#i am incapable of brevity

[raskies456]

I'm curious what your music taste is like. What are some of your favorite bands/artists/songs?

I’m sorry I sat on this forever lol it’s just a surprisingly hard question for me to answer! The combo of me usually not having the spoons to go looking for new music or learn about stuff I do like + the fact that I seem to experience music differently than a lot of people means my knowledge of what music exists tends to be super spotty, I might love a song but not know anything else by the band, or I’ll be really inconsistent with genre

That said I tend to like music that has a lot of layers + interesting chord progressions, because that’s mainly what I hear when I listen (I can’t really process lyrics well so unless I already know them or from what I can tell they are egregiously bad they generally don’t matter to me much). But I am also too normie for a lot of the super experimental indie stuff, I don’t like when vocals are too far out of tune and bc my lyric processing is bad I don’t really get anything out of listening to slam poetry with a guitar line unless I can read along.

That said there are still definitely bands I like! If I had to pick a few I’d say The Dear Hunter, Ayreon, ABBA, and MCR? A lot of stuff that would fall under various types of rock.

Some of my fave songs off the top of my head (def not complete though)-

Condemned to Live (Ayreon)

The Flame is Gone (The Dear Hunter)

Godhunter (Aviators)

Hayloft (both one and two) (Mother Mother)

Animal (Miike Snow)

Them Changes (Thundercat)

Human (Oh Land)

Also I am always down for music recs! Literally throw anything at me even if it’s something I say I generally don’t like bc there are Always exceptions, or if it’s something you’re certain I’ve heard before bc you’d be surprised what I don’t know! I’m bad at getting myself to go out and find new music even though I really want to, so I pretty much rely on other people to show me stuff and it makes me really happy when people share stuff they like with me (:

[rosieofcorona]

Did Solas only find out about the baby after Lavellan gave birth? Or found out while she was still pregnant?

Bc picturing Solas catching a glimpse of pregnant Lavellan is gonna make me go feral

hey listen that's so valid, they make me feral all the time. under the cut for length:

i think he certainly knows ahead of time, but keeps his distance until after baby is born. in the beginning he tells himself it's for their benefit, but truthfully it's more because he doesn't want it to be real, and seeing her would make it impossible to distance himself. it's not that he doesn't care, it's that he cares very much (are we seeing a theme?). he's bitter that he's managed to make this worse and more dangerous for everyone. he's bitter that now there exists one more happiness just out of his reach. he's furious with himself for letting it happen to any of them. for creating any kind of burden for her to bear alone, again, for bringing a child into a world he's about to turn on its head, for making himself somehow lonelier and more distracted than he already was. but she wants to see him, after baby arrives. she asks cole to ask him to come, and solas desperately wants to tells himself he owes them that much. problem is, the closer he gets, the faster he folds.

[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?

[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.)

[clowndensation]

I posted 9,410 times in 2022

1,663 posts created (18%)

7,747 posts reblogged (82%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@emi1y

@flannel-wearing-book-nerd

@jeanharry

@serkonans

@salamancussy

I tagged 5,676 of my posts in 2022

Only 40% of my posts had no tags

#succession - 792 posts

#art - 285 posts

#quotes - 273 posts

#bcs - 263 posts

#tmags - 195 posts

#iwtv - 171 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#that to sacrifice those values to be together would mean sacrificing the very thing that makes us want each other in the first place'? 🥴🥴

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

the way succession says that a tragedy is not a tragedy unless there’s love inside of it has forever altered my brain chemistry i think.

like logan was a boy with a brother and a sister and an uncle, and he was told “God loves you”, and what that meant was “God needs me to beat you with this stick”. and maybe love is beaten out of you, or maybe it’s beaten into you, but either way it leaves a mark. and maybe it’s a lesson. maybe you don’t ask for love, maybe you’re inflicted with it, and it only goes in one direction. and then logan had his kids, and so he said “i love you“ and what he meant was “i need to beat you with this stick”.

738 notes - Posted January 1, 2022

#4

louis is going down as one of the characters of all time btw. there's something about characters who are so deeply repressed in every facet of their lives continuously fighting for happiness, yet ultimately they're unable to achieve that happiness because they've denied themselves for so long that they no longer know what they actually want vs what they've convinced themselves to chase.

and it's fascinating, because that's so clear in the way that louis conceptualizes happiness by fighting for the things previously denied to him; the spectre of his perceived failures as a human haunt him and preclude the possibility at any new lease on happiness in the future.

