#i am incapable of brevity

[bookishjules]

you made the owie situation so much worse because max 100% would have chosen izzy as his suggenes 😭 i’m reading qoaad right now and i miss sizzy so much. cassie really missed the mark by not having them be more involved in the plot and politics, especially because simon had his whole downworlder and shadowhunter equality advocate arc in tftsa. not that i’m saying they didn’t have any opinions on the cohort, i just wish simon and isabelle had more vocal moments in the book and it’s council meetings, especially considering that simon is jewish!!! and the registery hits very very close to home if you get what i mean. i’m surprise that simon didn’t have a moment during a council meeting or any scene where he mentioned how close the actions the cohort wanted were to nazis. izzy was kinda just a babysitter for most of the times she was mentioned, i miss her badassery BUT i do understand that this book is from emma and the blackthorns’ povs and they’re closer to clace and malec… let’s hope simon works more with the new academy and we see him and izzy be mentors to dru (izzy trainer era would be elite)

okay i'm so glad someone else saw my vision... even if it hurts. i just can't help but imagine that in the universe where max lives, he gets closer to izzy into his teen years. i think izzy would spend more time with him when she's trying not to think about simon, bc both of her other brothers are in happy committed relationships, and then after the events of tfsa, he would get closer with simon through her bc of comics and anime etcetc and that would pull them tighter. plus, izzy isn't protective older brother like alec, and she isn't idolized like jace. she's a lot more .. accessible i guess is what i'm saying. as a sibling. she also ends up having a lot less responsibility than jace and alec, as you said, so it makes sense for him to go to her when he needs someone to talk to, or to her and simon's place when he needs a comfortable place to relax. ... anyway i have a lot more thoughts on this but it is not the point of this ask at all lol

i am also reading qoaad rn!! and i know exactly what you mean. i've thought similarly with simon. like he blazed through the sa in a very political manner, and yet we don't see him speaking up against the wrongs being committed here? and with something of this magnitude, and with his perspective.. there's no way he wouldn't feel a responsibility to speak up, especially now that they're all adult shadowhunters and are able to sit in on those meetings and have the voice they didn't always have access to as teens.

so basically yes i fully agree with everything you said <3 and i also really really really hope for more sizzy involvement in twp. i may have my hopes up too high (i.e. they exist), but just the knowledge that there will be a scene with simon at the pandemonium feels like it could imply a tilt in that direction. and i really think it's only fair o7

plus i mean.. not to go back to the max thing. but IF all of what i said above did happen, there's a world where sizzy would be more familiar with ty and dru bc they bracket max's age and would likely have ended up being friends, just by the nature of how involved clary is with emma, and emma potentially expressing worry about the kids not having friends their age etcetc you see where i'm going. so it just feels.. right. yk?

[phantomspren]

Hello! I'm Tesh! I'm an adult, aroace, American, use any pronouns, and am going to school for film and media production. (I'm going through a journalism program, so I also sometimes I say I'm a journalism student, just depends on the situation.) I've got minors in cultural anthropology and creative writing.

I crochet, do HEMA (smallsword mostly, though a bit of rapier and longsword too), and write! I'm also a Nerdfighter! And theoretically I'm learning Welsh and German.

I mostly reblog things I think are silly, but also plenty of serious stuff and fanart and things.

Media I am currently working my way through:

Books: Parable of the Sower

Games: Slay the Princess (I've played through twice already, but you know how it is)

Shows: Doctor Who, Arcane, Owl House (17th rewatch I think)

Audio dramas: Magnus Archives (3rd relisten), Welcome to Night Vale, Malevolent, and Hymns For the Road

(Will I keep this up to date? We'll see. If not, I'll delete it eventually.)

DMs/asks: I really love talking to people. I'm kinda shit at asking good questions to facilitate conversations, but feel free to DM me or send me asks and tell me about your projects or to talk about media we both enjoy or anything like that. Or ask me what I think the meaning of life is, I do have an answer and like talking about it and hearing other people's thoughts. :) I will probably not DM you first because my social anxiety is quite bad with that, but that does not mean I do not want you to say hi.

Media I really enjoy and occasionally post about:

Books: The Cosmere (my first real fandom it is forever in my heart), The Locked Tomb, Lord of the Rings (also the movies), Phantom of the Opera, Percy Jackson, Septimus Heap, The Raven Cycle, The Anthropocene Reviewed, The Wayfarers series, House of Leaves, The Dark is Rising Sequence

(My favorite genres are fantasy, gothic horror, older dystopian/sci fi/speculative fiction (I am a HUGE Ray Bradbury fan), history, and sociology. I have books recs. Ask me for book recs. Unless you want romance, I don't really read romance.)

