#it's literally in one of the first lines of the book

[just-sg]

So much.

Short/vague answers: It's about sword lesbians in a universe that not so casually runs on necromancy. It's about love, in every form, not just romantic: platonic to a soulmate degree, familial, polyamorous, and even enemies-as-a-FORM-of-lovers. It's about how the price of love is grief, how love has teeth and claws and it is impossible to care for anyone or anything without inviting pain, and how it will often drive you to hurt others and yourself as well, and you'll desperately chase it anyway. It's about religious trauma in a way that neither condemns religion nor seeks to excuse it, but seeks understanding and recontextualization of faith. It's about trauma in general and severe mental illness. It's about looking death and despair in the eye and continuing to fight anyway, because what else are you gonna do? It's about connection and healing and becoming better together even as you continue to suffer through the universe burning around you.

More specific answers:

Every book follows a different protagonist, is an entirely different vibe, and has a different mix of genres. Every narrator is severely unreliable in unique ways. It is all the same consecutive story (except when it's not, see: unreliable narrators, don't worry about it).

Parts of it are breathtakingly poetic and evocative, and other parts read like a tumblr shitpost, and this is entirely on purpose, used to masterfully control the tone. Practically every third line has bonus layers of meaning to a point you can reread multiple times and still be finding things that make you go "Jod DAMMIT". It is not possible to catch everything on a first read.

It's about:

There are literal memes everywhere and most of them are woven in to such a degree that if you don't recognize them they'll fly fully under the radar. At one point a guy brings fanfiction to a magic undead gun fight and wins. God is literally Just Some Guy and is canonically an Evanescence fan. The books also teach us that cows have best friends and watch sunsets.

If this raises more questions than it answers, good. If you're kind of interested but feel like you've been too spoiled, no you haven't. Please give the books a try. 🙏 (Also the audiobooks are great.)

I bet all the Cohort officials are sick to death of the Tower Princes. Imagine being forced to work for a shitty 20 year old nepo baby with a perceptually bad attitude because she can't get over her ex and her horrible toxic frenemy/rebound who has the personality of a snake trapped in a pillowcase. And you can't say shit about it because they are literally god's kid and a saint respectively.

Meanwhile god is busy crashing out and banging his way through your coworkers.

[short-honey-badger]

Plss make Shanks falling inlove with someone he just met but they were Shamrock runaway fiance

This one was funnnn anon. Thank you for the amazing request!

Redheads, am I right?

Pairings! Shanks x Female Reader , Mentioned! Figarland Shamrock x Female Reader

Masterlist for Shamrock and Shanks-> HERE

Shanks doesn’t know who you are or where you came from, but he does know that he wants your attention yesterday. You sit on the beach, legs splayed out in front of you, and curvy body on display as you lean back on your hands, face tilted up towards the blazing sun. You look like a dream brought to life, and the redhead wants more than anything to bow before you and worship the ground you walk on for the rest of his life, and he hasn’t even spoken to you yet.

Before he can follow his heart’s desires and act on them, he is elbowed in the ribs by his first mate. He winces and turns to glare at Benn, lips pulling into a pout.

“Stop thinking with your dick and help us unload the cargo, captain. I’m sure she’ll be right there when we get done,” Benn grumbles good naturedly, and Shanks pouts even more but does indeed tear his eyes away from where you are lounging on the beach.

You pretend that you don’t feel those vermillion eyes on your body, carefully keeping your face turned away from the redhead you can see out of the corner of your eye. You can’t believe that you’ve run into your fiance’s -ex-fiance you remind yourself- twin all the way out here in the middle of nowhere on the Grand Line. You had hoped to be done with redheads, but fate had a way of really messing with you.

It’s been three months since you escaped from Mariejois, and the sham of a marriage you would have had with one Figarland Shamrock, and those three months had been the best you’d ever had. More freedom and choice than you've ever had before. You weren’t ignorant enough to think that the Holy Knight wasn’t looking for you, but so far, he hadn’t had any luck finding you. Not yet anyway.