847 notes - Posted November 21, 2022

#3

louis, lestat, and their single bed as a motif louis puts into his own story, but refuses to explore, is literally one of the sexiest parts of the show. it speaks volumes about a level of fulfillment and freedom that louis feels by being with lestat that he rarely explicitly comments on when he's relaying his story to daniel, which feels extremely relevant to his overall reluctance to examine the parts of his relationship with lestat that he really enjoyed.

1,034 notes - Posted November 28, 2022

#2

i think it should be illegal to dye a man's hair if he's going gray like thats a crime. if he's got salt and pepper hair then we deserve to see it.

1,061 notes - Posted January 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

beating the mental illness allegations by going to shower

23,856 notes - Posted January 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[heymacy]

hey, macy.

that's all.

hey, nosho.

that’s all.

[leofrith]

not me actually considering reblogging one of those prompt lists again and asking for requests 🤡

[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.

[aphel1on]

I FINISHED THE FIRST CHAPTER

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

[leninisms]

question how did you start getting into marxism leninism/ political theory in general and why did you gravitate towards that ideology over anither

also answering: howd you start doing political organization and how is it?????

hiiii<3 i love these questions<3 this is going to be long and might read like a memoir because i’m incapable of brevity, but hopefully it’s coherent<3

how’d you start doing political organizing?:

i’ve been reading (political) philosophy for years at this point. i have OCD and one of the primary ways it manifests for me is as an obsession with Being The Most Good I Can Be. i turned to ethics and moral philosophy when i was maybe 13 or 14, and ended up falling in love with every branch of philosophy.

long story short: i am a revolutionary because i want to be and do good, but i want to be and do good because i am a revolutionary.

i joined my college’s socialist student union during my first year and i loved being around other marxists, but it felt like i had just joined a book club. there wasn’t any political action being taken. we’d just meet up and discuss politics and theory. these things are of course important, but they don’t accomplish much of anything if not paired with actual organizing.

when the school year ended and i decided to take some time off, i decided to get more involved in politics. i started looking into all the leftist organizations that were active in my area and reading their programs. most organizations are active on some kind of social media (i used instagram to find them), and generally once you find one local group it’s very easy to find most of the others because they follow each other or collaborate on posts, even when they hate each other.

if you find an org you like, but they don’t have a branch/chapter/network near you, i recommend reaching out to them to see if you can schedule a call with one of their members. i know this is something PSL does and i think it’s very worthwhile for people looking into political organizing. if a call seems scary, look into upcoming events and try to attend a few if you haven’t been already. this can really help you get a feel for how different organizations operate, as well as allowing you to meet members and ask questions.

this is super important: if you join an organization, and then realize you hate it, you can just leave. more importantly, try to identify the things you hated or were uncomfortable with, so that when you join a new organization, you know what to avoid! even more importantly, don’t just swear off organizing forever after one try. most of my comrades were in at least one other org (if not more) before they found our party.

and how is it?:

nothing has helped my mental and physical health the way organizing has. not to be tragic and tortured on tumblr dot com but i genuinely felt so lost and depressed and miserable for so, so long. but i started organizing and suddenly i felt alive and human and like i had a reason to get up in the morning.

my involvement in organizing has helped me improve my social and communication skills. it’s helped me learn and grow in my politics, but also just as a person. i’m happier, i have more energy, i’m more confident and comfortable with myself, i’ve made new friends, and it’s even helped with my OCD. i was detained by the police at a local university’s encampment and when i told my psychiatrist, she told me she was proud of me lmao

this all sounds very dramatic but you can ask anyone who knows me and they’d agree with everything i just said. there was a version of myself that existed before i got involved in organizing, and there is the version of me that exists now.

marxism-leninism?

i am a marxist-leninist for truly so, so many reasons.

anti-imperialism is the most fundamental aspect of my politics, and i could talk about it forever but i’m trying to control myself. u.s. imperialism is responsible for so much horror and bloodshed and suffering around the world, and it must be dismantled. i believe i have a responsibility, as someone living in the imperial core, to oppose u.s. imperialism wherever it exists. that means organizing in support of palestine, sudan, congo, korea, venezuela, cuba, haiti, and every other nation and population that has been and/or is currently being exploited and abused by the violence of the united states.

from mao’s “u.s. imperialism is a paper tiger” :

before this next point, obligatory “this is not criticism of any specific org/party, it is just my experience and opinion” disclaimer.

democratic centralism was something that was very important to me when i was looking for a party to join. i really just felt very opposed to joining any org that struggled with factionalism. for some people this doesn’t matter or seem like a big deal, but it’s always felt important to me that i should be able to travel to any city in the u.s. and be able to organize within the same party.

