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honoviadakai · 11 months ago

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What I think the Diaboys smell like: Mukami borthers edition

(CW: mentions of self harm in Azusa’s section and blood in all sections)

Ruki:

Top notes: old books, Tea, Herbs and spices

Bottom notes: Garlic, ink, charcoal

Ah yes

A refined smell from a refined man

This guy smells the least like a vampire

Like, the Mukami’s in general smell a tad more human than vampire, but Ruki smells the most human out of the 4 of them

And humans would never think he was a vampire based off smell alone anyway

Now in case you didn’t know, Ruki’s favorite food is soup

Why is that important?

Well it’s cuz ya boi smells vaguely of garlic, herbs and spices

Most people will believe he’s an Italian man before the idea of him being a vampire is on the table ��

Tbh it works out in his favor and for this reason, he’s the most human passing out of all the boys

However he does give old man vibes

Why?

Cuz he smells like he works in a library that was built during ancient Roman times

He smells so concerningly of old books that I don’t blame anyone that assumes his skin is actually made of paper

He also smells like he bleeds tea

To be fair…he probably does

Caffeine doesn’t affect vampires in the same way it does humans so you bet your bottom dollar he’s drinking tea every chance he gets

You have no idea how happy he is that tea and coffee don’t give him heartburn or acid reflux anymore (╯ ‿ ╰,)

But he does go overboard with his drinking sometimes…Kou and Yuma had to hide some of his tea so he’s chill out a bit

That day, they learned that vampires can in fact go through nasty withdrawal symptoms…

Thankfully he was able to take his mind off of that with his hobbies!

He has a few but the ones he tends to do a lot , outside of reading, is calligraphy and drawing

He specifically loves using charcoal as his drawing material!

His dad used to take him out for walks and they’d draw some scenery together

His mother was the one to teach him calligraphy

Doing either of these two crafts helps him feel close to his parents again

So he’s grown to love the smell of the ink and charcoal on paper

Sometimes he gets so into his work that his nails and fingers turn black by the time he stops

His brothers can tease him all they want, but he doesn’t mind it at all

He used to get much dirtier as a child when he worked on his crafts

So having the ink and charcoal permeate his skin in both appearance and smell gives him a sense of pride

He thinks his parents would be proud of him too

Kou:

Top notes: lilies, Gucci A Chant for The Nymph Eau de Parfum, berries

Bottom notes: Vongole Bianco, Cats, blood

Omg this guy smells so nice

First of, he naturally smells like lilies

Those flowers naturally smell sweet but super subtle

He also isn’t allowed to eat lots of desserts sometimes so he found a loophole and eats a metric fuck ton of berries when his sweet tooth is acting up

He’s not picky about the kind of berries he munches on, he just wants them to be sweet enough to satisfy him

So he smells very much like the cast of the Strawberry Shortcake franchise

And to top it all off, ya boi has pretty good taste in perfume

His favorite perfume is Gucci A Chant for The Nymph Eau de Parfum

It’s a very sweet, clean smelling fragrance that he makes absolutely sure to buy every 6 months

So based off all that you’d assume he always smells nice right???

Well…not exactly

First off, he is a vampire now and he does drink blood sometimes

But he doesn’t even smell like blood because of his vampiric nature

He just claims that’s why he sometimes smells like blood because the real reason is kinda embarrassing

So he’s an idol right? Part of his job is to sign stacks and stacks of autographs

He’s gotten so many paper cuts that he just starts wearing gloves

He has very delicate skin for a vampire, not as delicate as someone else on this list but we’ll get to him

He also smells like cats

He just really likes them so sometimes he just goes to cat cafes and plays with them

He also brings in strays and takes care of them

He won’t force them to stay if they don’t want to but 9 time outta 10 they stay so he just kinda smells like his feline friends

This dude also smells of his favorite food, Vongole Bianco

If left unsupervised, he will eat 5 plates of the stuff and he will smell of the pasta dish for weeks

Not in a bad way, he’ll just smell like he recently has dinner XD

@magnificentkidclamclod and I also came to the conclusion that once in a blue moon, this man will smell like French fries

Why and why’s it so rare?

Well for one, he’s just a big fan of McDonald’s French fries as well as their sprite so he will get it every chance he gets

Now as for why he rarely has it, it’s because of his manager and Ruki

As an idol he’s expected to maintain a certain weight and figure so he’s been told not to eat fast food

When his manager catches him he’ll just scold him and give him a slap on the wrist

But if Ruki catches him…it’s on sight

If Ruki even catches a whiff of fries on Kou, he’s running at him at full speed with what we blunt object happens to be close by

Unfortunately for the other 3 brothers, Ruki is a bit of a health nut and bans fast food from the house

Kou suffers the most and Azusa is the only one who helps him sneak contraband into the house

Yuma is true neutral on this tbh

He has a garden so he doesn’t care 🤣

Kou and Azusa will share fries every weekend at the mall followed up by a trip to the spa to get rid of the smell

Yuma:

Top notes: Dirt, Sweat, Sugar

Bottom notes: Blood, Fennel, Neem oil

Man is a farmer to his very core!

Doesn’t matter if he’s human or vampire, he’s gonna be up at 4 in the morning tending to every single one of his crops

And his scent always reminds everyone of this

He smells of the earth he tends to every day

He smells of the sweat of hard days works

And he smells of the fruits and veggies he tends and harvests

This giant bear of a man is the poster child of a rugged country boy 🤠

He also smells pretty sweet!

He eats sugar cubes so often that everyone’s amazed he hasn’t gotten diabetes yet

He also smells of fennel and neem oil

Those are really good, natural bug repellents

He’ll eat the fennel to keep the mosquitoes off him

He doesn’t need to cuz mosquitoes tend to avoid vampires but he did this a lot when he was human and old habits die hard

He sprays neem oil on and around his crops to keep pests away

All of these smells permeate into his being and set the gold standard of what your big, strong country boy should smell like

There is one thing that kinda weirds humans out though

He smells a tad like blood

It’s no where near as bad as the Sakamakis or the Taukinamis

But it’s juuuuust strong enough that sometimes his classmates will stop and ask him if he’s feeling ok

Thankfully his country boy aesthetic can save him from suspicion

Sometimes he’ll show them a cut he got from when he tried to clean the shattered remains of a pot and they’ll immediately drop the issue

Of course the dude who tends crops is gonna smell like blood! Hard physical work makes you bleed sometimes!

That’s all it is right?

🙂

He’s lucky he’s got such a water tight excuse cuz when he does drink blood, he gets a bit messy

Thankfully he cleans up after himself right away

Azusa:

Top notes: Blood, Shichimi Togarashi, curry powder

Bottom notes: Rubbing alcohol, fresh bandages, leather

Oh Azusa…

You beautiful, precious little masochist…

This one is the least human passing of the Mukami brothers and it’s not too hard to see why…

First off, he smells like the inside of a hospital morgue 💀

He smells like rubbing alcohol, bandages and blood

The strongest smell being the blood…

And here’s the thing

It’s his own blood that people are usually smelling

Yeah, sometimes it’s someone else’s blood

But 9 times outta 10 he smells like blood because he gave himself a few fresh cuts

And it’s usually a concerningly large amount of blood

He has the most delicate skin out of all his brothers

I’m also convinced he might have been anemic when he was human and maybe even still is

So combine all that and Azusa is basically a gusher

Thankfully he always has bandages on him

Unfortunately he doesn’t do much to cover up the bloody smell…

He does like spicy food so he tends to eat quite a bit of curry

So he does smell like curry powder sometimes

He also smells like his favorite food, Shichimi Togarashi

It’s basically like a seaweed mix

But it’s not enough to change very the weird bloody hospital smell he permanently has on him

Ruki does use the “He has anemia” card to make people less suspicious…but then Azusa gives Ruki a heart attack

Hell ask people if they wanna cut him

That’s not exactly normal human behavior so his brothers will step in and prevent him from doing anything to blow their cover

He also just naturally smells like leather

It’s very subtle but it’s nice!

As stated in Kou’s second, he also smells of French fries

He really likes McDonald’s fries…when they’re cold…

It weirds Kou out but he’s getting fries with his lil bro so he does his best to ignore it

#diabolik lovers #diaboys #mukami brothers #ruki mukami #kou mukami #Yuma Mukami #azusa mukami

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ganondoodle · 11 months ago

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something i just realized thats yet another point to the whole "sonau did all the things before the shiekah did, actually" weirdness is the helmets of those unnamed and utter voids of personality ancient sages- their weird ass sonau helmets are very clearly meant to be the titans heads but "sonau" so i guess the shiekah didnt even come up with that design on their own either, isnt that totally coolio (why are they wearing that sonau stuff anyway ... doesnt that too come off as weird?? putting face masks made of the design from the dominant culture of the king ruling everything over the other races leaders heads and not even giving them a name .. let alone a pesonality, or anything to say but the literal same exposition dump 4 times???)

also, though it is a smaller point, the sonau being supposedly "from the sky" also sitts wrong with me bc we know the shiekah had a long history of admiring the stars and trying to read from them etc, which combined with everything else just kinda adds to the weird feeling of the sonau having hijacked all of the shiekahs things in retrospect despite the shiekah as a whole having a wayyy longer history (and no i dont find it inspiring or like ... cool that the sonau are bascially the origins of everything the botw shiekah ever did, it feels not just disrespectful but like it cheapens the shiekah as a whole since now they really had never an original idea i guess lol - i swear if they meant that random "mechanical beast" that zelda apparently rode when she was trapped back in time as some sort of precursor to the eponator zero from botws dlc im gonna scream-)

additionally, the sonau being from the sky is still kinda weird to me given their other heavily used design elements are clearly based on undergound stuff, like the lightferns being literally every lamp bc i guess they knew only one kind of lamp to build, one that only gives off an eery cold slightly greenish light, (not really working in favor with that also cold grey and rather featureless blocky design of all the totk sonau structures) and the design of the constructs looking alot like mini/gigamas, i dont know if i want to believe they invented all of their stuff that isnt grey blocky rock after coming to the surface and mining the underground barren .. given how spread out their mines are they must have had a pretty strong grip on hyrule before they all went extinct from *gestures vaguely* -i think the english version puts it more vaguely but the german text def implies they all died 'somehow'- which is weird and underexplored as well-

all of this really adds to the sonau just ... not fitting into anything, not the world, the history, the design, the story, and their presentation as those only good goodestes of peoples makes me even more sus of them- i know im not the only one who was convinced that rauru was running some sort of scheme behind your back or something like that for almost the entire game (also to the person that added to this post saying that the same rauru statue being over and over at the end of the shrines made him feel even more like an "divine king" kind of dictator vibe, yes i feel like that too) and yet he is only ever presented as the oh so kind and good and perfect king by divine right, with his only mistake ever being not stabbing ganondorf right away i guess, but its fine, he died to seal gan after all uwu, what a noble guy, uwu