You sigh and reach for the book that sits on the towel beside you. You didn’t want to think about the harsh redhead right now, but it was hard not to when his literal twin wouldn’t stop making eyes at you every chance he got while he helped his crew unload cargo to be sold off in the market later on. You ignore it for as long as you can, not wanting to go back to your hotel room quite yet, and that ends up being your undoing.

Shanks turns back to the beach as soon as he is done doing his part, loping down the docks with a wave of his hand at his crew. Benn rolls his eyes but knows that there wasn't any stopping his captain when the redhead got like this, so he just left him be. Shanks hops from the wood and into the warm sands, carefully loping forward until he stands behind you, a teasing smirk pulling on his lips.

“Watcha reading?”

He laughs when you jump all over yourself, book flailing into the air, and you brace for the sharp edges to hit you only for nothing to happen. You peek your eyes open and find that your book has been caught by the same man who scared you in the first place. You snatch it back and glare at the redhead who hovers behind you, a mischievous looking look on his face as he meets your eyes.

“Something that I'm sure would go right over your head,” you snap and shift to hold the book closer to your chest, hiding away how the top you wear hardly covers your modesty. You suddenly regret allowing the sales woman to talk you into such a skimpy swimsuit when the redhead flicks his eyes down your body and you watch those vermillion eyes, so similar but so different from the burgundy ones you know, take you in with an almost revenant look on his face.

To your surprise, Shanks throws back his head and laughs, something loud and delightful that makes something in your chest light up and flutter with sudden interest. You soften your posture, relaxing in the presence of his humor.

“Yeah, you're probably right. You seem like a real smart girl,” He says and drops his head to smile at you, those eyes going soft as he points at the sand in front of you, “May I?”

You blink, taking a half second to debate if this was okay or not, before shrugging and tossing your hand at the same place, “Sure.”

Shanks smiles against and plops down, heedless of the sand that flies up to stick to his pants and his exposed shins. He can't describe the feeling that sticks in his breast now that he is by your side. The redhead has been around countless beautiful women, but there was just something about you that drew him in, something familiar and safe that he wanted to bask in for the rest of his life. He nods at the book in your hands, his smile open and friendly, “Tell me about it?”

You are once again thrown for his behavior. You are used to surly sneering and hot demands of your attention, not this innocent curiosity that Shanks seems to wield like a second skin. You lick your lips and glance down at the cover of your book, then turn it around to show the redhead.

“It’s uh called The Time Traveler’s Wife,” You begin a bit awkwardly. You’d chosen the book because it reminded you of your own dealings with the man who you had run from, what you knew would have been nothing but a problematic marriage. You explain how the main character, Henry, has a rare genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time and how his wife has to deal with his absence. It’s not a very happy book, but it had spoken to you all the same, but you weren’t about to wait around for a man who didn’t love you to begin with.

“Sounds sad, sweetheart,” Shanks murmurs when you are finished and you shrug in answer, a weary smile on your lips.

“Maybe, but it’s pretty romantic when you think about how Clare stays loyal to Henry even though he’s made her life so difficult. She’s a stronger woman than I am,” you say, and Shanks notices a distant look in your eye when you stop speaking. He can tell that there is a story there, but he doesn’t want to be rude and ask, not when he’d just met you.

“Love is a powerful thing,” he says instead and watches with a soft sort of glee as your cheeks pinken and you duck your head to look away from him. You turn your face to the waves crashing along the beach, brow furrowing for a second before it smooths away with a soft sigh.

“It can be, if given to the right person,” you say softly, and Shanks gets the impression that you are talking about yourself again, and this time, he can’t help but ask.

“Sounds like you’ve got some experience there, sweetheart. Do you wanna talk about it?”

You huff in weary amusement. You can’t help but like this redhead far more than the other one you know, that Shanks most likely knows. You find in yourself that you don’t want to keep that secret from him, and so turn, setting your book in your lap to give him your undivided attention.

“I do, and weirdly enough, you probably know him,” you say, and Shanks cocks his head, brow furrowing in confusion and waits for you to continue, “My fiance, ex-fiance really, is your twin brother, Shamrock.”

