#i could only find the first two books but i FUCKED with that premise

[respectthepetty]

Pride Petty Watch (SOTUS) 1/5

The crowd picked two blacklisted shows for me to watch during Pride, which were Love in the Air and The Untamed, and so even though I finished the first, I've stalled on the second, and it's all because of the beast named SOTUS. I watched this show when it aired in 2016, but I don't remember any of it. All I remember is that I'm very mad at it, yet this was the wild card show that was unlocked during the voting, so instead of fearing this show so much that I cannot bring myself to finish The Untamed, I'm going straight to the big boss, and fighting this demon NOW!

It's me and the gear in a battle until the very end, and even though I cannot remember a single thing about this show, as soon as I pressed play, all the hate in my body rose to the surface, so I already know this is going to be a ~journey~

First and foremost, I'm going to give this show and Krist a compliment because I HATE Arthit, which is exactly what I should be doing in the first episode. He is 🎶The Worst🎶 and he leans all the way into it. He snarls. He yells. He forces a girl to give him her number through mere power dynamics and sexism, and this isn't just 2024-me thinking this. 2016-me knows that this character is written well because the worst thing Arthit can think of doing to another man is making him say he is gay.

Then to casually whisper in that man's ear that he could find him a skirt to wear . . .

Arthit really is the epitome of the homophobe-to-homo character and I can't believe that it worked in 2016 since I feel that was late for a character like this to still be a love interest, yet it's still working so well in 2024 because here I am, pissed, pressed, and ready to fuck him up for being the douchiest bro in this damn cafeteria. It's refreshing how much I'm allowed to hate him.

Because even the way he screams Kongpob's name with his student ID every fucking two seconds is setting me off.

And I'm very disappointed in BL Land for only ONE video existing of him screaming Kongpob's name, and it's only the times from the first half of the first episode. Thanks, OP, but we are slacking!

But, honestly, if I had a boy who looked up at me like this every time I screamed his name, I'd probably be a lot worse than Arthit. You know, instigating fights and hands on me or something like that.

And now I'm questioning this series because if these two would just choke each other out then kiss, I would be fully for it and enjoying all my snacks along the way. I'd be fine with Kongpob telling the entire room he would make Arthit his bitch, but Kongpob instead says he'll make Arthit his wife, and . . . the vibe is not as kinky as I need it to be to support all that is being thrown at me from these two.

Which is why I'm heavily shipping Kongpob with M! Kongpob got in trouble for having two books, one which was M's, and had to say he liked men. Now, they are drunk at this table with homophobe Arthit and the hazers are staring them down while Kongpob is just holding M's face.

But let me actually rewatch this show instead of reflecting on how GMMTV messed this enemies AND lovers premise up twice (looking at you, Dangerous Romance) because right now, this show is trying to make me believe the girls would not wave hello to a babyface Off.

Once again, back to the actual rewatch, and because I don't remember a thing about this, I don't know if Wad is good or bad, but him busting out this move when Prem told him to apologize was equivalent to an older white Southern Christian woman telling someone to have a blessed day, so I felt that shade through the screen!

And I'm not victim-blaming, but I do actually think Kongpob and Arthit are trying to push each buttons to see who will break first and fuck (up) the other one because this is not a sane answer to "why did you stay?" when the possibility of the hazers physically harming someone is extremely high.

I only see my Kongpob and M ship now because when Arthit asked if anyone knew M, Kongpob immediately stood up and knew his entire life story. I have known my best friends for decades, and I still could not recite half of that information. Kongpob, what are the heterosexual reasons for you know any of this information about M?

JAN!

Once again, Arthit is 🎶The Fucking Worst🎶 because instead of just taking his L, he made Kongpob say everyone's damn name, then ripped up May's name tag, only to scold Kongpob for giving her his, and now the kids are passing out from his ridiculous physical activities! As a member of a Greek-letter organization who was hazed because that was the culture of the time period, Arthit is being soooooo messy!

Hear me out - Kongpob and M would be so good together! Arthit is the antagonist. Kongpob is the protagonist who meets a sweet quiet boy on his first day of orientation. He helps the sweet quiet boy come out of his shell and watches over him. He cares for him. THEY FALL IN LOVE!

But instead I'm getting a love interest who nominated Kongpob because he knows he is cute, yet can't admit it because ~internalized homophobia~ Ryan from The OC would have never treated Seth this way, and they were in the early 2000s. What is your excuse, Arthit?! The show wants me to hate you, and for that, I'm thankful.

But I could never hate Minnie! Arthit came up quick like he was protecting the boys from Minnie being a predator, but Minnie would NEVER! I could never fear Minnie with the bisexual scarf? And now MDL is telling me the actor has only acted in one other series and that series is Deep Night. Gold star resume, and I truly mean that.

Look at them. LOOK AT THEM! Tell me they don't look good together. Tell me they wouldn't have wrecked every other ship. This is why I need GMMTV to let these MEN (no longer boys) kiss their homies. Kongpob x M. Singto x New. I ship it.

*punching walls and ripping doors off hinges* Kongpob gets kicked out the group and the FIRST one to stand up for him is the boy he loves (it's canon to me and IDGAF what the story's gotta say about it). Quiet and sweet M finds his voice just so he can ask to have Kongpob back. THEY ARE IN LOVE!

Arthit is wildin' out here trying to gaslight Kongpob with this bullshit of "if you keep helping out your friends, then they'll never stand on their own." Sir, you wanna fuck Kongpob so bad, you look stupid.

AND KONGPOB SAYS IT!

I cannot stress enough how kinky this is and could have been if 2016 BL Land was allowed to lean into this because Kongpob has already established through his actions that he likes showing up for the punishments, and here he says the quiet part very loudly - Arthit likes punishing him.

Taking a break from the kink to point out that GMMTV was always going to get My Love Mix-Up because in 2016, May's friend said that "In Japan, if you write down the name of your crush on an eraser and use it, that person will love you"

Then we have May asking for an eraser and keeping it just so she can write Kongpob's name on it. But who gets upset about it? M! Because he loves Kongpob and I'm not accepting that he likes May just like Atom realized he liked a boy instead of girl eight years later. M loves Kongpob. That is my truth!

And here comes the kink lite again! Kongpob could leave. He doesn't have to take this verbal abuse from Arthit. He doesn't have to eat that damn spicy ass plate of food. He doesn't have to finish it either because Arthit gets up and leaves, yet HE DOES! Because he likes this treatment. This makes sense if it's sadomasochism, and that will guide me through these next couple of episodes.

Because the decision to make Arthit the one who likes pink milk is a choice, and now I want an entire TED Talk on how Arthit is probably the most well done homophobic bully with internationalized homophobia falling in love with the boy he is bullying.

Because, joke's on him, the guy he falls for is into that kind of shit.

And all of this happens so we can end with Kongpob getting pink milk for himself after he finished an entire spicy meal that he didn't need to since he enjoys being punished should make me so happy, but the show is trying to lighten Arthit's behavior by having him pay for the bill (and get the freshmen food, and having been hazed himself, and blah blah blah) instead of just letting the toxicito be toxic and Kongpob being into it.

I never thought I'd write this, but I don't want Arthit to be tamed. I want him to be so much worse.

[kaelidascope]

Dude, I love this fanfic so much! I just wanted to ask where you got the idea from. Did you have any inspiration from anyone? Also, what's your favorite fanfic? And want do you recommend ?

AWE bless!! Thank you so much I'm glad you're enjoying it <33

So actually a good 80% of this is written from personal experience LOL I used to dance and was into drift building/racing in my late teens/early twenties! Most of the references or scenes in Midnight Menagerie are references to things I've seen or done in real life, OR stories friends have told me within the same field. (Nora is literally just a rebranding of this one mutual friend we had who just. Absolutely fucking unhinged) Like for example, the anticipated Hangover Chapter is just a retelling of an insane Summer weekend I had in 2017 ☠️ it's a personal delight being able to translate things into the narrative, even more so knowing people find my stupid, terrible decisions as amusing as I do in current times lol

My general rule of thumb is to write from experience. Things I understand either on a technical point or emotional connection. So, if you've read it in my work, it's probably something I've done LOL

Another reason I find drive in writing this type of narrative is that MM!Blake's type of dissociative PTSD is something I haven't seen much in media in general. I've seen people depict her in various ways (some of them good!), but none of them ever really apply directly to me, so I wanted to make something that I could relate to and how to properly navigate life, given the environmental circumstances. Plus some us need better examples on how to juggle mental illness as adults and also be in healthy long term relationships because damn I have zero reference LOL

For the fic recs, oh boy I have so many LOL time to be a pathetic fangirl on main but okay here's the ones that immediately jump to mind (also heads up most of these are mature or explicit rating);

Certified Kaeli Fresh Fics

Let You See My Wilder Side (If I Can See Your Bones)

We all know this one but it is, hands down, my favorite piece of literature of all time. Masterfully crafted and a timeless classic worth several rereads (and I have. Embarrassingly so)

Written by @/lucytara on tumblr || @/explosive_sky on twitter

honestly all her works are immaculate and beyond compare. Also a major fan of I Have A Bullet With Your Mouth On It (That was first RWBY fanfic I ever read LMAO a friend recommended it to me before I even watched the show) I aspire to write like her some day. It's what got me writing fanfiction in the first place. So, credit goes to Erin for inspiring me to post my manuscripts at all. Words cannot express my gratitude and appreciation. I have two book series in the process of being published now and I wouldn't have had the nerve to do it had it not been for this specific fic.