Games: Hollow Knight, Outer Wilds, Slay the Princess

Shows/movies: The Owl House, the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, Amphibia, Gravity Falls, Psych, Good Omens (fuck Gaiman), the 1996 Hamlet, Over the Garden Wall, The Muppet Christmas Carol (I kinda wish I was joking but I'm fucking obsessed with this movie), Barbie in the Princess and the Pauper (I am mostly joking but also it's so funny)

Audio dramas: The Magnus Archives (*shakes like a wet chihuahua*), Welcome to Night Vale

Musicals: Les Miserables (also the book), Come From Away, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Michael Arden my beloved, I have not read the book yet), Hadestown, The Count of Monte Cristo (also the book), Wicked (not the book), Treason, The Clockmaker's Daughter (not the book there is no relation between the book and the musical), Frankenstein (also the book), Jekyll and Hyde (only portions of the musical, but also the book), Epic (I haven't read the book since I was fifteen but I enjoyed it)

Other music: The Mechanisms, The Amazing Devil, The Mountain Goats, The Narcissist Cookbook, The Crane Wives, To Kill a King, Sparkbird, AlicebanD, Fish in a Birdcage, Poor Man's Poison

A note on tags: I tag all Locked Tomb stuff with "The Locked Tomb," not tlt (it's short for a different thing in a different community I'm in). My personal tag for when I talk about shit is "Tesh talks." Other than that I think I do pretty normal things when it comes to tagging, feel free to let me know if you'd like me to change how I do stuff to make it easier to avoid spoilers or anything like that.

[periwinkla]

update

good news is: the checkup showed nothing wrong with my hand meh news but don't worry it's actually okay: these past few days the pain travelled from my arm to my shoulder to my back and today to my right leg ^but that's actually good news too because that means it's not pertinent to my hand and it's just a general body thing borne of exertion and doc says I should just wait it out and rest (i mean not exactly in those words but this is the summary. it's nothing serious.) The thing that started it was probably what I did in the gym and while it's not unusual for me to get hurt somehow it never was like this - developing so may days after and so strongly - but well... gotta say I'm not exactly good at knowing my limits and always push through even though I know my body is kind of weak so I guess I'll need to go do something gentler instead (I go bc of health issues but. i guess even then it was too much)

So tl;dr: everything to my right hurts like a Butz but I'm not anxious about it anymore because my hand is probably fine so it's fine. And anyway my fingers at least feel a tiny bit better as I was able to eat using my right this afternoon so I guess he must be right.

[ro-botany]

The Risen King and his Tactician

In my previous post about Risen King Chrom, I talked largely about who and what he is. What I didn’t touch on was questions of why and how; the reasons for his existence and the means by which he’s controlled. So that’s what I’m tackling today.

Naturally, this means an examination of Grima’s thoughts on the matter. It's not a purely tactical decision on their part.

---

The first reason I could think of for why Grima would make a Risen out of Chrom was that it was an act of tactical cruelty aimed at their enemies. Nothing kills hope and morale in the enemy troops quite like making the shambling corpse of their exalt attack them! But while that’s almost certainly part of the point... It doesn’t explain why RK Chrom’s mind is intact. You can get that effect for a lot cheaper by bringing him back as a garden variety Risen with no sentience to speak of.

After reading the Forging Bonds supports, I initially thought part of the point was to be cruel to Chrom. They’re being sarcastic. They’re taunting him with his dead friends and torturing him by making him slaughter his people. That motivation would explain why he’s still mentally present—if the aim is to torture a foolish idealist son of Naga, it would hardly be satisfying if he weren’t actually there to be tortured.

But I think the main reason I read things that way is due to Heroes’ visual limitation of only having one portrait per character. They can’t adjust a character’s facial expression to better convey tone, which means that wherever tone is ambiguous in the text, the words are coloured by the expression of that one portrait. Since m!Grima’s portrait has that malevolent little smile, we interpret him as sarcastic or taunting and ignore the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the words are genuine.

Read those supports again, and this time ignore the portrait art.

