#fantasy invader

[raxistaicho]

Revisiting Fantasy Invader's elemental nonsense

My recent post tackling Emblem Xeno's whiny anon got me to delve deeper into how the Chinese elements interact with one another, and it reminded me of an older post I did addressing some truly screwy symbolic analysis of the five elements done by Fantasy Invader.

The tl;dr is that he tried to tie the lords plus Byleth to the five elements, so as to demonstrate why the Bad Red Lady is Red and Bad. Mostly he did this because, just like Emblem Xeno's anon, he dug way too deep into shallow references to the Four Gods, and, predictably, his analysis quickly collapsed.

Firstly:

Here's how the five Chinese elements interact. One propagates the next in a wheel and also overcomes (usually by restraining or destroying the element) the next element after the one it propagates. For example, water allows for plants to grow and douses fire, ores extracted from the earth make metal, while earth obstructs the flow of water (in reality, it doesn't always do this, canyons being a famous example of water telling earth to shut up and fuck off and shut up and die).

Now where this gets spicy is that Fantasy Invader assigned each Lord (and Byleth, and also Dimitri twice) to a Chinese element to see how they interacted:

Edelgard got fire, because the Vermilion Bird, which associates with fire, is associated with the South, which is where Adrestia is. Ignore that the Saint that is meant to reflect that bird, Macuil, is hiding in the north. Edelgard, at least, is associated with fire, so this is strongest one. And his only strong one.

Dimitri got both Water and Metal, depending on which phase he's in at his character development. Boar Dimitri got Water, while Savior King Dimitri got Metal. The Black Tortoise (associated with Water) is associated with the North (though Indech is to the west), while the White Tiger (associated with Metal) is associated with West, but the Western Church are Dimitri's enemies, so I don't know why he'd be associated with them.

Byleth got earth because earth is associated with the Yellow Dragon, the Top God, because Fantasy Invader wants Byleth associated with the Top God, dammit.

Claude got wood because... fuck, it was the only one left! Claude's from Almyra and the Alliance, which are located to the east, and the Azure Dragon (which associates with wood) is associated with East.

Oh, and it goes without saying but Edelgard is the only character associated with her given element. Dimitri has no association at all with Water and is not uniquely associated with Metal (if anything, Edelgard wears more armor than him post-skip), Claude is associated with wind, which is not a Chinese element, not Wood, and Byleth is not associated with Earth.

Now obviously the propagate/overcome relations are completely fucked up. Going by Fantasy Invader's illogic:

Edelgard creates Byleth and defeats Savior King Dimitri.

Byleth creates Savior King Dimitri and defeats Boar Dimitri.

Savior King Dimitri creates Boar Dimitri and defeats Claude (fucking asshole lol).

Boar Dimitri creates Claude and defeats Edelgard.

Claude creates Edelgard and defeats Byleth.

Only a scant few of these associations are true even from a certain point of view. You could argue that Edelgard spurs Byleth to follow the path Rhea set out for them in the non-CF routes, and Byleth does sorta thematically create SK Dimitri by helping him get over his demons (which I guess means defeating Boar Dimitri), but as for the rest?

SK Dimitri is the only version of Dimitri who can beat Edelgard, he certainly doesn't lose to her. He also doesn't create his boar self, nor does he put Claude into a hammerlock and call him a bitch, and Boar Dimitri certainly doesn't create Claude in any fashion, nor does he defeat Edelgard.

Almost like the elements and the four gods are just window dressing that you tend to see commonly in Eastern media. Hell, Freedom Planet did more with them than either Fire Emblem game did.

[raxistaicho]

Hey, thanks for adding your input! It was all really handy, you pointed out a few things I didn't know, myself.

Now the issue is, that if we accept the thesis that the game does invoke the Mandate of Heaven, then it isn't just Edelgard who loses said mandate in most routes. In fact, in this case heaven is represented by the players choice and to a certain extend also Byleth, as their choice of Lord will decide who will creat the new order of Fodlan in the end, therefore inherit the mandate. After all, Claude, Dimitri and also Rhea will lose their authority in the majority of routes as well, as 3 Houses has a strong winner takes all approach Edelgard isn't much of an outlier.