2. One Day At A Time

Also one of the earlier fics I read before getting into the show LOL I love all of @/Frenchsoda 's work, the full list is also worth checking out. I'm a fan of disgruntled Blake who doesn't understand her attraction to Yang but it's so god damn sweet ugh

3. Fucking In Love

Written by @/Set_WingedWarrior and @/Softlight

This one circulates a lot in my social circles. Everyone I know LOVES this one and after reading it earlier this year, now I see why. As someone who worked in the sex industry for a brief period of time, this one's not only accurate but also A DELIGHT to read. The premise is fun, captivating, and worth the wait. I actually discovered a chapter update earlier this year and sent the gc into hysterics because we thought the fic was dead LMAO props to these authors!! They're doing an amazing job and deserve praise

4. You're A Mountain, Full Of Glory

written by champion author @/lescousinsdangereux

I should just preface already that every book Blake reads in MM is a fanfiction that exists because I love Easter eggs. Everyone knows I had Blake reference this in chapter 3 LOL but it's equally as immaculate as Erin's work. I LOVED especially the dynamic between Weiss, Yang, and Ruby in this one. Baby, we're complicated fucking murdered me 😭 also that fuckass Christmas scene, that's my favorite Christmas song LMAO

5. The Home Inside Your Head

Written by the ever skilled @/writeriguess . I found this fic by accident by seeing fanart for it floating around on this site. Got curious, picked at it, and. Oh, my god. It's not very often my brain gets scratched in the right way, but boy this one does it. This author does something specifically unique I haven't seen many do before, and I applaud them for it. There's great detail on the scenes that matter, and the fucking organic build up between Blake and Yang is just. God. Chef's kiss. Truly. It feels so god damn natural and healthy and it's already crossing off several of my agendas already. Give this one a read and give the author some love. SENSUAL FACE TOUCHING? CHAPTER 13????? BOOOOOOOYYYYYYY I'm normal about it

6. You'd Be Paranoid Too (If Everyone Was Out To Get You)

Written by @/WabaJaba_ on twitter

Okay so this one's completely different than what I've previously listed but HOLY FUCKING SHIT IS IT A THRILLER. It doesn't nearly have the amount of love and attention it truly deserves. A friend of mine recommended it to me because it shook them so fucking hard they were in total brainrot hell for a MONTH. NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY LMAO God I was obsessed with this for weeks myself. It obviously lives up to it's rating, horror fics aren't for everyone. But if you're able to read it, good lord you should. It's chilling, captivating, and had me on the edge of my fucking seat the entire time. Both endings are good, I still can't decide which one I prefer but RAH I will make sure this is seen god dammit

and last but certainly not least

7. You And Me and This Temptation

written by talented author @/ProfessorSpork

Okay this one was an accidental find as well. A friend sent it to me because THEY found it by accident, I clicked on it for later, went looking for a completely different fic that I mistook for this one, started skimming and realized 'wait a minute LMAO I don't recognize this'. But the thing you have to understand is I hate reading. I'm not a reader, I'm picky and it needs to be worth sitting down for long periods of time. This is one of the rare instances where I was so captivated by it I kept reading more and more from the middle where I landed, and eventually just said ykw let me just start from the beginning cus LMAO context.

This one is, by far, one the healthiest and loveliest depictions of first times I have ever seen. This shit was so inspiring to me that it literally kickstarted an essay in someone's DMs why depictions like this are so important. I didn't have this experience irl, and why MM is written the way it is is because its meant to serve as a lighthouse for those who, like me, haven't. This fic however I feel like should be a required read for anyone getting into relationships for the first time because if it's not like how these two interact, LEAVE IT. This is the standard. This is amazingly written, it's the closest I've ever seen canon Yang and Blake be written to date. The fucking souvenir bit 😭 NJKFGNFJKGNGJ killed me, I was kicking my feet laughing for a good minute. This is the kind of standard everyone should look at and go 'yeah, I want what they have' BECAUSE IT'S CORRECT. LOUD CORRECT BUZZER NOISES

Honestly everything in my bookmarks is certified Kaeli Fresh but these 7 are my top faves. They're probably also really commonly known I'm sure but LMAO like I said I don't read much 😭 which is heavily ironic considering I write myself. Anyway this ended up way longer than I intended but LOL <3 <3 go give these incredible authors love!!

[jamespotterthefirst]

You & I (3/3)

Book: Open Heart, beyond Pairing: Dr. Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Dr. Lilac Allende-Ramsey) Word count: 1.7K Rating/ Warning: Teen/ Language

Series: You & I | Part 1 | Part 2

Premise: Her husband’s colleague seems a bit too interested in him. Things take a turn for the worse when she finds her in his hotel room during a work trip.

Note: Thank you so much to everyone who read and supported Part 1 & 2! This is based on a really old anon who asked: “has anyone every come between Ethan and Lilac?”

The two women looked at one another in stunned silence. The seconds stretched into eternities until Heather recovered first, schooling her pretty face into an unreadable mask.

“Dr. Allende.”

“Dr. Allende-Ramsey.”

The correction went ignored.

“I didn't realize you had been invited to the conference,” Heather said in a casual voice, as though she wasn't standing in a married man's hotel room semi-naked. “I thought only the most senior physicians at any given hospital got to attend.”

Lilac, for her part, barely caught the jabbing words with the deafening pitch ringing in her ears. Pulse pounding against her ribcage at an alarming speed, she urged her senses to focus.

“What are you doing in my husband's room?”

Her voice was surprisingly cool and collected.

“The hotel mixed up our reservations. They accidentally put us in the same room.”

Lilac almost laughed in her face at the feeble excuse.

“Bullshit,” she returned.

“It happens more often than you’d think. You would know.”

Heather's eyes sunk into Lilac's, sharp with implied meaning. With an icy twist of her stomach, she caught on. Somehow, Heather was referencing Miami and the mishap that had forced her, Lilac, to share a room with Ethan.

Lilac's legs were shaking at this point, but she held herself with dignity. “You can drop the act. The hotel got a request to accommodate an extra person. That was you, wasn't it?”

The blonde's face remained unreadable.

“What are you suggesting, Dr. Allende? That I willingly wanted to room with a married man?”

“Yes.”

From her peripheral vision, she saw someone approaching them. It wasn't until the figure was a few feet away that Lilac recognized it as her sister.

“I forgot to pack perfume! You think you could—” Laurel stopped dead, eyes falling on Heather. Surprise melted into confusion which finally gave way to anger. “What the fuck?”

Lilac ignored this, eyes boring into Heather.

“Tell me, did you pretend to be me when you changed the reservation? His wife? Because that must've been humiliating.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Really? You think I don't see the way you look at my husband? And all your petty little jabs at me? Which I'm not even upset over, by the way. You can hate me and insult me all you want, but the minute you disrespect my husband's privacy like this, then we have a problem.”

“You're being a paranoid b—”

“Finish the sentence,” Laurel challenged, filling the space between Lilac and Heather. “I fucking dare you.”

Heather's composed features flickered slightly when she stared down at the feisty brunette. Anyone with working brain cells would see that Laurel meant business when it came to defending her sister. And Heather, it appeared, was a smart woman. She backed a few steps, pressing her mouth shut despite looking as though she wanted to say more.

Lilac, meanwhile, remained stoic and composed behind her sister. Her eyes sunk into Heather, as though she was a puzzle that had been too easy to decipher up until the last, missing piece.

“What were you hoping for, exactly? An affair?” she asked, her voice cool and level.

Heather's eyes moved from Laurel back up at Lilac. Instantly, her pretty features lit up with amusement. And Lilac could see the exact moment all pretense crumbled.

“That's not uncommon for a man like Ethan.” The blonde replied with surprising confidence. “Powerful men like him have many affairs and no one bats an eye. I wouldn't be the first nor the last. You're naïve if you think otherwise.”

Laurel scoffed, outraged. She advanced, ready to pounce but Lilac stopped her with a hand to her shoulder.

“I'm sorry you don't trust anyone in your life unconditionally,” Lilac started, “but my husband would never be unfaithful.”

The blonde laughed derisively but Lilac ignored her.

“And I think you know that, too. Otherwise, you wouldn't have snuck into his bedroom.”

“Pathetic,” Laurel spat.

Heather spluttered, aware that the sisters were right. For the first time since she opened the door, she looked embarrassed. The sheer humiliation of this fact made her angrier.

“It's just sex!” she shrieked. “You two act like I wanted him divorced and remarried by next week.”

“Listen to yourself,” Lilac returned quietly. “Do you have any self respect?”

“Ha! Don't talk to me about self respect when everyone knows how you snatched him up. Sleeping with your boss? That's not any better.”

This time, Laurel closed the small gap and went straight for Heather's damp hair. Both women screeched, one in rage and the other in surprise. Lilac, for her part, pulled her sister back, doing a commendable job of restraining her.

“Laurel, no!”

“You're lucky I don't press charges!” Heather bellowed, disheveled and on the verge of tears.

Laurel opened her mouth to reply but another voice intervened.

“Lilac?”

It was the deep, rich voice of her husband, strained with surprise. His blue eyes moved over the scene, expression tensing with increasing shock as he took it all in. Finally, his gaze fell on a sobbing Heather and then immediately darted to Lilac.

The shocked, tense silence was only broken as another figure joined the fray. A breathless Tobias came to a stop beside Ethan, looking equally as surprised by the chaos before him.

“Baby?” Tobias said, spotting Laurel. “What's going on here?”

“This little homewrecker here snuck into Ethan's hotel room hoping he'd fuck her.” Laurel replied, no longer fighting against her sister's restraints.

Ethan flinched at the last few words. The shock on his handsome face had diminished to its usual neutrality, but Lilac could see the gears of his mind working. It was as though he was trying to solve a complicated case without having all the facts yet. Once again, his piercing blue eyes rested on Lilac, as though asking her for an explanation.

“Heather, what the fuck?” Tobias asked, shell-shocked.

The blonde's response was more uncontrollable sobbing. As both men surpassed the initial shock and regained their senses, the hallway erupted with noise.

So much noise.

Questions, accusations, and more sobbing— all of it echoed in Lilac's ears, drilling into her skull, pinching every last nerve. Someone said her name but it sounded distant. Someone else threw a jacket over Heather’s shoulders. Laurel cried out in indignation.

It was all too much. Lilac’s head throbbed, threatening to explode…

And then her feet were carrying her away.

“Lilac!”

Several voices called her name but she didn't stop until a gust of fresh air hit her face like a welcomed caress. The blare of New York City echoed from somewhere below the canopy of the purple sky. Despite the faint bustle, she found an odd sense of peace in the abandoned hotel rooftop. Her eyes roamed over the spectacular skyline, taking in the glistening lights that appeared as the last rays of the sun sank behind the horizon. Peace settled over her, easing her body from the stress of the day’s events.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there.

