#i guess it's not a reread anymore

[tooselfaware]

I finally reached the part in the story that I haven't before. And everything's just so exciting!

Toonka has new besties!

Cale's still looting as a profession.

He also has a new bestie in Central Plains (that I may or may not ship with him)!

Raon is foreseen to be in Central Plains!

Book 2 is just so thrilling that I sort of sped through the Xiaolen arc (ALL HAIL HENI WISHROP!) and Central Plains until I realized I don't know what's gonna happen anymore (because I caught up to my past read).

I'm gonna catch up soon. 😐 Then I have to wait again.

[emotionaldisaster909]

Today’s episode was heartbreaking

We’ve seen so much of Xie Lian’s pain

So much of the fall of XianLe

But now

Will you tell me that it was all his fault?

The “consequence of his actions”?

So what should we blame him for?

For being a child against the most powerful and cruel ancient evil?

The one that lived 1000 years, destroyed all the gods and deceived the entire world?

Or was he too stubborn and not listened to other people?

Well let me tell you

XIE LIAN WAS NEVER WRONG FOR NOT LISTENING TO OTHERS.

Who should he have listened to?

That very evil that told him not to try and help his people?

His guoshi who knew everything and told him nothing but to sacrifice an innocent child in “penance” to that very evil?

Should he have crushed all youngans in one go, kill the poor starving people, led to desparation?

Should he have told his own desperate people that their cure was in murder and watch the inevitable massacre?

The only thing

The only thing that he should have seriously done differently

His biggest, most fatal mistake

He did

BY LISTENING TO SOMEONE WHO TOLD HIM HE WAS WRONG

ONE TIME.

He listened to his father.

The King of Xian Le.

When at the very beginning of it all they had an argument

Where Xie Lian insisted they should melt his golden statues and let the starving homeless people into his shrines

That’s EXACTLY what they should’ve done, but they did not

Because guess what the father said

We can’t. Because we did not build the shrines and the statues.

People of Xian Le did.

Do you want to disregard your people by doing that?

SAID THE KING

Knowing VERY WELL that he is talking about THE ROYALTY OF XIAN LE.

THE RITCH PEOPLE OF XIAN LE.

THE ONES WHO LET HIM RULE.

THE ONES WHO EASILY MIGHT TAKE HIS POWER

AND LIFE AWAY

IF HE DISPLEASES THEM.

But he knows how to PHRASE IT RIGHT to his son who CHERISHES HIS PEOPLE NO MATTER THE STATUS.

And who might very much not know the intricacies behind the ruler’s chambers.

Because Xie Lian

Was

Never

Meant

TO RULE.

He was raised to be a Martial God.

To fight demons and grant wishes.

NOT

TO RULE

A COUNTRY

BUT GUESS WHO

WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO RULE THE COUNTRY????

WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO MAKE SURE A HUGE PART OF IT WON’T STARVE TO DEATH?????

THE KING

And his son had to

ABANDON HEAVEN

To come deal with his mess

You can try blaming Xie Lian for not listening to the prayers from that part of Xian Le.

But he did not NOT listen.

He DID NOT HEAR.

Because the prayers system of “the ritcher - the louder” is inherently corrupt.

And growing up in a wealthy capital

Xie Lian must’ve not even SUSPECTED that there’ll be a part of his country so poor that no offerings would be enough for him to hear the prayers.

He did not know.

BUT THE KING

DID.

There’s no way he didn’t.

Yet does anyone

Does anyone in the book

And outside, anyone of the readers

Ever thought to blame him?

No.

Not even once have i seen this take.

Not even i realised it until recently. Thanks to my dear friend @3luecactuz

And why?

Because Xie Lian tells us the story.

And he himself

Completely believes

That it was all his fault.

When his only real fault was in not standing his ground

Agains the only person

Who held authority in his eyes.

Who was the authority in his life from the very beginning of it.

Who, no matter the future arguments, was the person he loved.

His father.