Grima’s phrasing is never blunt. They couch all these hard truths about the situation in these long, indirect statements that soften them. They never bring up a point unless Chrom, in his panic and denial, brings it up first. They even play along with his delirium at first! None of the content of what they’re saying, absolutely none of it, is actually comforting; but the intent to comfort is there in the phrasing. It’s not “Robin is dead”; it’s “Robin is gone, lost, but I am here.” It’s not “Your friends are dead, and now they’re my pawns”; it’s “I know your friends are precious to you; don’t worry, I can bring them back, and you can lead them just like before.”

And they also lie about who killed Chrom. “Who stole your life, you might ask? It was I, with none other than the Fell Dragon Grima, within me.” It’s a bit convoluted, but it sounds like they’re trying to avoid implying it was Robin. But these supports aren’t a timeline where the details of Chrom’s death are unknown; we know he died at the Dragon’s Table fighting Validar, and his very obvious fatal wound is the same spot Robin stabs him at the Dragon’s Table in the premonition from Awakening. The spot that Robin stabs him, under Validar's control. If I were to speculate, I’d say it sounds like Grima is trying to preserve the memory of who Robin was. Spare Chrom the reality that it was his other half that killed him.

And the thing is, Grima has no reason to attempt to speak kindly to Chrom or to absolve Robin of blame... unless Grima remembers enough about being Robin to still care about Chrom. Regardless of how you interpret the nature of the connection between Robin and Grima, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Robin’s memories and emotions are part of Grima in some way, and influence their actions.

Why does Grima bring Chrom back from the dead? Because Grima never chose to kill the man they loved, and now that they’re a god again, they have the power to undo it.

But! We know that Grima is capable of true resurrection. They bring Validar completely back to life in the main timeline, living body and intact soul, when they aren’t even at full power. So if Grima cares that much, why not bring Chrom back as a living person?

The answer to that one is simple: because there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Chrom would ever willingly participate in their apocalypse. What good would it do to bring him back only to have to kill him again? The fact that they don’t want to bear him being gone is what has them raising him in the first damned place. Grima needs him to be on their side... So they force him to be. They remake him as a Risen; a being bound to as dark a role as they are, and by definition, something they can control.

And here’s where we get to that how question. While Risen are naturally controllable through dark magic, there’s never been a Risen with a will before, and certainly not one with the blood of a different divine dragon. And given Validar’s actions, Grima is acutely aware of the fact that holy blood creates the possibility of control by another. Which means Naga might try something. They needed to counter that possibility.

Look at Risen King Chrom again and count the holy brands. It’s not just Naga’s anymore; he bears the brand of the defile too. At first I thought it might be attached to his sword, but I enlisted the help of a much healthier Chrom to check, and...

...no, the brand is absolutely attached to RK Chrom’s hand.

Grima covered all their bases. They minimized any chance that Chrom’s willpower or Naga’s meddling could interfere by making a blood pact with him as a second means of control.

Channelled dear old dad a little with that one.

---

So why does Risen King Chrom exist? Because Grima still loves Chrom. Or to be more precise... he exists because Grima loves what Chrom represents.

He’s the idea of companionship. A symbol of the brief moment that Grima was Robin, and was happy. And they love that idea so dearly that they can’t let it die. They bring Chrom back—but they don’t bring him back as he was, they remove his ability to choose and then force him into something that has the shape of their former relationship and none of the heart of it. Grima is still the tactician, and Chrom is still the exalt, and they’re marching to war with the Shepherds like they always do. They’re together like they always were. Right? Grima is acting out a hollow facsimile of a different life, and Chrom is trapped in a nightmare he can’t escape from.

What’s worse is I think Grima knows it’s cruel to keep him around like this. But they’re too rigid in their own beliefs to stop what they’re doing, and too selfish and lonely to let him go. And I think some part of them takes comfort in the fact that they’ve broken Chrom of his ability to hope, too. If even he can’t keep fighting the tide of fate, there really was nothing they could do to avoid this. (Nevermind the fact that they rigged the game so he couldn’t fight even if he wanted to.)

[yunogf]

testing the limits of mine and my laptops patience w this edit

[emptymanuscript]

Sweet jesus... I'm watching this video right now by a psychologist talking about the experience of being a gifted child and it is RESONATING.

What's really particularly catching my attention right now, about a third of the way through, is the negative feedback loop about putting in the same amount of effort and getting worse results.

And I can point right to that in my own life.

I am particularly thinking of experiences that I think happened about a year apart.

