#idk if anyone will read them so i didn't develop them fully

[jaemotion]

i cry every time i hunt wayv fics cuz there's barely any here 😭

[achillesisnotcomingdown]

I finished ToA not long ago and I wanted to write down some thoughts/scenes that stick with me

(in chronological (ish) order, watch out for spoilers)

Theres an italian girl at camp ! It means Nico gets to practice and speak italian ! (which probably haven't happened in about 70 years)

Will introducing Nico as "my boyfriend". I already knew they would be canon, but reading that line felt weird /pos

Apollo sees Solangelo and think of himself and Hyacinth

That night when Kayla and Austin disappeared and Apollo left to look for them, it probably was the first night Will ever spent alone in his cabin

Apollo's insane body dysmorphia. He's a god, he can always take the physical form he is the most comfortable and confident in... Until now. He is stuck in a body that isn't his, he feels ashamed, when he sees certain traits in others he find them charming or pretty, but when it's on him then it's disgusting. He complain that everything is this body's fault (ex. he wouldn't have been touched by the Eurynomos if it wasn't for his chub.)(I could go on for hours)

Lityerses ! I love that guy. Idk why i love him that much. He is my best guy.

Apollo's reaction to Commodus' name. His flashback of him. So painful he was physically sick.

Apollo talking Helios out of killing them, because he just want to be free, not to hurt them.

APOLLO ATTEMPT TO KHS TO STOP THEM ?? IM A SUCKER FOR SOME GOOD PAINFUL SELF SACRIFICE.

Jason. I'm not talking about Jason. I can't speak about Jason.

Frank and Apollo ! They are so fond of each other !!!

Apollo heard all of Frank's prayers when he was unclaimed and wished he could've adopted him.

And Frank respecting Apollo as a god although he is *vaguely gesture at Apollo/Lester*

Reyna saying aloud that she doesn't want nor needs romance. It's so rare to see aromantic representation and Rick did it so well.

Literally Apollo singing his way out of situations.

FRANK'S SELF SACRIFICE!!! (He already had one of my favorite character development before that)

APOLLO KILLING COMMODUS ??? why do never talk about that it's one of the best deaths I've ever seen that was BADASS AND FULL OF EMOTIONS.

Apollo slowly dying out of poison and the Dodona Arrow doing everything it can to keep him conscious.

I hope Dakota didn't get killed off just to give Lavinia the role of Centurion. I love my boy Dakota, and his death felt kind of meaningless, except for her rank up :/ also i feel like it doesn't suit Lavinia. Some ppl are strong and good and trustable but just not made to order others. (ill prop make a full post about that)

Dionysos confirmed to be an annoying little brother!

Nico. How does Rick manage to always give him more issues. Leave the kid alone.

When Will glows, Apollo is genuinely impressed and tells him how proud he is.

Nico destroying Nero's door with his giant zombie bull. That was cool.

When Apollo gets stabbed in Nero's tower and think it's the end, he prays "Zeus, Artemis, Leto, anyone"

And in general the few parts he talks about Leto, he's such a momma's boy and I love it.

When Apollo left for Delphi... I was fully expecting Meg to go with him. I was so worried that he went alone while already feeling that weakened from the previous events.

DODONA ARROW. FOREVER IN MY HEART.

Artemis is here when Apollo wakes up. She's by his side, she's the first person to tell him he succeeded, she hold him while he sobs...

The first thing he does is to greet his horses :) and then to see his friends.

When he gets back to the Dodona bush ! To tell them all how brave and heroic the Arrow have been !

I could spend hours talking about the character developments of Apollo, Meg and the Dodona Arrow (i love the arrow so much you have no idea) but its for another day

There's many things I didn't talk about, but the post is already long enough. I love those 5 books, and Apollo is an amazing narrator.

I love the Arrow of Dodona with all my heart.

[puffyducks]

DCRC Week #27

Today we're reading PKNA #22: Fragments of Autumn and it's about to get CRAZY IN THIS BITCH!!! WHO UP FRAGMENTING THEY AUTUMN?!?!?

Ok so first of all shoutout to every single piece of cover art for this comic for being absolutely breathtaking. And also shoutout to Lyla for having eyes that get bigger and more haunting each time.

Uuh yeah she's gonna shoot the BAD GUY why the fuck did you jump in front of her 😭 Idiot

oh my god it's SLENDERMAN

Well he was a cop so 🤷‍♀️

friend and admirer 😏😏😏 (in a gay way)

OH NAW THEY SENT BABYGIRL TO THE UNITED NATIONS

I've said it before but I'll say it again: who the fuck calls into a meeting in this stance 😭 seriously is he sitting on the floor?

Oh GOD the Raider is rubbing off on him we're gonna have to put him down

Image that's relevant for 99% of conversation about Lyla Lay

NO HE ATE HERE!!! LEONARD, FUCKING KILL THAT GUY LIVE IN THE COURTROOM I BELIEVE IN YOU

So Odin is seen here in some type of hotel room with a bed in the background right? So my question is, does he actually use that? Can he sleep??? I mean Lyla said she has a sort of "sleep" mode where she has dreams, and Odin is technically more advanced than her so surely he needs to take breaks too right? These are incredibly important questions I need to know about his snoozer potential

Breaking and entering together, just like old times!!! ❤️

DID HE JUST CALL THEM CRACKERS

I like how much Donald is having fits of anger in this comic. Like yeah he's fucking everything up but it feels a lot closer to his usual character. Also I want him to kill.

"I'm going to do something Eidolon wouldn't approve of" YEAAHHH YEAH GO CRAZY GO STUPID

KILL HIM!!! KILL HIMMM THROW HIM OUT OF THE SHIP!!!! NOBODY WILL CARE IF HE DIES HE'S A POLITICIAN

Sorry maybe I shouldn't encourage PK every time he has violent fits but I think he should get to be a LITTLE homicidal. As a treat.

Soooo these panels are terrifying

Oh my GOD it was LEONARD VERTIGHEL ALL ALONG!!!!! (person who has totally not read this comic before and is definitely not pretending to be shocked)

"You don't know him" you shut your whore MOUTH. I mean not that Donald knows that he knows him well either BUT TECHNICALLY HE DOES.

Soooo instead of just making himself a robot wife that loved him from conception, he decided to make a bunch of pretty girl droid models, send them out in the world to develop their own personalities and memories, and THEN activate his secret little chip that would make them suddenly fall in love with him only AFTER they've become fully sentient beings with their own dreams and ambitions???........ EW

You just told us about your multi-year project to create someone to love you because none of the biological women met your "perfect" standards so... YEAH. You're an incel bro.

THE IMMENSE! THE UNIQUE! THE UNREACHABLE!!! A PRETTY GIRL IN A BIKINI WHO LOVES ME BACK

Odin please you can't just keep making vague references to your past with Donald I need them both to EXPLODE!!!!

Sooo that was Fragments of Autumn! (I'm not including anything here for the bonus comic cause I already hit the image limit, sorry to anyone that stans the Evron bonus comics or whatever.)

There was a LOT to soak in there between messages of love and autonomy and consent, but I mean HEYYY it sounds like Odin made some good deals for droid rights at the end there! So even if Lyla's big messy trial didn't amount to much, there's at least less of a chance that something like this will happen again in the future. Probably.

I'm sorry to Leonard Vertighel that he couldn't find the most perfectest woman ever to fall in love with him but also like, idk just get on Tinder or something bro. Go to the club.