there are branches of organizations that cannot work with branches in cities 30 miles away from them because they are so fundamentally different. i was able to organize with comrades in a city more than 400 miles away from my branch with no problem.

political education is also very essential to me. i chose to join a political party that emphasized political education, not just for public-facing events, but internally. i wanted to be in an organization where i’m constantly learning. there are so, so many issues and conflicts around the world, and though it’s impossible to know every detail of every struggle, i believe it’s important to have at least a basic understanding of major conflicts, and to stay as up-to-date as possible with global politics.

there are so many wonderful elements of marxism-leninism, so i’m just going to link a couple of resources for anyone interested in learning more:

if leninism is brand new to you, then i highly recommend this 3-part educational series about lenin. this is also available as a podcast on spotify and apple if you prefer.

the state and revolution, v.i. lenin

imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism, v.i. lenin

i hope this answered your questions:) everyone, please feel free to ask me anything about organizing! i love talking about it obviously and will never be annoyed <3

[averseunhinged]

what are your top ten favorite klaroline fics?

hello, friend! so glad you asked. this is more than ten, and i have more in my bookmarks, plus there's stuff on ffn, but this has been 90m of my life, because i am incapable of brevity or culling. i'll probs do a part two? maybe? idk. i'll try.

fine china and dull silver by@yespumpkindoodlesthings

wrote a review here!

where it begins: by endoftheline7

i've been trying to write a review of this for fic rec friday for a month, but i just have so many incoherent screamy thoughts about it. it's one of my favorite reads on both klaus and caroline and plays with the idea that vampires are always a little bit the age they were when they died, no matter how old they get, and spins it into a sort of teen summer romance. klaus is mostly awkwardly thrilled to hang out with caroline, but still has a moment of oh, right. he's batshit and full of murder. caroline's less perfect qualities aren't glossed over. they're fully confronted and caroline doesn't just accept those things. she begins to learn how to turn them into strengths. also, i think about that conversation between rebekah and caroline at the beginning a lot. the whole thing about it not being their responsibility to correct the behavior of the awful men in their lives, but the alternative is to let those men burn themselves out, and that option sucks, too. very hmmmm. so much thoughts.

a statement for the masses (series, but it's one longer fic plus a short one shot) by but_seriously

i don't usually like human au in this fandom, because i think it's hard to make klaus human and in character without him being more awful than i can stand. like he ports pretty well to a shitty billionaire, but ew. corpo romance. not for me. rock stars, however? perfect. i love the rivalry. i love the family drama. i love the complicated relationship between rebekah and caroline.

leave the dust behind by whirly

tons to say about this, but it's mostly all about the ending for me. it's open, so if you like a strict hea resolution, it's probably not going to be a satisfying read for you. but i love this sort of slow ticking over of caroline's thought progression while she figures out what her relationship with klaus could or should be. there's a sort of balance between her own developing moral code and klaus's atrocities that needs to be struck. most of all, i love klaus's faith in her and his belief that they'll figure it out eventually.

someone that'll look like you by @cupcakemolotov

i probably don't need to talk this one up, but whatever. it's super popular for valid reasons. it has a number of my favorite things. amnesia! a more interesting augustine society! enzo! caroline being a stone cold badass! the dichotomy of klaus being both ancient and immovable and willing to bend for what caroline needs! all delicious things.

there's a devil on my shoulder where the angels used to be (and he's calling me the queen) by meet_the_girl_who_can

my favorite no humanity caroline fic. i have such a love/hate relationship with the humanity switch. it could have been so interesting, but tvdu mostly made it silly and samey and boring. this is more in line with what i can see caroline getting up to with her humanity off. like why would she just hang around mystic falls? other than the shitty budget of this shitty show, i can't think of a reason why she would. and i really enjoy how smart klaus knows he has to be with her. she's still caroline, but she can't be careful with him with her humanity off, and that has to be a scary prospect, because she was capable of hurting him badly when she did reluctantly care about him.

the fate makes for a lousy poet (longer fic plus a short one shot companion) by @stars-and-darkness

so. like so many of us, i love soulmates au, and this is probably my favorite in this fandom. but the part i go back to the most is the second fic. i love elena so much, because of that dichotomy of compassion paired with a near total inability to relate her own feelings and needs to those of other people, not in spite of it. she's a really interesting character and ella's treatment of that is so deft. elena absolutely cannot equate her own situation with caroline's, despite it being so obvious from the outside, because she's so mired in her own suffering and the indulgence of almost everyone she's ever known. she's simultaneously cruelly selfish and extraordinarily selfless and it's a wonderful read, as is the first caroline + mikaelsons fic. ella always writes concepts and does character work in a way that makes me go YES THAT EXACTLY THAT.

