#it also would have been cool to see the cultural differences actually shown bc it could have added to the sharmas character as well

[sukibenders]

I wish s2 didn't focus on the Featheringtons and Whistledown that much in the show, and scrapped the whole love triangle as that was completely unnecessary and just weighed everything down because, not only does it take away interesting and needed moments with the Sharmas, we could have seen more aspects of their culture in the show. Like I would have loved to see Kate and Edwina discuss their distaste for English tea more, see both cultures represented during the wedding (like Kate telling Anthony about how she would prefer to wear a gown that isn't white because of its connotations with mourning for example), see the Sharmas in traditional Indian clothing like saris and witnessing a Haldi ceremony, see Anthony search for a cook who would make foods that remind Kate of home. Like there was so much that could have been added! Shondaland, I'm in your walls!

[pumpkinsy0]

PUMPKIN I NEED YOU TO GIVE ME AS MANY REASONS WHY PURLY IS THE BEST SHIP!! MY FRIEND IS TRYING TO CONVINCE ME THAT IT SUCKS AND I NEED TO PROVE HER WRONG

-🍵🧊

this feels like the equivalent of giving the bat signal in the sky for me to come

ANYWAYS LETS GO🚨🚨🚨

shipping papercut is like making a sandwich at subway, u can say it sucks all u want, but my brother in christ, U made it that way, this ship is like one of thee “u can do whatever the fuck u want w these two and u can make it make sense” ship u can possibly have in this fandom, if u dont like papercut, maybe its just UR rendition of it u dont like, pick it up n try it again w different things added to it to see if u like it🙄🙄

this ship is literally at the VERY BASE of it, opposites that compliment each other attracting and high school sweethearts and ur telling me ur not at least a lil interested🤨🤨AND I WASNT KISSING W THE ARTISTIC LIBERTY U CAN TAKE W THESE TWO, they can literally be enemies to lovers, that aloof couple trope, fake dating that turned real, u can even make ur own way on how they got together, u can pick and choose its like an all u can eat buffet, ur not rlly “trapped by canon” here

these r literally two dumbasses together like all the time, just imagine the dumb but sweet things they find themselves doin, and the ppl they annoy, just have a heart

if u like angst, curly was in the reformatory for 6 months after ponys life was quite literally changed forever, curly doesnt quite understand his own emotions, pony tries to see the good in the world while curlys always in trouble, AND THERES OTHERS IF U JUST DIP UR TOES INTO SHIPPING EM, the angst potential is RIGHT there🗣️🗣️

at the very base of this ship, theres nothing wrong w it, theres no weird age gap, they wouldnt be abusive towards each other, and ik some ppl have issues w this but also, but its a rare “not dating within the gang” ship, so u would HAVE to go out of ur WAY to make it weird, literally nothing wrong w this ship

if u love the relationship pony has w the gang, this ship can definitely help u expand on ponys relationship w everyone as a whole and u can show off just how protective the guys can become when it comes to pony in his own romantic relationships, what other ship u know is doin that🤨🤨BARELY ANY OF EM IF U DID NAME SOME🗣️🗣️🗣️

honestly same thing goes w the shepards, theres no other ship where u have angela and tim’s relationships w curly being explored through any other ship

while pony and curly r friends during the outsiders, its obvious they arent THAT close to each other, and so what i find interesting about this ship is that u can imagine their own little relationship actually building up and the trust in each other growing, as time goes on, i just think its cool to see them actually flourish, just make something entirely new because of the other and with each other, in a different way from other ships in this fandom

im a literal suckerrrr for cultural hcs so i love when theres cultural aspects actually shown with this ship i think its so cool bc it can get pretty intimate, like curly showing and introducing pony to parts of his culture???? so intimate actually SO underrated, and thats rlly only something i see done w the shepards and it rubs off on this ship as well and i love it 1000/10 (while we here can i convince u of haitian shepards🤔🤔 /lh)

they have shared experiences!!! yes they r opposites attract but they r also just some guys who r put in the same situation, trying to navigate life and protect each other, together, and even in their personal lives, theres things that should push them away from the other but it doesnt, they r this fandoms ship equivalent of the indomitable human spirit and thats all bc they r stupid lil dudes together

are u not a sucker for a guy whos pretty much been closed off emotionally a good chunk of his life finding someone to share his life w and finally finding learning to chillax once in a while w that person and that person alone cause theyre special to em?? boooooo🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱thats such a good trope

this is like the only ship where u actually have “rival” gangs interacting w each other,,,WHERE IS UR SENSE OF ADVENTURE

every shipper of them is literally so cool, like literally, ive never met a shitty shipper of these two, shipping them is like having a vip pass, and its not even like a huge group of ppl, its a small community, we r like a quiet village, unlike SOME SHIPS HERE🙄🙄

ANYWAYS i rest my case, ur just bein a lil haterrrr

if this aint convince ur friend that they arent at least a lil good, the problem isnt the ship,,,its ur friend,,,drop em immediately, but if this did??? welcome to the cool club

[amethystfox4]

Heres my tier list!

Explanations below the cut and thanks to @starrjoy for the blank list!

Note: every ship (excluding Knuxuge bc that is the only ship I have zero thoughts about other than "its canon") will have caveats to it.

Most of them being I do not have enough knowledge of the actual source(s) to have an opinion

My other one being I really don't care about the supposed canonisity of a ship so if you're wondering why theres only one ship in OTP its bc most of the others have some sort of hc attached to it (ex : All of Sonic's parings)

I love them!:

Hey look its the individual ships that make up SonAmyShad! In all honesty, I really like these three ships individually too, but I will gravitate towards the Sonic pairings more than Shadamy on an individual basis.

And I'm going to say it here Sonic as a character has two modes for me in a shipping sense- Hes either a disaster biromantic demiace or straight up aroace (no inbeween)

I like Sonamy in sense that yeah I can see yeah it can be cute but only if Amy isn't portrayed as an obsessed stalker. I know shes infatuated with Sonic and the idea of being with him, as shown in multiple games (I don't think its been a thing in recent years but I still feel the need to mention it), but I like to believe as Amy matures she realizes that putting Sonic on such a pedestal wasn't a good thing to do for either of them. I also like to think that as Amy mellows out her friendship with Sonic becomes a lot more solid.

Also if I was on a computer I would definitely put Sonadow between I love them! and I ship them for comedic value, bc you know those two idiots would not handle having romantic feelings in any normal way

Shadamy is interesting to me- I really like it I think its cute (Gives me Grease vibes now that I think of it) but I cannot see it being a thing in actual Sonic canon (honestly this is with most ship excluding a few). I see it in a "canon but to the left" kind of way.

So the next ship is Bunny x Antoine (I think). So my only and I mean only exposure to this ship (and these two characters) is from the fan comic TMOM (The Murder of Me) by Gigi and if their characterizations in there are anything like they are in Archie than yes!

Please do not comment asking for me to read the Archie Comics, I do not want to touch that monstrosity with a 10ft pole. (It scares me./j)

I purely ship them for comedic value!:

Infitgadet, I think is how that ship is spelt, is a funny crack ship that I just laugh at. Its stupid, its dumb, but I see the appeal.

Sonjet, a petty minor rivalry that becomes a bromance.

Sonic x Elise umm in canon: No. But outside of that...Ha ha, One!

Kinda cute sometimes:

Alot of these fall under "canon but to the left"

Shadilver and Sonilver, could work either way but in a similar but slightly different way to ShadSonAmy, I prefer it to be Sonadoilver over the individual ones

Blazemy, not much to say other than I like it.

Silvaze, I can see it better than the other three but not much else.

Tangle x Whisper, now I have not read IDW and I want to, so I don't much about these two other then sure, I'm cool with it.

Not for me but I can see the appeal:

Shadouge, I see Rouge as more as the older sister/wine aunt to Shadow more than anything else

Sonally, never watched Satam or read Archie but I do know of Sally through pop culture osmosis. If we're talking about how 90s American (cartoon) Sonic was than sure I see it. But for current Sonic (even Adventure Sonic) not really but I do see them as friends if she could exist again.

Espilver, dont know why I just like them a little

Sonknux, just a really good bromance, with Sonic being a little shit and sometimes flirting with Knuckles.

Not on the list but Sonouge is similar where I dont see them in a relationship they just like to throw flirty banter at eachother and it just confuses anyone who knows how Sonic normally reacts to being flirted with (even funnier if Sonic is aroace)

Sonaze, um its there, to me they'd just be friends with just a heavy meaning behind holding hands

I have never watched Sonic X but I can see the appeal of Tails being in a relationship but I really strongly see him as being aroace flat out, with strong platonic love for his brother and friends.

Not for me and I CANT see the appeal:

Shadknux, I see we are shipping the lancers together (Shadow and Knuckles are both lancers to Sonic in the five man band trope while Knuckles is the big guy/lancer Shadow is just Sonic's lancer imo). This confuses me I don't hate it I just don't get it.

Vanilla x Vector, huh? I'm not saying its bad just...

Silvamy, um what? I don't see them having romantic feelings for eachother like at all.

Wait this exist?!:

Metadow, Waveouge, and Blaze x Omega (?)...[Confused Laughter] What? Are these crack ships bc I can't wrap my head around them.

Surgeamy, now I have heard of this but why?

Sally x ???? (explains itself)

Shadaze, I see that picture is from Archie right? Uh...

Ian Jr. x Infinite, now thats a crack ship if I ever saw one!

Rouge x Topaz, uh I can't say I didn't know this existed just that I had no where else to put it since I have no idea what Topaz's character is like.

[thewingedwolf]

i am rewatching shadow & bone bc, once again, i am a parody of myself, and i really am so fond of Mal in the show, i am deeply nervous about how he’ll be written in s2 lol. not as nervous about almost everyone else - i say ALMOST bc i was not impressed with the way Jesper & Nina weren’t shown to be bisexual, like, at all, & while i think it was just clumsy writing & not malice (the same as the clumsy way they wrote Alina’s race), that doesn’t mean it’ll get better lol. also pls understand i spend half my time shitting on the darklng, ben barnes does an excellent job reminding me why i hate that bitch okayyyy

Mal already knows that Alina’s tent with the other cartographers was moved, and knows where it moved. We first see him fighting but seems like he got there, immediately attempted to find Alina, figured out she had been moved and was wandering around, then said fuck it she’ll find me or i’ll find out she got thrown in lock up again, and decided to go beat someone up so he could show off his kruge in front of her lmao

Alina is interested in the grisha. she’s smiling and curious, clearly thinks Zoya looks cool af (she’s right, Zoya is cool af). Mal spends the entire time frowning at them lol. Could be bc a grisha just crashed his party, could be mal’s general dislike of grisha and the upper class. it’s very funny either way that he just Refuses to smile until Alina distracts him

Alina experiencing A Racism but still thinking quick enough so her team can eat makes me emo but also Mal immediately being like “time to commit some crimes” every single time someone is racist to Alina is so great, get u a real man like Mal

Racism is done very messily in the show and i’m hoping it improves bc like - Zoya is insulated from most racism due to her status, but we still get that comment about “YOU from Novokribirsk?” comment from another Grisha, which seemed like a pretty obvious slight at her being Suli. Alina experiences racism everywhere she goes from nearly everyone she meets - random cooks, cartographers, servants, Zoya, and the Darkling himself. Even Genya sort of brushes off the comment about her eyes as like, typical bullying and not something very different & much more insidious. Mal looks uncomfortable at the anti Shu Han propaganda & I think that’s it? Which feels weird bc he doesn’t have the class protection Zoya has, but maybe he doesn’t *look Suli* culturally the way Zoya and Inej clearly do. Or are Mal AND Alina both supposed to be Shu Han? We know from Inej and Nina (and maybe Zoya, idk, i never read king of scars bc i would have to acknowledge Matthias & David’s deaths and I refuse) that the Suli are still mistreated on a legal level in addition to social, but are maybe treated marginally better than the Shu that live in Ravka, bc Ravka is in an active war against Shu Han. Is that the difference in what Mal experienced vs what Alina does? lol or i’m overthinking something that clearly wasn’t thought out very well before they put it in the show. I just like. Do Not think Mal is meant to be a white Ravkan, firstly bc Archie isn’t a white brit, and secondly because - look at him aksjdjd that is not a man that can really pass for white. I hope they handle Alina’s background better, especially since she’ll be interacting with other Shu characters, in s2 but i also want an explanation for Mal’s background!!!

I do think it’s funny that the sickness grisha get if they don’t use their powers is very informed in the show. Mal makes a few comments about Alina being sick all the time but she doesn’t actually look or act sick at any point in the show aksksk

Mal is so strong, like the dude is fuckin ripped, a fucking volcra tries to rip Alina away and he’s just like “yeah i can take this bitch with one hand” aksjsj

I feel bad for that lil blond boy that clearly has a thing for Alina lmao he really tries to stick up for her and she does not even notice a little bit and then he dies bc West Ravka is like “anyways don’t get captured even tho we’re at war with half the world and you have no resources, crew, or family over here” ya, they’re way better than Old Ravka smh (Zlatan is just as big of a bitch as the king and darklng dammit)

Interesting that Zoya only gets shitty with Alina after both the Darklng & Mal clearly choose her over Zoya. Mal she probably doesn’t gaf about, but it definitely stung her pride that she can’t even pull an orphan from Keramzin but Alina can. Before that tho, even if she’s thrown by Alina, she clearly sees Alina as One Of Us. She even looks visibly annoyed when everyone starts laughing at Alina and her “i’m a mapmaker” response & seems to pick up on the implied racism of the “what are you” question. It’s an annoying response that after being rejected, Zoya uses that racism against Alina to put her in her place but like…I guess it’s not wildly ooc? bleh.

Ivan and Fedyor purposefully ignoring the Shu Of It All when talking about power and privilege is 100% why Alina takes so long to trust the grisha, and so easily turns against the Darklng imo. For all they understand the danger of being Grisha, for all Ivan wants to lecture Alina about her privilege at dinner, none of them even bother to understand what it’s like now, right now, for the poor of Ravka. You serve in the army & let the Darklng indoctrinate you with his nonsense, or you flee like the mother in the first episode does, taking your chances with the slavers & the volcra & the Fjerdans. There are no good choices for the grisha, no good choices for the non grisha peasantry, and Alina’s entire existence, from the never ending racism she experiences, to the death and starvation she’s surrounded by, is a constant reminder how few choices that exist no matter if you’re grisha or not.