*sigh*

... man this entire game is such a mess once you start to think about it even a little, tbh i think zelda fans should be kinda offended this is what we are offered for an even higher price than botw after all this time ... we deserve better man :(

sorry, long post, got totk thoughts ...again

first botw vs totk shrines aesthetic and meaning; then shiekah symbolism thats overtaken by sonau

botw vs totk shrines (not in quality of puzzle since i talked about that a little before, but as in aesthetic, meaning etc)

something that worked well with shiekah shrines in botw was that these things were built SPECIFICALLY to make a future link stronger, theres that denialability to it that kinda make sense when you think about it, they are small challenges for the future hero to test and make them stronger, they are spread around the world bc you wouldnt want to hide some major source of power in one place, a monk literally sacrifices their life to enable you to gain more power their dead body waiting for you at the end (neat!!), they are each a little different in pose and clothing and im pretty sure its implied each monk made the puzzle for their shrine themselves; and the ones that rely on something happening in the world first can also be explained by their ability to see the future, the shrines and towers all rise up from the ground, which gives them that believable sense of they have been down there all this time and been activated via the net connecting them all to signal it is time- their design is also just .. nice? its got a nice contrast of the dark and the ligher brown with eye catching light from orange to blue to pink telling you in what states of operation it is (idle, working/done, corrupted) and their shape design is a very striking mix of bigger emptier spots of dark with the lighter browns wiggly lines coming in in nicely paced patches and the strong lights poking through giving you a nice soemthign for your eyes to look at (their tech is also a mix of magic stuff AND mechanism, they still look and work kinda magical but still have cogs and springs and looks like they are actual maschines put together)

totk shrines have no real denialability to why they are the way they are, its pretty clear that they are there for game reasons (and to copy botw i guess?) with no proper thought given to it (or failed to convey); they are already there when zelda does her time travel bs, and i heard (havent seen it myself? or dont remember) that the sonau shrines were built to .. keep monsters at bay? ok, im not even gonna question that part ( ... but i am .. i guess lightmagic wahtever dont think about it) so .... why do they contain a puzzle at all? its not to prevent monsters from entering since you need raurus hand to activate it (in botw you need the shiekah stone to do so which isnt really found besides yours either but ... their purpose is to test and empower you anyway .. and pehaps in a wider range to strengthen the bond with other folks when you have to work with them to get to it) then they werent present in botw so they must have ... somehow appeared out of nowhere? their connection to the lightroots might have been an attempt to try and make them feel more connected but that didnt work either imo, the shrines on the surface mirror lightroots in the underground, implying they are connected somehow, i at first thought like the lightroot is their root and the shrine is the flowerbud, but its very clearly just some ...magic rock crystal with stuff built around it including a teleportation thing thats pretty much copied from the shiekah ones (??) and you somehow ... enter magic dimension (which is .. fine, but i liked how in botws it was an elevator going down, making it feel like you are put into a physical room underground) but then there .... are also shrines in the sky ... that have no lighroot to connect to .. (i guess .. magic light wahtever dont htinkaboutit) so that part kinda falls flat- and the bring-crystal-to-shrine-spot (uhg) also debunk that thought since its a (tasty looking) green crystal that just kinda warps into a big grey rock ... for some reason, at their end is always the same colorless statue of da kind and his fridge wife (not her build) they are also missing that denialability that they were built for link specifically, sonau cant see into the future so (unless they yoinked that from the shiekah too??).. how does .. anything of that work then? especially with the crystal ones given that they are always a blessing shrine sicne bringing the crystal to its spot is counted as the puzzle but they couldnt have known that thats where it would end up at (and then ...how and why would you put a shrine thing into a crystal thing and disconnect it and throw it whereever when it manifests somehow again thousands years later- i need to stop thinking about it)- then their aesthetic is white green and gold(ish) which is a nice color combination in itself tho its lacking that neat status singaling and the eye catching contrast with their glow, the green glowy bits dont stand out as much, their shape design i dislike alot since it ... looks kinda unfinished and in a strange disconnect to their tech; buildings and statues are very blocky solid colors with the occasional rune or dragon carved into, which is also very blocky and one colored, their shapes are pretty uniform in a blocky way, theres not alot of shape contrast anywhere besides basic smaller block and bigger block, the most interesting looking ones are the ... outer walls of the shrines with their scaled look and the ground with the circle patterns; their tech and clothing is in a strange disconnect, its got a gree-tealish scale like texture in anything solid, be it tech or ornaments, it also features alot more gold and also brown stones that look rather untouched- now, for clothing, that is fine, the shiekah didnt dress like their tech either (.... mostly, ancient armor does exist) BUT the constructs and tech also have that more natural look to them

the fact that the same blocky statue waits for you at the end alsso removes not just coolness but also personality, instead of individual monks that gave their life for you and you setting them free once you take their spirit orb its the same representation of the holy king and queen giving you some light juice to cure you more of miasma .. which doesnt actually matter sicne you get your normal arm back no matter how many light juices you got at the end anyway (their "tech" also just looks less like actual maschinery and much more like .. magic tm, the constructs have nothing maschinery like about them and are just floating rings animated by green magic wiggle lines and function almost the same as literal bokblins with the added thing of being able to fuse/use tech.. the empty spot of a threat like the guardians is very prominent once you realize that the constructs are largely just like a reskinned bokblin, and the miasma hands, while neat, are more like a surprise jumpscare and less like a looming threat and are also not taken to their full potential)

theres also a disconnect between the sonau as we are introduced to them in totk and the actual sonau ruins from botw, which share a common dragon motive but have a much more .. MORE aesthetic, theres even color present you dont see anywhere in totk sonau stuff, like the red paint- you are given the explanation that those are ruins built by hylians as a monument to the sonau but i think it falls very flat sicne its clear it wasnt designed to be meant like that in botw and also looks much more withered than the totk sonau ruins which rarely look withered at all despite being even older than the botw ruins; im very sure its jsut an excuse bc their design for totk sonaus got changed ... for some reason, just like their "barbaric" origins in the phirone/faron region

shiekah symbolism and more kinda overtaken by sonau

so, soemthing i really dont like about the sonau as well is that theres quite a bit that they take from shiekah and kinda... present it as being the origin of it, actually;

we all know the very dominant symbol of the eye/third eye with three eyelashes and a tear drop for the shiekah which is established in the very first chronological game (skyward sword) but also featured in alot of other zeldas, it symbolizing their connection to hylia and their foresight (perhaps even more? i dont know everything); now we got the sonau who ... have a LITERAL third eye (and it doesnt even look special ..) that has three lashes and they paint tear drops under their eyes... (which has only the connection to .. the tears zelda sheds when shes a dragon, no other character does so at any other point, lol?) it makes it seem like we are to assume that the shiekah got their symbols from the sonau, actually, just like their tech wasnt their invention either but the sonaus, actually, who are new to the franchise and have no other connection to anything of past games, unlike the shiekah who have been there from the start really

then theres the tech, the ancient shiekah had very advanced, mystical tech in botws ancient history and now the even MORE ancient sonau had even MORE advanced tech way before them in totks lore which goes beyond even botws ancient history

im not saying symbols gotta be exclusive to one group of people but .. it holds alot of significance carried from the older games too, it feels strange for them to highjack the shiekah symbols and achievements WITHIN the two games that are supposedly directly connected in timeline and world (while also pairing them with those supposedly aniecnt hylian feather crowns and belly out look ... which, im no expert but i raise my eyebrow at that) together with the fact that nearly any and all traces of shiekah tech, except for the little needed parts that are never called that though and are just footnotes .. if anything, are precisely erased feels .... off

another long ramble about my thougths about totk, some people graciously call them analysis but i wouldnt say its that, its jsut a largely incoherent waterfall of words that would have spun around in my head for weeks if i didnt write them out and i keep coming up with more thoughts bc im thinking about the rewrite and well ...

im gonna have art soon again ... promise <(＿　＿)>

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rants #new addition #saying it here so people that want to read it know i didnt jsut reblog the post as is again #and it might be hidden under the expand thingy #its a long post after all #again ...................#sorry i just keep having thoughts tm

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jxpit3rr · 3 years ago

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doing cc!benchtrio’s makeup

••

Notes; gender neutral pronouns(not even sure they’re mentioned tbh)

I couldn’t hardly think of anything for ranboo so I’m sORRY

••

Tommy

Confused™️

Pretended to be offended

‘what am I not good looking enough normally?!’

Let’s you do it but isn’t happy ab it(let’s you know how he feels)

Very dramatic

“That fuckin’ hurts y/n!!”

“I can’t feel my eyes”

Hates the beauty blender

“It’s bruising me my face is gonna be purple!”

“…Tommy I’ve barley touched you-”

Very impatient

Tried to eat the base???

And the lipgloss??!

Kept crinkling his face because of the ‘pain’

Tommy sitting still?? Never heard of her

Midway through accepts his fate

Prolly asks for some crazy/vibrant eye makeup

Figures If he has to have it done, it’ll at least be eye-catching

Still grumbles under his breath tho

Tries to bite your chin or nose when you lean in

“Have you brushed your teeth this morning?”

“Wha-”

Doing his makeup is a process honestly

You’re worn out by the time your done

Kinda likes the look but won’t outright admit it

Makes jokes ab liking it

Might let you try it again(if he gets something out of the deal)

Tubbo

Kinda confused, kinda interested

Watches you set everything out

Inspects and comments on all the products

“Con-tU-Or”

“It’s contour, Tubbo”

“oH-”

Feels all the brushes to see how soft they are

Desperately tries to sit still for you but just can’t

Asks for pastels or bright colors

Prolly wouldn’t mind (a small amount of) glitter

Feels very relaxed

Prolly leaned into your hand when you hold his cheek to keep his face steady

Laughed the first time the eyeshadow brush touch him

“I’m sorry it tickled!”

Sniffed all of the lip glosses/chapsticks

Lowkey panicked when the gloss got on his nose

Booped your nose with his nose when you leaned in once

Don’t leave him alone with your pallets, he’ll (try to) swatch all of them

You left him alone with em? Congrats you now have a tubbo fingerprint in every color!

“This comes off of clothes right?”

Giggled when you blushed his nose

Actually kinda vibes with it

“If we do this again can you do like a bee theme or something?”

You put a butterfly clip in his hair and called him pretty

Turns out you didn’t need to put blush on him, just compliment him and boom! Natural blush!

Ranboo

Somewhat interested

Has no idea what anything is or what’s going on but will nod and smile when you explain

Asks a lot of questions

You don’t use that much base because he wears a mask

Prolly asks for some kind of crazy ass eyeliner

Lord help you to accomplish this task

His hair kept getting in the way

Half way thru gets pretty quiet and let’s you work

Mostly because his head is turned awkwardly so you can do the eyeliner

“I think my neck has been broken”

Thinks it’s pretty cool tbh

When your done he wants to do yours

He tries and its.. well it’s a line-

Likes the blush and highlighter

Correction, amazed by the highlighter

“Look at it! It goes pow when I turn-“

Decided to stream and shows off the eyeliner

Will prolly ask to do it again sometime

Until he tries to take it off, then it’s his worst nightmare

You will have to help

#tommyinnit #dream smp #tubbo #tommyinnit x reader #tubbo x reader #tubbolive #dsmp tommyinnit #tommyinnit x you #dsmp headcanon #bench trio #dsmp ranboo #ranboo #ranboo x reader #tubbo x y/n #tubbo x you

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theveryworstthing · 4 years ago

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So over on patreon Trevor asked for my take on the Addams Family and I grew up LOVING the Addams family movies so here we are. Instead of doing a straight up style interpretation, I decided to do a full on design challenge, using the characters as bases to make a black southern gothic Addams au. I actually drew the kids first, using the character bases of Wednesday and Pugsley to create some delightful kiddos I'm calling Sunday and Blanche. I of course then redesigned Gomez and Morticia into Carlisle and Mortesha.