In 9th grade English I had Mrs. Harper. Mrs. Harper was one of my favorite teachers in high school. Tiny little alkie who had soooo had it with us little shits and all our BS. I think she retired two or three years after I graduated XD because she finally just couldn't take these bad kids anymore XD. :/ I think she died a couple of years after I graduated college :/ tell the teachers you like that they're important while you can, I guess.

But she was the first teacher to ever fail me on any kind of test outside of STEM classes. And I was just devastated. I had read the book. I had read the notes. I was even interested and enjoyed the reading. And I told her: I studied.

She said she knew I had. She could tell I had done the work. She just taught High School, so the standard was higher. I had to do more than simply show I had done the work. Now I needed to extrapolate new stuff of my own that I hadn't been already given. But now I knew what the new standard was and she was sure I could work harder to meet it the next time and get better grades going forward. One F wasn't the end of the world, it was simply a guide post to how I needed to adjust. Just treat it like a tool to look for the sorts of thinking I needed to do.

And you better believe that was the only test I didn't pass for any class I ever took with Mrs. Harper. I was an A student for her because she told me exactly what I needed to do to meet her standards. She never expressed any doubt that I was capable of it or that I had done something wrong. Just, ok, you've reached this level, I see that, I believe you, I trust you, I just want more. Let's go for the next level. You can do it.

She got me. And she gave me what I needed. And how much I liked Mrs. Harper was something of a running joke because I appreciated that so much. She never let me slack but she was very consistent and clear once I understood what she was saying. Her grades always made perfect sense. Her behavior was consistent from the first to the last time I saw her.

I don't want to imply by contrast that Mrs. Surdaki was not a good teacher. Or that she didn't understand kids. I liked Mrs. Surdaki fine. I would even put her above average. And I feel like she did her best. Had a good heart. No general, abstract complaints. It's simply that she gave me the exact opposite of what I needed when I needed it.

I had her for history the following year. And she gave us the biggest term paper that any of us had ever gotten up to that point. And she let us have a lot of leeway in the topic. So I got to pick what I felt was very important to me and it motivated me to go the extra mile. I feel it is relevant to point out that I recycled parts of that paper multiple times, including in college, to get A's. So, from that perspective, you can say she actually provoked the best in me.

She gave me a B-.

I wasn't devastated. I was furious. I had worked my butt off on that paper. In my opinion, it was an A+ paper, and this was plain unfair. Again, while I never exactly recycled that paper in full, I did reuse a lot of it and got A's. In college. I now have a Masters degree in teaching my field. It may not have been an A+ paper but I am actually angrier in retrospect than I was at the time. The grade she gave me was exactly what you should not do to a student from everything that I've learned about education.

So I demanded to know what was wrong with it. Why had I gotten a B- for that work?

And she said it was because she knew I could do better. She knew I hadn't done the very best I was capable of. She wanted me to exert more effort. And she had graded me according to that disappointment in my effort versus my potential.

The problem is that Mrs. Surdaki was absolutely 100% wrong. I put more effort into that paper - because I was able to choose what I really cared about and was deeply important to me - than I had done for any other paper before. Or afterwards for the rest of high school. Not just because of the level expected from the paper - I should also note that I was never asked in college to write a paper that long - but because I cared and wanted to do a good job. I had, in fact, exceeded myself.

She hadn't raised the bar on me like Mrs. Harper had with a new standard I simply hadn't yet understood. She had pulled the rug out from under me. What she had told me, without intending to, was that the expectations were arbitrary. They were what she wanted them to be. And what she wanted from me was more. Not a specific more but an abstract, oh, you're really gifted, I know you can do something amazing but you didn't wow me, so down your grade goes.

Who thinks I tried hard again for Mrs. Surdaki?

Again, didn't particularly dislike her. If anything I did like her. She was fun. Young and not yet jaded by us evil little hellions. Easy to get along with if you didn't actually try to cause shit.

And I got perfectly fine grades. If I recall correctly I passed her class with a solid B. Because I stopped trying and she eventually decided that she had been wrong and nope, I couldn't actually do better. So: whatever. And we both just coasted through History.

While Mrs. Harper and Mrs. Surdaki were the first. They certainly weren't the last experiences of those dynamics. People who challenged me AND gave me the tools to meet those challenges, got my best efforts. Not just my intellect but all my people pleasing and my desire to excel. People who just made it tough, fuck 'em. I don't need 'em. I'll sail through or give them the kiss off because I know I can't trust them.