Shanks goes through a lot emotions all at once, jealousy, in knowing that his older brother had met you first, anger that his twin had obviously done something to you that caused you to run away, and relief that he had met you before Shamrock found you and dragged you back to Mariejois. He takes a moment to digest what you’ve dumped on him before ultimately shrugging and sending you a cocky smirk that makes you flush.

“Well it’s a good thing you ran into me then, isn’t sweetheart?” he drawls and boldly reaches out to curl his fingers over your cheek in a soft caress that you can’t help but lean into, “I’m much better than my brother, anyway.”

@mit-suri @sanjisleggy @nocturnalrorobin @mfreedomstuff @sordidmusings

[stars-remain2]

Last Lines

Chapter 4 Preview - I Won’t Go Where You Can’t Follow

9 Months Before the March to Moosburg, Stalag Luft III

Bucky had two favorite pastimes in the Stalag: playing imaginary Major League Baseball games alone and staring at the barbed wire fence that cut him off from the outside world and freedom. He was doing both simultaneously now, eyeing up the guards, the fence and the watchtower all while winding up his imaginary pitch. It was the top of the ninth, the score was tied and the bases were loaded with two outs. The stakes couldn’t have been higher and all eyes were on him.

He felt it first – the piercing blue-eyed gaze of his best friend Gale Cleven – before he turned around to meet that gaze head on.

Bucky had left the earth in a B-17 and then subsequently plummeted back down avenging Gale’s death. Bucky wasn’t even slated to be on the Munster mission but he’d begged Chick Harding to put him in the lineup. Bucky had been living it up and getting drunk while his best friend literally crashed and burned. The guilt over Gale’s loss had destroyed him and he felt that it wouldn’t have had happened if he’d just been there at Thorpe Abbotts – at the very least to say goodbye.

Whatever sentimentality and softness he’d had towards his best friend back then was erased the moment he was shot down and captured. Instead, he found himself harboring an unspoken animosity and sense of blame towards Gale that Gale didn’t even know about. It soon became a festering wound that he could never reveal to another soul: it was Gale’s fault that he was here in Stalag Luft III.

In the eight months since his capture and subsequent captivity, something had broken inside of Bucky. Where some, like Gale and Colonel Alkire rose from the ashes to be the leaders the men needed, others like Bucky floundered. In this very moment, Bucky was floundering. He was a man disappearing beneath the waves with no life raft in sight. Gale had no way of knowing that he was walking right into a tent of TNT and he was the lit match.

Gale broke the silence first, “You okay, Major?”

He always had a way of sneaking in a reference to Bucky’s rank, as if to remind him that he still had a job to do here. That the men needed him to lead. That Gale needed him to lead. It made John want to laugh. He couldn’t even lead a horse to water right now.

“Just askin’,” Gale said tentatively, as if he was afraid of what John’s answer might be. Everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells around him, but he never thought he’d see the day that Gale did too.

Gale had made sure to position himself in front of Bucky so that his body was physically between Bucky and that damned fence like he couldn’t still see it. Like he wasn’t living in a damn cage. Being a prisoner of war had changed something inside him and he knew there was very little of him left that would be worth knowing, if he were to survive the war at all. And to be honest, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to anyway.

“Am I okay? You really askin’ me that, Major?,” Bucky huffs, gesturing wildly at his surroundings, helpless to stop the tumble of words falling from his mouth. “You know what, Cleven?”

Gale stiffened at the use of his last name but Bucky didn’t even notice, continuing on without even taking a breath.

“No I’m not okay, I’m not okay because I’m stuck in here. And whose fault is that, Buck?” Bucky continues, looking anywhere but at Gale’s crestfallen face. “Not mine…no…yours. I wasn’t even supposed to be on that Munster mission, but nooo, I had to go chasin’ after you with some crackpot idea of revenge, some sense of loyalty to you and for WHAT? NOTHING. Because here you were the whole time, alive, reading your little poetry books and teaching Calculus like some fuckin’ Stalag professor. So you know what, Cleven, NO I AM NOT OKAY!”