The Addams have a very specific high aristocratic goth aesthetic (they've got a butler and nobody really works among other things) so in this re-imagining I wanted to go with vibes that run a little more middle class/upper middle class. I thought it would be interesting to think about what would be considered weird and off-putting in an entirely different culture, and how being a big ol' goth is way less controversial than it used to be.

I tried to keep this short (HAHAHAHAHAHA) so I didn't spin off into an essay about villain coded families, black people in the horror genre, and normalcy as it pertains to social survival, but just...bits of that are in these designs and lore. Keep that in mind.

Also I made the kids twins because they've flip flopped in age so much in different media and also twins run in my family (i'm the daughter of one). And let's face it, I'm pulling a lot of their southern gothic traits from living as a southern goth so *shrug*.

10 thousand pounds of lore incoming loooooooooool.

The Parents

From the moment he saw her he knew that there was a 50/50 chance of him either never making it out of that swamp alive or marrying the figure that was creeping out from under the distant willow tree in a black cocktail dress. The third time she found him trussed up in one of her traps, he complimented her rope work and asked if she'd like to go out sometime after his head wound stopped bleeding.

Or while it was still bleeding.

If she was into that.

Some kids and a mysteriously burnt down Piggly Wiggly later, their love is still as strong and inescapable as a bear trap in a sink hole.

Carlisle Guillermo (now Addams through marriage but I wanted to give him two first names for a name since Gomez has two last names) makes a vaguely described living practicing ‘law’ around town. A loophole king, people come to him from miles around with contracts signed in blood, fights over chunks of hair buried in their rivals’ yard, dehydrated primate hands, memories that seemed like dreams until the evidence of their happenings became too real, and other regular Legal Items asking for counsel which he is all too happy to give. For a price. Sometimes that price is a homemade pie and sometimes it’s a million dollars, depends on who you are. Whatever you’re asked to pay it’s worth that price, and if you try to scam him out of work or he just plain doesn’t like you? Well. He knows how to twist a contract better than anything at the crossroads.

And he always gets his due.

He doesn’t just serve the local (living)humans though, there are many things that need proper legal representation in this day and age. You wouldn’t believe how many city councils try to build on sacred burial grounds even after he lets them know that his ghostly clients are totally gonna haunt the FUCK out of the ensuing shitty condos and curse their families for all eternity. At least 50% of his energy goes towards dealing with real estate bullshit.

Carl is an excitable and good natured(?) man who loves his family, cigars, dancing, and his many knife-based hobbies. People find him very charming once they get past the feeling that they’re talking to a sultry gator badly disguising itself as a human. I didn’t put a ton of deep thought into designing him, mostly I wanted to make a middle aged dude who looked like he would have been voted ‘most likely to smooch the literal devil’ in high school. Tbh he probably has, but no demonic ex’s can compare to his lovely wife~

Mortesha Addams(her name was already perfect so I just tweaked it)is a woman of many talents. A self proclaimed homemaker, she prides herself on a greenhouse full of Concerning Foliage, a beautiful wasp apiary, and a coop full of what are probably chickens that she keeps for what are probably eggs. She’s also an avid creator of the outsider art that can be seen around the estate. She has taken on the family business of selling her homemade goods in a little stall by the road just outside the swamp with her mom, and makes pretty good money doing so. A surprising amount of poison gets bought in quaint southern towns.

Speaking of poison, people who come out to the edge of the swamp to buy it are usually carrying a lot of secrets around, and Mortesha knows most of them. It’s not like she pries the truth out of people, it just so happens that many nervous hellos eventually turn into the tragic backstory power hour if she’s alone with a client for long enough. She supposes that’s just how people are. Despite the fact that the Addams are very active in the community (whether the community likes it or not) she especially, as a direct descendant of the first Addams matriarch, is seen as…Well not an outsider because the community feels A Certain Way about outsiders and despite it all the Addams are their people, but maybe something like an exception. They feel like whatever weirdness they’re hiding can’t be weirder than any given Addams, so they get a little loose with their words.

This is amusing to her, since Addams’ don’t naturally keep the kind dramatic secrets that their surface level prim and proper neighbors do. It’s much more fun to openly talk about those things.

Do they have a sadly decrepit yet terrifying grandma up in the attic? Yeah, like three. They got a tv, all the creepy porcelain dolls they could want, and they’re close to family. Where do you keep your gram-grams?

Any bodies buried on the property? Yeah some, but most are thrown to the gators.

Any creeping through the balmy summer night with ill intentions? Yeah dude, everyone loves a nice family stroll.

What about dangerous forbidden love? If an adult Addams isn’t incorporeal then they’re either queer or in a torrid romance with some person/thing mysteriously drawn to that awful swamp. Sometimes both at the same time. Most times actually.

Mortesha would know.

The current head of the Addams family is just as outgoing as her husband but a lot quieter and harder to read. She never really seems to get mad about much and always has a genteel smile for everyone whether they deserve it or not. A seven foot tall human shaped “Oh, bless your heart”. A perfectly composed Lady even when she’s, oh I dunno, burning down a Piggly Wiggly. You know. A regular southern mom. Chat her up at the hair salon for 50% off a jar of wasp honey with your next purchase of a mysterious but foreboding packet of herbs.

Designing her was pretty easy because I just drew a lankier Grace Jones and called it a day. I had some problems with her outfit simply because if we were going HARD southern gothic then she’d probably be wearing a white/cream dress with a fuller skirt but I thought keeping the silhouette and the black was more important. She’s supposed to be an anti southern gothic southern gothic character anyway. A woman who looks like she has a million secrets who is actually the most open person you could meet. For better or worse. The red hair came from a coloring error that I really ended up liking (my mom had red hair her whole childhood that only darkened up in high school so I can buy that an Addams can be naturally fire engine red) and the veil was to get more of that classic Morticia silhouette in there.

The Children

Sunday and Blanche are the twin children of Carlisle and Mortesha Addams. Some say the Addams clan got their cursed homestead when a wealthy local businessman made a deal with the devil and lost, leaving his grand mansion to his least favorite maid and cutting his losses once he realized that the swamp would do everything it could to drag the house into the water and take what was owed with its horrible curse. Others say that the family has just always squatted there and no one really cares because man, fuck that particular swamp. Have you been in there? Absolute horror show.

Anyway.

Blanche is the more outgoing sibling and quite the engineer/mad scientist in the making. He started going grey at 2 weeks old but considering he was also rocking some extra fingers, toes, and a tiny tail (he takes after his dad), his parents just put it on the 'not life threatening' pile and decided not to worry about it. He's the kind of smart that teachers find utterly infuriating, less a dog eagerly learning and obeying commands and more a hyena who keeps teaching itself how to pick locks. He has a few friends in his school's robotics club (which they honestly allowed him to make so the school could contain his... creations) but mostly hangs out with his sister exploring the swamp. They find all sorts of neat things in there! wedding rings, suspiciously lumpy garbage bags, cloaked cultists who can't read private property signs, it's an adventure every day!

Blanche is all about experimentation with his creations, his look, and his tether to this mortal coil. Is lipstick a cool thing to try? Let's find out. Can he get out of a strait jacket fast enough after being pushed into the depths of the swamp by his sister? let's find out. He's not dead yet and confused local doctors can attest to the fact that he's rarely attained more than a bad bruise so he's pretty set on continuing to kiss rattlesnakes on their cute little heads and have his sister practice her knife throwing at him until that fact changes.

Blanche is very much a country goth. Cowboy boots (customized by his mom), knife, and lighter are daily accessories. He likes to wear the crusty swamp jewelry they find (the rust adds a splash of color!) and despite appearances he does try to keep himself neat. He's just got natural Grunge Colors and a tendency to wear clothes he likes until they fall apart. Pugsley always seemed the most modernly styled to me (which might just be because little boys clothes have been the same for a long time) so I wanted Blanche to be the most purposely fashionable Addams. Everyone else is goth by nature, but he's the only one truly familiar with goth as an alternative fashion.

I got really into designing Blanche because honestly, I find Pugsley to be the most boring member of the family. And he was hard to design! I had to mess with his vibe a lot to get him looking how I wanted. I know he's supposed to evoke an " 'evil' little boy next door who's parents never reign him in", but that's just goth Dennis The Menace. I's 2020. We can at least go queer goth Calvin.

Sunday was much easier to design. Wednesday was my favorite as a child (of course) and I really wanted to keep the spirit of her look while adding things like billowy sleeves (it gets HOT down here), big poofy twists instead of braids, and a nice tie. She's a professional after all, been running the local pet cemetery since she was 6 and the previous groundskeeper met with an unfortunate accident after telling her that tarantulas don't have souls. Her specialty is creating beautiful naturalistic animal funerals similar to those that Maquenda (https://linktr.ee/artofmaquenda) makes, and she takes pride in creating miniature dioramas of her subjects after each burial which she uses as a kind of 3D catalog for future clients.

She really wants to try out her skills on humans one day. Well. Publicly try out her skills. Lotta random bodies float into the swamp. None of them have turned down her requests for diorama models so far. Most seem downright flattered. Plus, she usually figures out which graveyard/crime scene they floated over from and gets her parents to give them a lift back. She'll even help enact terrifying revenge from beyond the grave on whoever put them there if she's not, y'know, busy.

Besides arts, crafts, and pet based funerary arrangements, Sunday is an avid lover of archery (any ranged weapon really), books where little fantasy adventure animals die dramatic deaths, and history. She is That Kid who eagerly raises her hand when asked who Christopher Columbus was and ends up being sent out of class after 15 minutes for making 'a scene'. Her favorite party trick is just picking an item in the room and talking about how it relates to either some obscure historical figure with a buck wild life or a horrible disaster. At least one charity pancake breakfast ended with children in tears after her vivid description of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Social-wise, while Wednesday is the girl that people ask to smile because they think she'd, "look so pretty", Sunday is rarely asked anything at all. People just kind of assume from her quiet nature (in between horrible history facts) that she's angry all the time and that she hates everyone. This is untrue. She hates some people but she's ambivalent to most everyone else and even downright friendly if you bother to talk to her like a person instead of a terrifying cryptid. Like, she IS a terrifying cryptid but she's also a little girl.

That’s about it for now. One day I might do the other family members but for now I’m happy with the four I’ve redesigned. Making an au! Lurch in a family that doesn’t do butlers could be interesting. Over on patreon I put forth that he could just be Motesha’s mute little brother (similar bone structure) but Amy Crook had the nice idea of quote: “ a mysterious "cousin" that "helps around the house" whose origins are both long in the past and faintly unsettling. He's good for lifting heavy things, like that tank of propane you're about to throw into the burning Piggly Wiggly... “ which i now consider canon. Who's kid is he? How old is he? Not important. Anyone willing to commit arson with you is family.

Annnnyway. This challenge was a lot of fun! I love indulging in AU’s.