Yeah, the problem here is twofold.

First, FI is focusing more on how Edelgard only wins in 1 route, and ignoring how that's true of every character barring Byleth (which we'll get back to).

Second, FI doesn't see Byleth as an extension of the player.

Let's be real, Byleth is a self-insert. They're borderline silent and all their interests and traits exist for the sake of the narrative and the gameplay. FI likes to talk about how choosing Crimson Flower is "changing the story" and overriding Byleth's will, as though Three Houses is the kind of narrative that's equipped to explore the concept of free will in a video game.

I mean, if we're arguing default=canon, then Rhea canonically dies and Byleth never does her paralogue (I'm talking about Rhea's paralogue, but Fantasy Invader thinks it's Byleth's even though it has basically nothing to do about Byleth), since to accrue support points with Rhea and pursue her support cutscenes takes an active effort from the player.

We also have to consider that many confucian scholars didn't consider badao outright evil, even through it was amoral. Confucianism is an incredibly pragmatic and nuanced moral philosophy and badao was considered a lesser path compared to badao, scholars acknowledged that it may be necessissary to establish order in chaotic time and that a hegemon can claim the mandate of heaven, but the issue is its lesser sustainability and instability compared to wangdao. So FI is leaving out alot of nuances here, nuances that the writing team behind FE3H often dabbles in, as seen in their more positive reception of Cao Cao as the Hero of Chaos, which makes his argument easily fall apart as Crimson Flower Edelgard would, based on its endings, have claimed the Mandate of Heaven and transitioned to wangdao. One could use her ending card giving her the title Flame Emperor over Hegemon as a sign that she archieved a kingly path.

And there's another thing, when the devs describe the difference between Edelgard's "military rule" and Dimitri's "righteous rule", they aren't ascribing a moral argument to either, they're just pointing out differences in methods. Three Houses never questions Edelgard's morals or intentions, just her methods with which she pursues them.

Yes, the game was created around Silver Snow, because it has been the first route written, but branched out from there, with Edelgards original role being a rival and foil to the protagonist, stories can evolve and change during the process of their creation and in the final product, the opposite is the case. The Black Eagles natural progression is hindered by siding against Edelgard, with their supports with her leading them to the natural conclusion of their arcs.

Exactly.

Crimson Flower Ferdie:

Silver Snow Ferdie:

And then you have Bernadetta only gaining the courage to leave her room in Crimson Flower, and even exploring the distant lands in her paired ending with Hubert. (Oh, but that's treated as a bad thing since she leaves her room thanks to the realization that war is dangerous, of course).

And Edelgard is symbolically actually very ambigious, she is both tied to darkness and the shadows through her connection with the Agarthans, though the same also applies to Lysithea, while also being linked to Fire and Flame, which symbolizes Sothis. If anything she belongs neither to the darkness nor the light.

Well put!

Birthright is a simple good vs evil story and if anything, Conquest is much more of a clear cut villain route than Crimson Flower ever comes close to, considering how Nohr is basically what if you mix Azure Gleams Adrestia with Faerghus on its most noble days.

It really is, roflmao. I've said it before, but Nohr is what Edelgard haters say Adrestia is.

Moral Ambigiouty: For Dummies

So I got shown another stupid post from our old friend FantasyInvader, the weird conservative guy who dabbles in white boy orientalism, and its barely funny enough to go over it.

I think if Edelgard haters don't want to be considered conservatives, maybe they shouldn't make highly conservative arguments that make appeals to religious morals, especially if we are talking about a religion none of the developers are likely to ascribe to. But lets humor him.