His voice rose to a shout and then the silence that followed between them was palpable. If there was one thing about Buck and Bucky, it was that their silences were always comfortable.

Not this one.

Bucky sucked his breath in through his teeth, unsure how the words, his forbidden thoughts, had actually exited through his mouth this time. He began to panic as his palms started to sweat and his cheeks reddened. He could feel his heart beginning to pound in his chest, his body prepping him for a flight or fight response. He ached once again to just fling himself at the fence.

He knew he shouldn’t do it, but he brought his head up anyway and looked at Buck, ready to survey the damage he’d done. Seeing the moment the light actually dimmed in Gale Cleven’s eyes took his breath away, knowing he was the reason why.

—

Why am I like this??? I promise this story will have the most happy AND soft ending for the Buckies but well…pain til we get there. Part 4 is complete and coming soon on AO3. Maybe tomorrow? ❤️

Thanks again to @steviewicks45 for the amazing beta help!! She’s been my rock and cheerleader through this and has the best suggestions and ideas. So thankful for you boo! 🥰

[magical-bees]

Im so sick of this debate in my English class, what does Tumblr think?

[egophiliac]

Did peepaw come home?!

HE DID! :D! luckily it only took me three ten-pulls; I think my past experience of being so thoroughly denied a Fairy Gala Ortho made me more worried than I should have been. may the gacha blessings pay forward to everyone else! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

so far this is hands-down the funniest Lilia card, because he'll say something all edgy and badass in that deeper ~General Vanrouge~ tone and then follow it up immediately with one of the non-card-specific cutesy Lilia lines, and it gets me every time

[batcavescolony]

just saw someone say Rick Riordan making a TV show is just as bad as anything JKR has done. BFFR you're comparing Rick Riordan trying to make his world more inclusive, changing some parts because of money/time constraints, or just making changes cus he thinks they're needed, to JKR being a terrible person!

[lemon-wedges]

Some process gifs of my paintings this year!

[kyouka-supremacy]

(╥﹏╥)

[mental-mouthful]

omg please i want to know why you hate bridglar

boring as hell. they are such a far cry from their more developed counterparts in the book and it kinda pisses me off that they take up time in the narrative to do nothing but bat their eyes at each other and then die when that time could've been spent on literally any other characters.

[hanzajesthanza]

i do enjoy how sapkowski has returned to the striga motif for geralt in both of the standalone novels from the past two decades.

it’s not what either novel centers around, but it’s present: the events of season of storms lead up to geralt riding to vizima to take the contract. in crossroads of ravens, a similar contract from years before plays out.

if i were more cynical, i could ascribe the “return to the first episode of your character” as a bid to maximize recognition and nostalgia—if someone has read just even the first short story, then alright, they’ll recognize what’s going on here. or, capitalizing on the success of that motif, as there was and continues to be a strong reaction to the playing with roman zmorski’s story and the figure of a striga. either way, it’s a smart business move—do what worked, go back to your first wonder, your first magic trick.

but another part of me just thinks that sapkowski, after leaving the witcher theme for over ten years, then coming back, and sitting down to write on it again… has to re-associate himself with the character and how everything works. at times, to great effect: this crossroads was a very intentional re-exploration of geralt’s character.

but because writing is absolute freedom, a blank page can become anything…

he could have done anything else, and yet he decides to come back to geralt and the striga.

amusingly, i imagine it’s a bit like how a proud parent will always remember their child—even when they’ve grown up and become an adult—as how they were when they were just a small baby in diapers. that’s how they came into this world, so… that’s how they’re fondly remembered, even when they’ve grown up, got a 9-5, gotten married, moved out. after everything they’ve been put through.

it’s, “i remember when you were young,” “i remember when you came into this world.” this was his earliest incarnation, this is the simple prototype preceding the humongous machine. what i think is that the striga story is core to geralt’s character, in his author’s mind. that episode is a useful landmark to center other events around, because it was the beginning of everything.

or maybe it is just nostalgiabait. ok then i lost because i enjoyed that shit

[arson-09]