I have a LOT of questions about Vertighel (specifically who this random fucking guy is and why Odin trusted him so much) but we're not ever gonna see him again in this series so for all intents and purposes we can just assume he burned to death in that lab fire. RIP bozo!!! Yes I know he's in PKNE but that's not relevant right now just let me have dreams

Coming up later this week: Crismus 🎄🎁🐻

[gh0st-patr0l]

Okay @junglemax got me thinkin a LOT abt my circa 2020-21 era in-kayfabe supernatural nonsense au Ive had in my brain forever so I'm just gonna dump a bunch of my headcanons here. Read them or dont idk Im not ur dad

So Darby is obv undead. Either fully or half dead idk but the point is he died and it didn't stick- some kinda fucked up necromancy magic brought him back just a little Wrong

For the most part, he had to figure out what he is and how he's changed on his own, through trial and error. Until he met Sting- hes like, a fuckin warlock or some shit whos been around Forever and seen Everything. He finds Darby and decides 2 teach him how to actually deal with all his undead stuff

Okay so this ones kinda crazy but I really like it. Luchasaurus was a human professor who got mutated with a dinosaur in a lab accident, fly style. He got sent out to the middle of nowhere to hide while he adjusted to his new life. That's where he met Jungle Boy

JB is literally a kid who got raised my monkeys. Maybe he got stranded in a plane crash or something idk. Hes like 12 when Lucha finds him

Luchasaurus decided to take JB in, and when he goes back to civilization he takes JB with him

JB missed the crucial stage of language development, so he struggles to form actual sentences. Despite that, which Lucha's help he actually knows a lot of words and can communicate in simplified speech, though talking is still weird for him. Hes kind of self conscious about it bc he knows he sounds strange. He prefers ASL, though again there's no real sentence structure

Kris is for real an alien. She like crashed onto earth a while ago, but was held captive in Area 51 for years. She recently broke out and ran into Orange by chance. He gave her a ride to the city and didn't say anything when she followed him to his and the Best Friends' place. Chuck and Trent had questions. None of them were answered. They just kinda shrugged and she's been with them ever since

Orange is. Probably human? People think? But nobody's Sure

Idk what the setting looks like here. I usually picture a superhero/villain comic book type context but I've only done a little worldbuilding for that. Maybe Ill get into it and flesh that oht more if anyone's interested in this lmao

[eigyu]

lost inside a daydream pt. 1 (c.sc.)

Memories that I want to cherish forever, all lived with you, are both lost and engraved in my mind. I try to build myself from all the pieces we left behind, but I still can’t seem to be complete, is it because it’s you who I’m missing?

minors dni!

word count — 1,7k

pairing — choi seungcheol x reader

content — strangers to friends to... (?), kinda right person wrong time? idk, fluff everywhere (only at the beggining), college student!seungcheol, college student!seungcheol, seungkwan and mingyu appear here too at some point!, jeonghan and joshua too since the 95z should never be separated ^^ // i wrote this thinking about longhaired cheol (anyone mv.) and i could not be stopped

warnings — there’s going to be cursing, drinking, and some other things (maybe smut) in the upcoming parts, so if that makes you uncomfortable please don’t read these

author note — so i felt confident enough to post the first part of this little thing i’ve been working on?? i’m kinda confident with this one but i’m also kinda scared to post it so... better to leave it here and run away from my blog asap i guess! hope y’all enjoy it and give me some nice feedback because i’m in serious need of it ;-; 

btw i haven’t proofread it so if there’s any mistakes please let me know! hope you enjoy it <33

----------------------------------------------------------

What do you do when you feel like you found the one?  That one person you can completely let all your guards down with. Some decide to rush fully into something with them, others are too afraid to even jump from the shore. When people let themselves fall in love, they let their guards down somehow.

That's how falling for Seungcheol felt like, it wasn’t something too rushed, but you grew confident around each other pretty fast for two people that didn’t really know each other for long.

You first saw him going around campus, and you just noticed how he was always when two other guys that you supposed were his friends. At first, you preferred watching it all from the sidelines, deciding that it was better if you didn’t get too close to them, also considering that they had enough girls going all over them. 

Whenever the three of them crossed paths with you, you would always linger on their walking figures, noting how they had an infatuating aura going around. Maybe the girls were crazy for them for a reason.

But you never noticed how Seungcheol would also look your way when he was far enough, paying attention to you silently.

And for that your friends, Mingyu and Seungkwan, would always tease you: "Are you sure Seungcheol and you don't have like a secret relationship or anything?"

You would deny it and justify your stares by saying that he wore such comfy outfits and that you thought about getting a hoodie like his. None of them bought your lie though, knowing how bad you were at lying.

Maybe denying the small crush, which you weren't going to act about, you had developed for the older guy was something that wouldn't really help you forget about him.

You weren't expecting him to approach you at your favourite coffee shop though. "Hello, is this seat taken?"

You couldn't believe your eyes, was the Choi Seungcheol really talking to you? Glancing up you replied to his - quite random - question "Oh, no, but there's another table-" You couldn't really finish your sentence, because he was already sitting down across from you. Smiling at you and letting you see his gummy smile and crescent moon eyes.

"Thank you, Y/N. I really appreciate having some company, especially yours."

Boom, boom, boom. Was that your heart ringing in your ears? Why was he flirting with you so blatantly?

"Are you that straightforward with every girl you talk to?" His bluntness didn't make you uncomfortable, but maybe a bit nervous, since you usually never received any compliments from other people that weren't your friends.

"I try not to, but I find you quite interesting, so I thought that I might as well get to know you a bit better" he winked at you. Did he have to be so flirty? You were trying to keep your heartbeat under control, having someone flirt with you wouldn't help your hopeless romantic self.

Actually, you usually kept it in check, since Seungkwan and Mingyu always brought your feet down when necessary. But, right now, Seungcheol was playing with the strings of your heart.

Coming back to reality, you decided to cut his act: "As long as you let me work in silence, you can stay"

"Sure, angel" he winked at you, again.

"And don't call me angel, please"

"Alright, Y/N"

You kept reading your book and noting things down, but from time to time, you tried to take a quick glance at the figure across from you. Surprisingly, he kept quiet the whole time, something you really appreciated, considering this coffee shop was your safe haven when you needed to hide for a little bit. How did Seungcheol know that you were here, though?

"May I ask something?" being taken by surprise, you noticed how he looked up from his phone the instant he heard your voice.

"Go ahead"

"How did you know I was here? Only two people from campus know I come here." You only confided in Seungkwan and Mingyu to let them know that if they couldn't find you, you most likely were here.

"Well, sometimes when I pass by I see you from the outside" he confessed "But I decided to say hi today for the first time, I didn't really want to look like a stalker. I don't look like one, do I?" 

"No, not really, but it did take me by surprise, considering we never spoke before and I'm not the most known person on campus or anything"

He moved his gaze from you to the window before speaking up again: "Well, it doesn't matter whether you're known or not, I want to spend time with and get to know you"

"Sure thing you do..." you muttered under your breath.

You both stayed like that for a while, he was just keeping you company, and from time to time your stolen glances were a habit of yours he picked up, looking at you from time to time too.

It was almost 9 pm when you decided you were done for the day, and ready to head home. "Hey, Seungcheol, thanks for the company. I'm going to be heading home now, it was nice seeing you" 

You tried to leave as fast as you could, but he grabbed your wrist before you took a turn to leave: "You're just going to leave without letting me accompany you home? Am I that scary?" Like a deer in headlights, he caught you. Scary? No, he wasn't scary at all, but his presence was numbing your senses and you weren't sure how much more time you could spend this close to him without turning to putty.

"Scary? You wished. I just want to get home quickly, take a shower and have some dinner before bed."

"Let me keep you company though, I'm not going to let you walk around all alone at this hour" he seemed serious, so you guessed it couldn't be that bad if he was alongside you on the way home.

"Alright, but which way is your house? I don't want you to go the opposite way or anything"

"It's fine, we live in the same neighbourhood anyway" He took you by surprise, how did he know that? You didn't want to press on, but that kind of sparked your curiosity, was he paying attention to you from time to time too?

"Okay then" you both left the cafeteria, your wrist no longer being held by his hand, but you felt all the electricity it left behind.

For some reason, even if rush hour was over, the underground was busier than most days, which left you no choice but to stand awfully close to Seungcheol. His strong perfume and closeness was, yet again, numbing your senses to the point that you were dissociating.

What if you said something about it? About how good his hair looks? Would it be the start of something?

You guessed that it was better not to do anything,  thinking he would find you weird and disturbing. Feeling nervousness creeping into your cheeks, you moved a little, getting a bit closer to him.

"You're kinda cute, do you know that?" he whispered into your ear from behind.

You had no time to reply to it, since you just got to your stop. So, instead of saying anything about it, you jumped out of the train, kind of hoping he wouldn't follow you.