#long post #the addams family #Character Design #au #design challenge #i am incapable of doing a design challenge like a normal person #oh god i forgot the cut lol

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cosmicbrowniefan · 2 years ago

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So I'm back again, and I was wondering if you had any blind Max headcannons? Because I've seen some saying that Will would wear his full wizard get up to distract away from her eyes and I was wondering what you thought of it

i am actually obsessed with that headcanon whoever wrote it has big BIG brain. these headcanons are just blind max, not wheelchair max, but i do have some of those too

lucas still takes her to the arcade and they go to the dig dug machine and lucas asks her if she wants to play

he says he'll help her with it and max says yes

but then she does the whole thing from muscle memory and gets a new high score

so she makes it her new mission to direct lucas in his moves and teaches him how to dominate at dig dug (although he'll never beat her high score)

el takes max to the mall and they go clothes shopping and describes the clothes to her

but max is insistent that she knows what looks good based on "vibes alone" so max picks out her own clothes and then asks el how they look

(and they always look amazing)

max and el make a game where they get a bunch of samples at scoops ahoy and max guesses each flavor as she tries it

max is sad about not being able to skateboard

so will holds her hand and helps her step on her board and el uses her powers to move it along and give her a bit of the feeling she used to get from it

after losing her sight, max depends on her sense of hearing a lot more, and she gets really dependent on music

so dustin takes her on drives and they suggest new music to each other

and they drive with the windows down and the bass turned all the way up and max just feels so alive

lucas asks max if she still wants to do that movie date and he says that he can describe everything to her

and she happily agrees

and for the next week she, dustin, and will can't stop talking about her "blind date" (this joke just makes max and el laugh so much)

max tells mike that she has to feel his face to visualize and this mf buys it, completely forgetting that she's seen his face a thousand times, and the whole party has this running joke of wondering how long max can get away with feeling mike's face

that's all i got for now but i love this concept so much, i might write a blind max fic soon tbh. if anyone has any headcanons they want to see pls send me an ask!!

#stranger things #stranger things headcanons #max mayfield #max mayfield headcanons #blind max #blind max mayfield #lumax #elmax #elumax #blind max headcanons

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butterflydm · 2 years ago

Text

wot reread: a crown of swords (chap 26 - end)

spoilers for a crown of swords

Current book ranking (strongest to weakest): The Fires of Heaven; Lord of Chaos; The Shadow Rising; The Dragon Reborn; A Crown of Swords; The Great Hunt; Eye of the World. I had a hard time figuring out where ACoS fits tbh. The things I dislike about it, I dislike VERY MUCH, but there are some genuinely amazing moments.

1. Up until this point in the series, the snippets we were getting of Morgase were actually working for me, but in this chapter, it’s just pointless trauma (and yet another example of consent issues in this specific book - she sleeps with Valda because he demands it and she feared the Questioners and then gets treated like trash afterwards when he lets the Questioners interrogate her anyway). Of this nineteen page chapter, we needed maybe two pages of it instead of the narrative luxuriating in Morgase’s misery (and, as a bonus, we get Breane shaming her for feeling traumatized and telling her that she’s a coward for not sucking it up and moving on already).

2. Anyway, there are two important things in this chapter: the Seanchan have invaded Altara and Morgase escapes at the end. I don’t really consider Morgase’s abdication all that important tbh considering that almost everyone assumes she’s dead already. Honestly, I feel like we didn’t really need this Seanchan scene at all -- the invasion of Ebou Dar at the end of the book is enough and would have come as more of a punch without this scene happening here. I guess it’s suppose to serve as our refresher on Seanchan culture, which remains terrible (also Suroth, who readers know is a Darkfriend, is still in charge atm). But in case we’ve forgotten: Slaves wear transparent robes that leave their bodies essentially exposed at all times; women who can channel are always property, and the Seanchan believe they have a right to own everything they want the second they want it.

3. Time for Perrin to split off into his own storyline. He and Rand staged a fight where they fought over the treatment of the Aes Sedai prisoners under the Wise Ones’ care. Perrin felt at one point during the fight that Rand might kill him for real. He and Faile and over a dozen other people are all heading off. Faile has taken a bunch of people into “her service” as she likes to do. They meet up with the Two Rivers men and a bunch of Wise Ones and a couple of Aes Sedai and Berelain’s people and a couple of asha’man. It’s a whole lot of people going off on this secret mission. The asha’man open up a Gateway for them to pop over to the west side of the continent. Sulin is one of the Aiel that’s going off with Perrin, which makes me sad about losing that connection with her and Rand. But I guess only Min is allowed to connect to Rand these days so we have to get Sulin out of there because she considers Rand a first-brother.

4. Loial is also going off on his own, with Karldin, one of the asha’man, to pop around to the steddings and see about getting all the Waygates guarded. Aw, Loial is worried about where Mat is. Yeah, you should be; he’s in a terrible pickle. He also worried that Rand will send Min away next. We should only be so lucky, but we’re stuck with her and their relationship, I’m afraid.

5. We learn that the married asha’man have figured out their own version of the Warder bond to use with their wives (and we only get acknowledgment that straight asha’man exist at this point). Honestly, this ‘wedding bond’ of theirs is sweet. I feel like Jordan will make me regret feeling that way, but it seems sweet for now, based on what we know, lol.

6. Perrin curses Rand for sticking him with Berelain but I don’t remember him telling Rand about Berelain trying to chase him. There is a certain amount of... irony?... in the fact that the whole reason that Rand is sending Berelain away is because he himself is also attracted to her (he tried to send her back to Mayene first). In general, the whole vibe around the Berelain situation just gets more sexist the further along into the books we get and it didn’t start out great. The official reason that Berelain is along is so that she can talk to Queen Alliandre of Ghealdan, ruler to ruler, to let her know that their army isn’t there to invade. And Perrin’s official job is to tell Masema to stop threatening and frightening people into following Rand and then take him and any of his people who want to go back along to Rand. I’m sure he will take care of that with the same swiftness that he used in LoC when he rescued Rand from the Aes Sedai!

7. Chapter twenty-eight focuses mostly on the horrific Mat-Tylin situation. She harasses him and then makes sure to jump away and look innocent before anyone else can spot her behavior. Mat is... desperate for other company to try to put her off, desperate not to be around her. He’s trapped and it only gets worse. And this is where we see how the power disparity hurts Mat -- as queen, Tylin can ‘starve him out’ and all of her people will work together to try to break him for her pleasure.

8. LoC!Olver felt like an actual kid that I didn’t mind reading about. ACoS!Olver is insufferable and I disown him.

9. lol, I like the bit where Elayne asks Mat to go somewhere be ‘be ta’veren’ for her. That part is funny/cute. Ah, they’re watching the place where the Circle was located (though Elayne and Nynaeve didn’t tell Mat that information). Nothing happens.

10. I do dislike that Mat apparently now... doesn’t like women. He’s attracted to women but has negative thoughts about them as human beings. This is a relatively new development; he did used to genuinely seem to LIKE women as well as be attracted to them, but now it’s a shock to him that he likes Birgitte as a person because she’s a woman and women are for sex but not for liking as people. This is very much a change from how Mat’s relationships with women and sex were portrayed in the past and I wonder if it wasn’t changed partly so that Jordan could justify Tylin’s behavior towards Mat. Because in order for her to be “turning the tables on him”, he needs to have the same attitude towards women that she does towards men (that they are for pleasure but aren’t actually people).

11. Chapter twenty-nine, Tylin rapes Mat for the first but far from the last time.

12. After Mat goes out for the day, he has to take Beslan with him, of course. Beslan is aware that his mother has made Mat her ‘pretty’ and has no issue with it. I’m not sure whether or not it matters to Beslan if it’s consensual? He seems to have the attitude that the choice is entirely Tylin’s and not Mat’s at all.

13. We get our fourth Darkfriend attack, this one on Mat & Co. Old Cully gets namedropped (not that Mat knows that the man is a high-ranking Darkfriend but we do).

14. We get a tiny hint of how the Kin don’t fully understand the White Tower culture that they worship and attempt to copy -- they believe that rank is organized by age and not by ability in the One Power, because that’s information that a woman doesn’t usually learn until after she gets the shawl, and none of the Kin have ever gained the shawl (that’s the whole point of them). Reanne suggests that every member of the Kin who doesn’t wear an Ebou Dari wise woman belt move to ‘the farm’ for a while.

15. Elayne is getting lectured for ‘revealing a secret’ that is only supposed to be known by women who have gained the shawl. As they are about to pass a punishment on her for revealing the Kin, there’s a message from the Whitecloak ambassador to let Elayne know the ~happy~ news that her mother is alive and a ~guest~ of Niall in Amador, which is very old and outdated news for the readers but brand new information for Elayne. She does not believe it in any case and her anger towards what she views as Carridan’s lies gives her fuel to stand up against the Aes Sedai trying to lecture her. Elayne is PISSED OFF about all the freaking secrets that the Aes Sedai keep from people and from each other (this is part of why she was so honest with Tylin at the end of LoC).

16. Elayne takes control of the embassy, essentially, and learns about the Kin and why the Aes Sedai have kept them secret -- they helped the White Tower maintain its aura of infallibility. And ELAYNE realizes that ‘what the White Tower knows’ about the Kin barely scratches the surface.

17. Moghedien spots Nynaeve in the streets of Ebou Dar. Recognizes her instantly. And then risks everything to chase after her and try to kill her. She tries to balefire Nynaeve but is startled by a pigeon at the last moment so balefires a slice through Nynaeve’s boat instead (ta’veren, I tell you, Nynaeve is ta’veren).

18. Very soon after Elayne gets an epic chapter, Nynaeve gets one. The Slog (tm) is very rough on our three ta’veren but Elayne, Nynaeve, and Egwene all get to shine. I hope that the show is able to improve Rand, Mat, & Perrin’s storylines while keeping the awesome that is happening especially for Elayne and Nynaeve in these books.

19. Ugh, tiny moment of ugliness that Nynaeve doesn’t realize is happening right before her eyes -- Tylin lent her an extremely expensive necklace as a ‘thank you’ for Nynaeve getting Mat to move into the palace and be readily available for Tylin to harass and assault.

20. But then we get to the meat of the chapter, when Nynaeve almost drowns (because of Moghedien’s weave) but instead is finally able to break through her block and channel freely. Congrats Nynaeve! Nynaeve realizes that she feels too hopeless and scared to be angry enough to channel and, at the final moment before it’s too late, she surrenders to saidar and is able to burst open the boat compartment that she was trapped in.

21. However, she is still about to drown due to being exhausted, so it is Convenient that Lan has just arrived in Ebou Dar (ta’veren, I tell you) and helps her get to a boat. When she realizes that Lan is there and she looks like a drowned rat, she embraces saidar again, easily this time, and channels herself dry. This scene is very genuinely romantic. Jordan can have one (1) right in this book when it comes to romance. Also this all sounds so very cinematic. I am kinda Team ‘Do we need Ebou Dar?’ but I do love this scene.

22. Oh, but then Jordan’s right immediately gets taken away as we get to Jordan’s obligatory Violence In Romantic Relationships Means Love as Nynaeve slaps Lan for being bonded to Myrelle and eventually punches him in the stomach (at least the fourth romance that involves the woman punching the man in the stomach) and doesn’t try, you know, asking him about it first. Use your freaking words, Nynaeve. I hate this for a couple of reasons: I hate that there’s so much violence in the romances in general and I also hate the whole ‘when women do a violence against a man it’s just a cutesy little woman thing that we don’t take seriously’, which is damaging in multiple different ways, both for women and men.

