#i just like dandelions okay

[icannotgetoverbirds]

unorganized thoughts abt dandelions

I've always loved dandelions. People call them weeds, and for a while I thought that meant they were dangerous. Toxic, even. Truth be told, they're just unwanted. That's all that the word 'weed' means. Once you get a yard full of them, do you think they stop being weeds and start being a garden?

~

Dandelions should be a symbol of something radical. Something that fights for kindness.

~

Dandelions. God, what kind of a world would this be without them?

~

Dandelions mean so much to me. I think they're my favorite flower. Sunflowers, too, of course, but dandelions really get a message across.

[teatitty]

It's way funnier to me to imagine that Geralt is the one who desperately wants Dandelion to winter at Kaer Morhen with him but Dandelion keeps saying no on the simple grounds that it's too fucking cold and do you want me to die Geralt? Do you want me to get hypothermia and fucking die?

And Geralt's like "please I am begging on my knees I will cuddle you every night to keep you warm I just need to prove you actually exist"

[yangjeongin]

HYUNJIN | 230910 • MIC & BRUSH @ 5-STAR DOME TOUR 2023 OSAKA

[heybiji]

dande's dying btw

[geraskierfanficprompts]

Prompt 22

Geralt rides into a town only to see a small family fumbling around in the street in a panic. Apparently they're a family business of fishermen who are worried that something much bigger than a fish has swam into a trap of theirs. Geralt gets a promise of money for getting rid of it and goes off to kill whatever water monster it is. But he gets to where they describe the beast and he finds... A mermaid? It's trapped and tied around in a net, facing away from Geralt, and clearly in pain, though he doesn't know why, yet. The webbed ear of the mer flicks and it turns to face him, hissing. Geralt holds his hands out in a placating gesture and sloowly walks closer, only for the mer to slam the full weight of it's tail into Geralt's legs and sweep him off his feet. Gods damn it. It can never be easy. Geralt draws his sword, and begins cutting the trap off the mer, even as it hisses, flails, and tries it's absolute damnedest to claw his face off. He ends up straddling it like it's a fucking gator, and when he frees it of it's restraints, it's only then that he can finally make out the giant wound on the mer's side. Too big and nasty a wound to just release it into the water. Oh great. It's gonna LOVE this. But it's not like he has to DO anything about it. He's a cold, emotionless witcher. He doesn't care of the mer lives or dies. If the wound is infected or kills the mer, he couldn't give less of a damn. So Geralt is currently walking up to his room at the inn, with a very angry hissing mer thrown over his shoulder, clawing the shit out of his armor. When he asks for the bath to be filled, blessedly nobody asks any further questions. The mer stops struggling as soon as it's in the bath, but it sure is still hissing at him. Geralt puts his sword away and takes off his armor and the hissing lessens. Now it's just whenever he gets too close. Big problem. He needs to get close in order to patch up it's wounds. The mer has the biggest, brightest, inhumanly blue eyes, with slitted pupils. It has sharp teeth, and twinkling iridescent blue scales dusting across the edge of it's face and it's cheeks. It stops hissing at him to listen to the bard perform downstairs. It stops attacking him, even as he pokes and prods at their wound. This is great! Except for when the bard stops and the mermaid goes back to thrashing and screaming- So Geralt is forced to hum songs under his breath to calm it. It's pupils expand and it stares at him in awe, with a slightly parted mouth. Geralt's just happy it stopped flopping around like a- w- Well... Like a fish. He fixes it all up, and shares his food, and softly hums to it the whole night, before it curls up a bit more and starts nodding off. He stops humming and steps to the inn's bed, only to be surprised when hearing a voice behind him murmur "Thank you." Oh shit-

[mag200]

unfortunately beige can be a really nice color actually but rich people are so fucking bad at it

[hanzajesthanza]

hold up actually. wait a second. i always loved this passage and even referenced it recently on here, but...

it occurred to me (a straight hair-haver) that... while this routine to brush through your hair thoroughly at night would be a good care habit for someone with straight hair, wouldn't it be a bad idea for someone with naturally curly hair to do this? wouldn't brushing her hair dry with a comb (she later puts away the comb in a box), nightly, mess up her hair?