The creaking of the door behind her, followed by a set of footsteps, broke her out of her lull. Seconds later, someone settled next to her. She didn't have to look up to know who it was.

“I had a feeling you'd be up here,” Ethan commented softly.

She didn’t reply. The soft fabric of his jacket swept her skip and he draped it over her shoulders. His scent enveloped her, bringing more warmth to her body than any coat ever could.

“I just got off the phone with the HR department at Mass Kenmore. I explained what happened with Heather today. They'll be opening an investigation.”

Without tearing her eyes from the horizon, she nodded. The sun was fully gone by now, casting the city into an inky blue haze.

“I hope something comes of it,” Lilac said at last. “What she did today was unacceptable.”

More silence followed. As the night breeze picked up, she stole a sideways glance at her husband. He, too, watched the glittering skyline, his jaw tight. He looked almost serene, but she knew him better.

“I'm sorry about all of this, Lilac,” he said quietly, finally looking at her. He opened his mouth to say more but she shook her head.

“There's nothing for you to be sorry about.”

“I should've listened to you,” he pressed on. “You told me your hunch before I boarded and I ignored it.”

“Even if you did take my word for it, there was no way for you to know she'd do this.”

“I know that, love,” he assured her. “I should've still listened.”

Tentatively, he closed the miniscule distance separating them. Even more gently, his hands fell at her sides, his blue eyes carried hesitation, as though he was afraid she’d pull away. When Lilac’s hand moved up to sweep his cheek, he closed his eyes against her touch, relaxing with relief. They stood like that, basking in the peaceful silence for a few minutes.

“What happened to Heather?” she asked after a while.

“Hotel security escorted her to her room. She is to leave the premises tomorrow morning. It's lucky for her since it places distance between her and your sister.”

That made her smile, but only briefly. Ethan was watching her with a quiet, pensive look.

“Did you ever doubt me?”

“Never. Not for a second, Ethan.”

He nodded once.

“Good,” he said before bringing her hand to his lips. “There will never be anyone but you, Lilac.”

The words made her feel weightless. Unaware of the way her heart stammered for him, he leaned in and kissed her softly. It was a short and gentle kiss, a perfect summary of their sweet moment on that rooftop.

A biting breeze made her shiver. Wordlessly, Ethan readjusted his coat on her shoulders. Then, his arms pulled her close for good measure.

“Ready to go inside? The hotel manager was so embarrassed about changing the reservation for Heather that he upgraded us to a suite.”

“That sounds heavenly,” she sighed, finally realizing just how exhausted she truly was. “Can we also get dinner? Your baby wants food.”

An incandescent smile was her reward at the mention of their child. His hands moved from her sides to the barely visible bump of her stomach.

“I meant me,” she joked with a laugh.

Ethan rolled his eyes but chuckled softly.

“How does room service sound? I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be around people.”

“Even better. Just you and I.”

He lifted her hand to his lips again, pressing the softest of kisses there.

“As it should be.”

Note: As I was getting ready to post this, YT Music decided to play:

It could’ve been because I’m playing a Harry Styles radio station but I’m going to interpret it as serendipity!

In all seriousness, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart if you read three parts. Your support means the world to me! I really hope you liked this mini-series.

I will be back soon with more mini-series, YBF, and one-shots this summer! Love you all,

Bree 

[wander-wren]

today i am angry because lightlark keeps (kept? i think it’s dead) getting compared to the hunger games

i don’t know if tumblr saw the lightlark drama and i’m not interested in rehashing it especially bc some of it got uncomfortably personal towards the author at one point and also it was months ago so just! suffice it to say lightlark is a book by alex aster, it is a terrible book, and i did not put myself through the torture of reading it but i did watch a 7.5 hour video essay

(i think the essay could have been 6 or even 5 hours, and i think this person went a little too hard on the critique at some points, so that rubbed me wrong a little but it was also extremely thorough and i was bored.)

but anyway. one of the big things about lightlark is that it was marketed as “hunger games x acotar” which is….fine. but every time someone compares a book to thg i’m automatically suspicious because no one does it right.

and of course, neither did lightlark.

the book is a complete disaster so i will try to stick only to the relevant points but seriously. there’s so much.

the official premise of lightlark is that six realms in a fantasy world have been cursed for hundreds of years. each curse is (supposed to be) a twisted version of the realms magic, and the curses also cut them off from their main island of lightlark. except for once every century, when the island becomes accessible for 100 days and the six rulers travel there to try to break the curses via death tournament.

but then you get to the book and learn that the curses are only broken if a ruler dies without an heir, since their special ruler magic just transfers to the heir and no one gets anywhere. this was only a caveat so we could have a young protagonist ruler, i’m sure. ALSO, IMPORTANTLY, if a ruler dies without an heir, their entire realm also dies.

and obviously that’s bad so the rulers have to consider carefully who they want to kill, and they keep putting the killing off bc it’s not easy to condemn thousands of people to death.

so why, pray tell, the FUCK, are you doing a death tournament every century.

(they’re not, by the way. the first 50 days are dedicated to some demonstrations that are definitely hunger games inspired and meant to allow the rulers to forge alliances bc even though there’s only six of them they’re also required to partner up for some reason?? but there’s almost no fighting and almost all the fight scenes end very quickly with no real damage to the main character. it got really annoying really fast.)

but like, let’s pretend for half a second that lightlark IS about six rulers fighting to the death to break a curse. it’s still not even close to being like the hunger games.

the hunger games was about teenagers under constant surveillance forced to perform and then kill for the masses, many because they weren’t rich enough to buy their way out or into good training.

no one except the rulers and the essential staff is even allowed on lightlark, and no i don’t know why that is. and the characters spend the entire book trying to avoid killing each other as much as possible (well, minus two cases) bc they want to find another way to break the curses. i don’t understand why it’s billed as this big bloody dangerous battle even in-universe when everyone involved really REALLY doesn’t want to fight.

also, this isn’t related to the thg nonsense, but if i’m talking about lightlark i have to talk about That Twist. alex aster really loves her twists and is very proud that no one can see them coming but that’s because reading the twists is like watching the street for cars, then trying to cross and getting hit by an airplane.

as i said, the characters keep trying to find a new way to break the curse, even though it’s been 500 years and many of the rulers have been alive that long (no i don’t know if that’s normal or a ruler perk, it’s not explained) so they SHOULD have tried all of these fairly obvious methods by now but SURE, JAN. this book would make so much more sense if it was only the first century and everyone was still scrambling to figure the curses out. but whatever. alex aster wanted her protagonist to be in a love triangle with two 500yo men

(there’s nothing inherently wrong with that and i actually really loved grim, not for the reasons i was supposed to bc the writing was bad, but i liked him, until—well, put a pin in that.)

ANYWAY. THE POINT. our protagonist, who i guess i should say is named isla, needs to find “the heart of lightlark” which “blooms where darkness meets light.” everyone assumes they’re looking for a super special flower but they can’t find it. then, isla decides this random-ass bird that’s only almost gotten her killed twice is DEFINITELY going to show them the heart, so they follow the bird.

and at dawn, the bird lays a fucking egg. and it falls out of the nest. and cracks. and the yolk. floats. into the air. in time with the rising sun.

I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW MUCH IT IS A LITERAL FUCKING EGG

no foreshadowing. isla has an internal monologue where she thinks she always did see the moon as an eggshell and the sun as yolky, but the yolky sun description happens twice in 400+ pages and the egg moon description happens Never, so like. shoutout to aster’s copy editor??

i can’t take this book seriously bc it is a literal egg an EGG isla has to carry an EGG YOLK to break the curses. there are scenarios where i could accept that but this Serious YA Fantasy Book is not one of them.

and since i mentioned the one thing i did actually like, i will explain isla’s one love interest, grim. technically her only love interest bc nothing about the other guy struck me as romantic but idk maybe her inner monologue was yearning or smthn. anyway, grim.

grim is from the least trusted/most stigmatized realm. he’s described as a huge hulking nightmare of a man, a demon, every badscary description under the sun. but like. the times he is alone with isla? he takes her to a chocolate shop during their first meeting and hand feeds her truffles, which is a little weird and overly sexual but…still. chocolate. then he hides her from another ruler no questions asked even though he has every right to be suspicious. he opens up to her and shit. he calls her “hearteater” (it’s a reference to her curse, her people eat human hearts to survive, no that doesn’t make sense either) (also isla is magically not cursed so our protagonist doesn’t have to be scary and gross and worry about that during the novel haha!) (guess what else is never properly explained….)

anyway grim calls her “hearteater” but like, almost in a teasing/endearing way, which is fun, and when they start to fall in love he just calls her “heart” which is ALSO cute imo i’m weak for nicknames. he’s like. the narration and aster really really want me to think he’s the scary bad boy but he’s just such a soft dude.

and then. ohhhh, and then. one of the other hit-by-airplane twists is that the weird sexy dreams isla has been having all book about grim? they’re not dreams. they’re memories. the two of them used to be together for about a year before the book started, and grim erased her memories as part of a plot to betray her yada yada i was braindead by this point so i don’t fully remember all 17 elements of the betrayal. but like…..first of all that retroactively makes all of their interactions but especially the chocolate thing kind of weird and creepy? also WHAT was the FUCKING POINT pf making her forget she loves you if you’re literally just going to seduce her immediately anyway. like. the book makes a halfhearted effort at having grim avoid her but it really didn’t feel like he was purposely being mean to push her away. because every time they did interact he was so sweet! sir!!

anyway he betrayed isla probably mostly to keep up the ambiguity of the love triangle and so aster could brag about more twists and i hate that bc WHY. he was doing so well.

anyway. i got so far off track. lightlark is a wild fucking ride and i did not even scratch the surface of the plot-hole filled mess that this book is. my sister does own it and i did check a few things bc i straight up could not believe they were real (like the egg. i cannot get over the egg.) so.

also this book only got published bc it went viral on booktok so that kind of tells you everything you need to know. the good news is it does give me some measure of hope/an ego boost bc if lightlark exists in the world…..surely whatever i’m doing can’t be too bad.

