#if only wasn't so keen on sabotaging me lol

[nemo-of-house-hamartia]

Why Yes.

It was time for me to rewatch Kingslaive again and HAVE MY FREAKING HEART TORN OUT OF MY CHEST JUST BY THE PROLOGUE ALONE.

POOR RAVUS.

POOR LUNA.

THOSE TWO BABIES.

OH MY HEART.

This game and story destroyed me in so many ways fml.

AND I AM READY TO BE DESTROYED AGAIN.

Seriously, no one can do angst like Squeenix.

that's why we love them.

AND NYX. DEAR LORD, NYX THE MOST PRECIOUS BEAN.

Also, fml, Lena Headey as Luna will always give me life.

And of course.

THE MAN HIMSELF. THE ONE AND ONLY JESTER THAT WE LOVE AND ADORE.

That glorious GLORIOUS magnificent bastard.

Also, fml, but I truly need to rewrite that first chapter I wrote.

I need to rework it a bit better and introduce Thalassa properly, because homegirl is Luscinia's bestie and they are two little shits together.

[booksandchainmail]

Pale 8.8 extra

“I, um, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.  Even if Tashlit isn’t a perfect fit, isn’t she the Other we can trust most?  We could use more of that.”

it looks like Verona's endorsement counted for more than she thought, which could be good if it means she feels more loyal towards the girls than her sponsors. And we know she wasn't involved in the murder, and nor was she picked out by one of the Kennet Others

Lis manifested in an all-girls private school in Quebec and she came out fighting in her own way. The climate she arose in was one of backstabbing & sabotage & bitterness and she blended into that crowd and poured fuel on the fires.

oh that's a rough start for anyone. The description of the downsides of Wallflower Doppelgangers is reminding me of a character from a book called Zeroes, who had two-way crowd-based empathy, where she could feel a group's emotions or project her own onto them. The difficulty was that if she lost control, or if the group was overwhelmingly large, she'd wind up just amplifying what they were feeling as her own emotions got overwritten by theirs, then projected back out. IIRC she had to drop out of school and avoid places like sports games to avoid starting riots.

Two groups of witch hunters banded together to try to sort through the mess and the three hundred students in attendance and she joined the collective witch hunters with each group thinking she was a member of the other.

sounds like someone needs some master-stranger protocols

And I don’t like that the Other with a serious body count of innocents and maybe-good-guys is that close to two people we don’t necessarily trust

... I would not count witch hunters as "maybe-good-guys"

“Lucy, when you grabbed our bags, did you pack Cherry?”

welp.

“No!  Aaa!  No, Snowdrop is coolest!”

aww. Touching especially considering how much of their friendship i Cherry trying and failing to dunk on Snowdrop

When we left that day it was with the added company of Kennet’s Anima Corporeal. The spirit of the city made flesh.

oh awesome. I love genius loci things.

Ken is surprisingly political and seized on the small amount of power he had as a newcomer to the council & as a representative for the citizenry. He is vocal with his opinion and yet has little to no ambitions in leadership (preferring to complain rather than do…).

so far I'm picturing the spirit of Kennet as one of those people who writes in endless letters to the local paper, and shows up at all town hall meetings to complain about new construction. Which feels appropriate for a small town

4) The tourist end is a bit scattered & eternally hopeful but anyone who lives here will acknowledge it is only useful or awake a portion of the year.

lol

I'm trying to think the split would be for my hometown: probably college instead of tourism, and no industrial section... maybe farming?

How on Earth do you think that a distillation of our crummy, struggling little town is going to be anything other than imperfect and prone to dragging things out, and dragging them down?  It’s unvarnished society as an Other and society’s the thing that needs about a thousand sharp kicks in the ass to get to a better place.

contrast here between Matthew liking Ken because Kennet is a place that he loves, and the girls have more complicated feelings. I think that's how it tends to go with places you grow up? For me at least I cared more about where I grew up when it became a place I could choose to return to

“I can’t help but wonder about the moves they’re making.  It feels like we made a certain move by going off to school.  And we did that because of Miss, a bit.”

another possible nefarious motivation for sending them to school: it gets the girls out of the way (at what sounds like it was a critical time)

She has a keen understanding of Others and how Others are put together and knows her way around practice like Maricica knows her way around illusion.

potentially a big threat, but also a possible source of knowledge

I’m texting him and asking if Crooked Rook is an Oni who has warred with practitioners but is mostly cool with us again like the ones Yadira’s family sort of worked with… or if she’s an Oni who was a part of all that and really hates practitioners.

oooh. Lucy is once again doing the liveblog's work

“I don’t think we can or should, Ave.  He’s a jerk and he did it to himself as much as anything but we played a part and not becoming one of the really awful practitioners means carrying that.”

I think Bristow and Alexander were both very good at putting anything they felt bad about behind them. Though by the time we meet them they're past feeling bad about morality.