#i should be reviewing tho

[viperbunnies]

A million sparks

Experimenting again with some brushes 🫶

[shadowglens]

i do still think datv feels very … disconnected from the previous trilogy, and that parts of it don’t really Feel like dragon age to me. that being said, i’m still having a fun time

[ghostly-cabbage]

What if Vlad had just got into doing drag instead

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Sorry if this is an invasive question, but have you read any specific fics and/or would be comfortable sharing which?

I don’t have an ao3 account so I don’t have a way to keep track of what I have read. But it’s really not that many. Probably like 10-15 in total.

Not really the person to ask for refs as ive barely read any ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[oddvanilla]

You ever get so bored that you have to check the reviews on your school ??

...Because I did

And our principal is being SLANDERED HARD.

[sirensea14]

HOLY. FUCKING. HELL.

So Specialedd finished his gameplay series of In Sound Mind and is, hands down, easily able to tear the fuck me out. This game is a masterpiece, its so emotional. I really cried at the fact that the government or smth tried to kill Desmond and his parting with his cat. This game easily made me tear up, wtf. (This is actually a rare occurrence for me 😭)

This is a fucking masterpiece psychological game. It had the strongest feels and--ugh its just way too emotional. It tackled things about mental health whilst being a game.

The characters that resonated the most to me is Allen and Desmond. My favorite part of the game would be Jorge (a mannequin)-and also the other mannequins-helping Desmond. Fuck. And it has an animated mv of it which made it sooooo sick!! It's way too fucking awesome. And that scene in the post-credits? Fucking wtf moment for me! The kinda 'relieved' type of wtf lol.

I should also mention that in Lucas' tape, those star connecting puzzles are so fucking awesome. And also i remembered, the 4 medallions in the church, fucking awesome detail.

I love this game and I--ugh damnit.

This is way too realistic for me. Damn too much. Im gonna have a brainrot on this. And the lamp/small chandelier near the staircase, the light had the colors! And the details of the map outside the building--the rooftop. All the places-Homamart, Icarus point, the quarry and the Elysium state park(or whatever, its smth Elysium) theyre all there! I love that detail sm. I even stopped the assignment im currently doing just to check on yt and suddenly the last episode of the gameplay is the first thing i saw! XD

I love this. I so love this sm. This-well, ive had a bit of interest in psychology or smth that affects people's behaviors and minds and stuff. This game. This. Game. Damn showed it too well.

In sound mind is going to my favorite games, kudos to We Create Stuff !(game dev team) This game has left an impact on me.

[csmsdust]

The books I'm reading at the moment.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius - I love this book. It puts you in the perspective of the time and space you occupy, I found a lot of my own thinking and feelings within the pages of this book. A guy born in AD 121 has very clear view on life that is still relevant today.

Great Adaptations by Kenneth Catania - A professor of biological sciences takes you on a journey with him while he studies various animals adaptive abilities. Star nosed moles, electric eels, tentacled snakes... Very interesting insight in how these creatures evolved and adapted.

What we cannot know by Marcus du Sautoy - Explains concepts from the ground up, I like the illustrations that accompany the text and practical examples. Lays foundations to the known and wonders into the future of research and the possibilities that come with it as well as limitations. Covering themes from quantum physics and cosmology to sensory perception and neuroscience.

Labyrinths of reason by William Poundstone - "Blue sky, sunshine, deja vu glazed with dread." How do you know this isn't all a dream? Is anything certain? Ontology, logic, mathematics, deduction, epistemology, memory formation, paradoxes and puzzles.

A brain for numbers by Andreas Nieder - Humans' understanding of numbers is intuitive. How are infants able to perceive numbers even before they learn the words for them? How do our brains process numbers? Can animals count? He shows how it is an adaptive ability and that plenty of animals have the number sense too. There is a variety of research and supporting evidence mentioned which I really like.

[sp4ceboo]

rant but im a bit scared im going to get attacked

[doodlingwren]

Ok, back to girlblogging eheh (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

[zirkkun]

Reading ULR and I'm assuming that Chara has a Lust soul type because of their bloodlust; so how come Ace didn't become a murderous fellow when given the lust serum?