Unfortunately, while you were taking out your underground card, you saw him from the side of your eye. “I said I would accompany you home, and that is what I’m going to do, so don’t run away from me, please?”

Finding it hard to retort his question, you just gulped and nodded, extremely aware of his eyes staring straight into your soul. 

“Now let’s go, we need to get you home safe and sound” he decided to grab your hand just so you wouldn’t try to run away from him again.

You noticed how his hand was bigger than yours, engulfing it and keeping it warm. Was the action making you feel warm in other places too? Seungcheol’s touch was electrifying, and for some reason, your heart was hoping that he was feeling that electricity running along his body too. 

The walk to your apartment from the underground station wasn’t really long, but having someone accompany you for sure did something to ease the anxiety of having to go back home at night. You two didn’t really talk much while walking, but felt comfortable nevertheless.

Once you got to the door of your apartment building, you turned around and looked Seungcheol in the eyes, flushing when you noticed that he was looking at you too. He was making you feel like such a  flustered mess.

“Thanks for keeping me company, Seungcheol”

“It’s no problem, we can even do this more often if you’d like” he shrugged, “I like spending time with you, anyways”

“Is this where you confess your undying love to me?” you took all the courage that you could possibly have within your body and decided to say something that was a double edged sword. Were you going to get cut?

“So you want me to confess how I’ve been unable to take my eyes off you at any chance I see you on campus?” you choked on your own saliva, not expecting this back and forth with him to end like this. “Because I can do it, I just don’t think you would believe me.”

Would you not? He really didn’t know that every single detail of any interaction the two of you might have had in the past could make you write a whole chapter on how the tingling sensation was growing each day. But you wouldn’t confess that, not even to your friends. 

You weren’t a really stoic person, but some things and situationships in life made you suppress your feelings, just in case anyone was coming with their guns pointing at your heart, ready to aim at any moment. So, for you, it was better to just build some walls around your heart in order to protect it.

“I might or might not believe you, but I’ll let you guess” you winked, taking all the courage possible to be subtle and leave him wanting more “Tomorrow, around 4pm, I’ll be at the cafeteria again, if you feel like keeping me company again. So see you tomorrow?”

“You’ll see me, I’m sure of it” he winked at you too, making your heart jump again.

You might need to keep your heart inside a cage if you were going to meet Choi Seungcheol more often.

[musicribbons]

hi! hope ur doing well, im a big fan of Pursuit and Sunflower. with the evolution and popularity of AI growing faster and stronger, what views do you have with the usage of AI in writing creative works? i.e., using it to proofread works, to give you ideas or a backbone for a story, etc--not major writing or letting it do the work for u, but giving it jobs that an editor or a person could do. im at a crossroads with that and idk how ethical or right it is, so what do you think?

Hello! I hope you're also doing well. This is going to be a little long…

This is a great question. I'm still trying to find where I stand on the ethics of using AI for work since a lot of is overhyped, environmentally destructive, and financially unsustainable. So I'll share what my current thoughts on the use of AI is. I am going to touch on how AI is used professionally before how it's used creatively though.

If you talk to anyone who runs a business or freelances, they'll say that you get to pick two: fast, quality, and cost. I've started to use AI, specifically ChatGPT, for some of my professional work. My clients demand fast and high quality work. Sometimes, the only way to close that gap and the impossible time budget expectations is to use AI.

Now how do I use AI in my work? Mostly to generate a first rough draft for whatever I'm working on. But the caveat here is that I've had to feed a lot of data and my own work into ChatGPT to finally get something close to an acceptable rough draft for me to review and refine until it's good enough for me to show my clients. Sometimes, if I need a completely different writing style, because the client wants that, I'll ask ChatGPT to do that for me. Stylistically, my professional writing is pretty technical. Sometimes, my clients want something more bubbly and exciting. ChatGPT comes in handy here, but I still need to go through everything to make sure that it has the core point and didn't make something up.

Going off on my last point, ChatGPT definitely hallucinates. I only use ChatGPT for things where I can cross-reference the source materials I'm working with and I'm personally an expert in. I can't use ChatGPT at all for any of my medical/academic projects. It just lies and makes up scholarly sources. It also fully cannot do word counts. It's incapable of it. It's so bad that sometimes it's hilarious, albeit, I get pretty frustrated with it.

At the end of the day, ChatGPT is like a keen intern that tends to work faster than a human being. However, it lacks all the critical thinking and problem-solving skills that we develop as humans. I am personally not afraid of ever being replaced by ChatGPT. My clients can try, but they'd be in a real world of hurt. I know organizations who have fired several employees thinking that AI could replace them and save money. Surprise! It couldn't replace humans, and AI is just a tool that humans created and use.

Okay, I know you were specifically asking about creative works. I personally found that AI isn't great at proof reading. You can definitely ask it on how you could improve your writing, but sometimes, it's a hit-or-miss. You still need to do the bulk of the heavy lifting and feed it a lot of your original work.

I mean, you can definitely use AI to give you ideas or an outline, because tropes are just formulaic versions of stories and characters that we've repeatedly used in our literature and creative works throughout history. But you still had to have a rough idea of what you want and create a prompt for that.

I personally think it's also fine to use if you have really bad writer's block, and you need to get unstuck. I don't think it makes you a bad writer or person for using tools at your disposal. If you're the sole creator of your writing and you're doing all the writing, it's still yours. If a friend helped you get unstuck at a plot point, would it mean your story is no longer yours? No, not really. You might give them a shoutout. (You do not need to give AI a shoutout.)

Now the ethics of how AI is being created, scraping data, and has impossible energy requirements? I have a lot of feelings about that. I just try to use AI as ethically as I can as an individual, and that includes not treating it like Google when I can use a search engine and only using it when I actually need to use it.

I hope that answers your question. It's also okay that both of us will have evolving opinions and stances on the use of AI as the tech and policy landscapes evolves. I think it's a bit early to tell how things are going to go. I just know that it's a lot of hype, and a lot of tech critics don't think the AI hype is going to last.

(I hope I don't get cancelled on Tumblr lol) There's also a great podcast interview on the "The Journal" by the Wall Street Journal who talks to Hans Zimmer about how a movie used AI to create a soundtrack that sounded like what he would've composed (but likely didn't want to or could pay for him). I really liked his perspective on the use of AI in music. It might be worth a listen!

[perseus-veil]

my thoughts on the veilguard

i finally finished the game last night and my brain is a mess after a long week of work so none of this is gonna be concise and will take jabs at braindead takes but whatever this is my house <33

gonna do this in pros and cons and under the cut if anyone is remotely interested in reading it!!

pros

the writing/story - i don't have a problem with the writing at all. all three acts were banging, especially act 3 where everything becomes more urgent and fast paced. i felt like i was playing a dragon age game, and that didn't change the entire time. - only having three choices carry over didn't make me upset or angry (unlike like some of y'all), and expecting to be able to carry over every choice you made from inquisition was crazy. how many important choices from dragon age 2 carried over into inquisition? not many. i know what choices i made in the past and how it shaped thedas and that's enough for me, i didn't need to go through it all again just for the sake of getting a random codex page or character mention. - i really enjoyed solas and rook's dynamic, especially when it all comes to a head and he traps them in the fade. manipulating and moulding them into someone similar enough to himself to take his place in the prison of regret only for them to escape by themselves (and with varric's help) because unlike solas, they know how to move forward. insane to me. i'm chewing on live wires.

companions - every companion is wonderful and beautifully written. i love how most of the story is based around them, instead of each of them just having one throwaway companion quest that does jack shit for their development. - in my playthrough, i chose treviso over minrathous, so i ended up with a hardened neve. i love that rook has to work hard to prove that they really care about her and her home, and that earning her trust fully is no small feat. it's so cool that she doesn't simply follow rook blindly, and spends a good chunk of time trying to help back home before returning. - also i really loved how regardless of loyalty and depending on your choices, some of your companions can still die. choosing between harding and davrin took me back to mass effect 1 where you have to save either kaidan or ashley, and inquisition where you have to choose between hawke and a warden, which i thought was so cool. i ended up choosing harding, as she's been there since the beginning. it makes sense to me for her to be the first to fall. very fitting, loved it.