[nightscapepersona]

Not Actually Bonsai — by Nightscape Persona

Hey, there! It’s been some time. Life happens, I guess. But… thought it’d be fitting to finally share the premise of this little something with the world. This was written way before Right Place, Wrong Person, but “Lost” seems to capture the starting place of our character Namjoon in this scene. So here it goes. Enjoy the first chapter!

Pairing: Namjoon x OFC (Original Female Character)

Genre: Fluff, perhaps some existentialism angst (minimal), bonsai-owner Namjoon, non-idol AU

Word count: 729

Summary: He needed something to retrieve his sense of self. Something that could help him feel like himself again, lively and alive. Something to bloom back into himself. And to avoid killing his bonsai along the way. When he enrolls in a bonsai workshop to prevent the impending death of his leafy children at his own hands, he does not expect something else to bloom into his heart.

Masterlist

✻  ✻  ✻

Not Actually Bonsai — by Nightscape Persona

Chapter 1: “Where he’s fucking lonely”

"I'm fucking lonely," he huffed as his brain pondered why he was feeding his bonsai tree a fertilizer—no, no, a growth promoter—more expensive than his own coffee.

He stared at his soil-ridden hands.

Like, he wasn’t lonely. As in, he had friends. But… he was lonely. Sometimes.

That's why he had his trees.

It’s not about the craving-human-company type of loneliness. The humans-are-complicated type of loneliness. He loved his humans.

Like sure, trees don't treat you like a dirt bag one day and then come back the other demanding you be their personal happiness dispenser. And ATM. Well, the latter was still true for his trees (hello, overpriced growth promoter). But anyways.

That’s not what he meant.

It was about how sometimes a deep, cold gust of overwhelming loneliness and desperation crawled into his days. The loneliness-of-being-a-human-on-the-journey-of-existence sort of loneliness.

Feelings were felt.

Yes, sometimes he came into a looming sense of just being floating around life.

People were busy. He was busy. His little moments of free time were encapsulated into scrolling pills, working pills, surviving pills, trying to fill up time somehow and just feel—less lost. Less empty.

The mundanity of it all was crushing. He felt disconnected. Like a useless limb.

He needed something to retrieve his sense of self. Something that could help him feel like himself again, lively and alive. Something to bloom back into himself.

Hence why he decided to start his bonsai project.

He had already come to own one or two dear plants before this experiment. Like his little plum blossom. Now his house was full of them, and he wasn’t exactly keeping them alive.

Sacrilege, what his care had been doing to jjin-jjin. That’s his Chinese juniper. How he came into custody of that 16-year old beauty he will never come to fathom.

Anyways.

He had to become a better plant dad.

Speaking of which.

He was running late.

The workshop.

He would not throw the entire paycheck it cost him by missing the bonsai workshop that would turn him from a destruction menace for his trees to a master of the arts. Hopefully.

The workshop implied talking to people, though.

Not that he disliked it or was bad at it. It’s just that he, the introvert, had been spending so much time in a recluse corner of the internet or his mind or his house trying to find himself that he forgot how to be a social being—which is all an art of its own. As happens. You know, the awkwardness and all. Introvert stuff.

It wouldn't kill him for a few hours. It normally didn’t, to be out and about socializing for a bit. But… But… But at the end of the day he always wished to return to his recondite corner of trees, books, and music to live his days happily away in the existential search for his self and the release of his emptiness.

Only acceptable interruptions coming from Jungkook or Moni. Preferably Moni.

Anyways.

He’s heard it that being around people and nature diminishes the hopelessness. Perhaps it would.

It could be a good day.

✻  ✻  ✻

On the other side of town, she was getting ready to face the world, rise and shine, embrace the day, carpe diem and all that jazz.

She fixed herself before the entryway mirror one last time. Tried to tuck her seemingly incorrigible baby hairs behind her ears. Almost dropped her barely-making-it cherry blossom bonsai off the entryway table before said mirror in the process.

It was just a workshop.

With people.

A workshop with other people.

People.

She didn’t hate people. She liked people. It’s just she wasn’t quite very good with them. Finding the right thing to say, leading a conversation, meandering along the corners of awkward questions and the not-knowing-what-to-say-next… It was an art, and she admired those who had no problem with it.

She was not very deft in such art, which she’d now have to engage in for more or less her entire morning.

Just as she was not deft in the art of the green thumb. Her lovely once-blossoming now-wilting Japanese flowering cherry bore witness to her lack of skill. She didn’t even remember its variety.

Hence why she was on her way to said workshop.

She accepted her fate and bid her half-dead cherry blossom goodbye.

“The things I do for you, my love.”

Almost comically, a flower broke off a twig, dramatically swaying down to the earth on the pot.

“Well, at least you have new bulbs coming up. That’s a second chance, isn’t it?”

She caressed the trunk of her little tree.

She’d have to be a better tree mom.

She closed the door to her apartment, making haste for the workshop that promised her the flourish of her bonsai-keeping skills… and perhaps even more.

✻  ✻  ✻

Masterlist

[usergreenpixel]

MALMAISON MEDIA SALON SOIRÉE 21: THE ACADÉMIE (2012)

1. The Introduction

Welcome, welcome, welcome! Did you miss me?! I missed you too!

Life has been hectic, but I’m back with a review of a book I came across by accident while browsing Goodreads. The setting of Madame Campan’s school isn’t used that much and has a potential, so of course I was interested.

The book itself is seemingly only available for purchase so far. On websites like Amazon that is. I couldn’t find it in the database of archive.org at least. But perhaps someone will upload it in the future.

Anyway, I’m always a sucker for more obscure media, so let’s proceed with the review already!

(Dedicated to @pobodleru and @josefavomjaaga )

2. The Summary

“Eliza Monroe, daughter of a wealthy Virginia lawyer, is sent to France by her family to get a better education fit for a lady.

At the school, she is quickly roped into manipulation games between two bitter enemies: Hortense de Beauharnais and Caroline Bonaparte.

Each of the girls will also experience love, betrayal and many other aspects of growing up.”

Coming of age stories are a classic for a reason, so let’s see how this concept is executed!

(Trigger warning for mentions of physical abuse, murder and suicide.)

3. The Story

First of all, there are too many POVs. Eliza, Caroline and Hortense EACH have their own POV chapters, where they narrate their side of the story in first person.

While this concept of switching between POVs could potentially work, the problem here is that there is too much switching, which gets very annoying and confusing. Basically, too damn much of a good writing device.

Secondly, for a fairly interesting premise, the story doesn’t do squat with it for two thirds of the book. Eliza doesn’t pick sides, characters don’t develop properly and the love subplots don’t get resolved.

For two. Fucking. THIRDS. Of the book!

The conflicts only get sort of resolved in the final third of the book, which, as you can probably imagine, just isn’t enough time to do it properly. And guess what! The author DROPS THE BALL WITH THE RESOLUTION and, as a result, nothing makes sense like she pulled the resolution out of her ass.

Another side effect is that the characters barely change at all over the course of the story, when growing up after facing adversity is the entire point of a coming of age story!

Which brings us to…

4. The Characters

I don’t like Eliza Monroe. The problem isn’t that she is a bratty teenager, by the way. The problem is that she doesn’t change over the course of the story and barely has agency, especially in the beginning.

Hortense and Caroline just play her like a fiddle most of the time, while Eliza herself just waits for something juicy to happen so she can gossip with her mother via letters.

Eliza is just a character blander than unseasoned oatmeal.

Caroline Bonaparte, as usual, is the bad guy. She is a selfish, manipulative cunt who only cares about herself and MAYBE Murat. Then she suddenly speed runs a sort of a redemption arc in the end, and even then it’s ambiguous if it was genuine or not.

Hortense de Beauharnais is supposed to be the good character, depicted by the narrative as better than Caroline in every way and almost beatified by the story.

Unfortunately, this makes her lack depth too and makes it very jarring when she does really shitty things, like trying to drive a wedge between Eugéne and his love interest due to believing that said love interest is unworthy of her brother and should know her place.

She never gets called out on her bullshit either! Our saintly Hortense, Neighbors! Oh, and she has an inappropriate relationship with her stepfather! Or well, implications of such a tryst.

Eugéne is a cinnamon roll personified. At least, until her accidentally kills his love interest, Madeleine. Supposedly, this happens because Madeleine is unstable due to enduring abuse and pining for Eugéne, yet all that happens is that she gets conveniently killed off by Eugéne and we never get to see if she truly was unstable or not. We are TOLD this, but not shown evidence.

By the way, Madeleine had the most potential out of all the important characters. An aspiring biracial actress horribly abused by her jealous, drug-addicted mother and pining for Eugéne, hoping to be rescued like in a fairy tale.

Madeleine is depicted fairly realistically, in my opinion, but then she is suddenly killed off to conveniently resolve the conflict of Josephine not accepting her as a match for Eugéne. No buildup, no significant consequences, ZILCH! Only Eugéne seems shaken by her death, but we aren’t really shown much of this either, merely TOLD.

Josephine, while definitely capable of kindness, has her own selfish bitchy moments, like not giving a fuck that Madeleine died or that Eugéne is shaken up by accidentally killing her. Her own past as a slave owner is also mostly conveniently omitted and she isn’t shown as being called out for it, unlike Eliza, who IS called out for thinking slavery is normal.

Letizia Bonaparte is a scheming snake just like Caroline, almost to cartoonish levels.

Napoleon Bonaparte is a stereotypical shortie, and also almost being a pervert to his stepdaughter. Ewww…

Madame Campan is a stereotypical kind and strict mentor.

So yeah. Most characters don’t feel interesting at all.

5. The Setting

The setting is mostly just mediocre, with occasional common cliches like claiming Robespierre REIGNED in France or that nobility during Frev was automatically in danger. But these are far from the worst offenders, so eh.

The descriptions are surprisingly good though, in that they are integrated into the book in a balanced way, so here at least one win for the author!

6. The Writing

Problems with the writing start WITH THE TITLE. More specifically, combining French spelling of a noun with an English article. “THE ACADÉMIE”, “THE TERREUR”, etc.

It’s unjustified and clunky at best. At worst, it looks like the author is just throwing in French words because the book is set in France. I would understand if it was a foreign character trying to show off and making these weird mistakes, but ALL CHARACTERS speak like that!