The issue with argueing with the Mandate of Heaven is that it doesn't really just apply to Edelgard here, but to every ruler. Shorty speaking, Mandate of Heaven states that a Ruler gains divine authority through Heaven, aka Tian, a spiritual moral force that will withdraw the mandate if the ruler rules badly. This doesn't just apply to amorality, but also can happen through incompetency or failure to uphold the peoples welfare. It is a very pragmatic concept in its core, because it both offers divine legitimacy to rulers but also justifies rebelions and usurpations, which makes it distinct from the christian divine right of kings, that didn't have such mechanisms, the authority of a king was bestowed to him by gods will which couldn't be challenged, even if the king ruled badly.

Now the issue is, that if we accept the thesis that the game does invoke the Mandate of Heaven, then it isn't just Edelgard who loses said mandate in most routes. In fact, in this case heaven is represented by the players choice and to a certain extend also Byleth, as their choice of Lord will decide who will creat the new order of Fodlan in the end, therefore inherit the mandate. After all, Claude, Dimitri and also Rhea will lose their authority in the majority of routes as well, as 3 Houses has a strong winner takes all approach Edelgard isn't much of an outlier.

I also don't know what hadou is supposed to mean, someone enlighten me, but I suspect FI is refering to badao in this context, which is correct, Edelgard does represent this concept. Primarily because she seems directly inspired by Cao Cao from the three Kingdom Period, who is often considered an archetype of this concept. Though again, if we operate from a confucian lense, yeah, Edelgard does act amorally through relying on Badao in 3 out of 4 rules, but her successfully uniting Fodlan with the ending strongly implying that her rule is one of peace and benevolence would under a confucian lense mean that she successfully transitioned from badao into wangdao after the war is united.

We also have to consider that many confucian scholars didn't consider badao outright evil, even through it was amoral. Confucianism is an incredibly pragmatic and nuanced moral philosophy and badao was considered a lesser path compared to badao, scholars acknowledged that it may be necessissary to establish order in chaotic time and that a hegemon can claim the mandate of heaven, but the issue is its lesser sustainability and instability compared to wangdao. So FI is leaving out alot of nuances here, nuances that the writing team behind FE3H often dabbles in, as seen in their more positive reception of Cao Cao as the Hero of Chaos, which makes his argument easily fall apart as Crimson Flower Edelgard would, based on its endings, have claimed the Mandate of Heaven and transitioned to wangdao. One could use her ending card giving her the title Flame Emperor over Hegemon as a sign that she archieved a kingly path.

If anything, the endings present Edelgard as representing wangdao the strongest, as she archieves an ending of true piece that results in the final absence of conflict, while Azure Moon and Silver Snow depict conflict waging on and Verdant Wind conflict never having ended. Wangdaos strongest trait is that it leads to sustained societal harmony.

The localization depicts Edelgard as worse than she is in the jp original while favoring Dimitri though, this has been widely discussed already, so dunno what he is on about outside of spreading the typical misinformation. And again, what is it with conservatives and not understanding nuances or the art of storytelling? Yes, the game was created around Silver Snow, because it has been the first route written, but branched out from there, with Edelgards original role being a rival and foil to the protagonist, stories can evolve and change during the process of their creation and in the final product, the opposite is the case. The Black Eagles natural progression is hindered by siding against Edelgard, with their supports with her leading them to the natural conclusion of their arcs.

Don't know what he is rambling about with Hopes, though Hopes would actually contradict FI's view of Silver Snow as the true route for the game because it fully abandons it. And lets not forget, 3 Hopes was written by mostly the same writing staff and Intelligent System still owns the Fire Emblem brand and could have intervened if the Black Eagles route being purely Edelgard focussed was against their intention, they didn't. If anything it shows that while Silver Snow is the original outline for the story, it ended up being mostly abandoned afterwards, with DLC material and Hopes depicting Rhea as more villainous than the basegame did. Also Edelgard isn't ever refered to as the Lady of Deceit, but I guess this has something to do with FI's idea that Edelgard is a homosexual sinful sexual seductress, I feel sorry for this mans mom.

The game contradicts him here, but then again, conservatives. The game frames Edelgard in all routes as a well intentioned morally grey Villain who at the worst faith interpretation the games text, not the headcanon of a guy who has a very obvious and severe madonna-whore complex, is misguided and misled by the agarthans. And Edelgard is symbolically actually very ambigious, she is both tied to darkness and the shadows through her connection with the Agarthans, though the same also applies to Lysithea, while also being linked to Fire and Flame, which symbolizes Sothis. If anything she belongs neither to the darkness nor the light.