So like, most of the bad guys have Weird Foreign Accents and I dislike it. All the Ravkans should have Russian accents but it’s only Fedyor & a few mean servants that do. The Fjerdans all have accents. Pekka has an accent. Everyone else is just a brit, including people in Kerch, even tho they don’t even speak the same language as the Ravkans do, they speak Kerch! Why does Kaz not have some country bumpkin accent dammit

“When our closest friend is in trouble, we do foolish things.” Smash cut to Kaz doing the Dumbest shit in an attempt to protect Inej from Heleen l m a o it’s not one whipped bitch in this show it’s two (it’s three actually, Matthias just hasn’t shown up yet lmao)

When Mal & Alina are both envisioning each other & reach out to hold the others’ hand, hundreds of miles away but desperate for comfort, THAT was the moment i fell for them. Archie & Jessie are just so Powerful okay aksjdjd

feels more obvious in retrospect that he’s not trying to train her to do anything but answer to him. he doesn’t even bother preparing her for the king bc he knows he can amplify her powers, so long as she’s not fighting him.

I do not buy Baghra’s insistence that Alina’s feelings for Mal hold her back. She’s able to summon her powers when she’s angry, and Baghra takes that short cut by continuously pissing Alina off. But Alina also uses her powers whenever she thinks of protecting Mal; she protects him on the skiff & when she remembers trying to run away with him for protection, she can summon a bit of her power. It’s Alina’s compassion that gives her abilities, but Baghra has spent so much time nurturing her own bitterness, watching her son nurture his anger, it just never occurs to her that Alina’s strength comes from her desire to protect the people she loves. Alina goes from wanting solely to protect Mal to channeling her power through her anger and rejection & Baghra treats it like a win but it’s just another shortcut that clearly makes her more susceptible to the Darklng whispering in her ear, not less, and if Baghra had any goddamn sense, she would have seen that she was making her son’s job easier. But like, the darklng didn’t just come out of nowhere lmao, and you can clearly see where he gets his defeatist, manipulative, and bleak ass outlook on life from.

As a certified Matthias stan still refusing to acknowledge the end of crooked kingdom, i think it is genuinely so funny that Mal gets chest wound after gut wound after chest wound in s1 and shrugs it off, but Matthias gets shot one (1) time and dies immediately & cannot be saved by the most powerful heartrender that ever lived. leigh PLS

“you are my true north and i can see my way to you now” IM JUST.

Genya has to hurt Alina’s feelings by lying about Mal, then immediately and smoothly changes the subject to something that will make Alina laugh. She knows she has to betray Alina and she tries her hardest to soften the blow, encourages Alina to return to the blue kefta instead of going too hard towards the Darkling so she has the protection of a color and a people, warns her as best as she can to be wary of the Darklng, even while she’s helping isolate Alina from anyone who could help her escape. i’m so depressed about Genya.

Enter David and Genya loses her damn mind ansjsjdjdjd Alina is doing miracle sun summoning and Genya just watches David the whole time, who probably cannot fucking believe his luck that his weird ass boss for ONCE is letting him hang out with the meanest, coolest, smartest person in the palace instead of Ivan & Fedyor, who spend all their time flirting with each other and bullying him

Fjerda is lichrally trying to commit genocide against the grisha & Shu Han does…some jacked up shit to their grisha lol, and i did a whole post about how the Darklng is just more of the same, but so is Baghra. All their talk of looking out for Grisha, but they both treat the peasantry of Ravka as disposable. Nikolai is theeeee only valid ruler specifically bc he does think of the cost to the peasantry & to the grisha before he makes decisions (something his father and his brother also don’t do lol). And both Baghra & Aleksander allow this “us vs them” bs to permeate through their own people - no grisha healers help the first army, and Ivan reads the dead but glosses over the Otkazat'sya deaths to focus on the grisha. but this is on purpose - if you make the grisha other the Otkazat'sya, you can easily turn them against one another. neither baghra nor aleksander ever work towards like, actual freedom for the grisha by building bridges and relationships between the grisha and the Otkazat'sya, they just turn the grisha into weird, insular child soldiers.

Alina realizing she can just swing on the racists now love that for her

Mal tends to deal with his feelings for Alina bubbling to the surface by purposefully breaking the tension; closing his eyes & going to sleep when they’re thrown in the brig, cracking a joke about going to Ketterdam when he steals her food. But their convo in the woods after they’re reunited is the first time he doesn’t try it - you can almost see he wants to, when she says she cheated on the grisha test bc she didn’t want to leave him, his whole brain short circuits at what it could mean, and it’s a moment where he might have purposefully broken the tension but instead he takes a minute to think before he tries to open up abiut his own feelings - only to get derailed & heartbroken by the realization that the stag drawing wasn’t Alina trying to communicate with him, but Aleksander manipulating & isolating her. But he still doesn’t break the tension - he lets Alina hold him, and he holds her in return, & stops running from his feelings for real this time.

I do find it so funny how Aleksander sees David raising his hand to speak, initially starts to tell him to knock it off, and then realizes David will not understand why Ivan and him find it annoying & just decides to choose his battles aksjjdjd.

Also, him going through the five stages of grief when he realizes Mal & Alina are together, and overdramtigcally monologuing about the orphans of Keramzin being reunited to this random dude who has no idea wtf he’s talking about. Perfect, no notes.

Episode 7 is just very well written. All the conversations are tense, all the action is painful, all the acting is amazing. From David half in tears as he helps enslave Alina, all the anger going out of Alina when she realizes the king was raping Genya, Genya’s guilt & shame over her own hand in betraying Alina stopping her from talking even though she’s usually so composed, Mal’s helpless snarl when he says Aleksander will wish he’d killed him, even Aleksander’s inability to look Alina in the eyes because he knows she’s right to hate him it’s just that he thinks she’s a justifiable sacrifice. Meanwhile the Crows are being the most chaotic idiots ALIVE akskdkdk just perfect, excellent writing.

What i think is interesting is that Alina makes the hypocrisy argument to Genya, and it works. Genya appeals to Alina’s compassion when she admits the king has been raping her, but Alina pieces together that Aleksander placed her in front of the king to begin with. Not a soldier, just a pawn. And Genya is so struck by this argument she has no counter; she just leaves in tears. Alina tries this with Aleksander as well, to get him to see the hypocrisy in his actions - of killing the king because the king is a monster, yet using the fold as a weapon. It has the complete opposite effect because whereas Genya is aware on some level that she’s being used, Aleksander is so far removed from his own experiences as a pawn, as a target, he can’t see her point.

“all countries will answer to us. for who would oppose us now?”

means Something to me that Immediately after that nasty comment from that heartrender, Zoya sees another Suli girl (who, if we remember, someone she is friends with just called Suli trash before getting got by said Suli girl) who is about to be killed, witnesses the destruction of her home and what she will find is the death of the only person who ever loved her as a child, and makes the decision to betray the only stability she’s ever known for the glimmer of hope that Alina can offer her.

It’s also exactly what I mean when I say I hope we get an explanation for Mal’s background. In Inej’s chapters we get the sense that the Suli are a people that draw close together, even outside Ravka. Her curse on Bajan clearly hits him hard; even clearly trying to assimilate into Kerch culture, the thought that his Suli ancestors may forsake him for harming a fellow Suli really gets under his skin. So in the show, what I love is we get a small exploration of this bond that exists between all Suli as outsiders in their home countries - Zoya and Inej instinctively working together, Recognizing that bond in each other, with Inej even attempting to stop Zoya from going back to the ruins of the city, of wanting Zoya to stay with them. And Zoya, despite her pained history with her own people, despite her comments about Alina being [redacted], clearly returns those feelings. She’s so much warmer with Inej, and vice verse, then say, Jesper is with Mal (he’s not cold to Mal, he’s just Typical Jesper). The thing is - maybe you could argue Zoya and Mal kind of take a small interest in each other because they recognize the other is Suli, but Inej and Mal don’t really have that connection in the time they know each other, and Zoya and Mal are much more cordial with each other than Zoya and Inej are. OBVIOUSLY there are other factors at play. But. Whereas we get a hint of Zoya’s own complicated past, and Inej is defined by her ties to her culture, Mal doesn’t really show any of this beyond one single uncomfortable look at a Shu Han propaganda poster, and that’s likely more to do with Alina than his own background. I JUST THINK ITS WEIRD AND CLUMSY OKAY.

idek what to say about Alina’s amazing speech besides HELL YEAH THATS MY WIFE. she’s so fucking cool.

Ivan’s lil bitch ass being like “know your place” RIGHT AFTER Alina gives her “you asked WHAT I am” speech and then Jesper being like “i think the fuck not” and tossing him overboard. absolutely perfect i love that man.

Zoya looks so uncomfortable during the whole conversation by the fire. For the first time, she’s the outsider - the lone splash of color against the browns and blacks of the crows and malina. But when Zoya says she has to go back, Inej shoots up to stop her, and even Kaz attempts to dissuade her from what he thinks is no better than a suicide run. Since her childhood, Zoya has seemed alone, but just as her aunt stepped in to save her then, and the crows attempt to console her now, Zoya is never as alone as she feels.

And neither is Alina! Knowing where their stories end up going, i think it is interesting that both Zoya and Alina are very adaptable and very adept at making very loyal friends. Despite all the odds against them, with them being Suli and Shu, with Zoya being a huge bitch (which I love) and Alina constantly struggling with her own self worth, other people see just how amazing the two of them are and are willing to fight for them, with them, to be near them. Sankta Alina and the Grisha Queen. Wonderful.

[fisherrprince]

ask dump (big long)

1) ABDBHTDND YEAH THEY DID UM, they did the ”no THANK you..! etc etc BUT IM WEAK” song too! Wild how that is now. points at them hey I know those guys

2) OHHH….. THIS HITS……….. I like missio sometimes but this is a nice chorus also: Vanitas… yeah I, like, always love music recs. they can be hit or miss but it’s only fair with how much music I find and then immediately go what if I showed everyone

3) how many does he have in there now, eleven? Twelve??? He signed up for one mouse and he got eleven human children or at least nine to ten human children, two young adults, and two regular adults who aren’t going to be helpful—

4) aaaaaaaaa thank you!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

5) MMM I haven’t thought extensively about cowboys for a while… it’s been mostly space up here for now, haha. I like my space murder. But that’s not to say I haven’t given them some fond passing thoughts! Two bros sitting in a river 5 feet apart cos they’re covered in mud and smell awful and one of them is very loudly blaming the other for the plan that involved hiding behind a barn (actually the last thing I wrote in my notes is a mini totally unfinished drabble of hiding in Lea’s bar but the “great hiding place” Lea has is in his floor)

6) gosh I Have to wonder if it’s a case of destiny/universal “the nature of humanity is that every so often someone invents homestuck again” or if we just, like, had common knowledge of the book of prophecies. Or not even the Book, maybe, I have to assume that knowledge/observance of the Foretellers phased out pretty quickly, but prophecies left unfulfilled would linger for generations probably. Or maybe they’re even old stories, a tale of seven masters of the past drawn in to a chess game, or the game based on the old fairytales, or the numbers 7 and 13 are ingrained in local culture … see, because obviously Xehanort implies that this prophecy/old masters stuff ISNT common knowledge, but Eraqus CERTAINLY knows about it and it’s in all the architecture/local myths… ok but then also, if we’re to take the opening chess game as more than just clever symbolic narrative bookends, everyone’s symbols ARE right there. I just kind of registered that’s probably what you were talking about. In which case our questions are still there, how much did the common populace know and how much did eraqus know? Did he like, end up with three apprentices who had very distinct chess symbols as keychains and go uh oh john or what—

hey why’d you do this to me. I’m a tired college student in scala on my sixth response paper about the prophetic legitimacy of foreordained keybearers versus the self-imposed creation of destiny as following common legend and I’m arguing with some guy named Einar about how you can’t just fake a prophetic fulfillment by claiming to be the Crown piece in chess. You can’t just KIN A CHESSPIECE, Einar.

7) ABGDJGD TY..!!! To be honest they also live in my head rent-free! Some of them need to start paying rent because I’m supposed to be in school getting Better at storyboarding—

8) hard same hey thats just bc magnet is uhhhh. The best spell? Aside from mine spells

9) SEE AGAIN I DONT KNOW bc for one Sora obviously isn’t ENTIRELY unique, if he’s able to be diagnosed so quickly, but this “holding your nobody and two to four other people in there” kind of thing probably has never been seen before. But for another, Roxas and Xion have copied a keyblade. Just like — a keyblade? Copied entirely? Wild.

anyways keyblade manifestation is a mystery to me and I’d love to see it explored because what we know the Lore is, is this: they were fashioned after the likeness of the x-blade. They can be bequeathed to others (shown to not necessarily mean that exact keyblade is passed down, probably this means the ability to wield can be bequeathed). They can be WILLFULLY given. They come from the heart, they are not welded out of steel. They are…. questionably sentient, or maybe just sapient, or somehow are picky about who holds them. Side note khwiki is telling me things I Did not know about the whereabouts of Ven’s heart during 358 and also the ability to wield two which requires more than one heart obvi but which is named synch blade??? always question the wiki but these have sources. Anyways. Keychains can swap their forms so they have a Base and Custom Skins mode. There are three kinds, Light (common), Darkness (Michael mouse??? Not his bbs one the rod one which I GUESS is a counterpa Iiiiii am getting off trackaaaaa), and Heart (which I’m guessing is just the x-blade, maybe the gayblade, and the kh1 keyblade of heart??). Um. What was my point here. OH yeah I was just gonna say Bro Wild. This is completely a mystery to me. Does every keykid’s base form keyblade look different, and we were all just given cool keychains? Are there some kids who melded unique keychains? If I were connecting dots wildly and with reckless abandon I’d say yeah and also you cannot just suddenly one day wield one, you HAVE to be bequeathed, but as soon as that happens it sparks the creation of your own personal heart sword. Every keyblade is manifested independently — those wielding a family keyblade have the ability to summon their own, if necessary, but the family sword is taking up that space in their heart and theyd have to get used to making their own. since, it seems, keyblades (summoned) will die and solidify if their bearer dies, but keyblades (unsummoned) will either disappear or summon themselves somewhere else and retain a small piece of your… essence. A legacy keyblade, I feel, would be a little something like feeling every past Avatar and you are the avatar, but you can’t talk to them. They’re there tho. Also I think that having an exceptionally strong heart would be not only a moral requirement for ensuring the keyblade’s duty is upheld, but also a physical requirement! youre carving out a bit of your heart to make room for a sword. Weak hearts should not do that even if they want to.

aye… how was that longer than the scala answer? You got me on tangents again in these essays I

10 (submission from licilou22)

NGDBFDBFSHGDHFDHGDA 😎👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼👉🏼 WHEEZING

[sunder-soul]

OK WOWWW

I've been meaning to write again, and I agree with you on your opinion of Tom. Personally, after researching on psychopaths a fair bit (for one of my own OCs), I feel that—at surface level—Tom can be classified as one. But nevermind that now, bc I absolutely LOVE the way you write him.

Which brings me to...