romance - i romanced lucanis for my first playthrough. not having much content didn't bother me, as it made sense story wise. he's been in an underwater prison for a year, tortured and tormented, so naturally he's gonna be slow to trust anyone, and like a hardened neve, you have to work to earn it. and in the end, it's so worth it.

animations/art style - i know i've said it before but the facial animations aren't that bad. even then, i don't really care because mass effect andromeda is one of my all time favourite games and the animations in that are still. not great. veilguard's animations don't have shit on the disaster that was andromeda when it came out lmaoo - bioware have a habit of reinventing the wheel and changing art styles with every dragon age game, but i do really like veilguard's style. it was never gonna look like inquisition, a game that's Ten Years Old, so idk what some of y'all were expecting. i don't care that it looks a lil cartoony, it's nice to look at.

environment/locations - we finally got to fuckigng go to kal sharok. i know it wasn't for long or that much but!! it was enough <33 - every location is visually stunning, i could've spent hours just wandering around aimlessly looking at everything and taking pretty pictures. next time i plan to turn most of the ui off to take it all in. - i also don't get the hate for that lil purple tinge to everything, especially in arlathan forest. it's pretty. what the fuck are you talking about.

combat - i LOVED the combat system in this one. i had to play on pc (which i don't normally do) and i chose the easiest difficulty because i'm mostly here for the story, but the combat was so fun and engaging, and i enjoyed having to actually pay attention to it as opposed to just holding down a button to attack and not needing to worry about much else. - also the combo opportunities with companions was s o cool to play around with. we blowin everyone up to absolute shit babeyy

cons

(i don't actually have many cons so i'm just gonna bang em all out here) - i really hated how they literally nuked the south. i'm not mad about the lack of choices carrying over, but i am a little mad about the fact that every decision i made over three games turned out to be all for nothing. why did they do that. hello. i'm ignoring it <33 - i do really love how they included the option of having a trans or non binary rook, but characters actually saying 'non-binary' in game sounded. strange?? like it just doesn't fit in a fantasy setting because it's a real-life modern thing?? idk this one isn't a big deal i don't mind so much. also my gender is Whatever so don't come at me - while i don't want my companions threatening to kill each other all the time, i do miss having more conflict. there were plenty of opportunities for that, like with bellara and taash's banter regarding artifacts and the lords' 'dalish advisor'. you can't have such a diverse group of people and not have some type of conflict, it just doesn't seem natural otherwise.

anyway that's it i'm not gonna say anything else because i don't want the deranged girlies coming after me <33

[millimononym]

TAG GAME!!!

tagged by @cerisia76 thank u 4 the tag!! I didn't know who i should tag so I'm just gonna be answering this one

3 ships:

this is gonna be hard I'm in so many fandoms lol I'm gonna try to be diverse. Also this is super long

1. Eritav (Homestuck)

OUGHHH where do i start with these 2. Ok so tavros is my fave troll so naturally during the period i was reading Homestuck a lot i stared having dreams about him. And for some reason one time Eridan was also there so i was intrigued and looked into their ship tag on AO3 and found the best fic ever with like the best characterization, writing etc... Before i literally didn't give 2 shits about eridan but it made me love his character as well. It's called "Black sails, Black romance" by mtjester and it's about Tavros and Eridan developing a kismesissitude(which is basically hate love, for those that don't read hs). The reason i put a pic of them down there as moirails is because i can honestly see them in any quadrant, despite them never talking in canon.

For moirallegiance, i feel like it would start out rocky but eventually develop into something better. Tavros would actually be allowed to speak his mind and develop more confidence since i dont think Eridan would shut him down constantly like Vriska, as Eridan is desperate for his quadrants to actually work. And Eridan would obviously benefit from having someone to keep his ass in line.

I can see them developing into matesprits later from that as well.

And as for kismesissitude, well it's already getting too long and i already gave a fic rec for it.

image by urfavsarequadranted

2. Toxic4Toxic/Socket/Rocket x Sinedd whatever they're called (Galactik football)

Must i say anything. They give each other undiscovered mental illnesses and are horrible for each other and i love that for them. Rocket is my favorite character and so his arc in season 2 was most interesting to me, which includes his relationship with Sinedd. I feel like they could have done more with them in s2, but i already made a post about that.

3. Hinadam (Super Danganronpa 2)

AHHHH THEM. Contender for fave rarepair of all time and fave Danganronpa ship overall. Best fics on ao3. 0 fandom toxicity surrounding them. Should be shipped more than k0mahina. Is more canon than k0mahina(I'm gonna get torn apart for this opinion but idc!!!)

like the entire freetime events with Gundham ends with him letting Hajime hold his hand, which he never let ANYONE do due to his touch aversion. He never develops a relationship this strong with anyone, not even Sonia who is his friend in the game. Hajime is the only person he feels safe and comfortable letting down his walls with due to Hajime's genuine effort to understand him better and be his friend. It's genuinely touching to me idkk i think i cried a bit first time i saw it. I'm not going to go into spoilers but good god man...the chapter ....if you know you know

and also in the island mode ending, Gundham asks Hajime if he wants to live a quiet life with himself and his animals. How is this not shipped more they're literally so in love it's not even funny

And NO i do not ship it because gundham is the best character and Hajime is the character i relate to most. but that could be part of it

IDK who made this artwork I'm sorry

Last song:

Okay it's technically not these ones but its the ones i remember listening to most lately. It's rainbow factory and Terrible Things. Fun fact a childhood song of mine called Erase The Underground (undertale fansong) just. Straight up used rainboe factory's music and i never knew so when i listened to RF i got the biggest jumpscare of my LIFE

Last movie:

The last movie i remember watching fully was Howl's moving Castle bcz my sister forced me and i enjoyed it even though it's not one of my favorite ghibli movies or anything. It was cool

Currently reading:

Still reading Watership down! (I have no time for anything lately otherwise i would have finished it) and if Manga counts I've also started reading NANA !! and i love it tbh my favorite thing is the fashion i could feel myself getting more cultured while reading it i think

Currently watching:

There's nothing im really focused on atm but i have a list on my pinned. The big ones i would say are Adventure Time and MAR (for nostalgia purposes). I'm also watching the justice league cartoon but tbh I don't really enjoy it that much despite people saying it's great. It just doesn't hit the same heights as BTAS or have as enjoyable of a superhero team as LOSH 2006. To me. But idk maybe it gets better later

Currently drinking: waterrrrrr baby

Currently craving: school to end to end tbhhhh

[cauldron-burn-and-fire-bubble]

I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT NINA!! anything you want to share about her, i want to collect

OOH OKAY ALRIGJT. (btw sorry this took a while i wrote up most of it days ago but The Tasks. you know how it is. here's a sketch for now)

so the thing about nina is that she is a really really old oc that i decided to revive over the summer to see what i could do with my current understanding of science and techmology so she doesn't really have an actual storyline. but here's some tidbits (under the cut because I have a lot to talk about). also warning for discussion of some unethical biomedical practices

- she's from kind of a cyberpunk dystopia where extreme human genetic alteration is possible (in embryos only ofc) but very very expensive because of not only the procedures needed to make an altered zygote but the resources required to incubate it for a full gestation period and because only some will end up viable the lab will have to create and incubate a carefully calculated number of embryos often with slight differences to ensure at least one will fully develop (this will be relevant i swear)

- so the technology is basically only available to the ultra rich

- nina was intended to have superficial birdlike features (think feathers instead of hair, high visual acuity, some minor skeletal alterations) but the lab done fucked up and she's much more bird than intended. im not an expert on emerging gene editing technology maybe the targeting sequences they used were a little off due to a glitch but you can see how she turned out

- the person who commissioned her didn't accept her and culling a fully developed altered human is well. murder. so she ended up in a care facility for rejected lab kids like herself

- she took way longer than a typical human child to start actually communicating when she talked but she was able to mimic words and phrases very very early. kind of creeped a lot of her caretakers out to greet her and hear their own slightly distorted voice repeat the greeting back from the mouth of a like two month old