It's the difference between looking at the evidence and coming to a conclusion (good) and having a conclusion for which you find evidence (bad). They might look the same on the surface but one is patently bullshit.

Unfortunately, the outcome also taught me a pattern. That I can get away with the kiss off. All I have to be is pleasant. Don't rock the boat and the bare minimum will do. What Mrs. Surdaki accidentally taught me was that most people don't know what they think they know about other people. People just guess. And if they're wrong, well, no skin off their back. Who cares, really. So she also accidentally taught me not to try until someone proved they were worth the effort and insightful enough to be trustworthy. A test that most people fail because it's easy to fail and most people don't even realize they're on the spot.

The end result: Mrs. Surdaki's conclusion was a self fulfilling prophecy that caused what she wanted to nip in the bud. Not really her fault. Certainly not her intent. Just the lesson I took.

So it goes.

It's just that I need to change that behavior now.

[riseninsaturn]

stayed up until 1:30 AM playing chronicles & working on the klapollo t4t fic. checked the fic draft this morning and it’s only about half-coherent. nice.

[altruistic-meme]

i love avoiding answering questions by writing

time to get crackalacking 🫡

[catholic-paladin]

Minthara:

Yes, yes, yes, I know Minthara is evil, but she's also ruthlessly intelligent, a paragon of logical process, and a true stoic. While all the other companions are running around having mental breakdowns and displaying fatherless behavior, Minthara is strategizing and planning her next moves, psychoanalyzing everyone in camp and figuring out their weaknesses because she knows a team is only as strong as its weakest link. She's a natural leader in that regard, and she knows the value of self discipline:

"He has been deprived of freedom and strong blood for so long that he is addicted to both. While those addictions have their hold on him, he is still a slave." > He'll be a slave to his blood-thirst as long as he lives. "And while you live, you'll be enslaved to your appetites and hungers. We all feed on something, and if we are deprived of it, we will fight for it."

(discussing Astarian)

She's laser focused and knows what she wants even when her plans and allegiances shift throughout the game. And despite her surprising sense humor she always maintains a sense of poise, reasonable confidence, and taciturnity. She speaks her mind but doesn't contribute to meaningless flowery conversation -brevity is the soul of wit after all.

She is direct and logical but she's not incapable of feeling. She knows how to love and be vulnerable, but she also knows when its appropriate to engage those feelings and when to suppress them

“Loving another is not soft, wizard. It is one of the hardest things a person can do.”

She's one of the wisest and most emotionally mature characters in the whole game. When asked about Karlach she philosophizes on the gravity of mortality, the fleetingness of life, and the merit of living in the moment.

Despite their extreme differences of character, she actually admires Karlach for her earnesty, strength and commitment to living:

I have never know anyone so ferocious and unassailable in battle, and yet so fragile and impermanent in their very being. I often think of mortality as a curse. In time, all that I am and all that I have known and learned will be lost. In time, our cities will be dust. Karlach does not seem to have such anxieties. Perhaps because she cannot afford to. She exists in the moment and she will burn out and be gone in a moment. There is something very beautiful about that.

All of this said, she is definitely evil, as are her ambitions. She is merciless towards the weak (or those she deems weak) -a result of being raised in Menzoberranzan and Lolth sworn society. Even the writers seem to hold to the opinion that she is irredeemable, but I reject the notion of an irredeemable soul. To say that such an adaptive and rational character as Minthara is incapable of change and personal growth, would in my opinion, be antithtical to her nature and intellect.

[aphel1on]

I FINISHED THE FIRST CHAPTER

succumbed to writing thistle fic and tripped sideways into post-canon falin character study

[mellowdarkness]

Getting increasingly worried and worked up about the fact that there seems to be very few strong marketable and visible qualities or traits which I possess...

I look decent but not good, and most of the qualities that I possess only shine through after a set amount of time when I've gotten to know people and be in situations with them. I'm funny on occasion but for my humor to shine you need to know me personally so you get the deadpan delivery jokes are actually jokes and not me being mental. I lack any strong passions or drive and I don't do much that I can show off as a skill driving my main personality. Even in terms of weebshit, I barely read/play/watch anything anymore and I am entirely incapable of telling you about a series I'm a fan of without it feeling like a fraud.

I think I'm a fairly good conversationalist but again, to have a conversation, you need to have people actually get interested in you, through looks or marketable character traits as said above, which are both null at this point in time. In spite of that, I struggle to properly articulate my points, and I lack brevity as a whole, which makes me sit out of many debates or higher-brow conversations as I'm painfully aware I'll appear like a fool.