23. And this whole thing here is another reason I have a hard time believing that Jordan really did mean the Mat-Tylin situation as genuine commentary rather than ‘rompy sex comedy’, because he already normalizes violence in romantic/sexual relationships (as seen here and too many other places to mention). He’s also previously treated a woman ignoring a man saying ‘no’ as actually the woman doing what the man secretly WANTS her to do (in Rand x Min during LoC, when Rand explicitly tells her to stop kissing him goodbye like that). And in another Rand-Mat comparison, the man is given no privacy against the woman intruding on him whenever she wants - the Maidens letting Min without ever checking with Rand first is essentially the equivalent of Tylin having the key to Mat’s room. Mat-Tylin is a more extreme version of what Jordan is already doing in several other romances.

24. Once Lan is able to actually explain the situation to her, she realizes that he’s someone in the grips of what is essentially a sickness, the Warder grief from Moiraine’s bond to him snapping, and she extends him compassion and love. And she also makes him laugh when she asks him if there’s a way to make sure Myrelle would KNOW it’s her when she sleeps with Lan (because she’s sorta just proposed to him and says they should get married today). He tells her that her ship went down due to balefire and she realizes that Moghedien must be here hunting her. Nynaeve also realizes here that she’s not angry but still holding saidar and nearly falls over herself with delight. This scene would be so amazing if we just snipped Jordan’s endemic domestic violence out of it.

25. Elayne takes the Aes Sedai to go talk to the Kin, so she racks up another win here by marrying these two sides together. She gets to be very in control and quite queenly. She makes the offer to the Kin about the Amrylin wanting every woman who can channel to be connected to the Tower and the women are emotionally overwhelmed by this, because every woman here is someone who was REJECTED by the Tower and sent away for one reason or another (... I wonder if we’ll find out in Prime!verse that the old Wisdom of Emond’s Field knew of the Kin?). We learn there are nearly two thousand members of the Kin, which is nearly twice what the White Tower had before the schism. We also learn they live a lot longer than Aes Sedai do.

26. Mat comes into the middle of all this to let them know that he’s found the warehouse with the BotW; Elayne tries to claim that she already knew but when she feels Birgitte’s disapproval in her head, she relents and sincerely thanks Mat for being the key to them finding what they needed. “His gaping astonishment was almost worth the agony.”

27. “Women with knives make me uneasy these days”. Ugh, I hate the Tylin storyline for Mat so much. And he’s so desperate to leave Ebou Dar immediately but that idea gets smacked down by Elayne -- they are staying until the Bowl is used.

28. We get a look into Elaida’s very unpleasant dreams -- her getting to punish the rebels while "young al’Thor” quietly kneels at her side as she holds the shield on him that prevents him from channeling. She dreams that Egwene would throw herself on Elaida’s mercy and kiss her hem. She’s woken up by Alviarin to the bad news that she will NOT be getting a pet Dragon any time soon. Corvarla, the highest ranking of the sisters who escaped, has returned to talk to Elaida and tell her what happened. Twelve sisters escaped to Tar Valon (out of the 39 sent). Gawyn and his Younglings have also returned to Tar Valon, which is a deep disappointment to Elaida.

29. Elaida also learns about the asha’man at this point, several hundred of them, which makes her hands shake with fear. It means that the Black Tower is a much more formidable opponent that Elaida realized, so Toveine and the Aes Sedai sent with her (50 in total) will not have an easy time. Will, in fact, probably get curb-stomped. And it’s too late to order Toveine to retreat, due to her orders to go in secrecy. Alviarin uses all this to get a hold over Elaida and take her ‘advice’ by reminding her who will truly be punished by the Hall if all these failures become known. The ‘advice’ that she gives Elaida is something that is certain to cause discontent and agitation between the Ajahs (big goal of the Black Ajah, I assume). She also tells Elaida that it’s time for the White Tower to stand formally against Rand al’Thor.

30. Elaida goes to a White Ajah Sitter named Seaine that morning (after she has done as Alviarin ‘advised’ her). I will note that Elaida is ALSO having ‘infamous cold furies’ basically exactly like Rand does. Her brush with Aridhol seems to be affecting her fairly similarly to how the taint is affecting Rand (when we can untangle what is taint and what is trauma, which can be difficult with Rand sometimes).

31. I love the little touches of personality in Seaine’s rooms! Her little portraits of her now-deceased family and her little cat collectables. Verin is still MVP but it took me less than a page to fall back into love with Seaine.

32. “I want you - I command you - to undertake an inquiry. And you must indeed hold it in your heart. The wrong ear hearing of it might mean death and disaster for the White Tower.” More specifically she says, “I charge you to follow the stench of treason, no matter where it leads or how high, even to the Keeper herself.”

You guys, I think Elaida might be my problematic fave now. She just managed to create something amazing completely accidentally out of her paranoia and fears. From what I remember of the Black Ajah Hunter storyline, it is a genuine highlight. Because Elaida’s trying to set up, essentially, for Seaine to ferret out traitors to HERSELF but Seaine interprets it as treason to THE AES SEDAI. Which means Black Ajah! And Seaine is actually a character who is willing to CROSS AJAH LINES, here in the White Tower, where every sister looks suspiciously at all the others. Anyway, I’m sure Elaida will do something to piss me off and take her off the list, but she’s temporarily on it, lol.

33. Seaine was the Sister who proposed Siuan Sanche as Amrylin years ago!

34. Despite promising to keep this a secret, once Seaine realizes/decides that this is a Black Ajah hunt, she brings the one person that she trusts into this hunt with her: Pevara of the Red Ajah. Who is our token Actual Good Red Ajah character who shows us a different side of the Red Ajah as a whole. The Red Ajah forced Pevara to end their friendship when she joined the Ajah. But the reason that Seaine is certain that Pevara can be trusted with this is because her family was murdered by Darkfriends. This chapter is SO GOOD honestly, from start to finish.

35. Pevara is plump, short, and pretty, with a merry twinkle in her eyes and a ready smile, and she’s openly argued that the Red Ajah would find Warders useful, actually. The first thing Pevara does is apologize for cutting her off after she became Red Ajah and say that she wished she’d approached her years ago. Seaine doesn’t hold it against her. “We cannot go against our Ajahs when we are young, and later, it seems impossible to retrace our steps.”

36. Oooh! Pevara has been convinced for a WHILE that the Black Ajah were real. She suspects those two Amrylins dying so closely together right after the Aiel War seemed very suspicious and suspected the Black Ajah’s hand (correct!). Seaine has logic’d out that Black Ajah sisters must still be able to lie and get around the Three Oaths, so confronting sisters directly isn’t where they should start. “If any sister wrote that she did one thing when we can prove she did another, then we have found a Darkfriend.”

37. Rand is in a gray depression after Perrin leaves (no more Two Rivers people in his life at all; I would be depressed too) and doesn’t stir for days, only able to react once Min shows up and is let into his rooms despite his orders. I really am pretty sure at this point that Sulin was sent away because she has too much of an emotional connection to Rand and that job has now been assigned to Min. I will keep an eye out but I... I suspect that Rand’s special relationship with the Maidens is going to begin to fade into the background now that Min is here. Which I really hate because I have adored Rand’s found family with the Maidens.

38. He is also fighting hard against an arrogance that is threatening to overtake him, fighting against the urge to use all the power contained in the Choeden Kal, as he has now hidden the access key ter’angreal behind his wardrobe in his room in Cairhien. “He was the Dragon Reborn, the only hope of the world against the Dark One. And the Light help the world for it.” Rand’s increasing arrogance wars against his self-hate. He dreams of all the women who have died ‘because of him’ (he is very loose in his definition). Has nightmares that he killed Perrin during that staged fight of theirs. He has nightmares of being back in the box and taken out to be beaten again. Nightmares of trying to go to the White Tower to confront Elaida and seeing not only the Tower united against him, but Egwene and Nynaeve and Elayne on her side as well. He has nightmares about what Cadsuane said about madmen hearing voices in their heads and begs Lews Therin to talk to him again. And he’s terrified to realize that Alanna’s presence at the back of his mind has started to comfort him.

39. More violence from Min in the Rand-Min relationship as she ‘jolts’ him out of his self-hating depression.

40. Anyway, Rand tells Min he loves her, and that he loves Elayne and Aviendha. Min says that’s chill or whatever, and Rand officially makes Min his exemption in his policy of Send Away Everyone I Love To Protect Them, so that happened.

41. Yeah, Nandera kinda semi-officially hands over the duties of Caring For Rand to Min here. I’m sad, y’all. I hope we still get SOME found family scenes in the future. We sorta get one here but it’s still mostly about Min.

42. Anyway, Rand finally goes to the Sea Folk and doesn’t prepare for it at all. The arrogance definitely has him strongly in its grip. He assumes they will just bow down before him and give him whatever he wants. Honestly, Rand’s bounce from depression to arrogance here is pretty concerning.

43. Yeah, Rand is 100% embracing all the pomp and circumstance that used to majorly bother him and is attempting to use it to overawe the Sea Folk into just accepting whatever they need to accept about him so that he can go back to his ~important work. I’d be miffed at him too. As always, Rand’s awareness of the ‘honor’ being done to him is married to his certainty that almost everyone around him hates and resents him.

44. Tracking Rand’s PTSD & taint-related symptoms:

paranoia - he feels like he can only fully trust a very short list of people that consists almost entirely of his lovers or people who knew him before he was known as TDR

recklessness - despite his worries about the dangers of the world, he tends to leap in first without his guards way too often

more susceptible to flattery/arrogance - this one is very much on display right now

allowing his lust to control his choices (per the text, that’s why he sent Berelain away; he was too attracted to her and felt like he couldn’t have her around)

moodiness that comes in three flavors: cold rages (this was one of his first symptoms; he notes early on in the series that he’s having a harder time controlling his temper than when he was younger), gray depression (this started when he was kidnapped by the Tower Aes Sedai, so that one goes very much into the ‘definitely PTSD’ bucket for me), and a giddy and talkative form of mania (Min calls this euphoria a little later on and we’ve previously seen it before around Perrin and Mat; it might only come out around people that Rand trusts)

self-loathing/suicidal tendencies, which relates back to his recklessness, I think. Rand doesn’t hold his own life as very valuable, except as coin to spend at the Last Battle. This also started appearing very very early on.

specifically from his time in the box, we know that he hates confined or dark spaces

45. Yeah, Rand has become very very certain that he “knows” and understands what all the prophecies mean and believes that he can sweep aside everyone as he barrels towards the Last Battle. Again, this is a place where I think having what is essentially a ‘live-in fortune teller’ is a bad thing for him, especially when it seems like she does more to encourage and facilitate his certainty than she does to caution him to combat it.

46. Rand does basically overawe the Sea Folk into agreeing to the basics of what he needs but then he can’t fight his fear over being trapped in a small space anymore and has to leave with the Bargain mostly undone, with Merana to finish the rest. Harine does give him the useful information that the Seanchan have likely ALREADY returned to the western coast.

47. Min apparently now also cares about having ~light ~delicate furniture (she notes that she never cared before). She’s considering completely remodeling Rand’s rooms in Cairhien despite not having cared about home furnishings and linens before now. No but seriously wtf? I guess sleeping with Rand activated her dormant ‘housewife’ genes. “she was not one of those fool women who tossed their brains at a man’s feet along with their hearts”. you are literally the main example of this sort of woman in this entire series.