Because that's not quite how the Lust SOUL works! It's not related to bloodlust at all actually, but I suppose it can evolve into that if the owner of the Lust-trait SOUL has gained enough LV, now that you bring it up 👀 but that's for another time...

Each of the SOUL traits in ULR gives the owner a specific asset to their overall person that is intended to help them in life (but might not always do so depending on the person, their situation, and their relationship with said trait). Patience, for example, makes the owner willing to put up with a lot more than the other SOULs, whether it be wasted time, annoyances, being ignored, or even so far as consistent abuse without argument. This can be both an asset if they need to be in a place where patience is a virture, but it can also be a liability if they need to act immediately lest their life be in danger. It also tends to allow the owner to negate their emotions more easily and let them calm down faster.

For Lust SOULs, they tend to find themselves more attached to folks more quickly, not necessarily in a sexual or even romantic way, but more like how Asriel explains at the end of Undertale that you seem so quickly attached to the people of the Underground despite not knowing them for very long. Their added asset is having better fertility than other SOUL types, which is why Sage (Gaster) ended up being so exited about the fallen human possessing a Lust SOUL. Additionally, Myriad (Asgore)'s SOUL is attributed to Lust, so when even he and Ash (Toriel) couldn't bare a child, the whole of the ULR Underground began to lose hope for their future. (comic part where these are both mentioned)

The Lust serum was developed in order to restore the magic of the ULR Underground, because aside from not being able to have children anymore, they also are struggling to communicate, eat, and just generally survive. I guess you could think of it being one step away from a Horrortale situation, but that wasn't entirely my thought process while making the AU since I didn't know shit about Horrortale until recently. Sage wouldn't have developed the serum, though, if he thought it would make anyone go crazy and murderous since their species is already dying. If that happened, it would be entirely unintentional results. He sincerely wants to help.

When Ace took the Lust serum sample, the dosage was too high, causing his SOUL to possess more magic than it's supposed to and dyeing it red. As a result, he's overall having similar symptoms to monsters' heat cycles in this AU, which functions similarly to human menstrual periods but shows up differently due to monsters being made of magic instead of physical material. It didn't make him bloodthirsty more than it made his body overheat, bones become hypersensitive, and constantly trying to dispell the excess magic. He can only temporarily relieve this with various, as they say in the Sims, woohoo-ing acts, but again it is merely temporary. It also made him more emotional than before, since his normal assigned SOUL trait is actually Patience, and despite his grouchy outer surface he gets attached to people at the slightest bit of affection. And I mean attached, you are gonna want to do anything you can to get this lost puppy from clinging to you all the time if he gets to that point. (Not in a yandere way, he's not super jealous and more often than not doesn't like it when he gets jealous; but he will throw everything else away.)

I feel like I might have tangented a little from your question so if I missed something feel free to send an ask again, I'm more than happy to answer 😂 but I hope this explanation makes sense!

[llycaons]

❄️🔔End of the year media review: Books

So I'm not linking my goodreads for privacy reasons (though mutuals are welcome to request it), but here's my top books of the year. Not necessarily the best, but the ones I enjoyed the most. A mix of western classics, urban fantasy, historical action, and YA-esque adventure/romance. Besides the first, NOT in order. I'll give a brief summary of each under the cut.

Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville: Nautical fiction/cosmic horror/tragedy/adventure fiction/encyclopedic novel/BL. My book of the year. Sometime in the early 1800s, Ishmael, an American sailor, decides to try whaling and meets a Polynesian harpooner (Queequeg) in the process, forcing him to question his biases. They're hired on board a Nantucket whaler and are drawn into a dangerous quest for vengeance of a deeply unwell man - Ahab, whose leg was taken by the infamously deadly white whale. Not as much action as you'd expect, honestly. Long LONG meditations on the ocean, color symbolism (all kinds of symbolism, the man is OBSESSED), whale biology, the process of whaling, rendering oil from blubber, and anything else that the curious, intelligent, and unreasonably confident Ishmael cares to ponder. Moby Dick is funny, homoerotic (and really tender? honestly?), rich, dense, and represents earnest attempts to be anti-racist from a white man in 1850, so...efforts are made but Queequeg is still presented as a savage and racial slurs are still used to refer to the black harpooner. Highly recommended, but proceed with caution

2. Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix by Aminah Mae Safi: YA action-adventure. Robin Hood is reimagined as a Muslim teenage girl fighting in the Third Crusade, with POVS from antagonists and other characters here and there. Rahma al-Hud is clever, funny, just, and kind-hearted, and the lighhearted tone the narrative mostly maintains as she banters with her sister, picks up a members of a motley crew, runs heists, returns lost children to their parents, and cons a group of French crusaders doesn't even clash with the gravity of the other points of view or the setting of war and occupation. I never felt like the seriousness of the situation was being under undermined, rather that Rahma understood what was going on and was and reacting to it in the most positive and proactive ways she could. There are also unexpectedly devastating reveals later on relating to their comrades left behind and to Zeena, her lesbian sister. It's a fun little adventure set in a fascinating political and social setting that for once doesn't center the Christian perspective. There's a lesbian Jewish alchemist, a sexy mysterious spy guy I really liked, a 6-foot tall Mongolian princess, a defector...it was a great time! I love when YA books are actually good!

3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: Gothic fiction. In early 19th century England a child of color (of indeterminate origin), is discovered alone on the streets of Liverpool, named Heathcliff, and brought to the isolated lower-gentry Earnshaw house as a ward. He's at turns abused, treated as a servant, and protected by the brother and the father of the house, and develops an intimate friendship with the wild and willfull Earnshaw daughter, Cathy. The framing device character follows his journey over the next thirty-odd years as he endures racial harassment and abuse and alienation, as he and Cathy lose each other, and as he concocts his revenge scheme using their respective children as pawns. This would have been my favorite book of the year had it not been for Moby Dick - it definitely has issues in how it treats Heathcliff, but the amount of compassion the writing has for him, and for Cathy, for being children subjected to various forms of abuse and neglect was so beautiful. It became a story much more about healing from the wounds of the past and about breaking the cycle of abuse than about torrid love affairs, though I did love the long and tormented monologues Heathcliff and Cathy delivered to and about each other. The atmospheric writing for the moors and for the desolation and isolation AND freedom Cathy and Heathcliff experienced out there was so good....and man Cathy was such a mean bitch and Heathcliff was so violently angry at the people who treated them like shit and I loved that for them I really did.

4. Black Water Sister by Zen Cho: Adult urban fantasy. A unemployed lesbian college grad moves back to Malaysia with her parents after they experienced one too many work hurdles in the US. She immediately becomes haunted by the ghost of her dead grandmother, who drags her into a plot involving the corporate destruction of an ancient, sacred temple and an incredibly dangerous god. I absolutely LOVED the atmosphere and setting in this one - it felt like I was there in every single scene. Jess is closeted, and her fear about coming out to her parents, as well as her arguments with her long-distance girlfriend about it, is depicted with such raw honesty and pain that I felt it had to have come from personal experience. The plot becomes a lot about generational trauma and historical misogyny/the exploration and abuse of women, which was hard to read at times but also very cathartic and compassionate. I think I've cooled on this book since reading it but I do still really like it.

5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: Psychological horror? According to google, erotic literature? It's hard to summarize this one. One of the most heartbreaking books I have ever read, and intentionally so. If you walk into it expecting ~a seduction~, that's probably what you're going to see. That's why it's been misread all these years. But if you understand that Dolores is a child, then Nabokov's choices regarding her as a character become complex and valuable, because they all mean the same thing if you actually pay attention. Humbert Humbert went after her. He is a predator. He controlled everything about her life. And it didn't matter if she'd had sex before she met him, or what she was wearing, or how she acted at ANY point before or during or after their relationship. She was still a child, and he still abused her, and she never wanted or asked for any of it. And he ruined her childhood, and hurt her in deep and powerful ways. And the way Humbert Humbert slowly comes to realize this by the end of the story is one of the most heart-rending things I've ever read. Not to mention the language itself. Nabokov is a beautiful, astute, precise writer who never misses a single line - shoutout to his editor and wife Vera, who also saved this manuscript from the fire - and even in reading the most nauseating, the most repellent scenes, they were brilliantly laid out. The language was spellbinding. It was also, strangely, rather funny in some scenes. This man can really do it all.

6. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik: YA historical fantasy/romance. A Jewish moneylender's daughter takes over the family business in Medieval Eastern European Country when she realizes her gentle, disrespected father can't stand up to their neighbors for debt collection and it's actively impoverishing them. She manages the business so well she begins to boast she can spin silver into gold, and a supernatural ice king overhears and kidnaps her to do just that. Meanwhile, a tsarina is asked to marry a mysterious prince with a dangerous secret, a sister tries to survive an abusive household with her two young brothers, and a fire demon eagerly contemplates devouring an entire realm. This book had SO much that appealed to me - magical jewelry, dimensional travel, ye olde business practices, siblings healing from childhood abuse, unrelated characters becoming family to each other, cross-cultural exchange, genuinely unexpected plot twists, snowy forests, witch's cabins....I listened to the audiobook and was blown away by the narrator's performances. I did NOT love how the romance was developed or how it framed the sexual situations, and some of the ways the mc and narration talked about other people was kind of insane bc she did save this girl but she saved her by putting her into indentured servitude....but overall it was a fun time? I don't like Novik's take on romances (she goes for those ~dark supernatural mcs~ ) but most of her other stuff in this book rules.

6. Babel by R.F Kuang: Adult speculative fiction/dark academia/fantasy. Babel's been a subject of hot debate in these here circles and I'm not here to try to litigate whether Kuang is a sellout or a culturally authentic writer bc I don't know and I don't think it's really my place and honestly I don't really care until I see an analysis that talks about the book itself and in the meantime I'm keeping Babel on this list bc it really hit me and I liked it a lot. Robin (English name, original name not told), is an impoverished young Chinese boy whose mother has just died in a plague sweeping southern China in the early 1800s. A white British man shows up and offers to take him to England as a ward and educate him as a translator, and there Robin grows up and as a teenager is entered into a famous school as a magical translator, using (along with a few other students of color) his own native language and his knowledge of English to help power the linguistic-based magic that the colonial powers of the empire use in their quest to conquer and control the world. The conflict between Robin wanting to stay safe and comfortable and get the status and respect he'd always been promised and like, being exploited and realizing the empire's impact on his original home and his people and now his role in exploiting others and helping to run the imperial death machine was perhaps a bit straightforward, but I liked it a lot and I found the finale well-earned and poignant and thrilling. I might buy this one honestly I really like the cover too.

And that's my highlights of 2024! Again, mutuals feel free to ask me for links to my goodreads where you'll find exhaustive (and spoilery) reviews of these books and everything else I've read this year!

[joanna-lannister]

uh, i just had a phone call with one of the women who will review my case for my allowance for disabled people, and i don't know if it went well or not 😭

[soldierandawar]

slept on my double feature from yesterday and wow. two disappointments back to back. i was on top and now im at the bottom. how quickly the tables turn.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

The Grimoire of Grave Fates

YA fantasy anthology of interconnected short stories

follows 18 students at a magic school, in the aftermath of the murder of a hated professor

as they all investigate or accidentally discover different clues to what’s going on

all sorts of interesting magic including necromancy, smoke, embroidery, song, dance, magical creatures

diverse cast of queer, trans, bipoc, & disabled characters

[bibelots]

Paddington keyring at the ready off to see Mr Whish on stage in the big city!!!

[no-phrogs-in-hats]

You know your job is about to be chaotic when you receive an email saying to call the manager for an interview after putting on the “why do you want to work with us” section “I like Asian food and I need money”.