[simplepotatofarmer]

-bangs on the door- dreblr funds time? or fic commissions with flexible completion times if you feel like you want to earn it. $10 for 100 words!!

there's an issue with getting money for writing fanfic so i definitely don't want to cross that line and i really love writing for people so i wouldn't want to ask anything for that!

but thank you for the thought, i really appreciate it <3 <3

[vulpinesaint]

in complete honesty i am not very far into the books so i am not the expert on the full breadth of their relationship nor how it ends. however i find geralt and yennefer's relationship SO interesting i am saying this all the time... true love aside. destiny aside. love at first sight whatever idc. having these two people who love each other so much but are so bad for each other, who make each other miserable in a way that is obvious both to them and to the people around them but still care so deeply about each other that even when they're split up and won't even acknowledge each other by name they are still concerned with not just each other's health but their wellbeing... two people who are deeply traumatized and don't know how to be loved but keep trying to love each other anyway. two people who are trying and failing to be better for each other but are continuing to try. i don't give a fuck about love but they kind of drive me craaazzzzyyyyyy

[coquelicoq]

it's interesting, a few people on my post yesterday about the dandelion dynasty told me they were taking it as a rec for the series, but i didn't actually recommend the series in that post. it's making me think about whether i would rec it to people, a question i hadn't fully considered yet (as it is a very different question from "do i like this book?"). so this is me figuring out the answer to that question. i'll keep it spoiler-free (though i make no promises on brevity).

i just finished book 3 (of 4) and each installment has left me more invested than i was before, but the series started out very slow, and i didn't really get into it until halfway through book 2. i wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people bounce off the first book; i didn't, but only because 1) i almost never give up on a book that i've started (it's a character flaw of mine 😕) and 2) my trust in ken liu is ridiculously high because the other stuff i've read by him is so beloved to me. so my reaction to feeling kind of meh about book 1 was "okay, let's see where he's going with this" rather than "i guess this just isn't my cup of tea."

i should say that the problem might just be my own ignorance/lack of familiarity with the form. i don't read a lot of epic fantasy - in fact, lord of the rings is the one series that i have given up on reading a couple of times because it just left me totally indifferent. so if you like epics, you are starting out way ahead of me and can maybe just ignore the rest of this post lol, but i think i had to adjust to what the form is asking of me and what it's best suited to accomplish before i could get fully on board.

the main thing i struggled with is the writing, like the actual sentence-level mechanics of voice and style. this surprised me, because i usually find his writing very beautiful, or, when not beautiful, i can get a sense of the effect he means to achieve by employing a certain style. but in this series, the writing came across as kind of awkward and one-note to me at first, and i couldn't see a reason for it to be that way.* the dialogue especially - different characters don't really have different ways of speaking, they all feel pretty much the same. this was one of the main things i had to adjust to, but i do get it now. i don't just mean that i got used to the style and it doesn't bother me anymore, though that is true; i mean that i now understand the effect he means to achieve by employing this style, which gives it purpose and inextricably ties it to the story he's telling (this becomes especially clear in book 3, as it's directly related to a major theme of that book). if the style were different, he would be telling a different story; that's the sign of a successful execution, i think.

i said in the tags on yesterday's post that one reason the series doesn't have much of a fandom on here might be that the characters aren't natural blorbos. of course every character is probably the blorbo of somebody somewhere, but i don't know that these characters were designed to be blorbos, if that makes sense. not that they're plot devices either! every single one of them is conflicted and complicated and compelling, and most of them are followed over a period of many years, so we see them develop as people over time. but there is no protagonist, for example. you could also say that every character is a protagonist. the "list of major characters" at the beginning of book 3 is six pages long, and there are stories to be told about each of these characters, and none of them are told in isolation. but in a way, the characters themselves are not the point, or if they are, it's in aggregate - it's in the ways they're all complex, the ways they all have motivations that make sense to them (and that make sense to us, once we get to know them). and it's about power and the roles that the characters play in their society, rather than the roles the characters play in the story. or maybe those are the same thing! because ultimately, the main character of this story is the society. and the plot is the history of this society, rather than the journey or life of a single person or handful of people.**