In Short, she is Revan.

Birthright is a simple good vs evil story and if anything, Conquest is much more of a clear cut villain route than Crimson Flower ever comes close to, considering how Nohr is basically what if you mix Azure Gleams Adrestia with Faerghus on its most noble days.

[dinolich]

HELLAWEEN: Spellbent— the sequel to my debut graphic novel is AVAILABLE NOW!!! Run to your favorite shop for books 1+2!

Join Gwen and her friends as they face new worlds, new monsters, new curses and big Halloween plans! “With such an inventive world and fun cast of characters all I want is MORE. I could read about this hellish little gang and their adventures forever.” —Dana Terrace, creator and executive producer of The Owl House

GET YOURS

[fistapology]

And finally, my suffering is complete! After starting this over a month ago, having my program crash and delete everything, then going through two redesigns, the character designs for ES!Tallest Miyuki and Io are finished. All OC's and story belong to Define Me, I'm just the artist and, with that, I take my leave and walk into the ocean.

Story here! AO3 FF.net

[tyger-land]

𝙒𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙒𝙤𝙤𝙙 Cover art, 1952.

[mxtxfanatic]

can I ask you what exactly you think of wei wuxian using the reanimated corpses of wen ancestors/ recently killed wen casualties against the wen.its genuinely, by definition, a war crime

Sorry to burst your bubble, but “war crimes”—a modern concept that was actually created in reality and therefore exists with the basic premise of “dead people do not come back to life” in mind—does not cover a man digging up corpses to pad his corpse army against a genocidal entity lmao. You know what is a war crime, though? Mass murder and mistreating prisoners of war. With that said, Wei Wuxian has my stamp of approval 👍🏽

[g0nefischin]

MERSKELES PART 3!

Definitely not mermay anymore but here's the last 3 sirens I wanted to do

and some explanation on why I choose what I did under the cut

(little warning for parasites on fresh's section)

So from left to right

Dream is a golden colored koi carp fish, I picked it because they are very pretty and they represent a lot of positive things like luck and fortune, some people even wish on them to make their dreams come true :> I also thought of the legend where a golden koi fish climbs a large waterfall to turn into a dragon, so they have some mythical legends as well. In terms of the actual fish, Koi are very sociable and sturdy, they also live for quite awhile.

Nightmare is a coelacanth, he should probably be an octopus considering he has tentacles, but I really wanted to make him a coelacanth because I think they are neat. Coelacanth's are very old with the latest fossils being over 400 million years old, they were thought to be extinct until one was found in 1938, grandpa nightmare. They are also nocturnal, sleeping in caves during the day, they live deep in the ocean as well. 

Fresh is actually a two in one, he is a rainbow parrotfish with a tongue-eating louse in his mouth. Out of alI the bright fish I did a parrotfish because I really like their gradients, and I think the magenta fins fit his jacket. He's a parasite inside of a Sans body, so I picked a fish parasite to go along with the fish half of his body. I chose the tongue-eating louse, a type of parasite that replaces a fish's tongue. It first severs the blood vessels to the tongue and once it falls off takes its place. feeding on nutrients and acting as a new tongue for the rest of the fish's life, very cool and terrifying.

[thepeanutlord]

this was fun

[raxistaicho]

"God's gonna get Edelgard for this!"

Yup, we sure have gone there!

So a while, RandomNameless got an anon ask:

Insane that Sothis can watch Billy slaughter her children and subjugate Fodlan in twu piss, and still say she adores him. The devs were drinking the El Grey that day.

You know it's RN because the stupid nicknames.

So yeah, Anon's just angrily ranting that Sothis doesn't care about her daughter which established a false religion, made people suffer for a millennia, and tried to violate the laws of life and death, which, when Ashera did it in Radiant Dawn, was treated by Caineghis as an utter betrayal of her supposed core attribute of order.