It’s… definitely an odd choice.

Other than that, however, a bit of props to the author for at least trying to write realistic bratty teenagers.

7. The Conclusion

Honestly, this book isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen. Not by a long shot. However, I would still recommend to give it a hard pass. It’s not bad. Not even so bad that it’s funny. And not even rage inducing.

Just… meh. Bland. Nothing to write home about.

On that note, I declare this Soirée at the Malmaison Media Salon as finished. Hope you stay tuned for more future reviews though!

Love,

Citizen Green Pixel

[fipindustries]

todos los demonios estan aqui

you've probably heard me mention multiple times that one of my favourite novels of all times is"la battala del calentamiento", an argentinian novel about a man who suffers from gigantism going on a trip to the argentinian south and encountering a strange little village there with strange people living in it and becoming the step dad of a girl with magical powers.

well, the writer of that book is called Marcelo Figueras, and it just so happened that a couple years ago he published a new book called "todos los demonios estan aqui". so, obviously, i had to read it.

it was fine i guess.

the book reads like a suspense horror movie, i could see A24 adapting this one day, with strong influences from stephen king. a psychiatrist is hired to work at a strange mental hospital, tucked away in an old mansion in a distant island in the middle of the Delta (an important argentinian river). soon he comes to find out that place is a lot stranger and much more sinister than he thought at first.

the twist at the end is that actually the institution, as well as all its franchises, are actually franchises of hell. the "patients" in those hospitals are all damned souls trapped in their bodies on earth, unable to access heaven. the goal of these hospitals is to treat those people and give them a second chance to repent and redeem themselves. our main character accidentally lets a patient escape and it turns out that patient was john gacy, the clown serial killer.

highjinks ensue.

its a pretty decent mystery book, the clues are doled out slowly and the reveal is satisfactory. although i feel the premise was never properly explored. as soon as the big twist is revealed we jump into the third act and we never really a breather to explore in more detail the implications of this (there is a throwaway line that hitler and stalin are also patients of this hospital in other countries) the only two "infamous people from history" we get to see are john gacy and ottis toole.

as a story its pretty decent but there are a couple of aspects that hold it back to me. first, as i said, most of the book is spent unraveling the mystery and once the premise is finally revealed in full we barely have any time to really explore it or let it sink before we rush to a typical horror movie third act serial killer type fare.

second, the main character is very unlikeable. he is a middle aged man who is EXTREMELY divorced, the most divorced man in the conurbano. with all the typical flaws associated. hates his ex, has only eyes for his son, is constantly oogling other women, he is a bit of an alcoholic, has a bit of a temper, is kind of a lonely loser, etc.

third, this book has what is probably the most out of place, shoehorned, tacked on sex scene i ever came across in a story. is completly ridiculous and the only explination i can find is that the writer got a sudden and uncontainable attack of hornyness as he was writing the book and he just had to type that scene with one hand while the other was occupied.

finally the happy ending kind of strains belief. the guy fucks up, he fucks up massively. he lets a serial killer escape from the hospital because he thought he was "harmless", the guy went on to kill two people, torture his ex and molest his son. a lot of energy and personel from the hospital had to be used to recapture the guy. the fact that he was not fired for this and gets to have a happy relationship with his son by the end of it all is absolutely ridiculous. it would have taken me out of the novel if it wasnt for the fact that it ends there.

honestly this book is more interesting for its premise and the fuel it gave me to extrapolate interesting stories in this world than for the book itself. like damn, who else is in these hospitals? how do they get them from the moment they die into these places? how do they make sure nobody recognizes them? i want to see how they handle guys like hitler, or charles manson or margaret tatcher.

in the epilogue we see the guy taking on a new patient, Mister J, who turns out to be his abusive father who was a colaborator with the military dictatorship of the 70's. i don want to see just a page dedicated to that, we could have had a whole novel based on that alone!

so yeah, competently written but with a few stumbles here and there that end up making the whole experience a lot more frustrating than it needed to be

7/10

[yveltalreal]

did you watch the actual noctowl house or like a bootleg version how do you not know what’s going on

i watched the actual noctowl house. way too much happens in the first episode. the amount of shit they do is stuff i would have expected to take place over the course of like 3 or 4 episodes. its incredibly hard to follow, especially when youre someone like me who needs to take amoment to fully process whats happening sometimes. not to mention that it gives you a very skewed idea about what the show is about. i should know the bare bones of a shows premise and what to expect by its first episode. the noctowl house does not let me do that.

you watch gravity falls, you have a vague idea that the show is about two twins who find a weird book that tells them about all the supernatural stuff in this small town, supernatural stuff they will be fighting. you watch amphibia, you have a vague idea that its about a girl and her friends who are sent to an alternate world where everyone are shit like froakies and stuff and its about her wanting to go home and learning how to live with the froakie people. you watch avatar the last airbender, you know its about aang who is the avatar trying to master the 4 elements and defeat the fire nation who are trying to colonize the other nations. you watch steven universe, you know its about steven who is this kid with magic alien powers who lives with 3 other people with magic alien powers and together they fight monsters and save the day and shit. like SUPER bare bones shit, no idea about the full plot, but you know the basic idea.

i could not tell you what they want me to know about the noctowl house. theyre going to be?? breaking people out of prison because theyre weird? being weird is illegal in this world? everything i have the vaguest spoilers of later in this show does not give me the impression that i am right. hell maybe its about luz being a witch?? i have literally never seen this talked about and like. YOU ONLY GET THIS AT THE END OF THE EPISODE. if the whole point is her learning magic why have an entire fucking. jail break and prison riot that served no purpose???? i literally needed a full 24 hours to comprehend what i had just watched. i watched this several days ago. i have been thinking on this mess for several days. this isnt me just like oh i didnt like the first episode at first but now that ive thought about it its fine. im not overwhelmed by it anymore. its just objectively hard to follow, and my close friends have told me that yeah, no, it does not get any easier to follow.

like tbh i think the owl house at least from what ive seen COULD work, just not with the pacing it has at this point. i would have split the first episode up so its like. kinda ends with luz doing more of the chase in the city with eda and maybe seeing more magic shit and putting the saving eda stuff in the city before they escape and have luz ask to be trained to be a witch there and then like. have the next few episodes be prepping and training before they break into the prison and then an episode for the prison break and ensuing prison riot that luz starts. either that or like. the owl house feels like it would be more fitting as a series of fantasy novels rather than a disney show.

like i dont hate the context i just think it has the most dogshit pacing. who knows though this is all from what i know of the first episode and some of my friends being like yeah no the pacing just straight up gets worse near the end so. idk.

[voidwhump]

yea what i was talking about to whither-wander-whump was Dragonlance, like you guessed. Dragonlance Legends specifically (so, in case you're not sure which one that was, the premise is basically that the mage Raistlin wants to become a god, his twin brother Caramon needs to do a bunch of character development and stop being emotionally dependent on Raistlin, and the cleric Crysania wants to redeem Raistlin and Raistlin uses that to manipulate her to help himself). I've just been having brainrot abt it, like Dragonlance isn't even really a main fandom for me - honestly I haven't even really looked into what sort of a fandom exists for it, i've just been. you know. having brainrot abt it and suffering silently on my own, lmao. (I haven't even read that much of the franchise, and I'm further hindered by the fact that my local library mostly only has translated copies which I refuse to touch because the one time I read one of the books translated, the translation quality was awful. So anyway for now all I've read is Chronicles, Legends, and the first book of Destinies.)

Anyway for some reason my brain has decided it's fun to poke at Caramon a little bit (literally this wasn't a choice my brain just went okay we're rotating him now, without asking my opinion, you know how it is sometimes) and i've been toying with some "okay no way in hell he's actually just fine at the end of the story, he's gotta be traumatized as fuck after all that, what if I make him break down a lil bit over everything and then throw in some comfort" kinda thing. Y'know, a good old-fashioned aftermath angst / hurt/comfort fic. And I just feel like a few extra scars and an injury that didn't really heal properly or some lil things like that could be fun to add into the mix. anyway yea idk i'll probably never actually write it anyway cuz my brain is stupid

(also i ended up even reading the books in literally the stupidest weirdest most roundabout "how the fuck did you even manage that" way, it's ridiculous, but that's beside the point)

Cool! Like I said, dragonlance has never been my main focus, but I definitely read at least the first book of chronicles and I remember Raistlin but not his twin for some reason. It might be because I read it somewhere between 8 and 11 years ago lmao.

If you do actually get words on paper, the two routes I primarily see in fanfic in D&D universes to keep cannon injuries around are 1. removing magical healing that happened in cannon or 2. making a unique injury harder to heal/fully recover from than was established in cannon. For injuries invented for the fanfic writers just exclude clerics and include limited healing potions it seems.

I just now thought of a secret third option that could be a vibe: phantom pain from an injury that was healed but for whatever reason that character's brain didn't catch on. Maintains cannon injury -> magical healing status but fits nicely with emotional stress.

Anyway fucking mood on not being able to find copies of these older series, I've been trying to hook myself up with legend of drizzt ebooks for a while but Hoopla straight up removed the prequel trilogy at some point and libby's options from my branch are sporadic at best and always checked out. If I'm buying books I want physical copies and I do NOT have the space for that lol. Or the funds really.

[wrenhavenriver]

top 5 books for you too! also, top 5 video games and top 5 movies, if you would like :3c

heeell yeah! top 5 books:

Salvage The Bones by Jesmyn Ward - an incredibly lyrical and deeply sad story of a family in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. i read it for the first time at a very shitty time in my life and the sibling relationships especially punched me directly in the heart. a tough read on many fronts (definitely look up/mind the content warnings if you have any "hard no" topics in your books) but the power and beauty of jesmyn ward's writing is something else.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - one of those rare high school assigned books that actually made an incredibly lasting impression. i'm glad 17-year-old me got all those reality checks about *checks notes* the horrors of war, the hollow uselessness of nationalism and being convinced to die for it, the absurdly circular reasoning that props up systems of power and the incompetence of the people at the top of them, the ability of bureaucracy to drive you to sheer sobbing madness, financial systems being wildly arbitrary at best and a fucking scam at worst, *takes breath*,

The Long Walk by Stephen King - look, I find most of Stephen King's work deeply annoying, but this one fucking hits. A Hunger Games-esque premise that's about self-destructive urges and toxic masculinity as much as it as about the actual, you know, ritualized dystopian death march. also the camaraderie that forms between these teenagers even in the most hideous of circumstances is so charming and funny and sweet. also also it's just, like, really gay (peter mcvries you mad bisexual disaster).