(sidenote, there will be a period during book 1 when you will think to yourself, "wow, all the women characters are super one-dimensional and the narrative doesn't seem to respect them." this is on purpose. just keep going.)

the plotting is intricate while also feeling very organic. he's got dozens of plates in the air at once, he's maintaining them over a long period (these books are MASSIVE), and he's somehow making it seem like a real history, not like an author pulling strings. i haven't finished it yet, but my guess is that he's going to pull off a very satisfying conclusion that's at the same time very open-ended. definitely looking forward to it.

and the worldbuilding. oh, the worldbuilding. this is some of the most detailed, complex, realistic*** worldbuilding i've ever encountered, and he covers SO much ground. you want linguistic worldbuilding? you got it. philosophy? it's here. psychology of empire? coming right up. the nitty-gritty of everyday governance? buddy, pull up a chair. mechanical engineering? how much time you got?? (it better be enough time to read 3504 physical pages, because that's how long this series is.) and he's drawing on chinese history and cultural narratives rather than slapping lipstick on a tolkien clone (see his comments here, but stop reading at "In this continuation of the series" if you want to avoid spoilers). he WILL go on for a hundred pages about a single invention, but it's SO interesting that he is allowed. this is a story about how technology (including language, and schools of thought, and agriculture, and...) shapes, and is a product of, its time and place and people, so again, this is all to purpose. but it's also just. really cool.

the last thing i'll say, and this is mainly for other ken liu fans, is that one of the things i most love about his short stories is how they tap into emotions i didn't even know i had, as though they're reaching inside of me and drawing to the surface ways of experiencing consciousness and love and mortal life that i had no idea were in there. this series is not causing emotional revelation for me in the way his other stories do, which isn't a bad thing - i don't mean to say the series is not engaging or that it inspires no emotions! i just mean, iykyk. if you've read the paper menagerie and are expecting that experience, you will have a better time here if you leave those expectations at the door. i am invested in this book because it's engaging my intellect, curiosity, sense of wanting to find out what else the characters will learn and what's going to happen next...less because it's turning my heart inside out inside my chest. and like thank goodness, because i don't think i could survive four entire 900-page books' worth of that! but anyway. word to the wise.

tl;dr: yes, i recommend it, especially if you like epic fantasy. if you're a fan of ken liu's other work, this is quite different, so just know that going in!

*this opinion is of course subjective and not universally shared. for instance, see this review of book 3 (full of spoilers, so don't actually read it lol) which says "There's Liu's voice to hold onto, though — beautifully deployed here and fully in command of the language of his imaginary universe." so ymmv. maybe it's an epic fantasy thing.

**this is making me realize that the story is commenting on this very thing through a tension between bureaucracy (founded on interchangeability) and monarchy (informed by a specific personality). dude. that's so meta!

***though sometimes i'm like, "really? you scaled up that invention to use untested on the battlefield in the span of like two weeks? sure, jan." so sometimes he falls down a little on translation of ideas into logistics, but it makes for such a great story that i'll allow it.

[ghostlylicious]

hey so um im getting into afk arena

inspired by this frm pinterest

[teatitty]

Okay no but I'm thinking more about Big Brother Eskel hearing about this fucking bard Geralt has picked up and all the mischief and mayhem he causes while also bringing back a light to Geralt's eyes and making his path so much less lonely [wolves were never meant to be alone and especially not Geralt] and when he does meet him he's just like. Fuck. Look at this thing. He's so small and wild and free. Is anyone going to fuss over him like he's an errant baby brother or do I have to do everything around here my-fucking-self. And then he does and Dandelion's incredibly confused but he's not, like, mad about it

