#forgot to post this yesterday!

[azothinc]

[honey-dont]

[muffled rock music playing in the distance]

[shameless-fujoshi]

Rating: Explicit

Thank you SO MUCH to my amazing beta readers, @spices28 and @missoblaine! <3

Summary:

There’s a legend in Hateno Village about the well in Princess Zelda’s garden.

They say it’s haunted.

Zelda knows better, though, since the rumors didn’t start until the well had been built. And because they didn’t start until after she and Link first became intimate.

Just a short little ditty about Princess Zelda’s Secret Well.

[burquillos]

Day 17: A bunch of unhinged doodles because I don't have access to digital art rn

[cosmicangst]

weekly reads (12/17)

the gentleman's gambit (#4) | evie dunmore: ★★★★☆

⤷ the last book in a league of extraordinary women series, which is about a group of victorian suffragettes who find love in their allies and specifically in the last two books, champions and activists of their own cause. so i was understandably feeling the gravity of it here. this one deals with an academic/linguist and a businessman posing as a scholar to retrieve stolen artifacts from his homeland. 

i feel like these all had the right ingredients for a well-developed romance but i think the execution of it still fell short of perfect. the main external conflict for example was riding on the heist, paired with the internal conflict of the leads overcoming their past experiences to trust in their love. however, i feel like the book was busy also being the Last Book of the series and just pulling in a lot of other threads that the resolution of the core story just feels a little unfinished.

like conceptually i understand the third act breakup (especially as a woman of color who lives in diaspora) but i don't know if it feels emotionally satisfying. and i think that could be rooted down to the fact that we learn a lot about elias and his perspective especially with regards to politics but we dont know the personal (and painful) context of his motivation besides an ill-fated love affair. what is elias risking by pursuing catriona? why is the betrayal so heavy as a man belonging to an oppressed class and as a man who's been disappointed by love before? and by asking these i mean how is the story showing us these answers rather than telling us?

for me, my political beliefs stretch over groups but they are no doubt rooted in very personal and very specific experiences. elias can say a lot about politics and the ethics of why he does what he does but as a character, where is the specificity? we spend a lot of the book with it telling us the history of his country and his people but not a lot of showing in why elias does what he does. i can see traces of it (especially in scenes of microaggressions and blatant racism) but the writing feels a little lazy in this regard by just applying a handwave-y "yknow 1800s-typical racism and xenophobia" as character motivations

if anything what we needed to learn more of was his family and his specific relationships with them besides some mentions and a few cameos from his cousin. a more cohesive way to tie external and internal conflicts from elias's side of things is to root his drive in his loyalty and perhaps complex feelings toward his family (and by extension his homeland) and have it face his burgeoning feelings for catriona (and his diasporic identity) and marry those together. hot take here but if the heist was going to conclude anticlimactically like that, it should have been placed halfway in the book. then dedicate the last half to catriona following elias back to his country and meeting his family and properly learning about them and what it means to have an interracial marriage in this time period. if we go by how the points are outlined, catriona's journey feels far more streamlined than elias's. a balance would have made the third act not feel so cut off and unearned. also we should have had two epilogues if it was going to end like that lol

but still. i have much love for this book and im sad to say goodbye to these characters. overall, my final thoughts for this series: best book overall is still probably the first one but my fave couple is the second. third and fourth book have perfect individual elements that i wish melded better with each other. which makes me think about them a little more than the first two because im always thinking about the could-have-beens. elias could have been my favorite mmc here if he was just a little more cohesive as a character

tokyo ueno station | yu miri: ★★★★★

⤷ the ghost of a homeless man reflects on his life, family, and poverty and the thin line that separates him and the most powerful man in his country. a re-read and still just as emotional as the first time. perhaps even more on a personal level since la is getting ready for the olympics, which make me reflect on how much my own streets have changed and displaced its own people. and how much more it will do so in the coming years. the final passage of the book is beautiful and agonizing. life does goes on, with or without you. for the better and for the worse.

[plaguedpriest]

just updated hades ii and this new npc just dropped hello ??

[cryptidkey]

Some doodles of him since it was his birthday yesterday

[charbies]

linktober day 14 - fairy

[giolovesyousm]

in the clurb, we all HATE desk sets‼️‼️

[chatlote]

This is where our story starts.

[phantomantzzart]

cutest dark mage in all of plegia

[linefelcei]

A man fell from the sky...! ✨️

[caemidraws]

Two of Wands

[discountscoobyart]

studio bones, where are they????

[pine-needle-shuffle]

She is the world's cutest rat (and there's a lotta cute rats out there)

[pimsri]