48. “whenever Mat or Perrin was present” lol the TWO TIMES that you’ve ever seen Mat, yes. Anyway, Min sees her purpose in life as “keeping up Rand’s spirits”. She suggests Rand "comfort her again” instead of going out to visit the rebels (he’s going out to visit the rebels because he feels like he’s on a ta’veren streak). She also notes that he is in the grips of a euphoria that seems as concerning as his depression, which is her first time encountering this side of him, I think.

49. We learn that Rand goes out without the Maidens “all the time” (yes, that’s exactly why no one knew he was missing when he was in the Box; he has not hidden this tendency as well as he believes that he has), which is that recklessness of his that has led into so many troubles for him. And will do so this time as well.

50. “she was ready to leap if he crooked a finger; she just wanted to make sure he never found out” I will MAIL YOU some freaking self-respect, Min. Please just give me your address.

Rand: expects Min to jump when called

Min: jumps when called

also Min: wow I hope he doesn’t ever find out that I jump when he calls

51. ...did Min really not realize that Rand was going to meet the rebels in person? Why is she surprised and attributing this to Rand being ta’veren? He literally told her this was his plan?? Also:

Rand: I love Elayne and Aviendha too much to be near them. It would put them in Too Much Danger!

also Rand: Hey, Min, come and meet the nobles who are rebelling against me and I will even tell the first one we meet who I am. I’m sure it won’t be dangerous at all.

He is just going to constantly & casually haul her into so many dangerous situations in the future. Not EVERY dangerous situation that he goes into, but a surprising number.

52. For someone who keeps saying she doesn’t like to share her viewings with people, Min is constantly sharing her viewings with people. Wait here a moment, MIN REALIZES SOME OF HER VIEWINGS ARE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES: “Sometimes, before she had learned better, it had happened because she warned”. Then why do you keep telling so many viewings to Rand? Make it make sense, Min. Earlier in this very section, she thought about how she “could hardly wait” to share a viewing with Rand about Lord Darlin.

53. Anyway, we do learn the valuable information that Fain is here, chilling with the rebels against Rand. I guess that’s where he went after his assassination attempt using Whiteclocks on Rand failed? Min sees no viewings around him at all. I think I read a theory somewhere that she never saw viewings that touched the Shadow and Fain was a Darkfriend before he was More Than A Darkfriend.

54. Cadsuane is also here, chilling with the rebels. This scene could have been cut down a lot imo. So of the Aes Sedai, there’s Caddy and her two buds, and four Red Ajah that have recently arrived. Though I have to admit if Min and Rand’s relationship weren’t rubbing me the wrong way, I would probably find it sweet in a poly sort of way that Min and Rand are pretending to be married while using Elayne’s family name.

55. Rand agrees to duel with Toram, the Lord that is Fain’s companion. They duel for a while; they’re both blademasters, and then there’s a wall of fog that attacks everyone, killing one of the Red Ajah sisters. Rand does work together with Cadsuane, her group, Darlin, Caraline, and Toram to escape the attacking fog. Bubble of evil, maybe? Or maybe a Fain thing? Rand uses balefire to destroy one of the fog monsters, revealing that he can channel. Toram runs off at the sight and the realization that this is TDR, but Darlin sticks around. Cadsuane hits Rand for using balefire but he’s more concerned about telling her that the Lews Therin in his head is real.

56. Fain abruptly leaps out of the fog to attack Rand, scoring him along his side. Samitsu heals him and takes note that Something Is Wrong, revealing that Rand was cut by Fain exactly over the top of his old unhealing wound from Ishamael. They take him to the Sun Palace as quickly as possible, which is not incredibly fast.

57. Min spills out the entire story of Rand’s trauma with Aes Sedai and the box to Cadsuane, her companions Samitsu & Niande, and Darlin and Caraline. So Rand doesn’t get to share this with someone in a way where he gets reassurance, but people he doesn’t trust get to know the full extent of his trauma. “He wanted it kept secret” but Rand is never allowed any privacy or any choice about what business of his gets shared, even as everyone keeps secrets from him. Anyway, I guess that’s an additional reason that Min was on that trip with Rand, so that she could trauma-dump on people about what he went through. As much as I hate Rand goes places without telling people what he’s doing, things like this show why he feels like he needs to do it. Because if people know anything about him, they will tell other people. At this point, it kinda feels like Mat is the only person who has ever actually kept Rand’s secrets for him.

58. Anyway, I will make a mental note that Cadsuane Knows that Rand was heavily abused by a large group (39 sisters) of Aes Sedai. Cadsuane’s reaction to hearing this is to tell Rand’s unconscious body: “I will not hurt you more than I must”, while the sisters with her are way more focused on him having stilled three Aes Sedai. Min regrets that she told them everything but, well, too late now!

59. “Rand was the only thing she cared about. The only thing in the world.“ Trust me, Min, we all know that.

60. In the flurry, the asha’man arrive and Dashiva orders Flinn to heal Rand. Cadsuane’s only reaction to meeting them is to add more “boys” to her "needs manners” list. Flinn is able to Heal Rand somewhat better -- he won’t die now. Samitsu is over her fear and now demands to know how his version of healing works. What Flinn did was seal the wounds off from Rand’s body while leaving them to fight each other -- they are two different kinds of evil and dislike interacting.

61. Mat has learned from Birgitte that his spear is called an “ashandarei”. He is with Elayne and some of the Kin to go to the warehouse where he’s pretty sure the Bowl of the Winds is. Mat is so despairing and miserable over how Tylin has him trapped and “helpless”. Also, the way that Tylin is basically telling Elayne and Nynaeve that she’s abusing Mat but coding it just enough that they don’t pick up on it makes me want to throw things. Elayne, in a doubtful tone: “the queen said she finds you wonderfully entertaining and courteously compliant”.

62. This is also the section when Jordan starts transitioning to “but actually he doesn’t mind!” which he kinda goes back and forth on. But he talks about Mat enjoying himself “in sections” when “he could forget he was with a woman who thought he was some sort of bloody doll”. Basically the “it isn’t rape if you have an orgasm” argument, which we all know is BS.

63. Lan arrives with Nynaeve, which is how Mat finds out he’s in Ebou Dar. We learn that Lan and Nyneave got married last night by “Atha’an Miere custom”. Something that seems super-weird to me in this book series is how people outside a culture, if they get married by someone inside that culture, are apparently bound to follow all that culture’s traditions for married life. Having an Atha’an Miere wedding doesn’t mean you’ve magically become Atha’an Miere. This issue comes up later, too, where someone considers themselves bound by another culture’s wedding traditions even though they have no reason to want to be a part of that culture. A wedding isn’t a magic spell?

64. Lan tells Mat both that Moghedien killed his two men and also that Nynaeve didn’t want him to tell Mat about it. Mat literally thinks he would rather face Moghedien, one of the FORSAKEN, than he would see Tylin again (and Tylin has now moved him into her own apartments) and he thinks he’s about to start crying. “I say no and she laughs at me” kinda sums it all up.

65. Elayne found out that the red flowers on the basket Tylin gave him means they’re having sex and she immediately accuses him of forcing his attentions on her. Which makes Mat sputter in protest and confess to her that the exact opposite is what is happening. She doesn’t take it seriously at first (she laughs and tells him about what young ladies who catch the eyes of kings do) but eventually (after he offers his medallion for protection against Moghedien) she takes him seriously and says she will explain the situation to Nynaeve (as Nynaeve had already been told the incorrect version).

66. Mat doesn’t understand why his attempt to try to protect her by lending her medallion made her respect him and take him seriously when it’s always pissed her off before when he’s tried to protect her. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure why this is the thing that makes her take him seriously either, when confessing to being forced into sex made her laugh and say it was “a taste of his own medicine”. Maybe because this breaks her previous idea of “who Mat is” more?

67. The Black Ajah sisters find them now, as Elayne has already dashed upstairs, and Nynaeve is shielded by them. Nynaeve tells Mat there’s channeling upstairs and actually asks him “Please” to check it out while she and Lan & the wise women take care of the Black Ajah sisters. Mat comes upon “an ordinary-looking fellow” in a gray coat, who manages to twist one of the women’s necks to kill her. Mat leaps into action to fight him, seeing Elayne lying on the floor and thinking that she’s dead and he’s failed Rand.

68. The man kills Nalesean and Mat is losing the fight against him. And then by chance Mat’s medallion touches him and it burns him. Mat thinks that maybe he can’t win this fight and there’s no point in dying avenging Elayne... and then he sees her hand move and he realizes she’s still alive, so he jumps back into the fight with a vengeance. He breaks off the necklace for his medallion so that he can use it as a weapon. “The first step was the hardest, but he had a promise to keep.” The man runs before Mat can get him, and Elayne calls for him, so he goes to her. Mat is still such a good character and such a good person in this book. He is trapped in an incredibly shitty storyline with Tylin but he himself has remained unbroken so far by it.

69. Elayne sees Mat with new eyes after he fought so hard to protect her and I really really hate that Mat is going to be ripped away from this plotline at the end of this book! We deserved to see how Elayne and Mat’s relationship would shift and change now that he has her respect. Instead, he gets trapped in Ebou Dar with the Seanchan and Tylin. The actual worst narrative choice that Jordan made was dropping that wall on Mat at the end of this book. “You are going to have to let me save you at least once to balance the scales,” Elayne says. Hate that this new dynamic gets cut off at the knees! Mat deserved to finish out this storyline!

70. Mat learned about the man -- gholam -- from Birgitte and shares that knowledge with the Aes Sedai. They were created in the middle of the War of Power, during the ending of the Age of Legends, and created for the express purpose of killing Aes Sedai, which is why channeling doesn’t work against them. There were only six ever made; they have no bones and are incredibly strong. Mat does get everyone to agree to leave and, ugh, another frustration -- MAT is the one who gets the Windfinders to agree to use the Bowl. He’s the one who breaks the stalemate (using being ta’veren, essentially) and then gets punished by the narrative for it, trapped into a horror show (this is not a spoiler; the Seanchan invading anywhere is a horror show by default). This actual scene itself is pretty good though. I love how integrated Mat’s memories are into how he behaves and thinks. It’s such an interesting compare/contrast against Rand.

71. Tylin and Mat’s “goodbye” scene here is so gross. Even more so because, well, he ends up getting trapped in Ebou Dar, so she will have more chances to abuse him in the future. Olver cements my dislike for this book’s version of him by being the reason that Mat has to leave the others and thus gets trapped in Ebou Dar. Disowned entirely. Though, in fairness, the fault truly is with the useless attendant that Tylin assigned to him (to get him out of Mat’s bedroom so that she could continue harassing and abusing Mat) so I guess it’s Tylin’s fault. But, yeah, Mat spends literal hours seaching for Olver, and ends up with a building on top of him as the Seanchan invade.

72. Chapter 40 is entirely Shaido nonsense. There’s loads of torture-porn, essentially, and then they get sent all over the place by Sammael to cause ‘chaos’.

73. Rand wakes up. I wonder if Min will tell him that she spilled his secrets out to Cadsuane. Nope, she just tells him about her viewing that Cadsuane will teach him something important; him and all the asha’man. idk why I’m surprised. Of course she didn’t tell him; why would she want to warn him that someone he doesn’t trust knows some of his trauma? But, yeah, Rand has a rock-solid certainty that Min’s viewings are never wrong, so Min is potentially able to manipulate Rand’s decisions by which viewings she does and does not choose to tell him, whether intentionally or not (we know that she doesn’t tell him everything; notably, she doesn’t tell him that she has had a viewing that she believes has ‘failed’ ...which is something that would puncture his certainty in her viewings).