In the face of the greatest crisis he’s ever seen

Under the pressure to make the right choice for so many innocent lives

He gives in and listenes to a person who he not only inherently trusts

But who objectively had much more experience and knowledge than him

Who’s flaws he has not yet seen clearly enough. And never will.

Because this person raised him to be

Perfect.

And he failed.

Because no one is perfect.

And he believed in it in the wrong time and place. He gave in.

Decided to look for another solution.

And gave the evil orchestrating his demise just enough time to pull the first string.

Of many.

So tell me.

Really, tell me.

Did he deserve this?

Should he have listened more?

Should he have?

Or maybe

Just maybe

He needed someone

Who could have told him

To do what he thinks is right.

[clonerightsagenda]

I don't care what kind of hotshot future surgeons they have, I can't believe that they replaced all the specials' bones with synthetics, for multiple reasons (some would be difficult and dangerous to remove without damaging important tissue, you need your pelvis/sternum/spine for marrow production, 16 year olds aren't done growing although idk if Dr. Cable cares about that) but now I am imagining 35 year old Tally alone in the wild with the world gone to shit yet again because of and despite of her best efforts staring at her own cast-off 16-year-old skull.

[valewritessss]

Every time someone says they hate Annabeth and Percabeth in the sense that they think they’re toxic, I have to start guessing if they ship Pernico, Percy x Apollo, and it pains me to say because I know people get mad but Perachel.

[vulpinesaint]

the treasured girlboss and failboy dynamic that goes so often underutilized. dandelion’s weak poet’s constitution vs. yennefer’s quite literal unequivocal slay

[pepperpottes]

is it so much to ask to be able to read my own writing with someone else's eyes and brain

[astral-scout]

my mom loves reading and she's confused about why i most enjoyed reading in elementary school GIRL IT'S BECAUSE YOU WOULDN'T LET ME READ ANYTHING!!!!

[thousand-winters]

Okay, yeah, I'm not 100% settled on that because it just feels wrong, but I think I might quit Dadrius week for real and just. Not write the rest of the prompts.

I was thinking about how I was regretting not having written an angsty prompt for day 2 because I know people like angsty prompts more but the friends I consulted like the fluffy one more and I did want to write fluff so I was happy with that, but then the whole time I've been worried about not having enough angst in my prompts for people to want to really read my stuff and... idk, man. That's just off. I used to write things because I thought they were fun, not because I was agonizing over if people would read them or not, you know? Literally my first Dadrius fic was just me going "oh, my god, I want to write this so bad" and coincidentially it did get a lot of attention but at the time I was just SO excited about the idea and the composition the fic would have and that was literally it. I wasn't thinking about anything else, I was just having fun.

And I guess it's because in the past, when I wrote fics for this fandom, people did interact with me and I liked that, it was fun to talk to people about these things and whatever. And I don't get that anymore, which is fine, of course, I'm not entitled to anybody's time, but it's just not fun anymore. It feels like I'm just throwing empty words out there and it's so... boring. Like I don't know, maybe my writing just sucks, maybe it doesn't. My friends are very sweet and do seem to like it but you know, they do like me, so things I do they might see with sweeter eyes.

Idk, man. I just feel like I've been doing so many things for so long that haven't been for myself but for what it feels like it's expected of me and that's all. And it sucks even more because literally nobody expects this of me, I'm not fulfilling anybody's expectations, I'm just stressing myself out for nothing.

So idk. It might be good to just NOT.

[somehowsomewhat]

Kinda rambley thoughts because my Christmas season entertainment has been rereading+getting up to date with Tower of God. Very general impressions on how rereading felt like, especially after years of not reading and legitimately thinking I wouldn't ever touch it again (spoilery tangential mentions to the last events so beware??).

Going from 'maybe I can reread this arc i liked' to 'actually let's reread the entire thing and if i keep liking it i'll get up to date i guess?', it's amazing how starting from the beginning made the issues in season 3 leagues that much more bearable and how much ToG gains when read as a whole instead of weekly.

