#i think i posted abt this b4 but whatever. more lore for u

[saphushia]

speaking of fucked up hermits. i made up a chronic illness for redstoners 👍

most of the other hermits have enough other fucked up shit going on with them that cancels out the redstone poisoning, so tango and etho are the ones with the worst of it. zed is susceptible to redstone poisoning too but he's a good boy and washes his hands so he's okay

[auztim69]

Bames interprets 🥺🥺🥺

Ok sooo since I’ve already basically info dumped all the actual lore I have for these 2 I’m just going to spend this whole post listing off random hcs n stuff so yay :33 

I think they both have like rlly stupid, corny, sappy pet names for eachother. I think we’ve talked about something like this in the past b4 but I kinda wanna expand on it more. Like the shit they call each other is so unserious, James unironically calls B pookie,,,,,,,, n like B will call him stuff like, “sugar, honey, baby, sweetie, darlin’, love of my life,” but like all at once in one continuous string of words, like, is he stupid?[SILLY] N they will do this to a nauseous amount. To the point where like if 1 of them is doing something n the other walks n or smth, they will both more than likely just get so distracted by the other’s mere presents that they just completely forget abt whatever they were doing b4. They just that gay ig, smh, me when I’m such gay that I forgor abt my surroundings, just bc I’m that gay[VSILLY] 

If B wakes up b4 James does n she refuses 2 get up, he’ll like threaten 2 cook breakfast bc he’s shit at cooking n like 9/10 times it works bc B has legitimately stared kitchen fires trying to cook in the past,,,, B also has like a rlly low flavor tolerance, n I don't just mean like spice I mean like ALL FLAVORS. Like, eating a burger would make him feel sick. This is what eating nothing but granola and almond water for upwards of 50 years will do 2 a mf, smh 😔🙏. The 70’s mind could never truly comprehend the modern fast food industry.

B carries James around bridal style at random intervals, just cuz he’s that light weight. It do kinda stem from this underlying need he has to protect the people close to him as much as possible, but also just cuz it’s funny. Like James does complain about it sometimes, but it’s done jokingly most of the time. I also think both of them r just rlly physically clingy, like they r always holding hands or cuddling in some capacity. Idk it’s a trauma thing. Like James does it bc of the whole, y'know, not being loved as a child thing, and B does it bc of backrooms mind-fuck, anyone could die at any moment, mental shenanigans. They're just like super touch starved, borderline codependent at times, like, go 2 therapy PLZ,,,,, 

B legitimately HATES horror movies, like cannot physically stand 2 watch them and can’t comprehend y anyone would want 2 either. Unluckily 4 him tho, James [n Hashley] does not feel the same way. They rlly like 2 watch horror movies n stuff just 2 make fun of them, but they gotta be extra abt it they can't just pick like “normal” horror movies, they gotta put on some freak shit like Tusk or Splice,,,B is evidently NOT a fan of this…

James snores rlly fucking loudly. 2 the point where it just starts 2 sound like white noise after a while. B don’t gaf tho cuz he’s like an extraordinarily heavy sleeper. Like, aside from all the backrooms trauma n paranoia, that’s 1 of the main reasons y he sleeps with 1 eye open, bc it is like cominally hard to wake this man up otherwise. Like. U gotta full on shake him,,, 

James is the only person B is comfortable with seeing most of his scars. He’s fine with, like, Hashley seeing more minor scarage like his hand and parts of his lower leg, but nothing past that. I think that like around their house there r just. like. Random drawers with shirts n stuff in them so that B can just slip 1 on whenever if need be 4 like if they get like a knock on the door from someone, bc B usually sleeps shirtless[gay/VSILLY] 

B is rlly good at putting on fake accents me thinks. Like,,,he kinda hates the way he sounds normally, so, it’s sorta just a skill he developed over time to just. sound like whatever. Impersions 2,,, like if he’s listened 2 someone talk 4 long enough, he can. like. almost perfectly replicate their voice. Like if he’s in a rlly petty mood or smth he’ll do it 2 James cuz he knows it pisses him off

