#isiliar makes me INSANE!!!!!!!!!!! MELDIER!!!!!!!! THEY MAKE ME INSANE

[bitegore]

thought a little too hard about the venerate and now i'm going to explode and blow up and die i think

what if you were promised you could unshackle the chains of fate, that you could fix things, and that every terrible means you need to use for your ends would - eventually, once and for all, when it's done and over with - be erased, and the only thing that would be left would be the victory. that everything could be fixed in the end, no matter how badly you have to break it now. if you could come home, not just victor, but hero and savior and with every cruelty and sacrifice repaired so that no one knows you've even done them, because in this world you haven't

what if it was you and yours, together, people you've known for longer than anone else who understand and who want what you want - people who get it, when no one else can, after how long it's been and how much you've done and how much you've traded and sacrificed and become for the one goal, when no one else could possibly understand. And then one of your number lost their mind and gave up on the perfect shining goal, and in only a hundred years or so - the blink of an eye, to you, immortals, around for thousands of years at the minimum - kills several of your number before you finally band together and put an end to it. When before, you were somewhere between friends and family. When, in spite of everything, you still are.

and with roadblocks in the way and stresses and hardships for a thousand years, you work at it, you try to get the things moving again. it takes a thousand years. and at the very end you find out you've been betrayed from the inside again, that your most dedicated member has changed his mind, or lost it, or both. frankly, definitely both. tal does not have his fucking mind together, half the series he's amnesiac and the other half he's a zealot unwilling to even consider peace with the people who have known him longer than half these societies have existed.

And then one by one, within less than a decade, the rest of your number are dead, and so is he. When the only constant in your lives across the millenia has been that you cannot die. And the world will never be fixed, if it ever even could have been.

anyway i'm going to go cry for eight million hours now.

[laireshi]

For the highly specific ship ranking meme, because I love to hear you talk about them: Caeden and any/all of the Venerate of your choosing. 😁

MY BLORBOS.

Well depending on the Venerate in question, and I'll get into that, we get any of those:

Squick / Just nope / A trainwreck you can’t look away from / Mehh but they are bloody everywhere / Not interested but no negative feelings / I need to see how I could make it work / BroTP / Cute / I love them / They rented a room in my mind and are here to stay

They're all way too tragic for the 'cute' option, and all hit the trainwreck part. And Caeden/anyone lives rent-free in my head. I love them all so much. They all love each other so much! I can't deal!!!

Obviously there's my biggest ship of Alaris/Caeden, but I'll save most of those feels for another ask I have yet to reply because I have too many feels and trying to write them down at once is too difficult XD But oh my god. Them. Their love. I. They were so important to each other. I think that, for a moment, Alaris really must've let himself hope, even knowing better, that an amnesiac!Tal could be talked around, and it kills me. He never stopped treating him like a friend. It's horrible. I love it.

...I'm very glad you just got to the Isiliar scenes because now I can talk about her! They're on the BroTP end of the scale though I'm sure they slept with each other back when everyone was happy and they were all friends. It's just, they were so fond of each other? Joking, working together, making good-natured bets. AND THEN TAL'KAMAR WENT AND IMPRISONED HER IN A TORTURE DEVICE FOR 2000 YEARS. Everything is fine I am doing so well. And then she hurt him so much after, but she had Licanius and she didn't stab him with it, and if that doesn't make you cry, I don't know what to say. So many people were ruined by loving him. So many.

I can't not mention Meldier now, and -- he'd been imprisoned in the Tributary too and he had all the chances to kill Caeden afterwards and didn't take any. (Still not over how he stops him from stepping out into the Plains of Decay). It kills me how close friends the Venerate had been before everything came crashing down. Freshly out of the Tributary, and a part of Meldier still cares! How! God. *cries more* (And then there's the part you haven't reached yet, so I won't talk about it, but just. Insert more crying.)