like the sun shines by @lalainajanes

this is like my #1 wish it wasn't unfinished fic, but i also absolutely do not care that it isn't finished, because it's just so much fun. canon barely goes here, which is so very favorite. i love a mostly everyone lives (contemptuously with each other) au. and i love caroline traveling the world. and i love caroline and bonnie in new orleans with secret, (probs) very important business. and i love a klaus who is still kind of the worst.

lost in the right direction (again, a series) by @kirythestitchwitch

there is nothing i love more than klaus and caroline traveling the world together and just doing stuff. all vibes, minimal plot. this series is A+++ murderfluff and it's enormously engaging, watching them figure out themselves and each other and whatever they have the potential to be together. totally one of my comfort reads

feel the madness closing in by yokan/@galvanizedfriend

this one is ugly and sad and awful and such a realistic take on caroline in new orleans during the events of the originals. i love so many things about it, but caroline's thoughts about whether he's been cursed or gone mad or if it was simply that klaus wasn't capable of loving someone without treating them like a possession are on point.

leave my rage to the sea and sun by sophisticatedfangirling

another ugly one. as much as i love that klaus never compels caroline, i can't help but think if he fucked up badly enough and felt like he'd lost everything else, too, he'd probably do it. this is so sad and slides pretty seamlessly into canon.

bride by brombones

this is one of those surprisingly layered, literary flavored fics. i'm planning on writing a dedicated review at some point (lololololol), but the very basic gist is caroline runs an experiment with klaus's blood and manages to completely fuck up her life to the point where she'll never be able to escape him, even if he never finds out the results. it is WILD with a fantastic use of silas that makes me want to shriek incoherently.

[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 !

[julienbakerstreet]

Hi! What’s your favorite sherlock Holmes story/adaptation? Do you have any specific Holmes takes?

Hi! This is an overly convoluted answer because I’m incapable of brevity and love to ramble. In my defense, you asked. Obviously favorite story is an impossible question, but I will share the best response I’ve ever heard to this question by Sherlockian Peter Blau: “I am often asked that question and my standard answer is: the one I’ve read most recently. And to be mean, I’ll then say that it’s a story that most people don’t like, like The Mazarin Stone. I maintain that no matter what the story is, there’s something interesting and fun about it.” I definitely have preferences, but I agree that you can find something interesting in each of the stories!

On mystery value alone, I think The Red-Headed League and Blue Carbuncle are two of the best. Doyle didn’t always write fairplay mysteries, but I like it when they’re at least close! I generally recommend those to readers new to canon and/or the mystery genre. I also really enjoy how the stories deal with the concept of justice and social oppression, for which I love SCAN, YELL, COPP, SPEC, CHAS, and ILLU. It’s a pet peeve of mine when adaptations divorce mysteries from their social contexts and downplay Holmes’ deep-seated love of justice. Finally, there’s stories that I just love for how they expand the world and deepen the characters, like STUD, HOUN, GREE/BRUC (for giving us Mycroft), GLOR, 3GAR, DEVI.

Adaptations are also tricky because I love seeing how different people interpret the same stories and what aspects they choose to emphasize. One of the coolest things about being a Holmes fan is getting to see so many perspectives on my favorite stories. I love comparing how different adaptations from different countries/time periods depict Victorian England, because you can really see a difference in how the 80s viewed the 1880s versus the 2000s versus the 60s, etc. My favorite genre of adaptation, however, is Holmesian antecedents. The Holmes/Watson dynamic is really big in the mystery genre, but I have a soft spot for Holmes-inspired duos in other genres, like Bunny and Raffles and Jeeves and Wooster. 

As for Holmes takes, I recently watched a video essay that asserted that the main draw of the Holmes books is the mysteries, and I couldn’t disagree more. Sure, we all love the mysteries, but the pop-culture ubiquity and enduring appeal of the stories and the fandom are primarily due to how fascinating of a character Holmes is and how personal Watson’s narration feels. Reading these stories, told through the POV of a close friend, you feel like Holmes is teaching you his methods and encouraging you to apply them. I love Doyle, but other writers (specifically from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction) have written far better mysteries on a technical level that haven’t garnered half the attention and staying power as Holmes. The way Holmes encourages us to think about mysteries is dramatically more relevant to his popularity than the actual mysteries he solves. We see this in how people who’ve never picked up a Holmes book know where the “eliminate the impossible” quote comes from. There’s just something so cool about being in a niche community that’s simultaneously been so wildly popular for so long that references to it are inescapable– like, I caught a Holmes joke in Veep the other day!