Ok that’s all 4 now I may add more later <33

[wafflesandkruge]

I always see maps like the grishaverse as “the country this is about still hasn’t figured out all the continents and doesn’t know as much as they think they do about the world” Shu Han doesn’t make any sense because it’s named after the ancient Shu province which is now Sichuan province, so you’d think it would be based off China but the kuwei and Ehri are the only ones with East Asian names (afaik) but that means Ehri is German or Japanese which doesn’t make sense if Shu Han is fantasy China1/2

so that would mean fantasy Japan has taken over fantasy China? the way I see this it means Ravka and the Shu Han have been in isolation for so long so the information is dated and inaccurate also if Leigh’s gonna make fantasy Japan in charge of fantasy China she should talk about that more and have characters dealing with it/overcoming it? I’m not reading gv that much any more bc so much of the international politics she writes are based on real stuff and badly handled except for maybe Kerch 2/5

capitalism but that makes sense cause Kerch is based on the Netherlands but it reminded me a lot of the avi books about Victorian New York also she puts more effort into western/European worldbuilding and I read soc b4 the trilogy n I thought “king Nikolai” and Ravka was based on like 20th century post war dictators bc I was learning abt that in school with like power vacuum split country militarization+drafting teenagers (which goes against his trilogy morals btw) and I thought he was like 3/5

Descended from the original Nikolai lantsov till I read the trilogy and remembered that scene w sturmhond and kaz so I was like oh and I think Leigh wrote him badly cause he reminded me of the dead emperor of Renee ahdieh’s books the flame in the mist set in feudal Japan so much that when u read his perspective I thought he was gonna b a main character like Nikolai anyway about names it makes sense for tolya and Tamar to have Russian names because they’re also Ravkan but the Russian name is 4/5

is Tamara not Tamar and Tolya literally means from the east which is a really bad name to give one of your only two loosely East Asian coded major charachters especially when the shu han is such a worldbuilding mess and all the Shu people are written really stereotypically 5/5

Okay first of all, a disclaimer. I’m first-gen Chinese-American and not super well-versed in Asian history pre-1900s so pls feel free to correct me if I said something wrong.

Leigh definitely didn’t put that much into the worldbuilding of the non-western inspired countries (check out @zemenipearls zemeni extended universe!). Personally, I don’t think the royal family of Shu Han is supposed to be the equivalent of Japan bc see 500 years of colonial beef. (Search up the current controversy about Japan’s rising sun flag not being banned at the olympics bc Yikes) Like the equivalent of fantasy japan conquering the rest of fantasy east asia is kinda uh,,,,🤢

I was actually talking to @farahmeanthappiness about Shu Han’s “lore,” and we had a few interesting ideas? Like we headcanoned Shu Han as being like comprised of smaller, warring nations that were eventually unified under Queen Taban. (so like imagine if the Mongols had actually conquered Asia). So Shu Han is still comprised of different countries/kingdoms/states with their own borders, but they’re all ruled by the Taban family if that makes sense. The countries don’t necessarily like each other, but they’re not warring anymore. And if Queen Taban’s unification of Shu Han happened in whatever’s the equivalent of the 1100s/1200s, then we don’t have to deal with japanese imperialism which was/is a whole mess. 

(Also, why does Shu Han have no rivers or islands like wtf. I’m just gonna say that the maps in the book are from Ravka and they’re just guesstimating bc Shu Han looks horrible geographically. China was a cradle of civilization because of the Yellow River, how can there not be any rivers ugh)

Leigh’s Shu characters in tgt were definitely problematic, because all we had was like Botkin- a martial arts instructor- and Tolya and Tamar (which I guess are kinda problematic from their name’s etymology, but I’ll take your word for it) The whole reputation of them being scientifically obsessed to the point of human experimentation with the Khergud (is that their name idk) and the whole jurda parem thing is also not a great look ugh. She did say she was gonna explore Shu Han more in KoS2, so I have maybe,,,some hope? Also more Ehri and Mayu, which will be nice.