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Sorry.

Anything by Octavia Butler really, but Dawn has a special place in my heart. The detail Butler put into all the different ways an alien species would be, well, alien to us--biological, linguistic, the makeup of family units, understandings of gender and sex, etc--and her description of humans as intelligent but highly hierarchical, and how these conflicting qualities could very well lead to our destruction...the hugely messy power dynamics not only between aliens and humans but among humans themselves...there's just so much to sink your teeth into, and it's only the first fucking book in the trilogy!

much more briefly because i'm giving myself eye strain, top 5 video games:

this is another one of those things that seems to shift every time i'm asked it but there are two (2) that will very likely never be budged from the list and those would be: have i mentioned this game called dishonored 2012 dev. arkane studios maybe one or eighteen hundred times over the last ten years; and bloodborne babey!!!

feeling like i need a zelda entry on here rn but i can't decide between majora's mask or twilight princess

fire emblem: awakening set me on the terrible path of anime chess obsession and i'm much less mad about it than i should be

also need a sengoku jidai media entry on here but i can't decide (x2) between sengoku basara or nioh which is hilarious because they are WILDLY different in tone. the duality of man

oh shit that's at least five? ask me again in a week and i'll have at least three different substitutions lmao

favorite movies:

the handmaiden. adapting fingersmith to 1930s korea is galaxy brain levels of genius and hideko and sook-hee are peak romance

saw pan's labyrinth for the first time at like. age 14? and it chemically altered my brain and introduced me to guillermo del toro's work and made me feel a lot of horrifying things. 10/10

need a ghibli entry on here but can't decide (x3) between princess mononoke and howl's moving castle, vote now on your phones

lord of the rings: the two towers. saw it six times in theaters when it originally came out and it's still my favorite of the series. can pretty much watch it by just closing my eyes at this point.

favorite disney/pixar is tangled. "i see the light" is also peak romance. wait what if hideko and sook-hee sang i see the light to each other

[mittenhater]

ok i've decided that i do want to compare and contrast mindhunter and criminal minds and, more specfically, delve into why one show only got two seasons (fuck you netflix) while the other got a whopping fifteen + a spinoff/reboot.

so for those who don't know, mindhunter and criminal minds have very similar premises:

mindhunter is based off the true story of how the behavioral science unit (BSU) of the FBI was founded in the late 1970s. the plot follows the cast in their personal and professional lives as they develop the process of criminal profiling to catch criminals and prevent future crimes. because it's based off of a true story, all of the criminals that are featured in the show are actor portrayals of real people (edmund kemper, dennis rader, charles manson, etc.).

criminal minds follows the behavioral analysis unit (the BSU was renamed in 1985) in the early 2000s and on as they use the already established process of criminal profiling to track down serial killers. this show is a fictional portrayal of the real unit so, although they occasionally reference real criminals, all the criminals they chase are fictional.

for the purposes of keeping my thoughts at least somewhat succinct, i'm going to keep my comparisons broad and not go into a crazy amount of detail about specific episodes because this would turn into a full-length dissertation.

like i said in the beginning of the post, i want to talk about why one show got cancelled over the other and what i think it boils down to (other than money obviously) is the current obsession with "instant gratification" in media. to elaborate- i feel like a lot of consumers are not willing to wait for an emotional payoff in whatever tv show/movie/book they're engaging with; they want all the facts laid out directly in front of them and they want a clear resolution. now keep in mind this is just my personal opinion based on what i've seen in different online spaces, but let me dive into each show more to explain why it seems to fit.

mindhunter is a very slow-paced/slow burn show. it focuses a lot more on dialogue and character development than on action (chases, shootouts, standoffs, etc.). most of the plotlines span multiple episodes at least, some of them remained unfinished even at the end of season two. it's a crime show, but in a very atypical way; the focus seems to be centered more on each character's personality as well as their interpersonal relationships rather than on the usual "find the criminal, arrest the criminal" archetype. because of this, i can see why the show could potentially not bring a massive audience. people looking for a crime show that is going to draw them in with a bang are not going to be interested in mindhunter. it's the kind of show where the payoff doesn't come unless you hold out and keep watching.

moving onto criminal minds, it's kind of a polar opposite to mindhunter in terms of its execution. it draws you in immediately with action and then starts to focus more on the characters. the unit usually has one unsub or team of unsubs brought to their attention in the beginning of an episode and they are caught by the end of it, save for multi-part episodes. the first episode literally starts off with a woman being kidnapped and ends with a dramatic standoff and her being rescued. actually, i lied, it ends with a flashback of gideon being held at gunpoint by the footpath killer, but my point still stands. it has all the typical selling points of a crime show and it's incredibly easy to be drawn into.

to be clear, i am a fan of both of these shows (although i don't think the original run of criminal minds should have had 15 seasons, i think the quality went downhill as the show went on but that's a separate discussion). the point of this post was not necessarily to analyze which show is better, but more to analyze why two shows that are so similar at the core could have two strikingly different outcomes and be recieved so differently. i really do think that it speaks to what the current culture around media is and the specific (and somewhat narrow) expectations that people have of the shows/movies that they watch.

[alexjcrowley]

Miss Kringle's fate: A Useless Essay on the Masks of Abuse and Respecting Equilibriums

(Spoiler for Gotham s2)

I am watching season 2 of Gotham and I finally came to the death of Miss Kringle. I'll have to make a premise: I knew she was going to die already (I spoiled myself quite a lot of the show) and Edward was going to kill her. I had thought, knowing nothing more than these two pieces of information, I would hated Edward for this death. I thought he was going to make a 180 degrees turn, become all of a sudden a horrible man who kills the woman who maybe wanted to break up with him, the epitomy of the violent misogynist. I was wrong, and I am pleased about it. I still think Edward is misogynist, just not in the way I think he would have been, in a way I find more sophisticated.

First of all, to analyse Miss Kringle's death, we have to understand why she was killed. I am usually hesitant to automatically define the killing of every woman as a feminicide, I prefer to use that term only when the motive behind the killing of a woman is directly connected to her gender. What I mean is, if there's a bank robbery and they kill a woman because she was the banker and the thugs needed her dead to steal the money, I personally prefer to simply use the word homicide. If a woman is killed by her partner because she wanted to leave them, especially if that partner is a man, I call that feminicide. That's probably just me, but I say that because I thought, before watching the scene, Edward was going to kill Miss Kringle just because she wanted to leave him. It has to be acknowledged he had another reason for his actions, maybe even more important than the fail of their relationship, which is that she was threatening to tell the police he had killed Tom Dougherty. Ed's reaction does not only depend on his broken heart, but on a very practical reason: he doesn't want to go to jail. As much as he seems to only ask for Kristen not to insult him, there are other reasonings in action behind he keeping her mouth shut and stopping her from leaving the apartment. He doesn't just kill her because "woman weak, man strong, man needs to teach woman lesson". He isn't showing he is the strongest in the relationship, he is trying to protect himself. Does that mean he is not guilt of misogyny? Hell no. But I love how the show treats that.

You see, I was worried Edward was going to turn into Dougherty n. 2, especially with the Riddler saying things like Miss Kringle owed them her love and that women likes their guys a little violent. You have become the very thing you swore to destroy, blah blah blah. But that's not wbat the show does, it's not the Riddler to kill Miss Kringle, it's Edward, and he does it staying true to himself.

Let's get a clear vision of the situation: Edward fucked up by telling Miss Kringle he killed Officer Dougherty. It may surprise you what I am going tp tell you, but I understand Edward. First of all, he was genuinely trying to reassure Miss Kringle. The poor girl was worried she was going to get killed for having another boyfriend, Edward was trying to bring her out of her paranoia. Second: there are moments you feel so connected and so in love with someone, you think you could tell them anything. Spoiler: you can't. Most of the time, you fuck up by being too blunt or revealing them something bad about you, this very romantic idea that your person will love forever and ever the entirety of you is not very realistic. I blame lots of romance books, movies and shows for planting this idea into our head, and especially movies for making us believe that real life is just like a film, that there are scenes too romantic and perfect to be spoiled by a single wrong comment. Usually, when you fuck up a moment like that in real life, you are not confessing a murder to your loved one. Edward was, bad luck. I mentioned romance books and movies and tv shows because I genuinely believe Edward mainly relies, on the subject of romance, on those rather than real life experience. I think Edward thought for a moment he was in a movie and he was the hero, now that he got the girl the story simply ended with a "and they lived happily ever after", nothing could ever change that.

Now Miss Kringle's reaction is completely understandable, she gets scared and she starts insulting Edward. Was that the best strategy to go out of that situation? No, of course not, but can you blame her? She just found out her boyfriend is murderer, and quite proud of it.

Anyway, that's when the fun starts. As I said before, Edward DOES NOT switch to the Riddler, he stays himself the entire time. We have to analyse his words and his actions separately.

Let's start with his words. He is pleading. He is embarrassed, he is ashamed, he is clearly losing the verbal debate. Miss Kringle is the aggressive one, Edward is helpless, almost at loss for words, he just prays not to be insulted. He tries to keep repeating his reasons behind his action, but that just makes things worse (Kristen calls him a stalker). This guy is fragile. His ego was already shattered and Kristen is basically beating a dead horse. Miss Kringle is winning, Edward is losing, badly. He is the scared, he is making up excuses, she is insulting him and threatening him. He keeps showing devotion and love to her hoping this will calme her down. He doesn't suddenly turn Tom Dougherty, he doesn't go "You stupid bitch, I saved you, you owe me!", consciously he is aware he is wrong. His words are the part of himself he can control, and with that part he begs for forgiveness and pity. If we were to only hear their dialogue, I'd imagine she is throwing stuff at him while he is curled in fetal position on the floor. Even her more cutting insults don't make him consciously retaliate against her, threating her to kill her like he did with her ex boyfriend, Edward is acting like the weak one.