WHITE DOVE O.M.G.

KING YOU ARE A BLOODY GENIUS ISTG. Part 6 was so damn well written. Like hOw?? I can't even properly write while sober, never mind drunk. You are so so talented, and I can't wait for the next fic you post (and maybe(?) a sequel?? )

The imagery of Tom just pleading and breaking down was just... pure fucking perfection (and I mean that in the best way possible lol). Keep writing King! You're amazing at it that's for sure. :)

Two-part super long response discussing Tom Riddle and psychopathy beneath the line!!!!

But also omg thank u for your lovely compliments on white dove, I really really loved writing that series so it's super gratifying to get all the positive feedback!!!! Hell yeah I'm geared for a sequel and it's just absolutely full of my fave fanfic tropes I am ready to self-indulge once more.

Pt. 1. I don't see any issue with headcanoning Tom as having a sociopathy/psychopathy personality disorder, I just really dislike when people don't do what you have done and don't actually research what that actually means. I think general media has been 'fascinated' by 'psychopaths' for the last few decades and have created a really weird cultural conceptualisation of what someone with that disorder looks like/acts like.

People will have Tom committing genuinely horrific acts of violence for his own pleasure, fucking with people for fun, and engaging in lots of different taboo kinks and then explain it by simply being like 'he's a psychopath' and it's like oh... 😬

Idk I find that specific trope lazy in terms of story-telling, shallow in terms of character interpretation, and damaging in terms of real-life consequences for normal ass people with personality disorders.

Pt. 2. All that being said, I (personally) disagree with you in terms of Tom being able to be classified psychopathic!

I'm aware that some people distinguish between 'primary' psychopaths (those with genetic predisposition) and 'secondary' psychopaths (those who develop the disorder from environmental factors, sometimes called sociopaths) though it should be noted that this distinction isn't really agreed upon across the field and is under debate lol. But I feel the need to address both since I'll probs get anons "calling me out" me if I don't haha.

Premeditation before acts of violence, severely diminished emotional responses, and a lack of anxiety are traits characterised to primary psychopathy, and at first glance I can kind of see a case for Tom here. But... some of Tom's/Voldemort's biggest character beats revolve around him being impulsive, hyper-emotional, and extremely reactionary (like just killing an entire room of his own followers and goblins after finding out Harry knows abt the Horcruxes, or freaking out about the prophecy and murdering the Potters for that matter, or even duelling with Dumbledore in the Ministry etc. etc.).

Like I know he can be super calculating and set up long-arching plans and shit, but I've never really read Tom as being that 'premeditated' in what he does. He's ambitious, yeah, but to me I see him setting his eyes on a goal and doing everything he possibly can to reach that goal in a sort of perfectionist-driven, covetous desperation where if he just pushes long enough and hard enough and far enough, he'll prove that he can do fucking anything and everything in spite of everyone else and fuck everyone who said he couldn't - rather than this detached, cool, logical premeditative flow-chart of decisions.

On the other hand, the reasoning behind Tom having secondary psychopathy reads as more logical for the character for me - being an orphan in war-time England and having to essentially self-prioritise to the absolute extreme to survive could all be strong environmental stressors that would result in learned lack of empathy. Crimes committed by those with secondary psychopathy are also (apparently) more emotionally driven, more reactionary, and more impulsive. But.... Tom does still set up these long-arching plans, ya know? He's not acting solely on impulse, and he's also still very emotional outside of his acts of violence. Plus he's also never struck me as particularly anxious (which is a trait often used to distinguish secondary psychopathy). He's both impulsive and premeditated at times, just like how most ppl act both impulsively and premeditated at times.

The point I'm trying to make, lol, is that I think it's a misread of the character to consider him 'unemotional' or detached from others bc I've always thought of him as like the most extremely emotional character in the whole series. Canon demonstrates him to be highly emotional but just very very controlled/performative most of the time. He's shown to have bouts of hugely expressive rage, and he acts very vindictively which suggesting he takes things super personally, but he's mostly able to hide these emotions around people he doesn't trust. This might make him manipulative but it does not make him psychopathic/sociopathic.

In summary, I don't read Tom as having a personality disorder, I read him as being selfish, jealous, emotional, egotistical, covetous, self-aggrandising, suspicious, and manipulative. He's a dick, your honour.

[rickriordanfandam]

opinions on riordanverse ; my edition

a lot of people have been doing this so i decided why not right. probably gna lose some followers or smth but anyways. pls respect my opinions! if u disagree, thats fine, but please be polite. unless any of my opinions strikes u as morally wrong then pls point it out to me respectfully. thanks!

- i actually liked drew. im so sorry to everyone who hates her but full offence, why. think about it this way ok, first of all drew became hc because silena died. silena was the traitor, the one who betrayed chb, yet after she died campers celebrated her as a hero? and then drew suddenly has to replace her and live up to idk that legacy she left behind,, when all of a sudden this girl named piper swoops in and takes her place. idk abt u but i wld be salty abt that too. not only that, but as an asian, the chances of drew having faced racism/bullying as a child is pretty high (she studies at brooklyn academy). which means that when she finds out shes a demigod, and arrives at chb where most of the campers are white (this is an assumption btw), she’d obviously be scared of being bullied for her skin color right?? so the first thing she wld do before the campers get to bully her is to bully them before they can do so. (sentence structure here is wack i apologize) ofc this might not even have happened, drew could have had a perfect childhood && was a b1tch for no reason, BUT EVEN THEN HER ROLE AS A BULLY WAS PRETTY VITAL BECAUSE THAT FURTHER SHOWED THE CONTRAST BETWEEN HER AND PIPER,, HIGHLIGHTING PIPER AS A HERO//GOOD CHARACTER,, AND THEREFORE MAKING READERS LIKE PIPER MORE. anyway stop hating on drew please. ALSO WHY IS THIS SO LONGA SDFJHG

- jason isnt bland, the fandom just kinda erased his backstory (thanks to @pjohoo-memes for the phrasing lol)

- reynabeth wouldnt have lasted/would have broken up several times. idk i just see them as two extremely powerful characters who have firm opinions and will definitely clash at some point. in a platonic relationship,, i can see them as really good friends but as lovers? idk i just think theyll break up

- PIPABETH

- i dont really like jercy,, i see them as better friends than lovers. also idt jason and percy were that close..?

- the dam and not my type jokes are srsly cringey and were never funny. ik that seems hypocritical since my username literally makes use of the dam joke but honestly i dont actually like the joke. its not funny to me and has never been funny

- the seven were not best friends. they definitely argued,, and honestly probably werent as close as the fandom makes them seem. like ure dumped with 6 other people, out of which u only know a few. my introverted ass would have jumped off the argo 2 quicker than leo valdez could bomb camp jupiter up. also leo was a dick to frank. so what if frank is bigger sized?? thats not a valid reason to tease him

- the fandom needs to stop hating on octavian while worshipping luke. if u hate luke and u say u hate octavian too, then okay. but if u tell me ure a luke stan but u despise octavian?? imma disagree w u. luke was worse than octavian im sorry. first of all, octavian being a dick was kinda justified. hes been after the praetor position for so long, and everyone keeps saying to “wait for jason” when suddenly this dude, whos a son of NEPTUNE (neptune wasnt liked much by romans), and the camp decides to make him praetor?? dude i would be pissed off big time. and then afterwards, he finds out that greek demigods are real and the dude they made praetor is greek. AND THEN GREEK DEMIGODS COME TO CJ AND ONE OF THEM BOMB IT UP?? octavian has been told all his life that greeks are scum and this dude called leo valdez attacks cj. sure it was an accident, but did octavian know that? no. so it was honestly justified that he was such a salty prick im just saying. also some of yall be hating on octavian for cutting a teddy bear open and thats the funniest shit ive ever heard i swear 

- luke didnt go to elysium

- travis and connor stoll r way too underrated. the two have been head counselors of the hermes cabin since luke was revealed as a traitor, can u imagine the stress? luke, the person they probably looked up to as a brother, betrayed them. and they didnt even have time to process this when they were  thrown the roles of being hcs. that would have been so stressful and i would probably have broken down if i were them. the stoll brothers taking turns to wake up at ungodly hours because a new camper is crying and homesick and terrified, the stoll brothers having to comfort and take care of new campers, having to deal with the amount of people in that cramped space because not enough campers are being claimed fast enough. having to resolve issues between campers in the hermes cabin all the time. the stolls arent just comedic relief, and we need to stop treating them as such

- tratie shldve been canon idc idc

- demigods of the demeter cabin arent talked about enough and i love the fact that meg was demeters kid. like she isnt the child of one of the big three yet shes so powerful.

- we need to hype clarisse up more her character arc was phucking amazing 

- rachel is overhated. sis found out greek gods exist and regularly come down to earth to fuck around and went “ok cool”. queen shit behavior methinks

- the floor 19 crew of mcga is srsly underrated. like do u even remember halfborn gunderson, mallory keen, tj, etc??? bc i feel like we only remember samirah, magnus, alex, and sometimes blitz and hearthstone

- sadie (tkc) was kinda annoying at first. i like her more now tho but i rmb not liking her for a phat while

- tkc and mcga need more love

- carter kane and jason grace arent boring. theyre just really sweet boys who are too good for this world and yes yes yes 

- hazel and frank (especially frank) need to be hyped up more. i hardly ever see anything about them. also yall seem to forget that frank was literally made praetor and that even hecate admired hazel and was willing to fight beside her because of how powerful she was

- frazels age gap is kinda sketch but i still think theyre really cute

- nico definitely had trauma from going to tartarus on his own

- GROVER IS PERCYS BEST FRIEND

- annabeth isnt smarter than leo but neither is leo smarter than annabeth. ive seen a lot of discussions about who is smarter and heres my hot take on it: neither. theyre equally smart, just in different ways. leos a genius mathematically speaking. he has no issues solving math problems meant for people much, much older than him. annabeth on the otherhand, is great at strategies etc. she can make an army of 1000 more powerful than the enemy, even if theyre outnumbered. so in my opinion, both are equally as smart//u cant compare their intelligence, because their talents lie in two different areas.

- while i do agree rick riordan isnt a god and that hes bound to make mistakes,, AND that hes given us a lot of representation,, if the representation offends the people its sposed to represent, then theres a problem. im talking about piper as a poc and wearing feathers in her hair. im not a poc, so i cant speak for them on whether or not its wrong, because i dont know either. HOWEVER, i have seen multiple posts BY pocs talking about how they didnt really like rick’s representation of piper, and thats an issue. pocs have been and are still oppressed and discriminated against by many. as a white cis man, we cant really blame him for not knowing (tho he could have done a research,, asked some pocs,, idk), but by representing pocs in that manner, hes influencing impressionable kids/teens into thinking “oh pocs wear feathers in their hair all the time” etc, which isnt true. the pjo/hoo series is extremely successful, and kids who read the books will probably start forming inaccurate opinions on pocs. the amount of fan art that depicts piper with feathers in her hair dont help either. “but rick said so in the books, so its canon” yeah well rick isnt a god and he can get some things wrong at times. im not saying we should cancel him, im saying we should start educating ourselves and not spread false info like pocs wearing feathers in their hair all the time. also that snake song shit where she sang Summertime was just- yeah. bc heres the thing you can be racist, and still include minorities, but portray them in a racist way. And even then, ignorance isn't a thing to admire. Getting those facts wrong still has a major impact. It continues to perpetuate racist stereotypes.

“ With the feather thing, I looked it up myself; it takes less than five minutes to figure out that Cherokees don't braid feathers into their hair. I didn't grow up in the country where my parents are from. I have many other first/second generation American friends who have also been through that, with a bit of a disconnect from their culture. But something that most of us have in common is that when we didn't know something, and when our parents weren't that big of a help, we looked it up. We sought out resources online and through other people from our culture to be able to connect more with where we came from. Some of that took a Google search. So I find it hard to believe that Piper, a girl who Rick's trying to portray as someone who is attempting to connect with her culture and is totally against racist stereotypes, wouldn't know that eagle feathers aren't supposed to be braided into your hair casually. She may be disconnected from her culture, but she's also shown to want to connect back to it. Piper wouldn't be casually braiding feathers into her hair while also telling off people for being racist. It makes no sense.” - reddit thread (down below) 

for those of yall who wanna know more please please read this, it has a lot of things i wanna add in here : https://www.reddit.com/r/camphalfblood/comments/gy3gl2/piper_mcleans_portrayal_is_innacurate/ 

as well as https://finding-my-culture.tumblr.com/post/189422373260/maxie-ratties-and-cattie-finding-my-culture 

i will be posting screenshots of these in future posts so if ure viewing this on ig and u dont have tumblr,, dont worry 

- the fact that most of the strong female characters in the series refuse to be “girly”, and ngl i dont really like that. just because ure girly doesnt mean u cant be strong. 

- piper would have been a great way for him to start making the strong characters act girlier, but instead he went with the “I’m not like other girls” trope which is quite obnoxious to hear constantly, and I don’t think it’s necessarily great for younger girls to read that idea growing up.  the closest we've ever had to a strong female character who was also into "girly" things was Silena. when I was younger I admired Piper's "I'm not like other girls" thing, but then I got older and realized that the whole mentality of "not like other girls" is super obnoxious, and a little bit toxic

i have a heck load more that i cant rmb rn but yeah feel free to add more 

[scaramoon]

OKAY SO LORE I’M TYPING THIS IN MY NOTES APP AS I’M WATCHING THE STREAM TO GIVE YOU THE FULL EXPERIENCE AND TO MAKE SURE I DONT MISS TO TELL YOU ANYTHING

there’s someone playing piano?? like straight up video of someone at a piano,,,,i think it’s yu-peng chen!! the song he’s playing is so pretty :( THEY HAVE A WHOLE INAZUMA THEMED SET HE’S PLAYING IN?? THERES AN ACTUAL INAZUMA ARCHON STATUE IN THE BACKGROUND AND EVERYTHING??

the stream is in chinese!! with subtitles!!

it will be 2.0 AND inazuma is now officially confirmed!!

now there’s a trailer! ITS ALL SO PRETTY AND OMG THE VOICE ACTORS?? GOROU AND THOMA WERE SHOWN!! oh my god the pyro cube?? looks so?? scary?? AAAAH THOMA THOMA THOMA??? STOOD NEXT TO AETHER?? IM SCREAMING rn they’re shaking ayaka!! and now yoimiya!! her voice actor is so cute i’m- SAYUUUU!!!! AGHH SHES SO CUTE BYE GOROU GORIU GORIU GOROU AAAAHHH HE EAS THERE HE WAS THERE AAAAAH

FIRST CODE: AS6BQKLY9GLD

now they’re back to the set!! they’re introducing some of the developers, right now there’s aquaria who’s the combat designer in genshin and rn they’re talking about the stages and joys of development and how the process works,,,i actually like this part!! it’s nice to see the people working on a game i’m so fond of talk so passionately about their thoughts while they’re working on it :> he said everyone at mihoyo loves the game as much as we do and that it’s all of us together in teyvat and i went 🥺 ngl

now he’s talking about inazuma and how different it was than mondstadt or liyue and how different the challenges there were! they put a lot of thought into the electro aspect of inazuma as well as the “eternity” part of it. there will be more dev talk later and now they’re just announcing the fan art contest that starts today

now they had a set change and there’s a different dev, and now they’re talking about the cultural and design aspects of inazuma! they say they love to see fan theories and that they often leave little clues in the game and that it brings them joy and motivation when people find and decipher them. they’re talking about the tea house now and the shiba inu that owns it; they hope players can discover all the little details the writers and designers put all over inazuma,,THEY JUST DRANK IN SYNC BC THEY STARTED TALKING ABOUT UNIFORMITY IN INAZUMA IM SOBBING,,,,ok wait it’s actually rlly interesting bc they’re talking about how they made sure every single detail in inazuma contributes/reflects the story and the “electro archon strives for eternity” story i’m- they’re currently talking about the real life inspiration they had, for example how the sacred sakura tree came to be and what it means

now they’re showing character combat (?) trailers!! ayaka is first, now yoimiya!! they’re actually showing the pyro cube in yoimiya’s!! THEYRE SHOWING SAYUUU MY BBY SHES SO CUTE they’re joking about how genshin players have been waiting for ayaka since the beginning of the game lmaooo bye 😭 they’re talking about the new characters now, what kind of people they are, what to expect from them and what their character traits are!! ayaka is elegant but also sweet and cute, yoimiya is creative and somewhat childish, enthusiastic and gets along with everyone, sayu sleeps a lot to grow taller and is a very well trained tiny ninja

we’re getting two new story chapters, act I and act II as well as ayaka’s and yoimiya’s story quests!!