- she eventually settled into her own voice but you could potentially identify the person who taught her some phrases if you knew them already. she's still a great mimic since she basically has a syrinx in there

- she struggles with verbal and written communication in general, a little better with body language at least for interpreting intentions/tone but different people can have very different body language ofc

- she also tends to be hyperactive (partly due to extremely high metabolism) and sort of impulsive

- incredible vision and spatial reasoning (those big bird eyes)

- technically with how large she is (about 4'3" if she could stand up straight without falling over and 70-80 lbs?) she shouldn't be able to fly but i ignore that

- remember how i said the duplicate embryos would be relevant well she has a secret not-quite twin another survivor from the same batch. idk how they got separated (remember i came up with the bones of this when i was like 10) but her twin had a messier life

- nina herself ended up as some kind of specialized government operative (cue booing) no she gets out of it in the end i swear

- the twin is a major figure in the conflict around rights for altered humans

- at some point the two of them meet and eventually join forces idk like i said there isn't a real story to this

- she has 2 fingers and the thumb free to move on each hand but they aren't very dextrous so she mainly uses her feet for fine motor tasks

- she also has difficulty emoting in a way that most humans can interpret due to the beak

- i have also made nina as a dnd character (her human parents gave her up to a monastery as an infant having frankly no idea what to do with her which she left as a teenager and became a highwayman as her appearance leads most potential benefactors to believe she's cursed) she has +5 dex and -1 con

and here's a little portrait for anyone who read this far. my beautiful daughter who i love so much <3

[ya-mi-la]

hiiiii!!! i haven’t interacted with you much but i was wondering! if you perhaps had any personal hcs/lore for nnt!! i’m writing a melban fic and currently begging for lore so!!!!!! hi! hope you have a wonderful day/night!!!

Hmmmmmm I think the main hcs that I have for the characters are influenced by other people's AUs/hcs so...

For Mel, it's mainly just the demon form cat stuff. I think at some point I read about someone saying that maybe demons get to pick the shape of their wings when they get them? I also like thinking of Meliodas having double horns (a pair coming out of his forehead and a pair on either side of the top of his head) that have grown in with time (maybe takes 100-200 years to grow fully?) And he has the typical demon tail and bla bla bla. Mostly physical appearances. There's fangs in his mouth, not like.. Vampire fangs, but fangs that can tear through meat easily (I haven't drawn him like that yet I think). Also - extreme flexibility, but that could somewhat be established in the show.

For Ban, I don't have too much? Maybe he has a super soft spot for Meli or smth. He likes cuddles about as much as he likes sparing, he looks kind of intimidating but he's super chill. He gets freaked out when Meliodas does contortionist type shit. He also teaches (or at least tries to teach) Meliodas how to cook properly by making the food the right way, but Meliodas very rarely listens completely because he has the attention span of less than 10 seconds OR he fucks it up to mess with Ban.

Anyways Ban is malewife and Meliodas is his pet cat. I think that's all for what I think about those two?

In terms of lore (like, story wise), I think that Meliodas didn't know how to write or read in English or whatever language they use in Britannia (which I assume is, like, anglo saxon or smth), and when he did learn, he developed an Irish accent because I am a strong believer in him being Irish (cuz, y know, Britannia). Demons and Goddesses speak semitic languages because of me thinking about religion and stuff and how Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc originated in the Middle East, Fairies are Eastern European to me idk why, Giants are..???? Whatever you wish, and humans are everywhere as expected. Vampires are also Eastern European because I searched it up and liked it. They have traditional dances and such - demons and giants have their dances connected to their fighting (giants dancing makes them stronger, demon dancing is just fusion dance w martial arts, like capoeira.), fairies create more lively atmospheres with dancing, I guess, and goddesses, since they're more "elegant", would have smth real classical. Fairies didn't really involve themselves in war too often, giants and demons involved themselves the most, and goddesses did it because of their VERY strained relationship with demons. Ehmmm, what else..... Meliodas never opened up to ANYONE. Like ever. Until he fully gained their trust (which could've taken months, years, decades even.) Ban's on the same boat. Anyways, after the sealing of the demons and the destruction of the goddess race (I may be incorrect, it's been a while since i watched the anime or read the manga), and since the humans are selfish and also gullible, they made history all about how bad demons were. They didn't see demons as actual people, whatever whatever, bla bla bla, you know the rest. Led to incorrect depictions of both races in history and what not.

That's just me, though. You can write whatever you want.

[aromanticyaoi]

hello peer! i am here to use askbox for some other deed than asking

1. sorry if my directly referring to Rebecca as she/her has made you uncomfortable or something. i deleted that tag silently and i will pay more attention to the usage of pronoun

2. as i remembered there sure is a blog about translation that mentioned Rebecca considered themself they/them but is okay with any pronoun but i couldnt find it rn. im fully aware and support Rebecca as nb but i assume it's okay to use other pronouns

3. felt like notifing you that i seem to always drawing Rebecca in a more-feminine-than-official way (idk if you noticed it). very much hoping you don't mind that

that's all i want to say to you. sorry again for any unhappiness, if there is any. have a nice day!

hello there!!!

I don't know where to begin. i guess i am super surprised to get this ask, because i wasn't referring to anyone in particular when i made that post. whenever i post something i am usually just speaking out loud, sharing thoughts. for a while i wasn't even aware that my #peer mindhack tag is visible in the #mindhack tag. but when people I didn't know started liking my posts i realized "well then, i guess my brainrot was visible to everyone this whole time?". so I'M SO SORRY if you had to read any of that 🥲 ..

i am more careful with what i write in the tag now.

second of all, when i said "gendered words", i only referred to gendered nouns, i.e. words like girl/boy, woman/man, queen/king and so on. basically, nouns that have a gender connotation. pronouns can be completely separate from nouns for some people.

what I'm getting at, is that in that post i wanted to joke about the fact that even format was called a woman or a she (the japanese word can mean both depending on context) by the devs, but rebecca only got gender neutral nouns. i distinctly remember that before the dev blog confirming rebecca as nonbinary was released, there were no hints at her gender except her feminine name. that is so cool to me, because this means that she was nb from the start!! thus, for me personally, it feels wrong to use gendered nouns, considering even the devs avoided the usage of them (though i guess it's easier in japanese). everyone else is free to use whichever words they want! a lot of nb people would be fine with gendered nouns, i myself am fine with most of them. and to begin with, captain is a fictional character, so anyone is free to do/headcanon whatever they want.

by the way, that blog says "rebecca views herself as nonbinary she/they, but is fine with any pronoun". so using she is completely fine. i mean, even the characters in game use that pronoun, haha.

(and i am also aware that some cultures don't even have a developed concept of a third gender, and that not all fans will be able to recognize rebecca's identity in the first place, and it is not their fault because they didn't choose where they were born. imagine living in russia, couldn't be me am i right?)

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding... i really like your art when i see it on my timeline, and reading your thoughts. and knowing that there are other english-speaking fans is always nice. I don't mind the way you draw rebecca either, it's a nice stylization. you are not in the wrong in the slightest. i was moreso just speaking aloud, and i tried to explain my point of view in this reply.

it is true that i can sound aggressive or defensive when i talk about nonbinary fictional characters, so i understand if my posts sound like that. but i believe that my opinion, in the end, is just an opinion, even if i express it in a forceful way, and it shouldn't impact other people's way of living. do whatever you want, i will continue to like your art and posts either way. i hope you have a nice day too.