74. Without Mat there to take charge of the army that was being aimed towards Sammael, Weiramon went ahead with just the calvary, against Rand’s express wishes. Sammael attacked back and Rand realizes that he would have known that Rand was lying in a sickbed; “everyone who had eyes-and-ears in Cairhien knew that the Dragon Reborn lay on the edge of death”.

75. Rand goes to wild lengths to ensure that “no woman” dies in this battle that where hundreds and potentially thousands of men are dying. My sighs are honestly eternal for this bit of characterization. It’s so condescending. Also, Rand is breaking his promise to the Maidens.

76. Anyway, while Sammael focuses on the army that Weiramon is sending at him, Rand goes to his secret army that Bashere is in charge of and channels a gateway right to the center of Illian, and they pour through. And then Rand and the Asha’man Travel all over the city and then channel a wide but harmless set of flows to essentially completely sweep the city so that they can set off every single alert or alarm ward that Sammael might have set up and so that he doesn’t know where they are. And it’s basically a fireworks show!

77. I am so sad that Mat has now TWICE gotten ripped out of important storylines involving other major characters: he was supposed to be the head of the decoy army and not Weiramon! He was supposed to escort Elayne to Caemlyn! And instead he gets spliced into the Seanchan invasion in Ebou Dar and NONE of the plot threads that I am actually interested in seeing him explore are going to happen! It’s so incredibly frustrating.

78. On the plus side, I actually don’t have an issue with Mat’s characterization in this book, except for two points. He’s trapped in the shittiest of situations but still manages to shine a lot of the time. The only two pieces of character development that are unfortunate are Jordan trying to ‘soften’ Tylin’s assault of him by having Mat think that he’s going to miss her and Mat not LIKING women as people anymore for most of the book (with the exception of Birgitte and then Elayne near the end). Which also felt like it was about Jordan trying to soften Tylin’s behavior to me, at the expense of Mat’s character.

79. Rand thinks that Lews Therin HAS to be real because everything that Rand knows about Sammael, everything that he’s using to make this plan work, is information that he got from LTT. But LTT stays silent. you know, maybe the lesson that Rand actually needed to learn from Caddy was “stop using balefire; it’s terrible for the Pattern”.

80. Sammael Travels from Illian to Shadar Logoth, and Rand follows. After spotting some Trollocs, he sees them attacked by a familiar face -- Liah, the Maiden who had been left behind in Shadar Logoth. It takes her a moment, but she recognizes him too. And then flees from him, her shame overwhelming her. Rand chases her as quickly as he can. “Death in a tattered red coat”. Rand.

81. Rand is saved from falling from the floor of a building by a man who tells him “You are a fool. Count yourself lucky I don’t care to see you die today.” He tells Rand to pull himself up, he doesn’t intend to kill Sammael for him. When he sees the man, he thinks of him as a “big fellow a little older than he, with hair black as the night”. He called himself a “wanderer just passing through.” Rand does not recognize his face, so he’s sure the man isn’t one of the Forsaken.

82. lol, after Rand hesitated over using balefire earlier in the scene, he uses it now. I actually approve tbh. When he stopped himself, they were in Illian and other people might have gotten hurt. Here, he uses on the fog of Shadar Logoth. However! The ~odd man~ is also using balefire and their streams cross, and Rand’s head rings like a struck gong afterwards. They both flee out of the building together and Rand demands to know who the man is. “His rescuer stood watching him; covered with dust head to toe, the fellow managed to look a king.”

83. He suggests that the man go to the Black Tower and tells him he doesn’t have to “live afraid of Aes Sedai” and the man snaps back that he’s NEVER been afraid of Aes Sedai. The man advises that Rand leave now but if he insists on staying, try to think like Sammael if he really wants to kill him. The Man (tm) also speaks about Sammael like he knows him personally. The last thing he says to Rand before he leaves is “Try not to stumble. A great many plans will have to be relaid if you let yourself be killed now.”

84. And then our mystery man is gone! Riveted by this dynamic already. I remember that I liked it but, yeah, it starts from the first scene, glued to the page, love it. Well, if Rand can’t have homoerotic tension with his best friend anymore, at least he can have it with Man Who Channels Without Saidin. Which Rand now realizes that he never felt saidin being used when the man channeled the balefire and their streams crossed.

85. Taking the man’s advice that Sammael likes to destroy people in front of their accomplishments, Rand heads to the Waygate as quietly as he can manage. He finds a tower near the Waygate and climbs it to get a better view. He sees Liah get hit by one of Mashadar’s threads of fog and channels without thinking -- he balefires Liah so that she’s dead before she can feel the pain. He sweeps the balefire across the square to catch Sammael in it; since he sweeps it all the way to meet the fog of Mashadar, he’s sure Sammael is dead one way or the other.

86. Rand Skims back to Illian to meet Bashere and the Asha’man. The Council has been eagerly awaiting Rand’s return. The remaining Council of Nine offers Rand Illian. “The crown, and the throne, and all of Illian”. Rand questions it being so easy -- he has never been offered a crown before. He asks why. They tell him the King disappeared two days ago and they fear Lord Brend (that was Sammael) had something to do with it. But, mostly, it’s because the grain he sent from Tear saved many in the city from starvation (Rand set that up way back in TSR!). The Council calls him the King of Illian, but one of his Asha’man, Dashiva, calls him “King of the World” and Rand’s PoV ends with the very ominous thought that he likes the sound of it. Honestly, pretty much everything to do with the taking of Illian and killing Sammael and what happens in Shadar Logoth is really good. For all that I have... oh gosh, MANY issues with this book, this ending for Rand is good. It is quite dark and ominous, even more so than when he took over Cairhien at the end of TFoH and had the nobles swearing fealty to him, but it’s a good kinda dark and ominous.

87. And we end with this idea that a storm is coming.

So... how would I have personally changed this book to make it (imo of course) better?

Assuming that we actually don’t want a fourteen-book series and maybe we wanted to tighten things up a bit, I would completely cut out the Shaido and cut out Tylin harassing and assaulting Mat. If... if we’re married to Mat getting shoved into the Seanchan invasion plotline, then he still has to be trapped in Ebou Dar, but if we aren’t married to it, then let the poor man escape with the others to the farm.

Rand and Min could still have gotten together but (and this change would fold back to LoC) don’t have her reinvent herself in order to appeal to him. Let Rand fall in love with Actual!Min, not this simpering Min who has grown her hair out into ringlets and explicitly thinks Rand is the only thing that matters in the world. The world is so big, Min! Please find something else that matters to you in addition to Rand.

There were also quite a few sections where Jordan goes into way too much detail. Like, I know he was proud of his worldbuilding but... it was pretty excessive at times.

Perrin’s vibe towards Rand isn’t as bad as I remembered it being, tbh, though it is HILARIOUSLY casual compared to how intense Rand and Mat were together. But another change I would make is have Berelain GENUINELY sent along with Perrin for political reasons rather than it being because she’s just Too Hot for Rand to have around now that he has a semi-official girlfriend. And then have her actually do her political things without harassing Perrin. Or let her stay in Cairhien and send Lord Dobraine along with Perrin.

Also, wow, the sheer number of non-consensual elements in this book are, like, wild compared to the previous ones. We had Myrelle raping Lan. We had Tylin raping Mat. We had Valda raping Morgase. I’m pretty sure Thevera is raping Galina too but I was skimming pretty quickly through the Shaido sections. We had Rand thinking that he’d raped Min. We had Elayne assuming that Mat had raped Tylin. We had Berelain’s persistant chase of Perrin start up in earnest, complete with non-consensual touching.

There’s also now a total of four romantic relationships where the woman has punched the man in the stomach hard enough that he’d physically reacted to it (knees buckling being one example) - Faile & Perrin back in TSR, and now Min & Rand, Nynaeve & Lan, and Setelle Anan & her husband all in this one book.

We also really start to get a spotlight on how Rand’s thing about ‘not killing women’ is actually JORDAN’S thing, because it starts to become clear what a difficult time Jordan has killing female villains off vs male villains... but he has zero issue putting those women into degrading & humiliating ‘forever punishments’ (the newest example being Moghedien being literally enslaved to Moridin).

Once the page count starts increasing and the padding starts, we also see more and more of these quirks/kinks of Jordan in the writing, so I wonder if the editing that kept the earlier books leaner and better-paced was also cutting down these kinks of Jordan’s. So, in order to improve ACoS I would have cut down/cut out the violence in sexual relationships, and all the non-consensual elements (since they are NOT handled well).

If Mat is not being raped by Tylin, then it’s possible his sexism also would not have jumped up in this book - imo, Mat’s increasing sexism is a way for Jordan to justify why he gets the evil/villain romances. Tylin is ‘turning the tables on him’ and his future Seanchan lady ‘leashes him’. And at the same time, Mat is an appreciably worse person (towards women) than he was in the books EotW-LoC, so imo Mat’s attitude towards women taking a nosedive is extremely related to his ‘romances’ kicking into high gear (this is one of the things I mean when I say it feels like Mat gets ‘thrown under the bus’ for his ‘romances’). Though markantonys pointed out an alternate viewpoint that also makes sense: Jordan just views sexism as part of being “a grown man” and so the growing sexism is meant to show that Mat is more ready to marry off and become a part of heterosexual marriage culture (it’s a very toxic viewpoint, but I think there’s probably a good chance it’s part of what was in Jordan’s head).

In this section; unnecessary scenes:

The Morgase stuff has gotten excessive at this point, so I’m adding her trauma conga-line to the list: 1 scene (19 pages)

Berelain-Faile jealousy nonsense: 1 scene (1 page)

Mat-Tylin: 1 (2 pages), 1 (2 pages), 1 (2 pages), 1 (6 pages), 1 (6 pages), 1 (2 pages), 1 (1 page)

Cadsuane negging Rand: 1 (1 page)

Shaido nonsense: 1 (14 pages)

I will add these to the total at the end as well.

SLOG TRACKER

The major plot-threads that we entered into A Crown of Swords with:

Rand: defeat Sammael (book 2 of this plot) - COMPLETED.

Elayne & Nynaeve: locate the Bowl of Winds and use it to fix the weather (book 2 of this plot) - NOT completed.

Egwene: Go to the White Tower with her army, confront Elaida, and heal the Tower (book 2 of this plot) - NOT completed.

Mat: Escort Elayne to Caemlyn and see her crowned as Queen (book 2 of this plot) - FAILED.

Perrin: For Perrin, he didn’t have a task coming into ACoS, but he acquires the task to gather up Masema and his Dragonsworn and bring them to Rand (book 1 of this plot) - NOT completed.

The plot-threads that are starting or being carried over to The Path of Daggers:

Rand: ??? for now.

Elayne & Nynaeve: Locate the Bowl of Winds and use it to fix the weather. (3/?)

Egwene: Go to the White Tower with her army, confront Elaida, and heal the Tower (3/?)

Mat: ??? for now.

Perrin: Gather up Masema and his Dragonsworn and bring them to Rand (2/?)