THEYRE TALKING ABOUT THOMA, he’s observant apparently and has a very mysterious character!! they’re also talking about sara and kokomi AAHHHH GOROU GOROU!! they didn’t say much about him other than that he’s very dependable and fierce in battle!! they also mentioned yae sakura!!

SECOND CODE; GBNA9J5H9Y4H

another scene change and another dev, now it’s cissie!! she’s the one designing the inazuma map/landscape creator and they’ll be talking about geological design and the scenery of inazuma since it’s a archipelago as well!! she’s talking about the different uses of colour and shapes and how they’re using them to impact the player’s gaming experience; she also said that they tried to pay homage to classic ghibli movies with some of the design choices they made!

rn they’re showing “the shimmering voyage” which is the 1.0 ost w 68 songs which will me available soon!! now they’re talking to yu-peng chen THEY HAD THE LONDON SYMPHONIC THEATRE RECORD THE MONDSTADT SOUNDTRACK, THE SHANGHAI ONE THE ONE FOR LIYUE AND NOW THEY ASKED THE ONE IN TOKYO TO DO THE ONE FOR INAZUMA?? HELLOO?? they pay attention to the smallest details i swear i respect that so much wow

THE THEATRE MECHANICS EVENT IS COMING BACK IN INAZUMA!! we’re getting gardening for our tea pot too!! new enemies called “ruin senitel (?)” which is essentially a worm version of the ruin guard?? it looks weird and scary ngl,,,we get new fatui enemies, “the mirror maiden” as well as normal human enemies in inazuma, dressed like samurais,,

ayaka’s banner is first, then yoimiya & sayu,,,we get 2 new 5 star weapons as well 5 new craftable inazuma weapons. we get 2 new artifacts sets, emblem of severed gate and shimenawas remembrance, we get the ability to choose an artifact by sacrificing 3 5 star artifacts and creating an artifact strongbox; new system for the weapon banner: you pick which of the 5 star weapon you want and if you don’t get it, you get “fate points” and with those you can choose the one you want!

THIRD CODE: LS6T4L9ZZ7TH

and that was it!! yu-peng chen is playing the piano again as a farewell, i guess

AHH TYSM BBY ALL THE KISSES FOR YOU 😞🙏

i really like how much detail they put into it though :( like i’m ngl i am an impatient little shit but fr its so nice to know the devs love it as much as we do, i’ll gladly wait knowing they put so much detail in it :(

ALSO SJDJFJ kazuha and sayu sleeping on warm rocks together send tweet side note: big brother kazuha is v sweet me thinks, they’re related now i said so

i saw some stuff about thoma when i opened twitter a second ago and people are lowkey pressed that their characterizations of him are wrong 😞 that’s what they get for saying he got downgraded 😁

also,,, ruin sential,, y’know the “upgrade, go back, I SAID GO BACK” meme ?? that’s me w ruin guards, hunters, and graders so 😃 i stg if that thing can go underground i’m gonna cry. OH ALSO i heard about the garden thing a while ago and i don’t remember a lot of what was said but it’s really cool >:)

pov you’re me using kazuha to fight the samurais bc i think it’s funny

OOH WAIT THE ARTIFACT THING SOUNDS COOL THOUGH :0 do we just get to pick what type it is, or do sub stats and stuff carry over/give you a higher chance of getting certain sub stats? either way i’m v happy about that i have so much maiden stuff and uh. no one to put it on :”)

the weapon banner thing sounds cool too :> i don’t have a five star weapon bc i’m scared to waste primos but mayhaps if i can choose... >:)

also shout out to yu-peng chen for being amazing, thought one of the mondstadt songs would be easy to play and i was Very Wrong

[morwensteelsheen]

WIP wednesday thoughts:

willow cabin is utterly fucked because i changed my intended ~moral~ halfway through and now im stuck trying to integrate this shitty political intrigue plot into what should’ve been a more interesting story about éowyn adapting to life in gondor. hugely fucking annoyed by it and just totally unsure how to proceed. i could significantly increase the chapter count, but im worried that because the initial framing device was this bandits shit that closing out that plot and then still going for ages afterwards would be really shitty? i honestly don’t know, it’s so difficult. really i just need someone to read my outline and tell me if im being a dumb twat about it lol

meanwhile I know exactly where I want to go with AFTA but for some unaccountable reason im stressed that my ass is gonna get roasted for the direction i want to take it in. it’s all based in both tolkien’s personal politics and (some) historical precedent, but im worried people are gonna see it as a marysue-ification? but also im hoping to do sthg of a sequel to afta to practice the political intrigue writing so i don’t make the same mistakes i did in wc, and to do that it would require this specific set up in AFTA. im gonna put my AFTA thing under the cut so don’t click read more unless you’re gucci with potential AFTA spoilers!!

this royal affair au is definitely gonna get published at some point but im trying to decide if i want to do ~tasteful~ smut that drives a longer narrative or if im really just gonna do a whole 3,000 word build up to some run of the mill, old fashioned PWP lmao

okay so i have spent a Lot of time thinking about what impact i think éowyn and faramir would have on each other in a pre-ring war setting, and the honest to god conclusion ive come to is that they would somewhat inadvertently egg on each other’s (wildly divergent) idealism.

faramir’s an idealist politically in ways that, as Big D rightly points out, are not super productive in a wartime scenario. but so far as im concerned, the war doesn’t feel as warlike until they have to blow the bridge at osgiliath. until that point, there’s not really anything to say that faramir’s whole throwback optimism isn’t a perfectly justifiable position to have.

but what that idealism is and how it manifests are two really important considerations. the crux of his idealistic politics is that he looks at númenor and sees something valuable in it, and looks at gondor and sees a lot that he thinks is fucked up. outside of articulating a general angst towards the glory hunting, it’s not like he’s spending time talking about his specific policy prescriptions. however, we do know a few things that can guide us to a more coherent reconstruction of his politics:

he’s pretty rigidly hierarchical (when it’s convenient for him). as seen in: him basically telling sam to fuck off and stay in his lane in WOTW, and in how and when he chooses to refer to his father as ‘father’ vs ‘my lord’ or ‘lord of the city’ in the aftermath of the osgiliath retreat and then before he gets his ass sent back there. i don’t want to go into too much detail here but if i go with this i’ll definitely justify it more thoroughly in the footnotes.

so we’ve got faramir’s emphasis on hierarchy and his occasional (when convenient) belief that the upper echelons of a hierarchy are there because they’re intellectually and/or morally better. or, maybe to remove the causation from that instance, because they are in those upper echelons, they have an obligation to be more morally/intellectually upstanding, and the people in the structure below them have an obligation to show deference. unless you’re faramir and you’re dealing with denethor in which case that all goes out the window. classic.

we know there is some sort of nascent pseudo-democratic tradition of popular sovereignty in gondor. we know this because faramir asks the masses at aragorn’s coronation if they’ll accept him as king. faramir is a lot of things, but he is certainly not a progressive political radical, and i cannot imagine any situation in which he cooked up that rigmarole himself. that then implies to me that it’s building on some sort of political/cultural expectation in gondor. so: some sort of relationship to popular legitimacy. the people of gondor are subjects, but perhaps not as totally passive and unconsidered in the power structure as we might assume given the comparability to feudal europe/asia.

given those two things, i want to use AFTA to argue:

that faramir, in looking to assign blame for the faults he sees in gondor, would not directly assign blame to the lower classes, but rather to the aristocracy, because he will have seen them as failing in their moral obligations to the people they rule over. this is not to say that he isn’t fucked off about The People™ valorising war, but i think he’d take the position that they couldn’t possibly be expected to form those values and opinions of their own volition, and the fault lies in their rules. faramir: not gramscian.

faramir lacks any power that is non-military, and even that is of questionable worth because the rangers seem to be fairly distinct to the general structure of the army, and are not exactly a huge force.

faramir lacking any political power isn’t necessarily a huge concern for him (as in, he’s not actively trying to change that), because he knows he’s not going to lead a moral revolution and isn’t interested in taking up the responsibilities having political capital would engender because he’s stuck dealing with this war, that he fucking hates btw has he mentioned that he hates it?

however, given that he is apparently eminently versed in lore and scholarship, he is probably keenly aware that there is this incipient notion of popular legitimacy somewhere in gondor’s culture. it’s not, for most of his life, knowledge that actually does anything for him, but it is there.

éowyn, meanwhile, doesn’t really have many strong political convictions (yet). not because she’s a dumbass or whatever, but because she looks at court politics as kind of a farce, and doesn’t believe that power legitimately emanates from anywhere that isn’t a Big Fucking Army. and why, strictly speaking, would she not think that? the event that brought about the creation of her kingdom was not careful, soft spoken negotiation, it was her ancestors being in the right place at the right time with a Big Fucking Army.

and the internal politics of the Riddermark actually seem to be fairly stable, all things considered. i sincerely doubt that Théoden or Théodred are having to negotiate complex politicking in the way Denethor and Boromir are. so where, then, would éowyn see that kind of political behaviour outside gondor? with gríma.

éowyn, then, will see the immediate contrast between gríma (backroom dealer, manipulator extraordinaire) and théoden (owner of Big Fucking Army). and gríma goes and fucking wins that fight. that forces éowyn to confront the fact that, jesus christ, maybe there are different types of power.

at the same time, she’s going to be in minas tirith and needing to cover for théoden letting his shit get wrecked. not just because she’s prideful, which of course she is, but because if denethor/gondor think that théoden is too weak to hold up his end of the bargain, why would they ever go help the Mark? éowyn, seeing that théoden’s f-f-fucked, knows that there’s a very very good chance the Mark will need help.

against her feelings about courtly politics, she starts to accept that she’s going to need to do something to get power in gondor. not anything substantial, it’s not like she’s trying to overthrow anybody, but enough that when push comes to shove she can force denethor to help out the Mark (if he doesn’t do so willingly).

but, as ive sort of already shown in AFTA, she’s a bit of a dogshit diplomat. good for a little big-brawny-enforcer stuff, but not exactly brimming with cultural sensitivity. by the time she realises théoden + the Mark are fucked, she’ll have burnt quite a few bridges with the gondorrim nobles, and it’s not like she’s the sort of person to go running cap-in-hand begging for mercy.

so: she has to look elsewhere. and wow! a chance for faramir to do his favourite thing — talk about his opinions! and by god, his weird idealistic politics are… actually kind of helpful? because he’s like, look, you’re never gonna be a diplomat, but there are other ways of consolidating power. and one of those ways is by appealing to The People™. so why not work that angle?

and actually, we know that this is a viable route for éowyn because hama, in arguing for her to take up the mantle of théoden’s heir when théoden and éomer fuck off to helm’s deep, basically says that The People™ love her and would have willingly chosen her to lead them.

we also know, based on faramir’s middle men speech, that the people of gondor and the mark have grown alike in nature. not totally unreasonable to then think that the people of gondor would take to her like the people of the mark did.

éowyn, then, in various ways begins to try to win over the people of minas tirith. i need to do a little more research on this bc what ive got on the practicalities of that so far are a bit, uhhh, sketchy, but the least jargony way to describe this is to point to when natalie dormer’s character in GOT gets out of the carriage to go hug and kiss some babies. (marc bloch, eat your heart out)

this would later segue into a potential sequel where, while trying to secure the way for aragorn’s coronation, éowyn actually plays an interesting role because she’s fallen into this incidental Diana, People’s Princess™ role and so is better positioned than almost anyone to go advocate on his behalf. wow! cool! éowyn getting to be politically useful in more ways than just getting hitched!

so yeah. that’s how i am thinking it might play out. this would obviously have a rolling impact on the remainder of AFTA and how certain (🔥) events pan out later, but i think that building up part has to begin pretty much now, narratively. also this lets me get in a reference to “and then her heart changed, or else at last she understood it” and have it not be almost entirely about wanting to shag faramir, but actually about her gradual evolution from valorising war above all else to being like, hmm, maybe there are other ways of being powerful. which i think still largely captures the “no longer I will vie with the great riders” stuff, but more subtly and without feeling quite so… deferential, I guess? Like it’s not that she’s swapping one form of power (violence) for nothing (gardening?? healing?? tolkien accidental articulation of necropolitics??) but swapping violence for a different type of more sustainable power.

yeah. that’s the take, basically. who fucking knows.