[clochanamarc]

so basically bc the rus*os won't, i have taken it upon myself to develop the lore of vormir, here u go, have my list:

so at the very beginning, vormir was this beautiful planet filled with natural wildlife, flowers, birds, peaceful creatures, and a small population of civilians.

the soul stone was placed there from the beginning of time, but nobody wanted it, nor did they resist it. they just accepted that this entity would exist above them, only seen when people came in search of it.

the "soul for a soul" deal was in place since the beginning, but it took thousands of years before anyone came along and actually made the sacrifice.

the soul stone was first claimed by a young woman named teryk, who sacrificed her only sister in order to kill all the men on her planet.

her eagerness to kill her sister unleashed a sort of corruption on vormir; the beautiful mountain on which the altar stood crumbled, leaving behind a tall, deadly cliff, and consuming the village under a pile of rock.

the people of vormir, or those who survived, chose to stay. they didn't believe anyone as brutal and ruthless as teryk would exist. but her power was so violent and new, that it gained infamy. it was five years before the next visitor came to the cliff. when he sacrificed his husband, it froze the sun in place, caught permanently at twilight, causing the crops and plants to wither and fail.

the people of vormir divided into two groups, one that left for new homes, another that chose to stay. the latter, being a smaller group, decided to relocate their houses to the foot of the mountain. they learned new languages, but only enough to provide warnings that they carved into rocks and slabs of wood that littered the path to the top of the cliff.

these methods, in addition to the failing paradise, saved seventeen souls from being sacrificed, and seventeen more from the corruption of power and greed. it would be centuries before anyone approached again.

the next visitor was moira. moira used dark magic to open a portal into the cliff, and in doing so, caused a blight to destroy the last of the wildlife on the planet. her vow to offer aisling's soul, however, gave the final vormirians an idea.

rather than sacrificing an innocent soul, they used the language of her promise to provide a new path for the soul stone. moira hadn't sacrificed aisling. her exact words were that "you can have her soul. all i want is the stone." and so it was easy to manipulate the language to appease her request. the soul stone could safely reside in the soul of the newborn aisling, and moira, having had aisling, would have the soul stone through her.

after twisting the deal, the last of the vormirians gathered their things, and used the warning signs on the face of the cliff to burn their houses. vormir could rest now. they would no longer need to beg and plead with greedy fools to turn back. and so they left, hearts lighter than they'd been in a million years, fully believing that they'd solved the universal dilemma of the soul stone.

when thanos arrived, there was nobody there to stop and warn him. only an ancient flagstone at the top of the cliff, left behind by the elders, that told him what must be done. (i'm out here doing god's work bc there's no feckin way that i'm accepting the canon there besties, nobody was on vormir, thanos saw a sign and decided he couldn't read and yeeted gamora, it's all true idk what movie u saw-- )

[atticoratticus]

Hello it's been a while, time for a rant about Tokyo Revengers because I binged the entire thing in the span of like 2 days a couple weeks ago and I'm literally obsessed (slight manga spoilers below)

So after I got caught up to jjk I just decided to pick up TR for the sake of reading something. I tried the anime a bit before that because a lot of my online friends loved it, but the anime just didn't do it for me. I especially wasn't fond of Takemichi because of how much secondhand embarrassment I got from him.

For me the manga was so much easier to work through, even though in the first half there were still a lot of moments where I was bordering on throwing my phone across the room (not an issue with the story itself, just me being dramatic).

I feel like for me personally TR was a relatively slow starting series in the sense that it took a while to fully hook me on the story, which was kinda frustrating at times. The writing is kinda inconsistent at times and a lot of the plot points get sort of jumbled, especially towards the end, but in a weird way it works??? Idk man.

It's very much a story where you read for the characters first and plot second (at least in my experience, idk if anyone else feels the same there), which personally is something that works very well with my taste in manga. Some of the characters are pretty flat and only really have one or two defining traits, but all of the major characters are well developed and fleshed out.

I am a raging Mitsuya and Draken simp. I'm not gonna sugar coat it shhfbbdbs

Like I am SO down bad for both of them it's actually insane, they're just... omg. And it's weird because I went into the series fully expecting for Mikey to be my favorite, when after finishing he's not even in my top 5 characters.

Takemichi is a character I'm relatively conflicted on. He has a hell of a lot of development throughout the series which I loved to see, but it always felt like there was something lacking in a way? But then again, that does work pretty well because he's meant to be an underdog character who no one really expects much of at first

I will say that Taiju is hands down my least favorite character. Just for personal reasons I can't bring myself to like him, though I do appreciate how his character wasn't watered down to make it more digestible. Honestly I think part of the reason why I like Mitsuya so much is how he dealt with Taiju during the Christmas battle, I absolutely cried reading that.

SPEAKING OF CRYING. oh my god, I have not cried this much while reading any series in actual YEARS. the ending had me bawling like an absolute baby, it just hit so hard. Even rereading the ending still has the same impact on me, it's actually insane. The rereadability factor is through the roof.

The last 70~ chapters were both extremely necessary and unnecessary at the same time. Going back and getting a happy ending for everyone was such an overwhelming moment for me, but I feel like it definitely could have been cut down a fair amount just to keep things from dragging on. It would have been cool to see an ending that still had some level of loss, because while everyone surviving and being happy was super nice to see, it didnt really fit with the themes of the rest of the series. But hey, we also got to see Mitsuya with long hair so thats why it was so necessary (/hj. Maybe. Idk he's just overwhelmingly attractive to me)

I promise I don't only have criticisms I promise, bear with me-

The twists were genuinely so well done most of the time, like I was clutching my pillow with an iron grip for most of the series. I think the only ones that didn't really land well for me was that Mucho (the 5th division captain) was a traitor, and that's mainly because we never knew who he was prior. It sorta felt like it came out of no where? But then again we got to see way more of Sanzu so it's all good akfjjdjs

Pretty much every character was made well enough where you genuinely cared about what happened to them, and for a good amount of the antagonists you could at least understand why they acted the way the did (even if that takes a fair bit of mental gymnastics, but yk). Whenever a chatacter died, even if they weren't immensely important to the plot, you felt their death in your soul because of how heartwrenching those scenes were as well as how others characters reacted to it. If you say you didn't cry at least once during the series, I simply don't believe you.

I have a lot more thoughts on the series because I barely covered most of it, and the characters too I feel like I can talk a lot more about, but I don't feel like writing a whole other character analysis essay like I did for jjk, so I'll leave it here for now.

Overall the story was a huge surprise for me, because I didn't expect something to immediately rocket to becoming one of my top two series in general. Jjk has better writing in my opinion, but I enjoyed reading TR way more. I already have reread the series once, and I'm on the verge of reading it again for a third time already sjdjfn

I love this series flaws and all, because it doesn't need to be perfectly written to have such a great impact

[wellofdean]

So, I read the response above which is so interesting, and I want to keep thinking about it, and then after that had these interesting tags in my feed from @bloodyentrails...

#i think that sam being compassionate towards certain people is kinda normal we tend to relate on a personal level#and him being queer-coded etc doesn't mean you have to care about him#just that that is a thing?#idk what kind of discourse i'm wandering into a lot of the time but relating to characters#and understanding they have been written in a certain way isn't the same thing#which is to say that i would love it if the writing had tackled that inconsistency#but i find that the show on the whole is inconsistent#and i think it's hard to maintain consistency over so many years with so many people working on it#i do think both of them are *trying* to be good people and they sometimes fail and also what constitutes a good person is kinda open#anyway#bear in mind i'm still only halfway through so#maybe i'll change my mind on all this#spn

It's a point worth considering that in the world of the show, Sam's sympathy for monsters seems principled and some how defies gravity, but that in the real world it wouldn't translate to anything real; that's likely true, and an interesting point. Having said that, I think Sam is pretty clearly not particularly"real world" compassionate, and I don't need monsters to make the argument that Sam is not the compassionate one because he shows a general lack of empathy towards PEOPLE, including but by no means limited to Dean, throughout the show. And, ok, he sometimes argues for a compassionate response to monsters and Dean doesn't always respond favourably, but that's because Sam fears he is one, and he needs to believe monsters are not all bad, which is not borne out of compassion, it's a rationalization that serves his psychological needs.

Basically, I think Sam is all surface. Sam is the urbane one, the smart one, the compassionate one, the one who talks nice to people, the broadly queer-coded one, the feminist, etc., but with Sam, all that is skin deep. He APPEARS as such! He's good at pretending, but he's nearly as savage as John is, Dean is much more sensitive to other people's needs, Dean is every bit as clever as he is, and intuitive to boot, Sam can ACT compassionate, but in fact he isn't really very empathetic to anyone, and he is able to just move on from all the things Dean just can't, Sam's not in fact queer, but Dean is queered to his fucking bones, and Sam's the one whose unconsciously replicated misogyny allows him to think any woman that would be into Dean is obviously a whore, and to keep his girlfriend in the dark about the truth of his life, while Dean is just talking a big game of cartoon misogyny TO SAM while treating the women he interacts with pretty fucking respectfully, actually.