...yes yes I know Andrael got literally one scene in the whole trilogy outside of the many name-drops, but he called him 'Kein and I haven't and will not recover. Also that scene was insane. "Here's the only sword in existence that can kill one of us, and I forged it because of your actions, but I won't even try to threaten you with it because I love you". I want to know all about the time they worked on ilshara together and how they must've tried to reassure each other and all the kisses that tasted like salt. One day I'll do something with those feels and write them down. For now they keep living in my head.

I don't ship Asar with Caeden romantically because their scenes didn't give me those vibes, but they absolutely loved each other very very deeply. I keep thinking of how heart-breaking it must've been for Asar to see Caeden hate himself so much without even knowing his own history. The way he only called him Caeden once he was dying. The way he was killed right in front of Caeden -- trying to protect him from yet more emotional torment by Nethgalla -- and Caeden didn't even really know him. Didn't know who he lost. (I wonder when the grief really set in.)

...I think those are all that you've met so far and I hope you're crying about them too, @eirenical XD

[bitegore]

woah I just finished reading licanius and I'm feeling lightheaded. do you want to yell about licanius because I want to hear you yell about it. I'm prepared to be so so normal about nethgalla

GOD. AHAHAHAHAA. i always want to yell about licanius

okay first my personal hashtag licanius hashtag experience is worth adding because it explains a lot about which parts i am most insane about. So I first found the first book Shadow of What was Lost back in the ancient years of like 2015 or 2016 or whatever before Islington got his book deal while it was still self-published on Kindle Unlimited instead of being published by any kind of publisher. Back in these years it was just the first book and the others weren't out.

....and surelyt you remember that fucking epilogue thing that Islington loves to do where he puts the Big Reveal right at the end of the book, right? So i spent like a full three or four years going absolutely Bat Shit about just the whole "caeden is also aarkein devaed" bit and then . book 2 comes out and. AUGH. AUUUUUUUGHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAAAAA the fucking. MALSHASH is CAEDEN is AARKEIN DEVAED is TAL'KAMAR why does this man need to be every character. and THEN the fact that CAEDEN DOES NOT KILL DAVIAN. HE GETS HIM FUCKING SELF.

insane. this series makes me insane. literally foaming at the mouth insane.

nethgalla was just like. okay actually i cant lie i kind of love that she fucked up every romantic plotline caeden/tal could've been involved in because i am so glad he did not have any actual romance plot with karaliene or anyone else but how do you invent a character as cool as The Demon Shapeshifter From The Torture Dimension and then fuck it up by being like "and she's obsessed with this guy and exists mostly to be a femme fatale" like come ON. come ON you FLUBBED it. i wish she had more going on with her because even just the idea that she's tied to bhim because he summoned her by fucking up resurrecting his dead wife is like spicy as fuck but then the actual execution is so. like. mid at best? it truly saddens me especially because when Tal shows up she's lame about him but every other time she is SO badass. when she's pretending to be that one hunter she was so badass. when she was tormenting ashalia in the name of making her stronger that kicked ass. they should've kissed. i said what i said

also FUCK LMAO MELDIER AND ALARIC AND ISILIAR AND THE OTHER VENERATE i am SO not normal about them I am obsessed with them I want to put them in my mouth and EAT THEM. i wrote a crossover where Vortex gets recruited into their ranks for an exvent once. i love them so dearly. i spent multiple years bullying my girlfriends into reading the books exclusively so i could get them to write fanfiction about them for me. i love them i want them so dead i'm so glad the story went the way it did but also they deserved better and i wish it didn't happen in the first place. literally the best fucking tragedy ever. i wish we got to watch Wereth's death and Andrael's betrayal and i also wish everything were worse and there was more bad. i am so normal about them.they are so important to me

the fucking shape of this narrative also. this is so circles ever. it makes me lose my fucking mind. look at it it is a self-contained loop (derogatory) (aspirational) this thing is soooooooo the chicken and the egg. its so. its so! i am normal and not insane about it i promise come closer etc etc