Unnecessary scenes throughout all of ACoS (imo of course):

3 of Shaido nonsense (35 pages)

2 of Berelain-Perrin-Faile nonsense (4 pages)

8 Mat-Tylin scenes (29 pages)

2 of Cadsuane negging Rand (4 pages)

1 Morgase Trauma Conga Line (19 pages)

Total: 91 pages.

There are 664 pages in my copy of ACoS, so that would be 13.7% of the book. And this total doesn’t include scenes that could have been trimmed to be shorter but still been just as clear, which the book definitely had.

I’ve also decided I’m going to keep track of Min viewings that are, imo, bad for Rand’s mental health. So far, we have the vague ominous warnings about Aes Sedai hurting him (LoC) that led him to flee to Cairhien and thus end up in the power of the Aes Sedai who end up hurting him. Telling Rand about the prophecy helped make it happen. I do not think either Min or Rand ever realize this.

In this book, we add that she tells Rand that he needs Cadsuane around to teach him and the Asha’man a lesson.

Though not a viewing, I’m not happy that she told Cadsuane about Rand’s time in the box and then didn’t tell HIM that she’d done it. Cadsuane now has this huge piece of information about Rand and he isn’t aware that she knows! I understand Min being desperate to try to save him, so I can excuse her telling Cadsuane in the first place, but WARN RAND that you’ve done it. And, also, you’d think she would start to guard her tongue after a while but I feel like she keeps blabbing things out to everyone in sight. We will see, I guess!

#wot #wheel of time #wot reread #a crown of swords #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #the wheel of time

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quarthly · 3 years ago

Text

Twilight characters as random animals that I think are oddly fitting

(Also yes, I am roasting the animals as well)

Edward: He would be a Cheetah. Now I know, seems like a cop out just because of his speed but hear me out. Cheetahs are, at face value, pretty cool. They used to be my favorite animal as a child, but then I grew up.

Cheetahs, through no fault of their own, are severely inbred. Now thats mainly because of poaching, but the cheetas anxiety also comes into play. In captivity, cheetahs are usually given emotional support dogs. I will admit it is cute but it negatively affects the population. Excluding one in the wild, cheetas can be to anxious to breed and thats not good for conservation efforts.

Cheetahs can hit up to 80 miles per hour in a couple of seconds. They are designed for fast running and agility. Their claws are similar to that of a dogs for better traction and they have elongated spines for longer strides. They have a thin build, long legs and a long tail for balance.

This has downsides though. Many times after making a kill, it will get stolen for them by larger predators. Thats right, they get absolutely bodied by the other animals. I should probably make these shorter but I'm on a rant now, so I guess this will be semi educational.

Throughout the series, we see Edward over estimated his abilities and value, constantly getting bodied by others. He's essentially a perfect mormon, though thats on S'meyers. He constantly judges others, dehumanizing them to their baser flaws, without doing any self reflecting. Him viewing himself as a monster doesn't really count to me. While he definitely hates himself, the only thing he is truly demonizing is being a vampire.

Bella: Picking up from Edwards, Bella is a Chocolate Labrador. Yes, she is his therapy dog. I feel like this is really fitting for her. I know Golden retriever would make more sense, as thats the most common breed for service animals. However, I kind of focused on her appearance. Only at first though! I just know that Edward raved about her human qualities and that would pass over as animals as well. Her chocolate eyes and brown fur, very average and boring. Thats essentially Bella. Even Edward wasn't into her until he got a wiff. Labradors a very loyal dogs and while they have more personality than Bella, I just couldn't shake it. Their also very stupid. Ok that's kind of mean, they're not stupid but when it comes to love, then yeah they are stupid.

I used to have a lab, loved him to death, but god he was something else. Very much danger prone, from their own stupidity or their lack of survival instincts. I know that labs are almost aquatic. They love water, swimming, all that jazz. We can just say that bella has a few screws loose in her dna and is just "not like other labs."

Rosalie: Now she was hard. There are quite a few animals that I think would fit for her. I'll list the other ones, but that one I went with is the Swan. Like Edward, seems a little on the nose, but I have my reasoning.

I was going to pick a predator for her, as she is shown to be very vengeful and viscous. I would have pick some type of cat, most likely a purebred, from a rich family. It could still work, but the swan just speaks to me on this one.

Swan's are known for being beautiful, graceful, and are pictured as the symbol of love. They are also very vain. Edward constantly brings up Rosalies vanity. She was constantly valued for her beauty as a human, so of course that crossed over in the transformation. She was raised to be married into wealth, she was used as a bargaining chip to increase the family's standing.

Rose has a very strong character and makes her opinions known. She's assertive and aggressive at times. She's not afraid to get dirty.

Swans mate for life and like geese, are known for being great parents. I was also going to choose geese as an option for the maternal instincts. I was wary at first because swans can be really aggressive. Like actually, you think geece are bad? Yikes bestie...

I was conflicted because swans are known for drowning dogs and sometimes people. However, I can actually see Rose drowning Bella. It's not that unbelievable lmao.

Emmett: Now this one is just ironic. I only associate him with bears. Its inevitable, but picking a Grizzly or Black bear is too obvious. So I went a slightly different route...

So I was going to pick the Sun bear just because of looks alone. Like, I'm not exaggerating, it looks like someone wearing a bear costume. I don't think it fits him but I know for a fact that he would dress up as a sun bear and sneak into a zoo to see if anyone would notice. I'll put a pic of it here

Like look at this thing. I have no words...

Anyway, what I picked was a Sloth Bear. Now Sloth bears are mostly nocturnal, which either way works consider vamps don't sleep. Their diet is also odd but honestly so is the cullens. They're native to the Indian subcontinent, and are known for being aggressive towards humans. Its said that for the most part they're pretty calm, so I think its just fear of humans that make them act aggressively. Honestly, that's a good thing because they are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red list.

They have some similarities with sloths, which is where they get the name. They have long claws and unusual teeth. They are known to hang upside down from tree branches, and is described as having a messy appearance. Honestly, Emmitt has a messy personality. Sorry bestie but you're a lot of work.

Now heres the biggest reason for choosing this bear. Aside from Baloo from the jungle book being a sloth bear, they are known to run fades with Tigers. Honestly, how fucking badass is that!? Now I don't think there are recorded instances of a Sloth bear killing a Tiger, but when push comes to shove, they can hold their own and I find that incredibly impressive.

Carlisle: This one was somehow the easiest as well as the toughest. I know Owl seems like the obvious choice, and I can see it. However, I believe Carlisle values emotional intelligence as much or if not more than academic intelligence. He is so charismatic and values other's above himself. He might not be as Saint like as Edward thinks, but he does try and I think he genuinely cares about others. For that reason alone, I choose a Elephant.

Elephant's are very social animals and are extremely intelligent. I could rave about them for ages, I love them so much.

Now elephants live in a familial unit and are usually matriarchal. Bulls usually are on the outer edges of the herd or form little groups with other males. Honestly, they're not that bad aside from when their in musk.

In the group of males, the elder ones will teach the younger where to get the best food, water, how to use things as tools, and every other thing that will increase their odds of survival. This is really cute to me tbh, they do this because the females usually choose the older males because they've proved that they are intelligent and strong, that they have survived and will continue to for awhile. Teaching the younger males these things are to make the odds of them getting chosen to mate more likely. The whole unit just reminds me of a father that has to deal with rowdy teens.

Carlisle likes to take in strays, he might not have a herd but he will make one and teach them to thrive. That's how he envisions it anyway. He just has a found family and is trying his best.

Esme: Now this might seem like an insult, but I promise it's not! This is in no way misogynistic. I love cattle and ever since I took animal science in highschool, I have appreciated these grass puppies like they deserve. Call me Castro because I love cows.

Yup! I chose a Cow for her. Specifically a beef cow. That might sound weird but its because beef cows have higher maternal instinct than dairy cows. I'm thinking Scottish Highland based on vibes alone.

They are nicknamed the Gentle Giants of Scotland. Super maternal and sweet and ugh look how cute they are!

Esme came from a abusive marriage and had just lost her child, she was depressed and desperate. Her changing was, in a way, salvation. She just fits in. She adopts all these strays along with him and will protect them to the death. She might be gentle by nature, but don't fuck with her family. She lost her first one and she isn't going to lose this one.

Alice: She's an odd one. There are so many possibilities and maybe I'm biased, but I feel like she would be a Crow.

Ok listen, I'm definitely biased but it just feels right. Crows get a bad rap, they are so cool! They are so intelligent and have the ability to actually sit and think about the past, prest, and future. I forget what its called, but this was only seem in humans! Maybe other apes, I can't remember exactly, but either way its awesome. They do live in groups, or murders, and remember people and faces. They remember locations and are able to pass down information through generations. They essentially have their own language! They are able to use tools too!

Alice's story is really sad. When we first meets her, it revolves around the death of her mother and her institutionalized. She was essentially tortured and forgot everything from her past. All she had was the future and even that wasn't constant. Crows a often viewed as omens, they are associated with death. I personally believe that instead of being the cause, they just know something is going to happen. They are very inquisitive and can be creative.

If you befriend a murder of crows, sometimes, depends or the group, they will bring gifts. Its can range from food to shiny metals and colorful plastic. Hell, I think I've seen a post of one stealing things from people just to gift it to their human.

Alice's love language is gifts. Even if they are focused around fashion, she still goes out of her way to get something that will look good and at least be a little comfortable. By that I mean she tends to forget peoples comfort zones, but she means well.

Jasper: Honestly not to sure what to put for him. I know a predator would be more fitting, but for some reason I can see a donkey working. I know, seems like I'm clowning on the confederate. Fair, but I'm serious about the donkey thing. Honestly, it would be perfect if it wasn't a herbivore. Porcupine would also work.

Being a predator would make more sense. Given his backstory and his characterization, it wouldn't make sense for him to be a prey animal. Usually I wouldn't count this, but given his gore filled past and trouble with the diet, it seemed fitting.

I see him as a Big Cat. Honestly, vamps in general just give cat vibes. Jasper though especially have some cat like qualities, which originates from hunting and being a soldier.

I specifically see him as a Mountain Lion. Aside from him being blonde, he just has the predatory stealth to him. In midnight sun, we see him use his gift to make the nomads overlook him. He's honestly really powerful.

Mountain lions are known for being stealthy with an air of grace and power to them. They are stong animals. And I mean strong. They can jump 40-45 feet.

They're very elusive and quite. They stalk their prey and tend to attack from behind but don't think they won't hold their ground if need be.

Jasper was changed during the Civil War and forced to fight in the Newborn wars. He was a soldier as a human and as a vampire. He's able to feel and manipulate others emotions. He's covered in scars and is very intimidating.

He still struggles with the diet and honestly I hate how the others handle it. Like they have no room to talk. I don't want to defend the confederate but it just pisses me off. He has to deal with his hunger on top of everyone else's. Like damn, besties always on edge! Everyone doubts him which I don't think helps any.

Also, Mountain lions and Cheetahs can purr!

@aquanova99 I'll do a Volturi one too. That one will be fun lmao

#twilight saga #the twilight saga #twilight au #bella swan #edward cullen #carlisle cullen #esme cullen #jasper hale #jasper cullen #alice cullen #rosalie hale #rosalie cullen #emmett cullen #the cullens #the volturi #honestly look at the muscle definition on that thing #jesus chriiiist

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