Honestly, it's the same as the way Sam is supposedly the 'main character'. He's introduced as the one we should care about and identify with, but within, like, two episodes, he's really just a foil for Dean. Sam has BIG PLOTS, but it's Dean's feelings, reactions and relationships we really care about.

And, the fact is, Sam was pretty well-realized in the earlier eps. JarPad was giving it some effort, and he was charming then with his boyishness -- the way he seemed like he hadn't fully lived into his physical real estate -- but the thing is, he never could really hold a candle to Dean who was just magnetic. All the interesting character development was given to Dean and Jensen killed it by always making it seem like Dean had so much going on under the surface, and like, to the extent I care about Sam, it's because Dean loves him.

I kind of wonder what happened. Was Dean always meant to be the dark horse hero? Or was Dean just...played by a better, more compelling actor, and they started writing for him instead? There are so many much more interesting things they could have done with Sam, and they just...DIDN'T.

I dunno, I suppose it could just be me, but I feel like the way Sam just SEEMS, Dean IS.

maybe this is me being a dumb overly literal autist stemlord who simply does not understand literary theory or some shit equivalent but why should i care about someone being coded as [X] when i can just. care about someone who is [X]. why should i care more about the conventionally attractive white woman with a job and mortgage because she's metaphorically othered due to being a supernatural creature when i could care about the actually othered addicts that she used as a source of food. help me out here.

[greensaplinggrace]

honestly THANK YOU for saying all that abt baghra bc i thought i was going crazy from not liking her??? bc i haven't read the books and only summaries of them on wiki and like. i dunno why ppl like her actually even in the show bc this guy, her son, is like "i wanna make the world better for us grisha" and she's just like "no." even tho he sees that she's MAKING HERSELF SICK from suppressing her powers! she's literally like in bed coughing in the flashback yet seem much healthier at the little palace. also like after everything, after her disapproval, after the fold, after centuries of waiting for the sun summoner.. he never abandons her. he makes sure she's cares for. he doesn't harm her. and i have to wonder if baghra has ever thanks him for that, for just not leaving her alone. like i dunno how im suppose ro believe aleks is a heartless villain when he still cares for his abusive mom like this. like has baghra even told her she loved him (honestly she reminds me of a classic emotionally unavailable asian parent but maybe that's just me). also im wondering if baghra ever told aleks that he had an aunt.. bc like.. now that u bring up her isolating him it's like hmmmm...

not at me being like alina... why do u trust the bitter old woman who literally beats u with a stick and verbally abuses u every chance she gets.. just bc she showed a bad painting... like.. pls use two braincells to see that who u figured out as his mother... is also using his protection..

like baghra could've upped and left with alina. but no. she stayed bc she knew she was safe under aleks's protection.

alsoim just impressed that after his first friend tried to drown him and harvest his bones... he didn't go into hiding???? he still wanted to make a safe heaven for grisha!!! HE STILL WANTED TO PROTECT GRISHA EVEN AFTER HIS GRISHA FRIEND TRIED TO KILL HIM FOR HIS FUCKEN BONES. like... this is the guy im suppose to believe is the villain???

honestly i feel like part of the reason why LB's plotlines seem so bad and disconnected (and sometimes outright racist but that's another rant) and why darkles is disproportionately more violent and villainous in the later books is bc she didn't expect the darkling to be so popular and wanted to stick with her guns of making him the villain. but also wanted the money from aleks's popularity. but like you can't have ur cake and eat it too.

Well thank you for sending this ask! It's very sweet and very passionate. I'm glad you liked my post! I didn't put as much thought into it as some of my others lol. I kind of just talked. But it was nice to be able to finally talk about some of the problems I have with both her character and the fandom/author's perception of her.

HERE is the post this is referring to, in case anyone's wondering.

👀👀 You've hit the nail on the head for so many things, here!

Baghra is extremely emotionally unavailable, basically to the point of neglect. She's also verbally and physically abusive, traits which I doubt were only reserved for her students and not her son. Baghra claims she would do anything to protect him, but I've known a lot of parents who have that mindset and yet still harm their children because they think it's "good for them".

Aleksander stays at Baghra's side for years, and even when they're opposing each other she's never too far away from him. Idk if you've read the books but he does eventually hurt her. And as much as I don't like Baghra, I think his actions were horrid. But I'm also honestly kind of surprised it took him so long lmao.

Yeah I mean, in terms of isolation, let's not forget that she never wanted to introduce him to his father, either. Baghra's sense of eternity clouds a lot of her judgments on relationships, which means she views most people as dust and therefore teaches her son to as well. The problem with that is that he's a growing child, and he needs those social and emotional attachments for healthy development.

I would bet quite a bit of money that Baghra has either never told him she loves him or she has told him so few times it's practically forgettable.

And everything becomes more complicated because so many of Baghra's actions are understandable because of her life and her history, but the impacts they have on the people around her, especially Aleksander, are permanently damaging. And the fact that that's never gone over in critical depth in the books or how it's glossed over in fandom is just very disconcerting. Like, acknowledging Baghra's failings doesn't mean we're excusing Aleksander's actions, it just means we're holding Baghra liable for her own. Which the fandom should be doing, considering she's the epitome of an abusive parental figure.

And Alina trusting Baghra over Aleksander is even more confusing! Especially in the show!! This is the woman who beat her and abused her and tortured her friends when they tiny little children (and who probably still does so now that they're adults). This is the woman who mocks you and harasses you and insults you on a regular basis. Why does Baghra revealing she's Aleksander's mother make Alina change her mind?! Like fuck, I'd just feel bad for Aleksander. No wonder he kept it a secret, I would too! And that painting is enough evidence?! Really?! A random painting shown to you by this abusive mentor that's been making your life hell. That's what you're going to betray your new lover over?

The friends trying to harvest his bones thing is a good point, too. I think Aleksander, especially show Aleksander, is incredibly idealistic. I think he cares too much for others - those he's deemed worth his care (a sentiment given to him by Baghra). Despite everything she's tried to teach him about hiding and abandoning others and never caring and never doing anything to help or reach out or connect with people, Aleksander still continues to do so. It's likely because he never got it from Baghra growing up, and so is desperate for those emotional needs to be fulfilled elsewhere.

His turning point, when Baghra tells him it was understandable that those kids tried to kill him because the world is such a hard place for them - that's crucial. And the reason it's possible as a motivating factor is because of that idealism and that desire to help and that desire to be everything his mother isn't. Baghra tells him this trauma he just experienced was because of the oppression of his people, and instead of following her lead and accepting that, going into hiding and abandoning everybody to their misery, he goes I can do something about that. I can make it so this never happens again. Which is usually how trauma like that combines with one's core personality traits at a young age, especially when there's none of the essential support systems in place to aid in recovery (ie, the role Baghra should have been filling but wasn't, because she decided to exacerbate the problem instead).

And yeah, one of my biggest problems with the ham-fisted "beating you over the head with a sledgehammer of evil deeds" look-how-bad-this-character-is! portrayal of the Darkling in the later books comes from the impression I get that Bardugo doesn't trust her readers. She's so desperate to have us hate this character and think him an irredeemable villain, not trusting any of her readers to engage critically with a morally gray character, that it feels quite a bit like condescending fucking bullshit. Which ew, I know how to engage with literature, thanks.

She really does seem to look down on a large part of her fandom, and imo, the infantilization of the female characters in her books seems to carry over to her impression of most of her female readers as well. Which is why the Darkling's character arc gets fucking destroyed. But he's still a good cash grab, of course, so she'll shake his dead corpse in front of the fandom for money every time she wants something from it.

Also! Another reason I think her plotlines feel disconnected (I'm sorry Bardugo I respect you as a person, but shit-) is because the writing in SaB is just bad. I mean, nevermind the absolutely nauseating implications of the way she portrays the Grisha as a persecuted group who's situation is never actually fully addressed as it should be, considering Grisha rights is what her main villain is fighting for (imo for a series called the Grishaverse, LB seems to be pretty anti Grisha), but her characters and story alone are just wrong for each other. They don't fit together.