I like feyre, even though sjm kinda killed her character i stand with my girl for the most part. emphasis on the most part because i will never recover from her manipulating tamlin to lash out in acomaf/acowar (sorry they all bleed together)🧍🏻

And people will say she was justified in what she did and that its tamlins fault that he lashed out. like it wasnt great on his part but it is a type of emotional manipulation from feyre to get him to do that. she had to push him to get that reaction, it wasnt a natural reaction and man. Sjm accidentally wrote 90% of my childhood experiences with shitty boys LIKE how did she do that ⁉️

[lucalicatteart]

A few little sketches of some possible school uniforms for mage schools/learning centers for magic/etc. :0c Though because Nanyevimi is so scattered and disconnected, it'd actually vary much more by region (like not everywhere would have a cultural concept of what a suit jacket or neck tie looks like lol), so it's probably unrealistic for so many of them to follow too many traditional Uniform Conventions from cultures in our world, etc. But, still, fun to mess around with designs, and think about which would be most fun to wear/what school you'd go to just based off the clothing lol~

[sskk-manifesto]

Finally got around to watching ep 11 (´；ω；｀)

[knife-em0ji]

When The Moon Hatched is an insane book. It is a fae romantasy but this author went whole hog into building a world that works completely unlike our own, and I can tell she is determined to make it consistent and make sense within her own internal set of rules. I really respect her for trying to do something new, even if the prose is the brightest shade of eggplant I've come across in a while. It's not Good -- the weakness of the prose, especially when she tries a "High Fantasy" tone, holy shit, and the stodgy romantasy beats [even with the twist you can see from a mile away] make this a squarely mediocre read -- but she was definitely ambitious and trying something that puts her work apart from the gazillion other fae romances (there's like, no humans at all in this book, which I respect a lot). She definitely has a Vision, and there's nothing I love more than works produced by self made arteurs with only middling technical skill that are obviously passion projects. Yeah, the story itself is mid and the characters pretty stock when you get down to it, but the world is genuinely interesting and probably the least derivative I've read in any contemporary romantasy. You can tell that she probably read things like Discworld and was like, "I want to do this too! I want to create my own unique planet and then set a sexy faerie romance on it and it'll be my magnum opus."

And you know what??? Good for her. I love that. Friggin large popcorn dammit because reading this feels exactly like watching one of those one-off mid-budget fantasy/sci fi movies from the mid 00s - mid 10s that are firmly mediocre, but still live in your psyche forever. This is truly the Mortal Engines or Chronicles of Riddick -- or, actually JUPITER ASCENDING!!!! -- of the faerie romance genre. I'm only about halfway through, but I'm pretty sure at the rate this is going my opinion isnt going to change much.

Also. People complain that there's tons of made up jargon and they need to consistently refer to the glossary, which I personally don't see because to me it's really quite easy to infer what things mean based on context clues ??????? Like the book never goes out of its way to overly explain what anything is since the POV character has lived in this world for her entire life, so it's all just normal to her, and I very much respect that choice not to exposit more than absolutely necessary. Like idk those 70s pulp sci fi books must have really done a number on my pattern recognition and contextual reading skills, because I'm not having any difficulty at all following and inferring the meanings of the jargon. Like. I really need some of these people who complain about fantasy slang and jargon to try picking up A Clockwork Orange one day. That book is nigh impenetrable with made up slang LOL.

[caterpillarinacave]

Every person thinks about the battle of Cadair Idris once a day is a statical error. I, CaterpillarInACave, who thinks about it once every 3 to 30 minutes, am an outlier and should not have been counted.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

If the landlord doesn’t want me fishing around in their shower vent and cold air returns, then they shouldn’t make them stink like rotting garbage. You painted over the screws so they’re hard to open? Cool. I’ll drill holes into them and get them out with a power tool because the town next to me is having a citywide garage sale and I’m sure there’s some Ryobi in there at a decent price. Your vents are coming off motherfucker, and if I find anything I swear to fucking god I am going to have both your vents and your bank account cleaned out.