[red-i-mean-blue]

A:TLA romantic ships part 1

yes, no one asked for my opinions, yes I will give them anyway, yes because I have decided making a bunch of meaningless decisions and arguing for them will improve my mental state, yes I watched the show all in one very sleep deprived go and i’m not interested in rewatching it so yes I have absolutely no sources, yes this is a really long grammatical nightmare because I don’ t know how to be succinct and i use way more words than necessary at any opportunity because if my point doesn’ t come across exactly like i intend it will greatly upset me, no I have not yet watched Korra or read the comics because i’m tired now let’s do this.

includes Kataang, Zutara, Jetkara, Jinko, Maiko, Sukka, Taang, Tokka, Toko Ty Lokka, Tyzula, Yukka bc these were on the Avatar wiki ship list, part two will go into gay ships more

from 0 I despise people who ship this immediately to 10 I will read absolutely anything with this, I love it and could draw it for hours on how much I think the relationship would be good and how happy it makes me

Kataang (looks like a comic book sound effect so plus points)

very clearly built up over the series

cute kid crushes also ngl did not know katara was 14 and not older 12 or 13 so didn’t care about age when watching

now I know she’s 14 and he’s 12 it’s a little weird but still

haters say katara was just the avatar’s trophy girl, as if aang didnt kiss the ground she walked on and wouldnt stop telling anyone how amazing she is. Katara was the first face he saw from the new world and they immediately became friends. she was so excited to meet another bender, he clearly is trying to impress her and it is working, he listens to her about bending and offers to take her to the other side of the world to master water, TELL ME at this moment she is not ride or die and she doesn’t even know he’s the avatar, he lets her feel like a kid again, which is a feeling she’s forgotten after years of being a mother to sokka and the children. he literally sweeps her off her feet to save her from the fire nations ship i-. rewatched boy in the iceberg and hoo boy had canon not messed it up, this ship could have been legendary

hard to imagine older them working out what with the whole last airbender, preserve air nomad culture, let’s travel the world bc nomadic lifestyle, what’s marriage i’m a monk without biological family values vs last southern waterbender, preserve southern water tribe culture, I believe in the power of family and am ridiculously dedicated to my tribe,  let me go home to my father and tribe shtick, but I don’t care for after the show finishes much except for following the gang fix the world so I don’t really care about the marriage issue

canon was good until that Mess in season 3, WHY did he kiss her after that speech, wish they talked that out properly, wish he learned letting go of her to open the 7th chakra was the only right decision, wish the ending was a little more vague in ships and just left things open but yk whatever

that finale kiss was sweet, they hugged foremost as friends, no blushing, and then got the fuzzies, that moment standing alone? a+ but without any talking about what happened on ember island, a little unsatisfying

overall, fine ship, not my favourite nor do I actively ship it, but I see a kataang moment, i’m like, sweet so I give it a 6

Zutara (apparently fans are zutarians which looks like an alien race, plus points)

latter half of the show had quite a lot of Zutara potential, but idk about Zutara actual

katara was so ready to drop his ass, no way at the start

there is only one dynamic between them in which I can see Zutara working and that is as in the Stalking Zuko by emletish series where katara is so distrusting over zuko she takes to stalking him to make sure he isn’t doing anything to hurt Aang or about to betray them (her) again but he is just such a sweet dork who keeps trying to apologise to her even while she’s apologising to him for being a bitch that she can’t help but start to trust him, i’m a third into the third book in the series not stalking firelord zuko and I am thriving and tbh this is the only situation where I accept zutara, read the series I love it

age gap is weird, I know it’s the same difference between kataang but they made a point of zuko being older in the show also he’s so much taller and I don’t like 16 year old boys with 14 year old girlfriends in real life and so would katara because jet

katara has a bad experience with bad boy sword weilders (jet) but I guess you could see it as the start of her type idk

they are both the moms of the Gaang. sokka is the fun dad.

there is a parallel between their families, with the leader of their people dad, mom who left the picture when they were young, an older brother who is not a prodigy at/can’ t bend their respective element so they become proficient at swords instead, prodigy at bending younger sister with a violent streak. this is why I see zutara as potentially a really close friendship, almost siblings, but not a romance because to me katara is a little too like azula for comfort...

tbh I think a lot of folk shipped it because ooh fire boy and water girl (not the game) that’ s perfect, and bam army of zutarians

overall, kind of weird but ok and good grounds for humour so I give it a 4

Jetkara (bad ship name, why would you like this, minus points)

Jet is bad. yes Katara really liked him, yes he was definitely her first kiss and she would definitely consider him her first boyfriend but they would not define it because it’s easier to manipulate someone when it’s unclear what your relationship is and Jet is bad, with his weird fricking eyebrows and not even real swords those hook swords

Not wasting my time, 2

Jinko (cool name, reminds me of Hong Jinkyung, plus points) 

short but so sweet. not the first thing people remember from watching the tales of ba sing se (brb going to rewatch and cry) but really cute, so here’s a running commentary

his first thought was she knew they were fire nation rather than a pretty girl sat in a teashop giving him looks because she had a crush omg

that honest surprise when his uncle suggested she liked her and then she walked up and asked him on a date, adorable

anyone who looked at that god-awful hairstyle and still thought he looked cute has it bad also aww that hair ruffle and the little grab onto his arm

he’s pushing his food around and she’s trying out ice breaker questions and recieving one word responses he has no idea what he’s doing

“she is not my GIRLFRIEND” he’s not over Mai, clearly but he still is trying his best to be a good date even if he’s terrible at making conversation

anyone who sat through that date and the bad lying and the stilted conversation and still thought he was cute has it bad 

he is So Bad At Lying he just told the truth very vaguely and then bam travelling circus

jin so knows the two are fire nation, the whole date she just politely ignores the clear lies and doesn’t react to the obvious firebending, what an icon we love jin

honestly I was really expecting the show to reveal that jin knew he was a firebender if not from the start then from the lights but eh I guess she can keep a secret, good for her

HE KISSED HER BACK BEFORE REALISING A RELATIONSHIP COULD NEVER GO WELL AND HE MAY HAVE ANGSTILY STORMED OFF BUT HE ADMITTED IT WAS A NICE TIME TO HIS UNCLE

that being said I can’t see anything more happening but this date but omg imagine fire lord zuko coming back to visit and they become friends I-

overwhelming support for pre-date jin flirting to an oblivious zuko and the date Jinko, 8

Maiko (name would be a good name for a cat idk why)

childhood sweethearts before the banishment i think

she crushed because he saved her hair from getting burnt by tackling her into a fountain? adorable

I love mai she’s so funny but I think not the best match for zuko? he has a lot of trauma to get over and she doesn’t seem like the let all your feelings out and let’s talk about it until you feel better kind of person.  it was deeply ingrained in her to keep all of her feelings and emotions strongly hidden because she got what she wanted from her politician parents so long as she was quiet, well-mannered, and perfectly behaved according to avatar wiki so I get why she’s that way, until I was 11 I was that way too all the time, I understand freezing your face so you don’t look afraid or upset or angry and risk annoying adults, but I don’t think that that would fit zuko with his social ineptness

they literally broke up twice but are just assumed back together? she just surprised him and said they were back together and I think he forgot she existed

the deadpan firelady and the fire lord would be hilarious together tho she got the ruthlessness he lacks

post coronation I can see it happening, 6 but under Kataang

Sukka (terrible name lmao)

the cutest, sokka very excitedly says “Suki!! :DDD” every time he sees her

she didn’t give him the time of day until HE changed, incredible

just the best canon ship, the two nonbenders in the Gaang but very clearly shown to be important key members.

suki is sneaky and badass, rivalling zuko for position on the team as the sneaky badass one (they tie and bond over being sneaky and badass)

sokka is a great dad, he is the dad of the Gaang and he clearly loves suki and suki loves him back

sokka ships are ELITE, 9

Taang (a delicious orange drink mix that reminds me of home, nostalgia)

foreshadowing from the swamp where someone aang loved in the future really made me think taang was endgame yk

opposite elements ideology that I guess is what zutarians like also leaves everyone in the gang dating a Gaang member if zutara happens

actually the same age but not much else going for it

best friends, 4 but under Zutara

Tokka (great name of a small pet fight me)

sokka ships are elite, childhood crush turned adult strong friendship

I really like seeing the rough, tough, greatest earthbender in  the world have a crush, adorable

sokka is a great friend and his and toph’s canon relationship is so sweet, I wouldn’t change it

toph was fully going to give sokka a kiss on the cheek for saving her life i’m melting

age difference is too weird for a romance he’s like 16 or 17 by the end I think and she’s 12

best friends, 10 as a relationship in the show, 2, but in their 20s after the show... 4 but under Taang

Toko (very forgettable name but both characters have 4 letters so I guess it’s hard to come up with something memorable but every time I read it as Toph because same shape ish so minus points for being annoying)

even weirder age gap than Tokka 

not many moments that could be considered romantic? 

toph first accepted zuko despite him burning her feet, how she sees, which was big and they resolved problems between them quickly

toph clinging to his arm and asking for a life changing field trip caused him to blush, but I see that as him being like oh someone wants to spend time with me?? she’s hugging me??? what is this 

convenient ship for kataangers because the Gaang could be paired off as Kataang, Sukka, Toko

her crush on sokka seemed to go away or calm down when he showed up and she punched him and teased him a lot, her way of bonding

similar strict teaching styles and bonding over secret identities as Blue Spirit and Blind Bandit and parental issues and being the children of important families who made them run away to enjoy not having anything to do with politics and being nobility with impaired vision who have never stepped into a kitchen in their lives and being used to servants and then being on the run

I really see them as siblings with her helping him relax from his duties as fire lord because you already know this boy’s sense of honour is going to make him work tirelessly to fix the world and him helping her relax from the whole i’m not a fragile, weak little blind girl, i’m the greatest earthbender in the world shtick and reminding her she can be both a blind 12 year old girl and the most powerful earthbender in the world, she can accept help without being weak or lesser than anyone, people want to help because they care not that they pity you

best friends 10, relationship in show 1, after show 3

Ty Lokka (I don’t like this name looks like a place but can think of nothing better)

yeah I guess ty lee’s obvious flirting is grounds for a ship but in every interaction he’s involved with someone else and doesn’t seem to like her as a person

do they even interact while on the same side?

friendly aquaintances at best, don’ t understand, 2 but above Jetkara

Tyzula (don’t like this name, like a mineral water?)

canon I don’t care it is canonically a possessive relationship

azula’s only genuine apology goes to ty lee after hurting her feelings

Azula clearly loves ty lee, her betrayal sends her mad

after a lot of therapy for azula and apologies, maybe a healthy relationship could form after the show, 8 above Jinko

Yukka (looks like a childish insult, surely someone could have thought of a better name)

Sokka’s love for Yue stays with him for the rest of his life, she was the first person to die in front of him and he sees the moon as her facing the earth

love this forbidden lovers content, sokka ships stay elite

Sokka and Yue spend as much time together as possible with secret midnight dates flirting (“you wanna do an...activity together?”)  Sokka’s reaction to Yue’s engagement shows that he wants to have a serious relationship with her, and also he thinks Hahn is a bad person for Yue, which he is. 

Yue dying devastated him and he never falls out of love with Yue. her last words “[she] will always be with him” are true. swamp visions show Yue as one of the most important people in his life like a season or so after he last saw her. he wouldn’t kiss suki in front of the moon, and cries when Yue appears on stage, ignoring Suki. he talks about the moon as if it is directly Princess Yue in that cactus juice scene.

she died in his arms oh my god don’t look i crying, he feels personally responsible and guilty

yue was great even though she was the indigenous or black girl with light hair and eyes character and I wish she could have helped aang in the spirit world 

despite her arranged engagement she clearly really likes sokka even though she knows nothing can happen, 9

Kataang, Zutara, Jetkara, Jinko, Maiko, Sukka, Taang, Tokka, Toko, Ty Lokka, Tyzula, Yukka

[aplpaca]

can you tell me more about inda? im curious

so Inda is the main character of the Inda Quartet by Sherwood Smith. its kind of a historical fantasy series? its not set on earth and theres magic involved, but the story is more focused on politics and world events than the magic (tho the magic plays a part in that).

but yeah the series follows Inda, the second son of a prince, throughout his life starting with his childhood at the Royal Academy, where nobility learn strategy, fighting, etc.  he does pretty well there, gets mixed up in some stuff, Stuff Happens, he ends up on a trade ship, and then a pirate ship, and then stuff interconnects with a larger war that had been brewing since he was a kid (these are over the course of a bunch of years). so thats like a vague gist

some stuff i like/that i found interesting about the series

Inda is autistic (its not outright stated in the book but its easily intuited imo also i emailed the author and she said it was intentional).  and like ive never really seen that in a fantasy book series before (renarin and steris are great and i love them but theyre not main viewpoint characters Yet) so thats really nice.  but yeah as a character his thoughts and emotional processing were super relatable. and even tho his Thing is that hes like super good at strategy and problem solving, it doesnt come off as a Wow Autistic Savant Lets Marvel At It type of thing bc the book actually goes into his thought processes and shows you how he gets to his ideas. also his friends are respectful and accepting of his differences and its great.

the series is has a really interesting emotional vibe to it that gives a really cool sense of the passage of time. i dont really know how to describe it more than that other than if it was music it would have a lot of violins

the characters are super complex and their dynamics are super interesting. and like even when they do stuff thats like What The Fuck My Dude its like not in a bad way bc characterization is well done so its like “of course thats what theyre gonna do. the bastard.” coughcoughFoxcough. they just feel very real in general

the culture is super open about sex and romance (theres a lot of talk about sex, but its not shown explicitly if thats a thing youre not a fan of). polyamory is super common and not looked down on and neither are different sexualities.  There are major characters who are bi and gay, and also lots of minor characters who are also.  Theres also at least one character whos grey-ace and Tdor reads as demi imo.  Inda is polyamorous, as are most of the main characters.  (also on the authors website theres a big thing about stuff that happens after the end of the series and theres a group of characters that end up in a man-his boyfriend-boyfriends wife/girlfriend-her other husband relationship)

theres a bunch of more mundane uses for magic. like theres a spell that can prevent someone from getting pregnant unless they drink a specific tea, so thats used as a birth control thing.  theres a spell where people can make a baby, like automatically without waiting 9 months and regardless of the number of people doing the spell or their genders.  like one character has a single mom who did the spell by herself, and whos grandparents are lesbians who did the spell to get his mom.  

the societies are pretty interesting, like Inda’s country is loosely Mongolian inspired, with some weird Spartan-esque stuff thrown in.  Most of the characters arent white, with the exception being the Venn (the country that the Marlovans, Inda’s people, are at war with), who are nordic-inspired (literally nordic is prob more accurate tho.  theyre descended from vikings who somehow got into a magic space rift and ended up on the planet the series takes place on. but that was way before the series happens. i got that confirmed by the author via email also).  also theres pirate societies and thats always great

but yeah. its a bit heavy with worldbuilding to start off with (lots of names) but its really super good and i wish more people knew about it. 

can you see why it took me so long to answer this?