“A blasphemy, you mean! How could the goddess of order violate the most fundamental natural law?”

Stay salty, anon.

RN herself weighs in on it next. I'm gonna let her go on a bit because the actual argument she's making needs to be stated in full.

That's what baffled me in Tru Piss lol, and first route bias etc etc meant Sothis was unsalvageable given how it became painfully obvious, even for someone who didn't complete the other routes, that the goddess Rhea calls "mother" is Sothis herself ! Bear in mind Hresvelg Grey meant Sothis couldn't interact with the cast bar Billy, will never talk to her relatives and will never have any influence on the plot. It's as if Elbert only talk to Mark, while Eliwood is still frantically looking for him, and Mark never tells Eli where his dad is.

So here, RN is misunderstanding the point of Sothis in the broader narrative. Yes, Sothis happens to be Rhea's mother, but "being Rhea's mom" isn't her role in the story. RN, because she's a huge fan of the Nabateans, wants the story to be more about the Nabateans, but it really isn't.

See, there's a reason the Agarthans are dispatched in one chapter in all routes and are never the final bosses or the true villains of the story: the story isn't about them. They're important to its background, but they're important for what they represent and what they do, not who they are. The Nabateans are the same.

Ultimately, the story of Three Houses is a tale of the conflicts between mortals and the divine, and the differing ideologies espoused by those who represent those sides. Edelgard firmly represents the will of mortal humans. Rhea, her antithesis, represents the desire of the divine to watch over mortals. Rhea, unlike her species is important because she is Edelgard's opposite. Thales, who might have been Rhea's opposite, is not as important because he isn't: Edelgard already serves that role. Dimitri leans more toward the necessity of the divine in human affairs, while Claude leans more toward the self-governance of humans while using the divine when necessary. There's a reason Claude sides with the Empire when he must, and the church only when he can control it for the purposes of promoting humanism.

Byleth is smack in the middle, fitting their dual-nature as both human and god, but they must choose a side in the end. In CF, they fully embrace the human, while in SS they fully embrace the god. VW and AM are something more in the middle.

Sothis is similar in a way, as a being who was once a god, died, came back as something less than a god, and chooses to sacrifice her powers to Byleth, thus remaining something less than a god. Sothis willingly chooses not to resume her role as the goddess (in Zahras when she decides to give her powers to Byleth rather than taking Byleth's body as her own in order to escape), and so her role in the story is not to be the goddess or Rhea's mother, but to be Byleth's guide, setting them at the start of their path and then departing so they might make the rest of the way.

But Rhea BaD BaD BaD,

And now we dip into the anti-Rhea conspiracy theory...

so her mother cannot take over Billy (something she canonically does in Nopes) to save her,

Here's another fact RN can't accept - and she calls Sothis a horrible mother for it - but Sothis doesn't approve of Rhea. Furthermore, Rhea's downfall in CF is almost entirely of her own making. She set the groundwork for Fodlan's oppressive social system, she refuses to allow it to be reformed, and she never questions why anyone would disagree with her. Because, for Rhea, reforming the church and Fodlan means resurrecting Sothis and submitting Fodlan to her divine rule, which becomes impossible without her church (it's already impossible because Sothis knows her time as the goddess is over and she's respecting the laws of life and death, but still).

and to erase Supreme Leader who hilariously tells everyone she doesn't exist.

It's not even that "hilarious". Edelgard's right in that the goddess worshipped by the Church of Seiros no longer exists: she's dead, and when she had the chance to come back, she chose not to. The Church of Seiros might worship a being with the same name as the gremlin in Byleth's head, but Sothis the head-gremlin and Sothis the goddess are a whole life apart from one another, and the Sothis we know chooses to remain the former.

But now we get to the real meat of this post.

Fantasy Invader.

Oh yeah!

I think this is a translation issue as Japanese Sothis doesn't say that "the stone in your chest is gone," she says "the stone in your chest...shattered."

Teaspoon Translations has it as "crumbled away" and has no ellipse, but who am I to question Fantasy Invader trying to make things look as sad as possible?