Now switch it up, and let's analyse their actions: Miss Kringle is running away, logically, Edward is chasing her. I think their movements represent what they're truly feeling in the moment. They have control over their words but their movements reveal their intentions: Miss Kringle may appear aggressive with the insults, but she is scared and she knows she is the one in danger, she wants to get out of the apartment. Obviously Edward is chasing her to regain, at least physically, some closeness, but then, when she tries to run away completely from the apartment he doesn't simply follow her in the stairs or even the streets, he keeps her in the apartment with physical strength. He is asking for forgiveness on the outside, on the inside he knows he also needs to worry about not ending up in prison, and that's what will happen if he let Kristen go. She hits him multiple times, he is hurt, physically and emotionally, but he has a frenzy in his movements, he doesn't take the time to check his wounds, bring a hand to his face, he is immediately on her. Because he knows he is in danger. Because he knows that Kristen's forgiveness is very important, but that he does not end up in jail is even more important, it doesn't matter if he deserves it or not. He doesn't threaten her with words, he is not ready to acknowledge that, but his actions speak clear.

The scene when Edward holds Miss Kringle tp the door saying he would never hurt her, that he is a good man, while he is choking her and putting a hand on her mouth shows greatly this dissonance between words and actions, in his conscious side and unconscious side. Even then, he is not threatening her consciously. He truly believes himself a hero, he is not lying when he says he doesn't want to hurt her.

And that is the reason I like so much how Gotham treats abuse in relationships.

Edward doesn't need to become Dougherty in order to become an abuser. There's a not a magical revelation in which oh, look at that, Edward is actually exactly like Tom, and he starts acting like him and that's who he truly was all along. Edward and Tom are different people, not all abuse look the same and not all abusers act the same, because abuse has different faces, both Tom's and Edward's.

And it's especially great that we see Edward's abuse because it goes to show that just because someone doesn't believe himself an abuser it doesn't mean he is not one. Edward stood up against Tom's abuse but he couldn't see his own. Edward genuinely thought he was acting good in Miss Kringle's regards and him holding her down towards the door, well, it was just a minor thing to keep himself out of jail, it's not like he wanted to hurt her.

Abusers aren't always villains with an evil plan to lure you in a relationship just to hurt you, they may not even realise they're doing wrong (which certainly does NOT excuse them) and I love Gotham for showing this. In the same way Edward did not realise hebwas hurting, to the point of killing, Miss Kringle, even Tom Dougherty didn't think he was abusing her, he just thought "that's how you treat women". Edward may become a supervillain later on the show, but at this point he is just man convinced he is doing no harm to this woman. Because he doesn't want to harm her he is convinced he is not harming her. Because the reason he is choking her and shutting her up is simply because he doesn't want to go to jail and not purposefully hurting her he is convinced he is not harming her. By my definition of a feminicide I gave before, Edward would say it's not what happened, he didn't want to kill her, he didn't want to hurt, he loved her so he can't be guilty of feminicide, but he is. He just doesn't realise it.

Edward is not Tom, he doesn't think he is the strong man who can take down a fragile woman, his ego doesn't get a boost how that he's proved himself to be stronger than a fragile girl, he knows murder is wrong. He never shows to think less of a woman because she is a woman, he is the first to notice and denounce an abuse, he is lean and lanky, he doesn't look like a gorilla who would attack you, more like a shaking leaf you could easily push around. Still, monsters come in more shapes than one.

I want to be extra fair in this analysis so I'll add even something more about Edward's actions. I have seen a few video essays on Gotham and what they all say is that the city is the true main character, the city shapes his characters and leads them into impossible situations that force them to change and act in ways they would have never dreamed of. I think this becomes incredibly evident in Edward's actions towards Tom Dougherty and Miss Kringle.

I'll start by saying this: I justify Edward's murder of Tom Dougherty. And not because Tom is an abuser (although this obviously makes me sympathise with Edward more than with Tom), but because it was the only way out. Listen to me.

Gotham (the show) spends so much time telling us police is corrupted to the bone and cops often cover eachothers' backs, even when the backs they're covering are guilty of serious crimes. This means that denouncing the abuse Miss Kringle was receiving from Dougherty was not only probably useless, but even dangerous. At best, it would have brought to nothing, Dougherty's colleagues would have said Miss Kringle or Edward were lying (and, especially with Edward, they would have tried to say that he was the creep that was making shit up because of his jealousy); at worst, not only that, but Edward would have got retaliation (probably physical, they would have seriously beaten him up) and the abuse on Miss Kringle would have worsened, as a way to intimidate her from ever trying to come forward again.

If you're thinking of some plot of "making Officer Dougherty leave Miss Kringle/falling for someone else", this does NOT solve the situation, it just means a different woman from Miss Kringle would have ended up abused.

The only solution is, sadly, to do justice by oneself, and that involves violence. Now, Edward use the most extreme option, murder, but let's be honest: it's not like he could ever beat Tom up. And even if he could, Tom would have beaten the shit out of him 10 times worse with the help of his friends. It solves nothing. As sad as it is, unless Edward decided to go to Jim Gordon, The Most Honest Man In Gotham, hoping he could something and quickly, murder is the most obvious solution. Edward could not risk Gordon's involvement to make things worse (and also there's this thing that maybe you don't want to advertise that someone is being abused, the abused person has the right not to want the word to spread and Jim isn't exactly subtle). Anyway, Jim Gordon's involvement was not a guarantee of solving the situation, and again, you fail the first time, Dougherty and his pals become more aggressive and dangerous.

Murder is, technically, always a solution for things, I have to add. You don't want to take a test in school because you know you'll fail? You could technically kill your teacher. Emphasis of technically. That would make you not do the test. Of course you don't murder your teacher for a test, it's an absurd and far fetched solution, a test isn't worth a human life and there hundreds of solutions in between murder and accepting to fail the test (copying the test, not showing up, etc.).

The thing with Gotham (the city) is that it's so filthy and corrupted that even something like murder, which is the last solution you should ever turn to, suddenly becomes a very valid option to consider, especially with a situation as serious as abuse. I don't think Edward was crazy to kill Dougherty, I think he was logical. I think he understood way better than Miss Kringle how things work in Gotham.

Again, Edward is a very logical person. He kills Dougherty because it's the only way to get efficiently rid of the problem, he holds Kristen down and doesn't let her leave the apartment because otherwise she would have got him in jail, he holds his hand over her mouth because her screams would have alarmed the other residents of his building. I am sure part of him also subconsciously knew that choking her and simultaneously blocking her respiratory tracts was going to kill her, but it was the same subconscious part that decided Edward being free was more important than Kristen being alive.

Truly, if we take into consideration how Gotham (the city) works, how it's based on an equilibrium of giving and taking, we may as well put the blame of Kristen's death on Kristen herself. When Edward confesses what he had to do to free her for her abuser and he explains his reasons, he has more of a point than he himself realises. He made a sacrifice to the city of Gotham, he took a life, Tom's, to save another one, Kristen's. Kristen is horrified by Edward's actions, which translates directly in being horrified by Gotham's logic.

She tries to do the right thing. The right thing is not compromising, is telling Edward he is a monster and she'll send him to jail. But she dies, because Gotham doesn't work like that, you don't win doing the right thing. She would have got more chances to win if she pretended to think Edward her hero, to think his actions brave, for the moment, and the day after, at work, she would have confessed everything to the police (people hate Edward Nygma, they would have believed her). She could have asked Edward to give her Dougherty's badge as a proof of his love and later present it to the police as proof of the murder. But that, you see, would have involved foul play, that is the way of Gotham Kristen simply abhors. So she uncover all of her cards and she starts screaming insults and she dies for that, because she refused to bend to the rules of the city.

Edward, instead, understands them very well. When he had to choose between Miss Kringle and his moral principles, he chose Miss Kringle. When he had to choose between Miss Kringle and himself, he understood he couldn't have both, and ultimately, even subconsciously, he killed Miss Kringle. He chose himself.

It's not an easy choice, those are true tears he cries over her dead body, but nonetheless he understood he had to choose. And he did, and that's why Gotham granted him to survive another day. The city is alive and controls all of his inhbitants, the ones who thrive are the ones who understands this do ut des, this constant give and take not even Jim Gordon, the epitome of the honest man, can escape, and that's why he bends to asking and doing favours for the Penguin.

Miss Kringle was asked to choose, live a life happily ever after with Edward and a dark secret or denounce Edward when she could, the only two rational options. She chose the third, to get out of the game, to scream and throw the chess board in the air. Refusing to play the game simply means to die in Gotham, and that was the fate she sealed for herself.

The only one who truly always wins is Gotham itself.

I know this is like a lot for somebody who has just started season 2 and it's definitely overthinking and if you're read until this point wow I'm impressed but Gotham burdens me with thoughts

[owlsinathens]

Hello and happy Greysnow Week Sunday!

For this event, at first I only wanted to rec "older" fics that new folks might not have found yet and Greysnow regulars will remember fondly, but for today I decided to rec two newer fics, simply because I can't not rec them.

Fight me by @thereluctantbadger

Rating: M

Summary: In which Theon is struggling to cope with himself in the aftermath of Ramsay. But a certain black haired nurse ends up being just who he needs.

Dany says: Well, damn. Rereading that fic when I went to pic my recs hit me as hard as the first time round. All the realness of the hospital surroundings, the things that have happened and are alluded to but dealt with with so much respect and care, the way Theon and Jon are with each other – it's just so goddamn fantastic. Theon is so Theon it hurts, his thoughts, his dealing with his situation, all of it. And then there's Jon, a warmer Jon than we find in canon, perfectly translated into a modern medical setting. And then there's both of them. Fight me. Ahhhh perfection ♥️

all us kids, knee deep in dirt by @vivacissimx

Rating: T

Summary: The sound of boots scuffling hid a sniffle. “Did you love her?”