[ladyofpurple]

answer all of the questions!!

holy SHIT ok bless you omg

(sorry it's a full day late i took this shit SERIOUSLY. don't ask me how many hours this took, i was in A Mood™️ last night. removed the ones already answered xoxo)

angel; have you ever been in love?

yeah. didn't end too well, but i loved him.

petal; favorite novel and author?

this is like asking me to pick a favorite child. i guess favorite author would be stephen king, if only based entirely on the sheer quantity of his books i own alone. favorite book would probably be special topics in calamity physics by marisha pessl, and i'm only saying that because it's been my go-to response for years. i have lots of favorite books. ask me again in five minutes and i'll give you another one.

honey perfume; favorite perfume/scent?

freshly made coffee. lilacs. jasmine. cut grass. the ground after it rains. chocolate chip cookies in the oven. cigarette smoke on skin. my mom's shampoo. my grandma. my dog when he's just had a bath. thanksgiving dinner. acrylic paint on canvas. sawdust. that one cologne i can't name but can smell on a guy from a mile away. mulled cranberry and apple juice. vanilla. coconut. fresh laundry. peppermint.

sweet pea; what’s your zodiac?

virgo sun, pisces moon, scorpio rising ✨

softie; talk about your sexuality.

i'm biromantic asexual, primarily attracted to men more than women (but have had too many crushes on girls to consider myself het), generally sex repulsed when it comes to the thought of having it myself. i prefer to call myself queer in passing conversation, it's easier than explaining asexuality and the differences between sexual and romantic attraction. if someone asks more specifically, i'll usually just call myself bi for simplicity's sake, even though the ace part is a much more important (to me) part of my identity. monogamous as fuck.

i'm still struggling with internalized homophobia and a lot of "am i even queer enough" thoughts, which is super fun. took me a long time to even consider the fact that i might like girls at all. i'll probably never come out to my parents. not that they'd, like, disown me or whatever, but they're juuuuust homophobic/transphobic enough that my few attempts to educate them when they say something A Little Yikes have shown me that i should probably just stay in the closet unless i absolutely have to come out. like i'm getting married to a woman or something.

sugarplum; what’s the color of your eyes and hair?

i usually say my eyes are green because it's easier, and they mostly are, but i have rings of greyish blue around the irises and sometimes they're more hazel in the middle. they always have a green tint to them though, even if the intensity of the green varies.

my natural hair is brown, a little on the darker and slightly ashy side of completely generic. currently a former blonde, although i'm hoping to bleach my fucking YEAR of growout soon, and then go some crazy color as a last hurrah before i have to go dark again. being broke fucking sucks.

wings; coffee or tea?

tea!! black tea. chai, to be specific, with an irresponsible amount of milk and sugar. chai lattes are a fucking drug okay? coffee makes me sick (not a judgement, a literal fact. last time i tried some i threw up).

fairytale; are you a cat or dog person?

cat!! but my family has a chihuahua named sonny and you can pry that little monster from my cold dead hands ok i will fight you.

snowflake; favorite time period?

okay, i wrote and rewrote my answer to this about 10 times. then i tried to divide it up into categories (aesthetics, history, fashion, vibes, geographical location, etc), but that didn't help. so basically: i don't have one, because i have too many.

i like the american 20s-60s for the aesthetic, music/movies, and the fashion. i also like the european 1600s-1800s for the interesting history and also vibe. i love the french and russian revolutions — the fashion! the art! the wars and political upheaval! I FUCKING LOVE HISTORY. then, of course, we can't forget the rennaisance. or the witch trials (pick your continent). and ancient greece? the roman empire? hello?? did i mention empires? how bout we mosy on over to south america — can i interest you in the mayans? incans? aztecs? what about china and japan? korea? vietnam? and don't even get me fucking STARTED on the black plague.

ancient egypt? sign me the FUCK UP. vikings? yes please. the celts? oh boy. the MYTHOLOGY. the ARCHITECTURE. the LANGUAGES and POLITICS and LITERATURE and REVOLUTIONS and GOD HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN ANY OF THESE

i uh. might have gotten a little excited. basically i like history a lot. and mythology. and linguistics. and cultural practices. and the politics and prejudices behind wars and stuff. and learning in general. moving on.

vanilla; do you believe in ghosts?

let's put it this way: i don't not believe in ghosts??

listen. we don't know jack shit. we don't know what happens after we die, there are constant scientific revelations that turn our understanding of the universe completely upside-down, and there is literally no way to know which religions or myths or urban legends could have some grain of truth to them. like, dude, i've literally thought i was haunted before. psychology is bananas and the universe is infinite.

demons could be real. ghosts could be real. what if we just haven't invented the necessary technology to prove it yet? what if we never do, and they just fuck around alongside us, moving furniture and making shadow puppets on the walls just for kicks until the earth explodes? what if that one tumblr post was right and ghosts are actually real people from alternate universes or timelines that we see accidentally bc some cosmic wires got crossed? who fucking knows.

i love horror movies and scary stories and ghost hunter shows just as much as the next gal. but listen. psychics? mediums? people who accept every single creepypasta retold third-hand from their neighbor's kid's classmate's second cousin who "totally knows a guy"? doubt.jpeg

i don't understand the sheer amount of assumptions made willy-nilly about the nature of ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. the assumption that "oh this machine that totally doesn't look like a coathanger taped to a walkman will work because ghosts have this temperature and can always communicate like this and are electromagnetic" or whatever just baffles me. to a certain degree, following a general consensus is one thing — some basic things everyone can agree on? that's cool. ghosts can walk through walls and are probably dead people or whatever. but oh my god, taking every single story as absolute, undeniable proof?? taking these stories and expanding on them to infer intentions and scientific facts to something that by it's very nature is unknowable and assuming, like, every spirit is created equal?? and yeah, ghost hunting shows are fun and campy and kinda creepy but like. you really, genuinely don't think any of them have ever faked anything at all??? even if ghosts are real, it's fucking reality tv, my dude. it's the entertainment industry. at least maintain the slightest ounce of critical thought before taking zak bagans' word as the goddamn gospel.

and sidenote, maybe it's just my limited exposure as a white woman in the western world, but of all the shows and podcasts and movies and documentaries and whatnot i've been able to find and consume, there's the constant use of christian ideology applied to every situation that just really burns my bacon. what, there's never been an atheist ghost? if you see a shadow person and you don't know the lord's prayer by heart, are you automatically fucked? why are there never stories about, i don't know, viking ghosts? does your religion in life preclude you from becoming a ghost in the first place? is that why people never mention buddhist ghosts? i don't get it, and that's why even though i'm self-admittedly the most superstitious person i've ever met, true believers make me roll my eyes so hard they almost fall out. makes me come across as more skeptical than i theoretically am. I HAVE VERY STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT THIS OK

but like, you couldn't pay me to fuck with a ouija board. i'm not stupid.

delicate; diamonds or pearls?

both have their appeal and their place, but diamonds, i guess. i like the sparkle. but fake ones!! or synthetic. diamonds are overpriced and artificial scarcity is a scam and i don't need a dumb rock that some poor person in a mine somewhere was exploited and possibly died for. no blood diamonds in this house, thank you very much.

if i ever get engaged, i don't want a diamond ring. i'd want something cool, a little unusual, like a ruby or a sapphire or some other sparkly gem that isn't literally shoved in your face every waking moment as the expected standard symbol of True Love. they're cheaper, they're cool-looking, as a ring they still hold the cultural symbolism of an engagement/wedding ring. and honestly, as long as it's well-made and durable, whatever hypothetical gem it is doesn't have to be real either. i'm a woman of simple needs and demonstrably low standards. no point in going into debt for a fucking piece of jewelry, regardless of ~tradition~.

lavender dream; favorite album?

oh lord. welcome to the black parade, i guess. or anything by panic! at the disco. there are dozens of possible options — my interests are mercurial and my memory is garbage. but i'll always be an emo little shit. black parade and vices and virtues were also the first two albums i ever listened to where i loved every single song on them, and i happened to listen to them for the first time at around the same point in my life (i got into mcr super late. like, 2012 late. rip).

silky; what’s your biggest dream?

it's cheesy but i guess i just want stability and, by extension, happiness. emotional stability, mental stability, financial stability, stable living situation, stable routines, stable relationships... you get the idea. i have ambitions and passions, of course, but my ultimate goal is happiness at this point in my life, and i'm pretty sure stabilizing all those things would go a pretty long way in achieving that goal.

a little apartment with walls i can paint because white walls make me angry. bookshelves and posters and fandom merch on every wall. a computer i can actually play games on again, and somewhere i can paint and draw and record my podcasts. someone who loves me, maybe. a cat, if i'm stable enough. space for people to come visit me, and a place for them to sleep if they need. a tiny balcony, if i really want to shoot for the stars. a job i don't hate. the spoons to hang out with my friends, and the money to not worry about buying little presents for the people i care about sometimes. i don't need much.

strawberry kiss; do you have a crush right now?

nope.

glitter; favorite fictional character?

another loaded question. like books, if you ask me again in five minutes i'll probably give you a different answer. but in this particular moment, caleb and jester from critical role (please don't make me choose between them). i won't go full shipping mode rn, but jester is so funny and silly and sweet, so much more complex than she seems, and she tries so hard to make everyone happy even when she's so sad inside. the healer who treats healing as an inconvenience in battle (she's so fucking valid and also mood), the glue that keeps the party together. and caleb learning to trust again, facing his trauma and coming out of his shell. he loves his friends so much he plays wizard as a support class and i love him so much.

i love the mighty nein in general, of course, and all the guests/honorary members they've had. pumat!! pls don't be evil reani!! keg!! shakäste and grand duchess anastasia!! cali!! kiri!!!! the brotps! empire siblings! chaos crew! nott the best detective agency! i still love molly and all his assholery to bits (fight me), and mourn his lost potential. i adore yasha, even when she's gone; fjord has grown so much; beau and nott and caduceus — i love all their flaws and disagreements and their character arcs and the excitement of watching them grow and learn. but if i had to choose, caleb, jester and molly have always been my top 3 since day 1 and, well, molly isn't really an option anymore.

but like i said, ask me again in a minute. i have a fucking list.

swan; share a quote or passage that means something to you.

a collection of things off the top of my head:

Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. — Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

a tired feminist Mood™️

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not foolin' a soul." — American Gods, Neil Gaiman

i got my love of books from my grandma — some of my favorites i got from her. sometimes, as a treat, she used to take my sister and i to bookstores and we'd stay there for ages, getting to pick one out, roaming the shelves, the mental torture of having to choose. the peace of being surrounded by thousands of potential worlds, so much information, so many stories just waiting to be told; being surrounded by strangers who share that same wonder. the anxious drive home so we could read them, being unable to wait that long so i inevitably start reading in the car and make myself sick. telling her in excited detail all my favorite parts. if we were lucky, maybe we got to split a bear claw, or she'd drive past starbucks and get us something there too (tall vanilla soy steamer with one pump of vanilla syrup, whipped cream on top that always melted too quickly and squirted out the hole in the lid, so hot it burned my tongue but so good i didn't care). i have never felt more at home than i do when i'm surrounded by books.

"There are a lot of different types of freedom. We talk about freedom the same way we talk about art, like it was a statement of quality rather than a description. “Art” doesn’t mean good or bad. Art just means art. It can be terrible and still be art. Freedom can be good or bad, too. There can be terrible freedom. You freed me, and I didn’t ask you to." — Alice Isn't Dead, season 1, chapter 2: Alice

as cringey as it is to admit it, this line made me cry a lot after my breakup.

"So you aren't American?" asked Shadow.

"Nobody's American," said Wednesday. "Not originally. That's my point." — American Gods, Neil Gaiman

[side-eyes white america real hard]

there's more, of course. there's always more. don't even get me started on song lyrics, we'll be here all day.

lace; what’s your favorite plant/flower?

lilacs and roses.

mermaid; do you prefer the forest or the ocean? why?

both, i guess. but in different ways, and in different circumstances.

the sea is wild. it is endless and deep and unknowable. it is beautiful and dangerous. i am terrified of the ocean, and yet my favorite place in the world is an empty beach on the oregon coast. i have picked sand from between my toes for days with hair crusted in salt, danced around bonfires and watched the stars while marshmallows burn, gotten pulled under the waves as a child and nearly swept out to sea. picked starfish and crabs from small pools in the rocks, and swum (accidentally) with wild sea lions. in a long skirt, too early in the year to be swimming, i once took off my shoes and waded fully clothed into the water to my waist and just... danced. splashed and kicked and laughed with a boy i barely knew until our throats were sore and our toes were numb, walking home hours later with our soaked clothes clinging to our legs, shoes squelching, dripping algae as we went. the ocean is freeing and overwhelming all at once. i love it and am petrified by it in equal measure.

the forest is beautiful in a different way. it is silent and dense and serene. you are surrounded by life and yet, somehow, completely alone. there is magic in the forest, and history, and even when all else dies, that will remain. the trees grow from the corpses of their ancestors, and some have lived dozens of our lifetimes — with luck, a few dozen more. it is quiet there, peaceful, even the tiniest wood in the middle of a city muffling the outside world through the trees. you can feel the ancient ways deep in your soul as you follow winding paths strewn with fallen leaves, the mystery and wonder and superstitions of your forefathers. you wonder what it would be like, to run your fingers over the moss, to take off your shoes and socks and just run, leaping and dancing over rocks and roots, hair wild and air filling your lungs in deep, pure gulps as you shed the responsibilities and struggles of modern life, for just a moment remembering what freedom tastes like. it is primal, this connection to nature, one we have nearly forgotten over time. and as the sky grows dark and the silence of night presses against you, shadows looming, every footfall deafening, perhaps you begin to understand why some believed in monsters.

honeymoon; do you keep a journal?

i used to. honestly, that's a good idea, i should start doing that again. lord knows i have enough empty journal-type books.

starlight; do you believe in love at first sight and soulmates? why/why not?

i want to. i want to believe there's someone out there for me, the love of my life, someone to whom i'll be the love of their life, and that when i meet them i'll just... know.

but when i met my ex, i didn't really look twice at him for a while — no love at first sight. and when we were together, when i loved him and he swore he loved me back, i thought he hung the stars in the sky and knew i would marry him someday. couldn't even consider the idea that that wouldn't happen. and then when he broke up with me, he ghosted me so suddenly and thoroughly that he even preemptively cut contact with every single one of our mutual friends he thought might side with me in the breakup, before anybody even knew we'd had a fight. so, not soulmates either.

i really want to believe that someday the perfect romance will just fall into place and i can have the happily ever after i've always dreamed of. but the reality is i might never even have another s.o. for the rest of my life. maybe i'll get hit by a car tomorrow, or my hypothetical soulmate moves to argentina to become an alpaca farmer on a mountain somewhere and we never even meet. maybe i'm so traumatized by the betrayal and lies that i'll never have the courage to even try again.

and even so, happily ever after doesn't have to include a fairytale romance, regardless of whether i want it or not. i still like to cling to that hope though, deep down.

princess; what do you value most in people?

i'm going to assume you mean "real people" as in people i have positive relationships with, and not random strangers on the street.

loyalty. kindness. support. humor. similar values. patience. being able to grow together and teach each other things, so we can make each other better. honesty. trust. compassion. confidence. emotional vulnerability. communication. intelligence, or at least a willingness to learn. strength.