And the ending is one of the main pieces of evidence in that regard! You can’t say the ending where Alina isn’t Grisha anymore is her “going back to where she started” when she’s always been Grisha. She just didn’t know she was Grisha because she denied that part of herself that she was born with.

Alina is reluctant to move forward or change, she struggles with adapting, and she’s very set on the things she’s grown attached to throughout her life. She also has some latent prejudices against the Grisha, and so denies the possibility of being Grisha for those reasons as well.

Alina’s lack of powers in the beginning of her life because she willfully doesn’t learn about them to avoid change versus her lack of powers at the end of the book when she’s accepted them and then they’re stripped away from her by outer forces are two entirely separate circumstances. You can’t make a parallel about lost powers and lack of Grisha status bringing her back to the start when she was always Grisha and she always had powers and she simply refused to come to terms with it because of personal reasons.

The first situation is an internal conflict that indicates a story about growth and a journey of self acceptance. Denying herself the opportunity to learn about her heritage and to find acceptance with a group of people like her because she’s tied to the past and because of the way she was raised is the setup for a narrative that tackles unlearning prejudice and learning how to connect with a part of her identity that was denied her and learning how to grow independent and self assured. It’s the setup for a different story entirely. The second situation is an external conflict that centers around the ‘corrupting influence of power’... for some reason.

In a world where Grisha do not have social, political, or economic power and they are hunted, centering your heroine’s journey of self acceptance and growth around an external conflict about... the corrupting influence of power (in a group of people that don’t actually have any power?!) just doesn’t work. It is literally impossible to connect the two stories Bardugo is trying to push in Shadow and Bone without seriously damaging the main character’s developmental arc.

The only way a narrative like this would work, claiming that she has gone back to where she started, is either a) if the Grisha weren’t actually a persecuted group and instead were apart of the upper class, or b) if the one bad connection between the two instances is acknowledged - that Alina denied a part of herself crucial to self acceptance and growing up, and that losing her powers at the end has also denied her. It is a tragedy, not a happy ending.

Alina suffered because she didn’t use her powers. She grew sick. It was bad for her. This was not a resistance to 'the corruption of power and the burden of greed', it was her suffering because she couldn’t fully accept herself.

Framing the ending as a return to the beginning can’t be done if you don’t address how bad the beginning was for your main character. You brought her back to a bad point in her life. You regressed her. This should be a low point in her arc. It should be a problem that’s solved so she can finish developing organically or it should be something that is acknowledged as a tragedy in it’s own right, for the future the world (the writing) denied her.

This is a ramble and it makes no sense and I’m really sorry, but my point is that Bardugo put the wrong characters in the wrong story. The character arc required for organic development doesn’t match the story and intended message at all. The narrative doesn’t fit the cast. She's got two clashing stories attempting to work in tandem and she ends up with both conflicting messages that fans still can’t comprehend in her writing and an ending that doesn’t suit her main character to such an impossible degree that it’s almost laughable.

So yeah, there's a few reasons why I think the story and the plot feels so bad and disconnected. I hope you don't mind me making this answer so long! 😅 I was not expecting to write this much.

[patchesproblem]

I have the strong urge to ramble about Tes and Eins so here I am. Slight warning that my writing may get confusing, so I'm very sorry about that. There'll be my personal headcanons plus other things I feel like talking about. There'll be a few jokes because I need them for my own sanity.

Rambling under the cut

Slight edit while I'm writing: I accidentally hyperfocused on one specific part so oops. I could fix that but I'm not so have fun reading my novel. I'll end up having to make a second post to finish my headcanons off because it's almost eleven and I'm still not done with them sobs.

These two have been living rent free in my head and they're driving me insane.

Tesla is 100% softer in private with Einstein and I will die on this hill. She's still an absolute menace to society, but a gentler one. What I mean by this is that she's more 'open' in a sense.

She lets her guard down purely because she trusts her and knows that she wouldn't do anything to hurt her. Things like feeling safe enough to not wear her glasses / contacts, being vulnerable, showing affection, etc. However if Eins ever teasingly brings it up in front of others she gets flustered and defensive and tells her to shut the fuck up.

Both Tes and Eins are extremely stubborn as well and I will also die on this hill. Literally they'd been in love for years and just refused to admit it because they were embarrassed. Though they were both also horrified that if they did it'd completely destroy their friendship if the other didn't feel the same way, so that played a part in it.

Funniest part is that everyone else knew they were dating before even they knew. They'd been living together for literal years and shared a bed. Totally best friend behavior right there.

Eventually Einstein was the one who caved, though it wasn't intentional and she wanted to disappear off the face of the earth at first.

An important thing to note is that over the years they both created their own way of communicating. They'd essentially developed their own language through the sheer power of mathematics. For a brief explanation on how, they assigned meaning to each string of numbers / equations. To go along with it there was a specific indicator. This helped distinguish messages from their normal work. It was originally made because they wanted to be able to send each other messages when they needed something, but they also just used it to talk to each other without anyone knowing.

The reasoning I bring this up is because it was ultimately what brought them together. At some point Tes was out for a meeting the majority of the day (probably arguing with and or insulting senators or something idk) and Einstein was home for a majority of the day. It was in the middle of winter and the heater for the dorms went down leaving everyones rooms cold. Eventually the cold caused her to become sentimental and made it where she couldn't ignore the repressed feelings, and combine that with the fact Tesla wasn't home she just kinda emotionally died.

Eins journals, and while Tes is aware of it and doesn't care, she keeps a hidden one she doesn't know about. Although at this point both of them were fully comfortable talking to each other about anything, it was one of those things that she still needed sometimes. Writing was (still is) one of the main ways she copes with difficult events / emotions.

Considering at this point neither was sure what the other thought she couldn't just talk to her about it. This was one of those moments where she needed to either write or talk with someone, and she didn't want to bother anyone. After a while she eventually dug out her second journal and started writing (basically rambling) using theire math language (because it was less embarrassing, plus if anyone else found it they'd think it was just part of her work). Originally she had planned to just put it up before Tes came home, but unfortunately for her she just completely forgot time existed for a few hours.

Tes did end up coming home around ten at night and sat down by Eins, exhausted and just wanting to be with her. She eventually glanced down to see what she was working on. Although it took her a minute to process what she was reading, she eventually realized and went completely still and channeled her inner lobster turning bright red. Eins eventually realized she was there and when she turned to tell her hi she quickly realized time was actually a thing and that Tes was not, in fact, completely illiterate.

They just stared at each other neither knowing what to say, and Einstein just wanted to disappear off the face of the earth. Eventually she decided to make an attempt at speaking, though she couldn't really get it out without stuttering. "T.. Tesla I-"

Tesla just kinda sat there before forcing herself to say they needed to talk, and proceeding to stand up and immediately tripping trying to go back to their room.

After about twenty to thirty minutes of Einstein just pacing back and forth preparing herself to get absolutely murdered and freaking out internally, she forced herself to actually go talk to her. Though Joachim probably got several texts along the lines of "Fuck. She knows this isn't a drill please help me." and him just essentially replying with "lmao good luck" and proceeding to go to bed. (Tesla had texted him less than ten minutes before freaking out. He was just happy they both were being forced to talk and he could be left alone. Both him and Joyce deserve financial compensation because they were both stuck in the middle of this for years. Joyce only escaped because he decided to just die on them and hid himself specifically so he didn't have to deal with their insanity.)

Eventually she poked her head into their room to see Tes just sitting on their bed. Just staring at the picture of them that was normally on her nightstand looking like she was about to cry, not even noticing her there.

Eventually she just said "Tes can I come in." Causing Tesla to get startled and look up before just nodding her head and looking down. The insanity continued, with Einstein trying to apologize and Tesla just telling her to stop, meanwhile on the verge of tears. After a few minutes of silence, Tesla eventually looked up and just asked her if she meant what she wrote. Einstein said yes, crying insued and they were finally together officially.

Joachim was now faced with a new problem of them being happier than ever and refusing to shut up. The Welts never win.