Like you loved your wildling? Theon wonders. She was dead, he knew. Dead like Kyra, like both of their fathers. “She saved me. I wanted to save her too.” A sob escapes him, and he can take no more. “Go, Jon. Go.”

Or: Theon escapes the Dreadfort and seeks refuge the only place he can. As he heals, Jon Snow comes back into his life with a vengeance.

Dany says: Drowned fucking hell, I still am not over this fic. It was the gift I received in the 2021 Theon exchange hosted by @alleyskywalker and I could not have received a better one. Theon is portrayed spectacularly. His inner fight, his splitting apart at the seams and yet trying so hard to keep it together, my heart broke for him over and over again. There's everything in that fic. Brilliant characterization, evocative settings that made everything incredibly real, a plot that leaves me craving a rewrite/continuation of the whole fucking book series with this premise... just wow. Wow. I'll forever be grateful that this fic exists.

[separatist-apologist]

MB I'm not sure if you're still doing haters bookclub but boy do I have a suggestion for you. It's called Credence and mama... It's bad.

I didn't even read it, I was listening to a blogger talk about it on YouTube and I swear I was that Lisa Simpson meme of her sitting at the dinner table in shock because I could not believe what I was hearing.

I wasn't sure if I was going to answer this because I did read Credence back when I was first into booktok. I have two things I want to say about this book and then I don't think i want to talk about it again because I hated everything about it.

I'm gonna put it under the cut, though I don't discuss anything triggering. Just in case people like this book and don't want to see me complaining

Dark romance should have some element of romance to it and I feel like the booktok girly writers have forgotten that aspect in their race to write the most outlandish things they can think of for booktok clout. There was no romance among any of the men in this book and if I'm asking myself, "what do they like about her?" and the only answer is her vagina, thats...not romance. Or really even escapist fantasy because you can find that literally everywhere in real life.

The writing was predictably atrocious that even if it had been good plot wise, it's just miserable to read.

I don't think that the kind of books you read say something about you personally. I think I could have liked a book with this premise if it had been done well. the problem is was not done well and forwent anything romantic in favor of "spice" but the spice was also off-putting most of the time.

Dark romance is dark for a reason, the themes are going to be uncomfortable and its not for everyone, I acknowledge that. I still think you as an author have some responsibility to like...care? About what you're writing? To develop your characters in a way that makes ME care about them so when they DO cross a line, I am still with them.

Penelope Douglass didn't bother with any of that and in some ways the book made me feel like this was fanfiction in the way that you CAN skip over characterization at times and throw them into scenarios because the readers already have familiarity with these people and therefor relate to them. Except here I had 0 knowledge of these people and since she didn't bother giving anyone a personality outside of being unbelievably stupid/a horny old man, when they did foul and fucked up shit I was like, put them all in jail.

Credence will always have a place in haters bookclub hall of fame because it was one of the first books that made me think maybe booktok is not reading anything interesting or well-written (though it took a few more of their recommendations before I learned my lesson).

[blorbologist]

this isnt cr so ignore this if u wish but. rewrite au where willowbreeze lived instead of greypool? 👀

HMMM

okay so I'm playing in your @fatal-rewrites-warriors sandbox so feel free to kick my shins if you don't like this.

OK so basic premise would be that Greypool dies to whatever illness killed Willowbreeze and her litter - so Willow survives but her sister and kittens are dead.

First thing's first I think Willowbreeze still being around would push Riverclan to be a lot more aggressive to the other clans than in canon. Given our Willowbreeze was a bit of a shit and always trying to prove herself to be So Extra Riverclan as a result of being publicly half-clan. The River/Thunder battle that Tigerclaw uses to kill Oak and Red might happen earlier with her warmongering.

You list Willowbreeze dying ~2 years before ITW. Mist and Stone are 3-ish years old. So Greypool likely still adopted them, only to die when they were 'paws or fresh Warriors. I can see Oakheart becoming more obvious a parent to them to compensate for her loss, which might have clued another cat or two in on The Secret. If Willowbreeze finds out, Crooked will be in for hell - not because she'd take it out on him, she would be so thankful he helped keep the heritage a secret. But she would immediately hate Oakheart with her whole heart, and Crooked would be torn between his brother, his Deputy, and his mate. If she does find out, though, she would absolutely dote on Mist and Stone, maybe to an uncomfortable degree - or try too hard to treat them like normal Warriors, which would also be odd.

I can see Willowbreeze also latching onto Silverstream as a surrogate daughter along with Crooked - they're a power couple that do everything together so she's 100% going to project her lost litter onto her a bit, and maybe Lep too. In canon Lep's main authority figures she seems to look to are Crooked and White, so having a molly (and one with such a painful past no less) to give her advice would be swell. I could see Willow taking a shine to both of the girls and pulling Crooked's ear about favoring Lep as a Deputy candidate - though if Sunfish is feeling bold she might call out the favoritism and thus force Crooked's hand to be a little more impartial.

Given Willowbreeze does not have dementia, she would likely still be an active Warrior for the events of the first three books - and one with significant political clout, too. She wouldn't have wandered off before a storm - though I could see Crooked instead dying trying to help Silverstream and her litter, if he has more time to search as a result. Willow would be absolutely devastated, but also, as mate of the last 'star, her backing Lep would make things very smooth for the new Leader.

I don't think Willowbreeze would figure out Silverstream was seeing someone from another Clan. She's the result of such an affair - she never actually directly saw one. She does not know what signs to look for. She would have been completely blindsided by the news, and felt incredibly betrayed by Silver's affair.

Here's where shit would get testy: Willowbreeze would fucking shred Greystripe. She's a senior Warrior, her mate just died, her *pregnant* surrogate daughter just died - as far as she's concerned she's allowed to act out a bit. Her kithood was extremely traumatic as a result of being publicly known to be half-clan, shuttled back and forth between River and Wind, and always having to prove herself twice as much to make up for it. She's just been slapped in the face with the fact that all the stories she told Silverstream, of how awful it was, were ignored and minimized, and that hurts. More than that, she sees two grandkits who will experience the same thing she did. Her biggest fear is to see them used as political props, so seeing Greystripe appear in camp reminds her of her father taking her to Windclan. So yeah, maybe she mauls Greystripe, and Leopardstar's first big political challenge as a leader is figuring out what the fuck to do with one of the Clan's most respected attacking someone who just wants to help, and not accidentally encourage more such behavior.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Here's an interesting fucked up 'what if' LotR scenario my brain came up with while I was trying to sleep last night. Something I figured you might find thought provoking as well.

Apologies for the long post, and I'll preface it all by saying I based this on the movies only - I've never read the actual books.

What if Grima Wormtongue wasn't just Theoden's counsellor, but also his illegitimate child?

It happened when Theoden was young - before he married Elfhild, and before Theodred was born. Grima was Theoden's firstborn.

He wanted to acknowledge Grima as his son, but couldn't, because this could have given Grima a claim to the throne, and his parents wanted his heir to be the child of his upcoming marriage to Elfhild, which was then being arranged. Queen Morwen made it clear that by-blow sons from lowborn country girls do not future kings make. Or, maybe Grima's mother was foreign-born (hence the dark hair) and the Rohirrim were a bit xenophobic and wanted a nice, blonde boy as their heir instead.

Theoden took care of Grima. He arranged for him to be educated, then brought him to court and gave him a good job with influence and authority - something appropriate for a King's son.

He never publicly acknowledged Grima, even in his later years, but everyone in Theoden's inner circle knew the truth.

This is why Grima became Theoden's right-hand man, and gained 'undue' influence over him. Everyone just looked at the setup and said 'well, that's the King's secret son, he's just helping his old man out, it's totally fine'.

Not helped by the fact that Theodred wasn't much interested in the business of running the kingdom, and preferred to spend his time hunting or chasing pretty girls (my headcanon), so Grima stepped into the gap that Theodred should have filled.

Saruman knew as well. He sought Grima out, whispered in his ear, persuaded him to act on feelings he'd previously kept to himself.

Grima sold out to Saruman because he resented his position, and his lack of recognition. As the eldest son, he thought he should be Theoden's heir. His parentage and birth status shouldn't matter.

This is why Grima 'assisted' Theodred's death in The Two Towers. Not just to weaken Rohan and further Saruman's plans - to get rid of the competition - the half brother who had everything he didn't.

It's also why Grima had his eye on Eowyn. Not just because she was young and beautiful - also because she was highborn and of the royal line, so a marriage to her would strengthen his claim to the throne. Think Henry VII of England marrying Elizabeth of York.

It's why Grima cried when he saw Saruman's army at Isengard - he realized he was about to be party to his own people's destruction. He's angry at being excluded, but not THAT angry.

Aragorn knew, because he was around when Theoden's thing with Grima's mother happened. It's why Aragorn stopped Theoden from killing Grima on the steps of Meduseld - fathers should never have to kill their sons, even when many would say doing so was justified.

Saruman's comment to Theoden at Isengard has two meanings now. Theoden's not the only man there who's the 'lesser son of a greater sire' - he means Grima as well.

It's why Theoden offered Grima mercy at Isengard, reminded him he was a man of Rohan, asked him to come back, instead of just writing him off. One last appeal from father to son.

It's why Grima attacked Saruman - one last moment of loyalty to his father and his King.

I freely admit this is all totally whack, but if it's okay to write a story where Aragorn meets Harry Potter, why not an AU like this?

I might actually try to write this one day, just for shits and giggles :)

So first, I love all of this and I am here for Bastard Son!Grima. He's out here to have conflicted emotions, a desire for a Family and Acceptance, hurt everyone around him, and to make some of the world's worst decisions.

Also, I feel like there's no need for things to be, idk, "believable" in fanfic re: premise. The whackier the premise the better - because then the characters have to react and it's a fun challenge to be like "so how would Theoden, as we know him, react in this situation wherein he's been betrayed by his son who he loves but also never really was able to demonstrate that to" etc.

and tbf we know literally nothing about Grima's background aside from his father's name - but that can be smudged/a reference to a grandfather/whatever (also Galmod means lust/desire so Grima being a by-blow resulting from Theoden's desire...) - so this is no more crazy than literally anyone else's theory on the matter.

Naturally I think you should write it! I would read the heck out of it.

<3 <3 <3