[professional-anti]

Chapter Ten: City of Bones

Things that have happened since the last update: I moved into my new school in a whole different country, became problematic, and read one (1) book. So I’m pretty cultured atm. Let’s do this.

Part Two: Easy is the Descent We have an unstranslated quote from the Aeneid, I guess so CC can show off how smart she is.

Chapter Ten: City of Bones Everybody freaks tf out about the fact that Jocie was Voldemort’s wife. We have an actual, real-life, total gem from Clary:

"That's impossible! My mother would never-she was only ever married to my father! She didn't have an ex-husband!”

Clary….blease…….I’m begging u……..she makes it so easy………

Hodge lists off the other death eaters. I’m not even going to pretend they’re not death eaters. There’s no reason to. Anyway, they all got in trouble after the Uprising™, except the Lightwoods got “clemency” bc they had a baby. Which is ridiculous and makes no sense. Ppl don’t just get lighter sentences bc they have babies. Hodge’s punishment is that he has to stay in this mansion in New York. I thought the Clave would be more into capital punishment, just going off how much they suck, but I guess that would just hinder the story.

Hodge reveals that Voldemort wants the cup bc it can give him an army of Shadowhunters. Isabelle comes in to say that she ordered Chinese, which raises interesting questions. Wouldn’t the ppl delivering just see a decrepit, condemned house? Did she have to order to next door and wait outside?

In the kitchen (where Simon is still staring awkwardly at Isabelle), Isabelle says that she thinks the fact that Voldie is looking for Jocie is “kind of romantic”. You know, that this vile supremacist is hunting down the woman who left him. Super romantic. Then she says the “evil thing” is “sort of hot.” No, really:

"Isabelle," said Hodge patiently, "this is the man who rained down destruction on Idris the like of which it had never seen, who set Shadowhunter against Downworlder and made the streets of the Glass City run with blood." "That's sort of hot," Isabelle argued, "that evil thing.”

At least in Harry Potter, no one thought that Voldemort was hot. In fact, everyone rightly despised him for killing innocents and preaching hatred. Bellatrix Lestrange was physically attractive, and nobody tried to argue that her actions were hot. Because they saw the terror she brought. No one would call her carving “Mudblood” into Hermione’s arm “hot”.

Oh, and even worse, after Isabelle reveals she likes murderous racists, “Simon trie[s] to look menacing”. The whole situation is just so awkward. Hodge tells them that Valentine would use the cup on children (it would kill adults) and discard the children who couldn’t handle it. Isabelle finally gets that Voldemort is bad and that water is wet. Jace is super mad that Voldemort wants to harm muggle children bc Shadowhunters are all about protecting the muggles. Never mind that Jace has shown nothing but disrespect for them the entire book.

Hodge pushed his plate away. "Valentine was insane," he said. "Brilliant, but insane. He cared about nothing but killing demons and Downworlders. Nothing but making the world pure. He would have sacrificed his own son for the cause and could not understand how anyone else would not." "He had a son?" said Alec. "I was speaking figuratively," said Hodge, reaching for his handkerchief. He used it to mop his forehead before returning it to his pocket. His hand, Clary saw, was trembling slightly.

Could Hodge be any more obvious. No, really, I’m asking. Please be more obvious Hodge. All the readers are dumb as goldfish and wouldn’t understand subtly. We need bricks in the face. This is compounded by Hodge telling them that they shouldn’t do anything to stop Voldmort, that the Ministry of Magic will handle it. Hodge is sooo not on Voldemort’s side, you guys. Never!

They decide to go to the Silent Brothers to retrieve Clary’s memories, which they think will help them save Jocie from Valentine. The Silent Brothers are Shadowhunters who destroyed their bodies with runes and now have crazy mental powers. Honestly sounds a little creepy. I’d read a book about their order, tbh. Are they all guys, though? Then I wouldn’t read it. Also, they sound like Dementors.

That night, Clary has a dream that she’s dancing with Simon in the Glass City, and then Simon turns into Jace. The Symbolism is so real. Then Jace wakes her up, holding her wrists. Apparently she tried to hit him in her sleep, but he shouldn’t have grabbed her wrists. I can think of few things more terrifying than waking up to a boy restraining my arms. Apparently, she fell asleep in a hallway the night before and Jace and Hodge let her to a bedroom. Honestly confused how she fell asleep in a hallway, but we have bigger problems to deal with.

Oh. My. God. A silent brother (I’m done with the dumb capitalization. We don’t say a Congresswoman or a Principal or a Citizen) has arrived. And his name is. His name is. BROTHER JEREMIAH.

Clary gets dressed and wishes she could look more like Isabelle. Bc girls have to judge themselves on their appearance even during everday tasks, like getting dressed. They meet BJ in the library, and he’s described like a death eater with a white color scheme, basically:

For a moment she thought he was alone in the room: that Jace had been playing a joke on her. Then she saw a figure move out of the dimness, and she realized that what she had thought was a patch of darker shadow was a man. A tall man in a heavy robe that fell from neck to foot, covering him completely. The hood of the robe was raised, hiding his face. The robe itself was the color of parchment, and the intricate runic designs along the hem and sleeves looked as if they had been inked there in drying blood. The hair rose along Clary's arms and on the back of her neck, prickling almost painfully. "This," said Hodge, "is Brother Jeremiah of the Silent City." The man came toward them, his heavy cloak swirling as he moved, and Clary realized what it was about him that was strange: He made no sound at all as he walked, not the slightest footstep. Even his cloak, which should have rustled, was silent. She would almost have wondered if he were a ghost-but no, she thought as he halted in front of them, there was a strange, sweet smell about him, like incense and blood, the smell of something living.

BJ says that he can’t get Clary’s memories bc there’s some sort of magical “block” in her head, and that she has to come to the Brotherhood HQ in order to have it removed. BJ leaves on his own, and Clary and Jace go and stand on the corner. Jace is incredibly cruel about Simon. Then a black carriage disguised as a limo pulls up, driven by BJ himself. It’s honestly cool how the carriage moves thru NY traffic and no one nottices. It’s the exact touch of “magic hidden in New York” that I like. Clary and Jace also have a conversation about poetry and music, which reveals the distance between their worlds, that I like, so maybe this carriage is magical.

Oh, here we are. Back on our bullshit. Clary looks at Jace’s ring and thinks that “there would have been something feminine about a boy wearing a ring, but there wasn’t.” Let’s deconstruct, shall we? First of all, men wear rings all the time. Secondly, we get it, Jace is super super masculine, feminity in men is Bad, Jace would never at all be feminine in any way at all bc that’s gross right? Like, I love how Clare has to specify that this ring in no way, shape, or form makes Jace at all feminine. No one would have thought it, and, also, there’s nothing wrong with femininity in anyone.

Jace says that he didn’t tell Hodge the identities of the guys Luke was talking to bc then Hodge would know that Jace wouldn’t take no for an answer re killing Valentine. He gives a pretty realistically traumatized description of his father’s death:

"I was ten," Jace said. She turned to look at him. He was without expression. It always seemed like some color drained out of him when he talked about his father. "We lived in a manor house, out in the country. My father always said it was safer away from people. I heard them coming up the drive and went to tell him. He told me to hide, so I hid. Under the stairs. I saw those men come in. They had others with them. Not men. Forsaken. They overpowered my father and cut his throat. The blood ran across the floor. It soaked my shoes. I didn't move.”

Bare bones, emotionless, disconnected. I approve. Honestly, I like the next part too. Clary shows emotion while attempting to comfort Jace, and Jace tells her that he’s not unhappy bc he has a purpose. It shows a bit about their respective upbringings.

Jace says that demons are worse than everything else (e.g. vampires and warlocks) bc the latter are part human while the former are “interdimensional parasites”. Doesn’t explain why Jace is such a dick to the other Downworlders, though. If I remember correctly, he’s going to be a total asshole to vampires at some party later on. I wouldn’t mind Jace’s disgust as much if it weren’t so confusing. The book contradicts itself so much. It’s demons he doesn’t like, no it’s all Downworlders, he’s all about protecting mundies, but actually, he hates them. It flip-flops back and forth, leaving me with little understanding of Jace’s psyche.

They end up at the Marble Cemetary and take a secret passageway under a statue into BJ and co’s lair.

You know why I think this seems so good to me? I read a little bit more of ACOMAFail last night, and this writing is so much better in comparison.

Anyway, the lair called the Silent City (so many cities), and it’s giant and underground has archways with shadowhunter ashes mixed in. Pretty cool. Clary also has a moment where she tells the brothers they have to wait for her to be ready for them to go inside her head. Showing agency, girl!

The brothers do their thing, and a bunch of memories come into Clary’s mind. Among others, there’s a box with the initials J.C. on it (Jesus Christ?) and a doorway with the name “MAGNUS BANE” over the door. When she comes to, she’s lying on the marble floor and has blood all over her arm. Not sure what she managed to cut herself on. The floor should have bruised her, not cut her. Anything for the Drama, I guess. Jace heals her with a stele. Anyway, the block can’t be removed, and they have to go find Magnus Bane. Clary and Jace leave. The end.

[aryanna5323]

I have literally never made my own post on here before and only like 3 entire people might see this, but I can't quit thinking about how much i dislike the idea of a black hermione granger. I first thought about this while having a conversation with my sister a while ago, but I just saw a fancast of a black girl as hermione on insta, and I have to spit this out somewhere.

The most obvious problem here is that if you want to have a main character be black.....maybe actually say that she's black? While writing the book? Not after publication? And definitely not after you said a white girl was the perfect actress and just what you imagined? You don't have to be like, "and this black girl came and knocked on our door" in the book, but you could mention her blackness other ways. Show her culture, but not as something weird and different. Describe the way shawdows cast from the candles in the great hall dance across her dark skin if you want. Just fucking describe it. And like not just once? Don't be like oh yeah she's black that's all because that's not all. Being black is about more than just having dark skin.

And also, why would jkr wax poetic about how pale other characters are and the way their skin looked if she didn't feel the need to describe hermione's dark skin at all? You can't just say "well I never said she was white... >;p". Don't make a main fucking character's appearance and culture ambiguous. Imagine giving someone a more genderneutral name like Alex and just never using pronouns. That's kinda strange right? Like are we supposed to say she/her, he/him, they/them? You wouldn't make it so we wouldn't know what to call a character accurately, so why make it where we can't imagine and understand a character accurately? If you're going to identify a character, fucking fully identify them. Let us actually know who they are. Bc again, being black is not that same as being white so that ambiguity is shit. You can't tell me hermione's personality would be the exact same if she were white or if she were black. There are differing cultures and experiences, and you have to include those in the character.

And when you basically surround this character with white characters and don't specifically mention that she's black, you can't expect us not to assume she's white as well. It's especially bad though, when jkr makes it disgustingly obvious when other characters aren't white. Fucking Cho Chang. Kingsley fucking Shacklebolt. I think that's all I need to say on that point.

Basically, if you want a character to be a certain ethnicity, just fucking say it (without going overboard and playing into gross stereotypes!!). It's not that hard. She described a few other characters' non-whiteness. Why couldn't she describe this in one of the main characters then?

Another issue with hermione being black is that there are few other black girls being actively described in this series. While it's fine to have very few black girls in a fictional school when it's a predominately white area in real life, it's not fine to shit all over the most described black girl for having bad hair and teeth. If you mainly only talk about one black girl and you give her bad hair and bad teeth and then say she's not pretty.....this is a problem to me. It feels like jkr thinks black girls in general have bad hair and teeth. Like their natural hair and teeth make them ugly. It feels like she's associating blackness with ugliness. Which, fuck that.

I know a lot of black girls are proud of their hair and their teeth, as they should be. But I also know that a lot of black girls don't like their hair or teeth because what's shown as conventionally pretty for hair is often straight hair, and for teeth it's perfectly closed, straight front teeth since these things are attributed to being closer to a standard of whiteness, which is what is portrayed by the media in the most positive light (which is also shitty and a different conversation).

My little sister is half black, and we spend a lot of time telling her how much we love her curls and how much we love her smile because we don't want her to grow up and think her hair is ugly and damage it to make it "pretty" or if she has a gap in her teeth that she has to close it. So to say that a very popular female character, known for her bad and untamable hair, who purposely fixes her teeth that she hates, is black, does not send a good message to young black girls. It's something I would steer my little sister far away from.

I also don't like the idea of hermione being black and the only one who cares about the house elves' enslavement. I would understand maybe her being black and the first person noticing the wrongness (even though in this century people in general should see the wrongness) or at least feeling the most motivated to stand against it based on her background (it's all a stretch but I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here), but shouldn't her friends realize how she might feel being black and surrounded by literal fucking slaves? Why wouldn't her friends join S.P.E.W.? Shouldn't ron specifically, who loves her, try to be more supportive and understanding instead of rude and condescending? Shouldn't harry, who was normally the one standing up for hermione, who made friends with a house elf and freed him after being mortified by his treatment, care a little more? I feel like the house elves' situation was mostly for laughs and barely for plot and almost unrelated to character development (besides the fact that the whole house elf plot was disgusting itself. Saying that slaves enjoy their work and were disrespected by someone trying to free them?? Wtf???? But that's a whole other can of worms more unrelated to having a black hermione). If hermione were black, this could've been made a huge moment where a big movement was started and led by a black girl (as we've seen and as is so often ignored in history! Black women are powerful. Give them their power in literature too!!). Instead of a joke of one whose meetings were never attended except by people who wanted hermione to quit annoying them. Instead of never following through with the house elves and leaving them in the dust when the plot got too busy. Instead of saying hermione is black so she's the only one who can really care about slavery.

Don't get me wrong, I would love a black hermione if the setup were different. If she wasn't told that some of her physical characteristics that balck girls can often be insecure about are ugly, if she were actively described as black and her blackness was incorporated into the character, if she wasn't the only character to truly care about an enslaved species, then a black hermione would be badass. A black girl as one of the main characters, who is so smart, who the chosen one would fail without, is powerful. It's saying black girls are smart and clever and important. It would've been so fucking cool if hermione were black if it was done in the right way. A powerful black girl, one of the brightest of her generation, who stands up for others. She would get all my love.

But I can't get behind her if she's ignored or shit on for things that would seemingly stem from her blackness. I, personally, think that it's better leaving her as white, since i think this is what jkr truly intended and worming around those intentions can lead to some nasty implications, and getting behind other black girls who got (or will get for the yet-unwritten ones!) the attention from their writers that they deserve.