It broke, which would mean something considering it's supposedly her heart.

We bwoke Sothis's heart by killing poor baby Whea T_T

What's more, the game changed Byleth's Nirvana class to Enlightened One, and part of achieving Nirvana is purging oneself of attachments that might cloud your judgement.

But only if it's Edelgard. If it's Dimitri or Rhea, attach yourself as hard as possible in the hope they come around.

Also, in the context of Three Houses, detachment is a bad thing. Byleth grows out of being the Ashen Demon through attachment to others. Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude become their best selves when they open up and allow others in. Attachment is a good thing in Three Houses.

Ergo, by playing Safflower (the route being named after a type of thistle, a path of thorns if you will)

Ah, yes, I remember that one. It wasn't very good.

the player breaks Sothis's heart,

Oh he actually just said, "you break her heart :("

the thing that holds her essence,

No, because by then Byleth held her essence. Not the crude, physical matter Rhea shoved into their chest.

You'd think the person who goes all-in on religious symbolism would value the eternal soul over the ephemeral body.

causing it to seemingly disappear,

Except it doesn't? Her essence, I mean, not the Crest Stone. That's what the S support is for.

But sadly, Fantasy Invader has a way to explain that away.

It's a really bad way, but a bad way is still a way!

yet she leaves behind the Sothis you knew.

I'm sorry, what. Nothing indicates the Sothis from her S support is some... bizarre cast-off shadow of her.

Sothis, the real Sothis, abandons Byleth at the end of Safflower, leaving behind any attachment she once held as Byleth walked down the path of the Beast as per Dimitri's comment.

I'm sorry, what. Is it too much to ask that FI provide some evidence for this claim? I mean actual evidence, not his headcanon derived from his poor attempts at analyzing Buddhist symbolism.

Wouldn't leaving behind a part of herself to remain with Byleth go against this whole no attachments thing? That's a pretty big attachment! And if Sothis rejected Byleth, why would she do that? She can't just make a clean break from Byleth, she has to literally detach the parts of her... soul... personality, that care for them? Wouldn't that make her an incomplete being? It was a bad thing in the Tellius games when Ashunera split her soul into parts!

Combine this with the implications Sothis can come back if she recreates her body,

You know, that thing she demonstrates no ability to do! If Sothis could just make herself another meat puppet to incarnate into, Rhea wouldn't have had to spend a millennia trying and failing to do that for her.

and why Nemesis needed to kill her when she was asleep,

Because she would have defended herself and killed him if she wasn't? He didn't have a Relic or a Crest back then, he was just a bandit trying to kill the most powerful Nabatean in the world.

What, is FI trying to imply Sothis's soul just got stuck asleep because she died asleep and that's why she never bothered to come back the first time she died?

and you get an idea what's going to happen when that occurs as well as another piece of evidence Edelgard is an Agarthan in all but name.

And there we go, "God's gonna get Edelgard for this!" Sothis will totally self-restore herself at some unknown period of time in the future, kill Bad Red Lady, and make everything right.

Well if that's the case, why do you bother getting upset at anything Byleth does, FI? Just be like those Christians who are sure Jesus is coming back any day now and he'll fix everything on Earth when he does.

So yeah, yet more salty desperate self-assurance that Edelgard's totally gonna lose the minute the credits start, trust me bro.

I mean seriously, if her detractors are so certain she'll fail, why bother getting upset when she wins? It really makes you think.

[z0nbii]

HOPE U GUYS LOVE MY IZ CHARACTER VIV AS MUCH AS I DO <3333 💙💙

[leliwardens]

an article that encompasses everything i genuinely despise in the vg fan sphere all rolled into one for my viewing displeasure

[fistapology]

ES!Miyuki character sheet done, as promised. I love her...she's not a good person, but I love women in power. Story below as well as the sister piece!

AO3 FF.net

[bjm0ne]

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[sewbro]

a zine i made in a weekend to have something cheaper to sell at my zine table

[skys-trash-bin]

i made seventh heaven in terraria