As always, issue identified - but how do we solve this....?

[ro-botany]

not me getting ready to drop another 1200-odd words of RKC analysis tomorrow morning, nearly a whole ass month after he got released

rent free, as they say

[grassbreads]

Thanks for the tag bestie!

Last Song

Snowflake by The Hoosiers. They're releasing new music again for the first time since like 2015, and I'm so pleased about it :). Big win for the mid 2010s 8tracks fandom playlist girlies.

Currently Watching

Bigtop Burger! It has been a shockingly long time since I've watched any actual movies or TV, but the season 2 finale of Bigtop Burger by Worthikids came out yesterday, and I have been losing my mind over it a little bit.

Bigtop Burger is a youtube series and it's very short (the longest ep is 6 minutes, and most of them are under 4), so it's super easy to get into. Season 1 is a goofy comedy about a clown-themed food truck, and the last couple episodes of season 2 will rewrite your brain.

Currently Reading

I'm actually between books right now! I just finished rereading The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle, which was just as brilliantly effective the second time through. Genuinely a must-read for anyone into Lovecraft.

Next on the tbr pile is Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. I haven't started it yet, but I liked the first episode of the TV adaptation, and I loved Gone Girl by the same author, so I'm anticipating a very good time.

As for web novels, I'm still making my way through the last book of Silent Reading/Mo Du by Priest. It's a good story and I like the characters (especially Fei Du), but I can't recommend it to others without a huge grain of salt for copaganda reasons. It's an interesting and impressively intricate crime drama, but at the end of the day, it falls into the same pitfalls as the rest of the police/crime genre.

Current Obsessions

I have a massive collection of webcomics that I've bookmarked as "to read later," and I've been devoting huge amount of my time the past couple weeks to actually reading all those collected tbrs. I hope you're ready to hear me scream about my web comic obsession.

A special shoutout goes to Countdown to Countdown by Velinxi, which is hands down my favorite of my recent reads. It's set in the not so distant future, in a vaguely post-apocalyptic society where a huge chunk of the population now has various superpowers. The main character is the son of the director of a culty prison tower that offers people with powers safety from the dangerous outside world on the condition that they act as though they're powerless. That main character wants out from that condition.

CtC's art is utterly stunning, and the story is a ton of fun (with a delicious amount of absolute heartbreak). You wanna read this comic so bad.

This post will be a mile long if I fully explain all the other things I've recently read and adored, so here's a speed round of the recent highlights (so far) from my web comic folder:

Ingress Adventuring Company by kayartics. A D&D-inspired fantasy about what happens to a powerful but messy wizard decades after he and his party save the world.

Going to Weather by SJ Costello. A ghost story set on a whaling ship.

The Property of Hate by modmad. The story of a young girl recruited to become a "hero" and save a literal world of imagination (and the story of the monster who recruits her).

Broken by Kristina Caruso. A fantasy horror about a psychic zombie and a fairy super-soldier trying to survive in a world of eldritch abominations and military dictatorships.

Wilde Life by Pascalle Lepas. A supernatural horror/slice of life about a man who moves to rural Oklahoma and discovers that his new home is overflowing with the paranormal.

Read more indie webcomics for the love of god. The creators need the support and these fantastic stories need to be enjoyed by more people. I'm never going to shut up about web comics.

Anyway now that I'm done getting carried away, here's tags (and feel free to ignore if you don't want to do this of course). @torterrachampion @halloweentual @travelingneuritis @reloaderror @helpfulbug @brushbugs @grelleswife and @96kyirah. The last tag goes to anyone else I didn't tag that wants an excuse to join in :)

9 people you'd like to know better

ty @haasegawa for the tag !!! so sorry i didn't get around to this sooner qwq

Last song: mine

Currently watching: very slowly finishing pokemon journeys, leon is so delicious

Currently reading: stormbringer except it's taking forever because i have the jp and en versions and i'm reading both at the same time

Current obsession: bsd in general, particularly fixated on soukoku and the next gen fic that i'm writing

tagging : @cyber-seaweed @xarlutye @cinammonelles @cyrafoam @severaltuesdays @frostlineprince @bimalewife (first mutuals on the list ty for following!), and @sweebat @killjoy-prince !

[emdashfaggot]

so i vaguely recall seeing a post of yours about writing some 👀 OC stuff so consider this a sign to share about those characters or share a snippet of your writing!!