I'm so open to having a conversation about this, especially if this is not how the black community perceives having a black hermione. Like if you're black and you think i twisted things and completely fucked this up, I'm begging you to shit all over me for it. I'm not trying to press my white bitch perspective (when I'm much less knowledgeable) on a community with lived experience. This is just how I felt jkr came across as completely insensitve and shitty with this comment. Or ways I thought having a black hermione was more bad than good if that statement was true, by whatever definition we want to give that word here. But if I'm wrong, I want to learn from this. I don't want to be speaking for black girls here, i want to be standing behind them in support. I just can't make myself spin this situation in a more positive light, not after everything jkr's said about her "gay" characters and about real trans people, without a little assistance (if y'all think I'm wrong and that assistance is necessary, anyway). I just don't have that faith in her. But if black girls truly think that having a black hermione does more good than bad, I'll be behind you and I'll support you.

Love for anyone reading this except for prejudiced bitches, homophobes, terfs, misogynists, and other shitty people of the like! <3 <3 <3

[rqs902]

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for a split second i actually thought tencent had bought them gifts but LOL oh its their parents that makes more sense 

ofc zzn would be with ljt’s groupppp hahahha aw im glad nana got to work with a group she had previously said she’d wanted to collab with. 

lol why do i feel like langlang is bringing all his friends and family onto this show LOL 

i cant tell if i like xiao li without bangs better, but a change isnt bad, gives him a new look 

oof the way xiao li says “im someone who doesn’t have a father” being raised by his mom and aunt and just remembers broken plates from his childhood, and left at 13?? its been 6 years?? wild 

and hyt commiserating talking about how admirably strong he thinks his mom is too but then im like wait a minute... they’re probably the two that contributed the most to making this song (well mostly xiao li) but theyre the ones whose parents didnt come, that’s sad :(

i respect xiao li rocking this bright colored hoodie in a sea of black LOL

wow i think he’s saying that music should have a personal touch to it, tell a story, and even tho growing up sometimes there are moments that aren’t happy, when you look back it may still be a treasured moment. is he talking about the broken plates? wow this just got real deep real fast and im just so intrigued by his artistic mind wow im just grateful that his group mates are really letting him drive their musical direction. i mean thats part of why hyt chose him, for his composition abilities, so im not surprised but its really so cool that his group is helping him tell such a personal story through their music 

pushu complimenting xiao li’s guitar composition in the demo and xiao li’s like im the one playing it :’) xiao li is really so talented wow

wait why did they do the elims in the middle of them making their own compositions tho? that just makes it sad that the groups that didnt make it didnt get to show their music and the reshuffled groups are at a huge disadvantage they only have 3 days left?? the timing seems bad

so basically xiao li did everything except hyt made his own drum part and they all supposedly wrote the lyrics together 

wow this song is.... oof. im still trying to process 

on a side note, i was kinda worried how mz would fit in this group but its great that he can be their bass player! and tbh im still kinda questioning xiao xiong’s singing, like it still sounded kinda pitchy to me but maybe its at least improving like gem said lol

but back to the song, when asked why a song about family isnt more warm, the way xiao li said life can be cruel but he still sees it as beautiful when he looks back and he still loves his family. i think thats why this song creates such conflicting emotions in me. its sad and even spiteful but also touching. you can feel how lonely and lost he’s been in life, but he recognizes he’s still loved. theres a lot of complicated emotions presented in the space of a few minutes (which shows how real and personal this song is) and i think i need to listen a few more times to help me digest his story. i feel like the messy, discordant chords in his piano solo represent his inner feelings and im grateful and amazed that he was willing to share his vulnerabilities so openly. 

Oof I read xiao li's weibo post about this song and it's so poetic I had to use the dictionary but oof it just made me think of hyt saying it seems like xiao li has been through a lot. I'm grateful he says he isnt lonely with the family members he loves (again sad they couldnt come support him...) I'm wondering what the meaning behind his words is when he says he still has candy and can forever be a child. At least he says he'll be happy.

OOF continuing with another sad story, man maybe its why that group of kids are so close, xu yang also talking about being raised by his mom (and zk too) from meager beginnings. kinda sad he cant perform the song himself but at least his friends can publicize it for him? i do feel like it wouldve been even more emotional for xu yang to have been in the perf himself :\ they did make it together but writing the lyrics shapes the whole message of the song. glad to see zk and jym are on good terms still and xu yang supported them to perform the song. 

well im glad to see that the adults are able to whip the kids in qiang ge’s group into shape so muji and wjy can work together lol seems like qiang ge’s learning from them and gaining confidence. oof qiang ge’s father being responsible for a family with 5 kids and always getting sick

happy to see mty so happy on stage and qiang ge so happy to see his parents and muji being so gentle with his little brother 

im tearing up at wjy talking about his grandma’s noodles and then qiang ge being all “arent my noodles good too?” I CRACKED UP HAHHAHAHAHHAHA

me watching xiao zhi’s group: wow xiao zhi is such a great older bro

AW muji’s little bro sitting at muji’s desk with the rest of the kids backstage !!! and then high fiving the kids going on stage !!!  

zhang yang’s always seemed a bit like an awkward turtle but you can tell he really loves his group mates, its sweet

oh ljt’s comment about parents gradually becoming like kids and the kids have to learn to 包容 them.... thats so real 

did nannan just walk in with a SUP DUDE.... HAHAHHAHAHAHA

nice to see jym has found peace within their group haha and not surprised ljt’s dad likes ljt’s music but zzn’s dad thinks zzn’s music is too loud L O L 

lol they said liu yang wrote the music and szb and ljt wrote the lyrics, then how come the credits have only ljt for the music and lyrics?? 

lol ljt’s dad’s singingggg hahahhah 

i teared up at szb’s mom’s words bc it must be hard for her to blame herself for everything

LOL JYM’S DAD !!! they seem to have a fun relationship. and i love how ljt saw jym sit down and immediately went to check to make sure he was okay. 

oof rip wu xing’s dad being like uh so we cared more about your older brother when you were growing up oops

but wu xing’s song may be my favorite from this ep. theyre not my favorite group, but i like this song.  

LOL zjy’s dad seems fun, why do i suddenly get the feeling thats how i imagine ljt would be like as a dad L O L 

oof hyt saying hes not surprised his dad didnt show up but he felt like something was wrong when he mom said she was sick. then asking whether parents should hide something like hospitalization from their kids... thats rough

aw muji’s mom feeling so sad for hyt and crying when saying muji would also feel like something was wrong if she hadnt shown up.. aw 

honestly i cant tell if i like muji in particular, bc there are times where i feel like his personality seems a bit unique in a way im not sure if he’d be easy to get along with, but i respect that hes repping his culture and staying strong and seems very close with his family. 

xiao xiong’s cantonese tongue twisters with the badminton LOL that made me laugh, he just seems so pure

man im sad that xiao zhi’s group is least popular, so they’ll likely be broken up. MAN if xiao zhi gets eliminated ill be sad......... hopefully he’ll get saved and jus reshuffled bc it may be cool to see him in a different context. itll be weird to imagine him as a side addition rather than the main pillar of a group tho. 

yall at this rate hyt’s group is gonna win this competition and idk how i feel about that even tho i like them. 

[izzyovercoffee]

Su'cuy, vod! I read through basically all your Mando'a posts and had some thoughts I wanted to share. I semi-actively work on a Mando'a-English-German dictionary, which opens a whole new chest of translation problems, but you gave me some great ideas, so I incorporated them into the dictionary. For example that whole sheath thing, for that I added a remark to the original word, to warn about it's connotation (didn't remove it, because 'real' dictionaries include slurs sometimes as well) 1/X

Only thing, where I differed from your idea on this was cab'gam, I used this as ‘protective case/cover’. Now some other things I thought of: On colours - you pondered about the connotations of yellow regarding ‘just/barely alive’ and its comparison to gold. I thought maybe it’s about flames/light - like a bright vivid flame is a bright gold, while the flame, when it’s only small and ->barely alive

Woo this is a long ask. I’m so sorry I’ve taken so long to get around to answering this, I’ve been very busy!! Also, I think I’m missing part 7? But I think I can extrapolate what was in it, unless you’d like to send it to me again if you still have. I’m so sorry again anon!

I’m good w/ defining cab’gam that way too, maybe as a general term for protective case, since we do technically need a general/generic word for that. So cool, that def works !! I’ll go back and note that on the original post.

Also, yeah. YEAH! You know, when I was working on that post, I didn’t even consider that it might have been referencing intensity of light/fire? But the way you put it, that may actually make more sense than the direction I was going in. I was definitely perplexed somewhat, like I was missing something. This sounds like what I was missing.

That could also apply for the heat of a flame, too. Like, referring to the intensity of the light, or the intensity of the heat, or both, depending entirely on context.

I’ll notate that in my personal references. I’ll probably come back to this in the future if/when I put one long complicated color references/resources post together again. 

Thank you for bringing that up, truly.

Meanwhile I also really like your thought and explanation on yellow and orange maybe being the same for Mandalorians. Another thing I wanted to tell you is sth you already found yourself, that saviin sounds a lot like Sabine, which seems very very likely to me, considering the long i (or rather e - from an anglophone perspective) and that [v] and [b] are very similar sounds, so maybe Sabine is like a basic transcription or a dialect form of Saviin. Regarding the meaning of the colour/name 3/X 

My etymology for it would be the following: “viin”/“bine” being a degenerated/shortened form (or even the root?) of kebiin - blue connected with “sa” - as, like, it gives “sa viin” - “like blue”, what is kind of a good description for purple/violet, implying the standard shade in mandalorian perception would be a darker bluish purple ALSO implying that the concept of purple cam up comparably late in the language, similar of the color orange getting it’s name rather late in germanic languages 4/X

Ohhh that’s such a good point! I was going color by color so I missed the connection in the effort to complete the post, which was an oversight by me sadly. But that’s such a great point ??? 

If anything it might also then directly connect the connotations of blue (reliability) with purple (adaptability, survival in adversity). They who are reliable can be depended on to adapt and survive adversity, or so on, kind of like orange (lust for life) from yellow, as thought about from above (the intensity of the flame). 

(lmao this is so awesome tbh thank you for mentioning both !! I’m like vibrating from excitement from these two points !! is that weird to say lmao let me make this hard to read so I don’t embarass myself too much)

Then I wanted to ask where you got the words cingaanar and din'waadar, as they aren’t included in the dictionary I have, what confused me little, as I also only got search results linking to your very post about it. In another post you questioned the missing of a word for child of parents sibling or was it child of sibling? Anywy, I’d say the explanation is for both rooted in the way Mandalorian society is made up. As we know the ideal is a big clan living together kinda like a commune…. 5/x

so the words cinargaanar and din’waadar were pulled from mandoa.org dictionary, which is the most popular resource. it’s also in one of the editions of the mando’a dictionary that was released via spreadsheets back in the day from Karen Traviss’ site. It looks like those spreadsheets are no longer available to access, so take that with a grain of salt, but essentially mandoa.org was/is the most comprehensive of “canon” mando’a we have to date in easy access to the general person.

Going along the common phrase “it takes a village to raise a child” any capable adult is expected to participate in bringing up the kids, so while it’s known who’s whose child it doesn’t matter enough to be shown in language. So your parent-sib-kids are just your vode (remember, vode an!) and your sib-kids are “ade” as well as your own children, it’s consens that mando'a relies heavily on context, so speaking family internally context tells who your own childs are and who aren’t. Aruetiise.. 6/X 

view about love. For Mandalorians love isn’t really an emotional thing, that’s also why we shouldn’t take “kar'taylir darasuum” lit. as “hold sm. eternally in the heart”, but rather just as “knowing someone forever”. Knowing someone for so long (or so good/deep it feels like forever) that you can unconditionally trust them and you have a strong bond with each other, that’s the mandalorian meaning of “love” With having “love” as such a hard-to-achieve state of sentiment it isn’t surprising… 8/X

Okay so it looks like I’m missing part 7/X and I’m so sorry if you don’t have it around anymore. I think I can extrapolate the meaning/context though. Again, I’m so sorry for the delay in responding.

wrt children of my siblings, I can see what you mean by that for sure. If anything, maybe instead of inferring them as vode, maybe the “proper” way is to refer to them as if they are your own children? As you mentioned “it takes a village to raise a child,” I’m wondering, now, if it’s more like … because mandalorians are so community-centered / focused, if the polite thing is to indicate that these children are “your” children, as they’re just as much an aunt/uncle’s responsibility as anyone else.

We certainly see Kal Skirata refer to all children as kid/s, or his kids even if he has no intention of adopting them. Since he’s supposed to be a representation of appropriate parenthood (all of our issues regarding him notwithstanding), perhaps niece/nephew isn’t a specificity that is seen as necessary — maybe it’s considered an unreasonable boundary specifically when it comes to children. Notsomuch the adults, as mandalorians can divorce authority, but children are sacred and unnecessary boundaries may interfere with that?

It’s something to think about at least.

edit:: with some mulling over w/ @cassiansfuzzyjacket I’d like to note that it may be inappropriate to claim that one’s sibling’s child is “your” child, as a child’s parents still inhabit an entirely different role and space than aunts and uncles. it’s more likely KT never thought about it and thus that’s why it’s missing, but ultimately YMMV. 

wrt love, that’s definitely a possibility. I feel like love and its interpretations is contingent on … cultural … interpretations? Notsomuch in-universe as the general audience (like you and me) and what we bring from the context of our lives and perception and place upon difficult concepts such as love.

I’m definitely informed by my experiences, and so how I view love is dramatically different than maybe how you do (or the same!). and I feel like when it comes to defining love from a mandalorian point of view, we need to get into the perspective as its available to use.

what I mean is that I agree with you, when you put it that way. At least, for a good subset of mandalorians if not all of them, love may then require trust, or knowing not as knowledge but deeper than such, exactly as you said. 

it’s certainly how I’ve personally come to view love, and love as a bond that requires a foundation of trust and reliability as opposed to passion that may not be entirely well placed despite best intentions … but then again I have a difficult time myself with the conceptualization of love so I might not be the best person with which to develop words for it. 

It also concerns me bc mandalorians may have this deep difficult and complicated understanding of love, but then also culturally expect people to marry young and stay together … and we’ve seen many, many instances where this often leads to unhappy marriages, or even dramatic power imbalances within the relationship, maybe even rendering them inescapable. So how does one bridge these dramatically opposing ideals?

I mean context and culture already has, as divorce is a clearly supported thing across different power differentials so maybe the expectations aren’t restricted by law. Something to think about, in any case.

Thank you so much for your thoughts! You’ve given me a LOT to think about and mull over, and I deeply deeply appreciate it. Thank you. Vor’entye.