[lsblrconfessions]

i hate how im so fucking hyperfixated on mutiny duo and wemmbu because I KNOW DAMN WELL WHEN SCHOOL STARTS IN GOING TO RIP ANY PAGE THAT I DRAW HIM ON AND ITS INEVITABLE. I WONT BE ABLE TO FUCKING ESCAPE HIM i want to dye my hair purple because i cant dye it yellow so hes just. im never going to fucking escape wemmbu. im scared of watching any zam stream because if he shows up im gonna crash out so fucjing bad

i wish wemmbu wasnt wemmbu like i need to. I DONT KNOW I LOVE HIMNHES MY BLORBO BUT I ALSO DESPISE HIM SO FUCKING MUCH I DONT KNOW WHAT IM GOING TO DO ANYMORE. I KNOW IM GOING TO END UP WITH A BUNCH OF MERCH OF HIM AND THAT IM GONNA END UP RUINIG IT BECAUSE I HATE HIM BUT I ALSO DONT WANT TO RUIN IT CUZ ITS WEMMBU BUT I HATE WEMMBU BUT I LOVE WEMMBU FUCKKKKKKKKK another thing to add to my. "im never going to escape wemmbu" dilemma is that my best friend kins wemmbu so IM HEVER GOIGN TO ESCAPE HIM HES GOING TO FOREVER HAUNT ME AND I NEED HIM GONE BUT ALSO NOT REALLY GONE BECAUSE ILL BE SAD IF HWS GONE BUT I ALSO WANT HIM GONE I NEED HIM DEAD BUT NOT REALLY

fuck my stupid chungus life - wemmbu hater anon im sorry if my hatefullness gets too much ^_^"

.

[portmanteaurian]

been thinking again abt gender as one does during pride month. and while i’ve maintained for years that i identify as neither cis nor trans — and this remains true — i think i found a new way of articulating why i feel that way

i’m not cis because i am not a man. that part is easy. i obviously do experience the world as someone who is usually viewed as a man by other people, and i’m a fag who forms romantic and sexual relationships with queer men, but i’m not “a man” as such. my understanding of my gender does not align with the word that was attached to my birth certificate.

however, my gender does align just fine with my embodiment, and has more or less always done so. i’m not trans, because i have no desire to transition away from anything, nor anything specific i wish i could transition to. i’ve had vanishingly few experiences with anything i’d consider dysphoria, and the pronouns and name i’ve always had are the ones i’m most comfortable with. claiming transness would feel totally misrepresentative.

these are the parts i already knew, but i have struggled with explaining how they both could be true to people.

what i realized though is this: it can be true that my internal sense of self is totally aligned with my body and how it moves through the world, but also that what those traits mean is not what people at large understand them to mean.

like, think of birds or plants or something, right? there are species of plant that look identical for all intents and purposes but can actually be completely different things. and a layperson will look at a row of them all laid out and assume they are all the same thing, but that person would be wrong. and none of those plants is like, trying deliberately to imitate one of the other ones*, they’re just distinct things despite how easily an uninformed observer might assume they are the same.

*i think maybe sometimes this isn’t totally true, from an evolutionary perspective, but no one said this metaphor was perfect

[geraskierfanficprompts]

Prompt 110

Okay so we all know about how Regis told Dandelion in the books that his blood smelled nice, which was most likely about how none of his wounds were infected and whatnot, but what if it wasn't? What if Jaskier has a special type of blood, whether magically made, cursed, or perhaps just o- or some shit lmfao Either way, Vampires LOVE this shit. Their favorite delicacy when they choose to partake. This becomes a problem when Jaskier has a hurt foot and Geralt takes him to a medic. A vampire, whether the medic, the medic's assistant, or just someone lurking outside who caught a whiff of the blood, is like "Jackpot!" and tells all his little vampire friends, and now they're hosting a big feast just to drain this guy. But it's such a delicacy, the vampire decides maybe they should only drain him a little, so he can keep the human around, so the human can regain his blood, and they can drink from him AGAIN! Oh yes, marvelous! He throws the best parties! Jaskier wakes up with a horrible headache. He's dressed incredibly fancy, though he doesn't think these are his clothes- Speaking of which, he also doesn't think this is his room at the inn... Is he- Is he fucking chained to a dining table? "Let the buffet begin! I hope you're thirsty my friends!~" Fuck. He hopes Geralt gets here quick-

[edelorion]

okay so i maybe have a type

artists for syokamori: knifedragon, kamei for pandoria: tonamikanji, monolithtk for sucrose: official art for io: 須影 (R18 artist)