Hello! Thank you sm for asking!

So! There are so many characters (and a handful of AUs to go with them), because I do a lot of RP and tabletop games with friends and that inevitably turns into words. Exploring characters and themes and just showing affection to my friends by smashing our little guys into each other on a page. It took me a minute to file down what I wanted to spew about today.

There's this game called galactic. It's basically a system that, to paraphrase the author (Riley Rethal) lets you tell the kind of star wars stories you wish you'd gotten to see in the theatre. This isn't especially important to today's snippet but it will become somewhat relevant if I keep talking about the other iterations of these characters in the future.

There's also a comic, Abyss Reflections by ZC_Coffee. It's a beautiful little story about a modern future and a supposed fantasy past that one character remembers but the other does not. It got me thinking about Vex Vincent, my Scoundrel from Galactic and the ever-present temptation to make a knight au. (He/him for Vex)

Of course I don't do things the easy way! Because the art reminded me of Vex, I really needed to figure out a kind of Knighthood that made sense for a man of his personality. Additionally, 'what if Knights were Different' is a take that will always hook me.

Excerpts of my early thought sketches into the discord void.

There's no Knight School. No one knows (remembers?) how the Swords came to be here. There are many of them, some of them will offer a name, many refuse. Less people ask than you might think, anyway. You can't hear a Sword unless it's chosen you to Wield it.

There's a lot of ways to come into a Sword. Sometimes you wake up with it in your hand. Sometimes you inherit it. Sometimes you defeat the owner in combat (not always the deadly kind).

It's hard to trace if it's a consistent Per Sword thing or if it really is all about the whim of the blade.

I know more now about several of the Swords and what their conditions/motivations are, but these things aren't widely known truths of the setting.

Knights are a bit busy with the Calling to sit around and participate in research. (Also, I don't think people are doing research. Swords just Do Things. They choose their Knights, or they unchoose them.)

Vex didn't ask for his. He won't tell you how it came to him, not even Gerard—not that a Prinxe would ask such a question. (He fell down a hole and into Knighthood, kind of literally.)

Venia Gerard is the runaway heir to the Saint, the largest authority figure in this dystopian fantasy setting. (she/he/they) But their relationship with Vex is a whole several other posts.

The Calling isn't just one blanket cause the Knights speak to. A Calling exists between the Knight and the Sword. The pair don't always agree, either.

There is no cohesive Order among the Knights, or the Swords. Some Knights band together as long as they're Called on the same direction. There's at least one pair of Swords that are inseparable, for better or worse of those they choose to carry them.

Knights are rather mysterious and often solitary.

bonus lore

My friend Solace asked:

what is a band of Knights called? a Vigil?

My answer:

it is now. a pair is called a Truce.

Thank you again for asking and reading. The lore is vast and I am constitutionally incapable of brevity when trying to Explain.

[riorangedeezguts]

(9> make em seethe, I'm playing with fire here lmao)

Okay, so your name's Rio Ranger...

But like... as in the term to arrange?

Just like how you rearrange your clothing with those of the deceased to appear more human for your liking? :)

Along with how you keeping switching those cards to rearrange your facial features and mimic a smile because you're physically incapable of making one yourself? :)

And how you keep arranging your pretty-boy personality to keep up with your father's standards? :)

Doesn't being referred to in such way make you feel more inferiorly inhuman?

(sorry this took so long to answer, anon! I've been thinking abt how I wanted to do it for awhile now, and I can safely say the ending is a bit disturbing lmao)

TW: a touch of body horror at the very end! (It's separated from the rest of the writing so you can't miss it, and the cut is for brevity since this is kind of a longer post. Enjoy!)

Tch. Look at the grating grin on this bastard...

"Hey, shit for brains! I'm the most human of all the dolls dad's ever worked on!" Ranger reminds you, flapping his expression cards against your forehead a few times in clear exasperation, as if to scold you the way a dog owner might lightly hit Fido with a rolled up newspaper. "Don't'cha know that means I'm the best of both worlds?" With a paper smile pressed to his lips, he goes on to explain why.

"First of all, I can't get sick and die like you losers, and even if the me standing before you became scrap metal, there's puh-lenty of backups for my code, my parts, my blueprints, my possessions... Dad's got alllllll of that junk on file in case something happens."

And yet, the doubt still creeps into his mind.

A masterpiece, huh?

What masterpiece constantly feels like shit?