Because, the foreshadowing is there and the thematic parallelisms are there. Knowing that the plot is going to end up with full focus on Traumerei (and Gustang's quest to get rid of the Great Warriors, because I spoiled myself that much when I was determining if I actually wanted to give the story a genuine chance) makes the narrative decisions in early Season 3 especially a lot more understandable. Actually remembering all the bits about Blue Thryssa (and the mention in the Floor of Death that it has administrator rights for some reason) makes its appearance as a power paralleling the Red Thryssa in an official manner that much better too

And that struck me in particular because I remember i was already spot reading at that point and getting increasingly confused and frustrated. A lot of the foreshadowing and buildup had happened so long ago i just... didn't remember it.

Do I still prefer season 2? Yes, for a multitude of reasons. I understand why season 3 had to focus on characters like Yama or even Dowon, but it felt much to the detriment of those characters I was already invested in. Wangnan come back pls the plot has evolved to a point your involvement would add So Much beyond me missing your silly ass. Tho at least his plotline has actually progressed (even if not through him directly), some of the other main Regulars have their plotlines 100% frozen as far as we know or only barely touched on.

Even if I think the Season 3 escalation of events goes very far on explaining why FUG felt the need to fake Bam's death in Floor 2, it meant the Regular characters aside of Bam fell hard to the side 70% of the time.

Yet all feels so purposeful otherwise??? I can only hope SIU compensates for all those things in Season 4 and, once we can read the story as a whole, it feels like a very understandable side trip.

Also V being, by the looks of it, just as much of a Mess as the rest of the Great Warriors is, honestly, to be expected but I sure didn't thinking it would be Like That. I'm lowkey worried about how SIU will be handling that.

I legitimately thought I was done with this series, but I guess the worldbuilding is just too tasty for me to ignore. If anything, the reread has confirmed to me that SIU has a Plan for the story long-term, which I value in a narrative like this quite a bit.

[archersgoon]

idk maybe the new recruits they mustve pulled after the battle were the ones going after froi in an attempt to legitimise their new & prestigious position by delegitimising his

[lalalasocks]

Something reminded me of a couple old fanfictions I loved and I’ve been searching for them for like an hour now. I want to reread them and I can’t find them

[britneyshakespeare]

Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I infer that poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of the process), I resolved to go to the play. It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose; and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw Julius Caesar and the new Pantomime. To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of the whole show, the influence upon me of the poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the smooth stupendous changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, were so dazzling, and opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I came out into the rainy street, at twelve o'clock at night, I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, "Chapter 19: I Look About Me, and Make a Discovery"

[thelaurenshippen]

you should tell us your favorite books, for science

ooh okay, yes, I would love to do this, I love this question because of how impossible it is!

in no particular order, the (specifically fiction) books that I absolutely adore and that altered something inside of me and that I have or would reread - an incomplete list:

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Cloud Atlas/The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

The Good Luck Girls/The Sisters of Reckoning by Charlotte Nicole Davis

and if I was going to recommend just three non-fiction (I read mostly non-fiction these days): Anti-Social by Andrew Marantz, Humankind by Rutger Bregman, and So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (really any of his books).

[sage-hendricks]

I'd like to think I'm old enough and mature enough to not have my whole world rocked when another famous man does what famous men do

But man the N*** G****n thing makes me want to (redacted)(in Minecraft) myself. Like what's the fucking point in liking anything anymore. Whoever made it is probably just a sick rapist cunt anyway. It's not like I shaped my personality around my obsession with various works of media and art because I lack anything else interesting about myself, I'm sure I can just not fucking read or listen or watch or anything anymore to avoid the fact that everyone is apparently evil and the world fucking sucks.

[frisfras]

im not gonna catch back up w my hero until it's finished but the shit im hearing...

[autism-disco]

guys can’t draw a self portrait normally theyvd always gotta add a buncha holes in their skin