"But I get it!" He exclaims, interrupting his own thoughts. "I get it! Really, I do! I'm sure it just gnaws you up inside knowing my dad loves me so much. Call me a gambling man, 'cause I'd bet big on you not thinking he was capable of it, what, with how stony faced he tends to be." Then Ranger pauses. "Say, whadda you think, bastard? Am I my dad's son?"

With the purposeful flick of his wrist, his mouth is no longer concealed by any cards, revealing nothing but the thin line of his lips behind them and the darkening whites of his eyes. Orange and yellow swirls of madness twist their way through the murk, pinning you in place beneath the weight of his gaze and the lack of a smile.

"The resemblance is uncanny, wouldn't you say?"

But something about the way you keep smiling at him says you expected this outcome. You think you've won, you cheeky bastard?

"What's wrong with being a bit inhuman, eh?" He asks tonelessly. He's asked himself this question a thousand times, because he is human in all the ways that count, isn't he? That's always what dad said.

"I'm a masterpiece with or without my humanity," he adds convincingly. You'd never guess he was trying to convince himself with those words too.

Why? It stings to question dad, but why?

Why was he made like this? Why does he doubt himself so much? Why aren't dad's answers ever enough? Every. single. time dad tells him the truth, and every. single. time Ranger squanders it.

He hates himself for it. But he hates you more.

"You're lucky your clothes are so damn ugly," he says to you at last, lazily eyeing you up and down once before turning on his heel to walk away, not even bothering to raise his cards as they hang dejectedly at his side. "You're not worth all the clean up killing you would require."

.

.

.

If only he could flay you alive.

Wear your frail, peeled skin like a mask, and see the look of horror in your eyes as the sight of your own face is the last thing you see. Skeletons can't smile back, after all.

But maybe, finally and at last, he could.

[mischievouslittlecreature]

hi there sweets. i love your story titled “love me where i’m most ruined” i think i’m somehow halfway through it cuz i’ve been binge reading like crazy! i have a question for you: would have thomas been able to keep going if it had been lucy the one who had been shot instead of grace? i often times find myself wondering that. i enjoy the throuple and how much love, respect, and communication is present there for one another, however a part of me is inclined towards the notion that lucy might have been a bit more important to him than grace was. especially when grace felt frustrated when she sensed thomas wouldn’t completely open up to her as he did with lucy. or maybe i’m just misinterpreting what you wanted to convey. thank you love for giving us such a great story! you’re an awesome writer! xo

Thank you so much, anon! 🖤 It always means the absolute world to me to hear that someone is enjoying my fics, especially this series, which is so near and dear to my heart.

As usual, I wrote a big 'ol essay in response to this because I am incapable of brevity and love to yap nonsensically about my OCs 😅

TW for suicide mention under the cut:

The short answer to your question is: no, I don't think he would have. Part of this is because I have very purposefully written Tommy and Lucy as being incapable of living without each other. Even before Grace's death, they were quite codependent (though this admittedly got much more pronounced after her death) and Tommy relied on her massively for so many things.

I could see him trying to keep going on for awhile after, for Charlie and Grace if not for anything else. But he would be a complete shell of himself, and what was left of him would start unraveling quickly. As much as I love her and her relationship with Tommy, I'm just not sure if Grace would have had to tools to be able to help him the way that Lucy could.

At the end of the day, Lucy is able to provide support and understanding to Tommy in a way that no one else can. I think that he truly feels like she is the only person in the world who actually loves him unconditionally. And I think that's part of why he's so much more willing to open up to her than a lot of the other characters in the series. Her ability to understand his thought processes, actions, and feelings without him even having to explain them to her a lot of the time is a huge part of why she's his main source of emotional support. Losing that would be crippling for him.

I think that Grace would try her best, and they both would be hurting hugely from the loss of Lucy. But as you said, Grace struggles more to understand him than Lucy did, and I think Tommy would grow frustrated at her not just being able to immediately tune-into him like Lucy could. And his PTSD symptoms would get worse, particularly his inability to stop working in an attempt to distract himself from the pain and grief. That would have caused conflict with Grace, especially long term.

I also could see him thinking that Grace and Charlie would be fine or even better off without him, and seriously contemplating and perhaps even going through with committing suicide.

Sorry for such a downer answer! 😭 You are right that generally speaking, I always have written Lucy as being Tommy's #1 person. It doesn't mean that he didn't love Grace and that she wasn't important to him, but Lucy is his soulmate.

Thank you again so much for reading and loving the series, anon! 😘