#jurdan shipper for life

[starrynightsxo]

QUOTES: CARDAN TO JUDE ♡

[gonnabesounwellaboutit]

looking for blogs to follow :)

started a new blog to find some accounts with similar interests!

about me: born in the 90s, she/her, eldest daughter™, arts dabbler, domestic partnered up, cat lover

Here are some of my interests I’m hoping to find blogs about:

Otome Games (played: even if TEMPEST, Collar x Malice, Bustafellows, Olympia Soiree, Cupid Parasite) Jujutsu Kaisen (faves: megumi, gojo, choso, toji, nanami … gege is evil) Spy x Family (i <3 the forgers) Castlevania (the throuple, isaac, hector) Tears of Themis (vyn, my love) Love and Deepspace (all!!! but maybe zayne biased slightly) What We Do in the Shadows (movie & show) Folk of the Air (jurdan always) Comics (love fantasy & romance, Purple Hyacinth, Stray Souls, I Love Yoo, Unholy Blood, Children of the Night, My Happy Marriage, many many more…) Studio Ghibli (can do no wrong) Obey Me (very casual player, love Beel, Dia, Satan, Belphie, Solomon, Barbatos) Horimiya (so sweet it made me cry) Enemies to Lovers/Slowburn/Angst (self explanatory) Star Wars (begrudgingly, anakin, ben solo) Art (i love seeing peoples ocs, fan art, just straight up pretty people, tender moments) Genshin (very casual player) Our Life (cove I will always love you - and your dad) Degrees of Lewdity (bound to syndey - ask me for my DoL sideblog)

if we have overlap i’d love to follow you!

i’d prefer not to follow any accts who are going to go out of their way to hate on other shippers (valid critique without being mean is fine, but i’m pretty ‘ship and let ship’ - i’m not here for anti discourse), i don’t want to follow any minors, don’t want to follow any terfs

preemptive content notice: i may on occasion reblog nsfw content

[sunlethscape]

The Wicked King Thoughts

this isn’t going to be an edited and professional review like my gaming reviews are lol. i just finished this at 2am last night and i legit DID NOT sleep well because i have so many emotions about this book...many of them that only got more negative as i talked about it with my best friend? which makes me sad because The Cruel Prince is my favorite fantasy book ever!!! maybe favorite book ever periodt!!!

so uhhhhhh here are my thoughts, i need to get them out and move on, especially since the wait for Queen of Nothing will be so long. ALL THE SPOILERS, OBVS so please don’t read if you haven’t read it yet and don’t want to be spoiled!

i think most of my issues stem from the fact that i think the book needed to be a lot longer. in a trilogy, the second book is the most important, in my opinion, because it serves as the bridge between the beginning and the end--there is no other bridge beside this book. and this book was really short and felt like it glossed over a lot? 

there is a 5 month time skip at the beginning, which doesn’t feel like the best move because seeing judge get acclimated to being cardan’s seneschal and all that entailed on a daily basis, both in terms of the physical stress and in terms of her feelings with cardan, would’ve been 1) great and 2) necessary for their relationship. 

jurdan is supposed to be this enemies to lovers trope, but the only way that this trope really works is if there is a significant amount of development in the relationship, or else the transition between enemies to lovers feels jarring and just doesn’t work. i didn’t see that transition here...they’re both very broken people, who have lacked the knowledge of what trust is for much of their life, but they do know it to some extent. i needed a lot more from them, a lot more development and also not what feels a retcon of what they learned of each other? like at least maybe cardan showing some hesitation or /something/ while sleeping with other people when he supposedly likes Jude, Really likes her enough to be unable to get her out of his head, enough to just scrawl her name on a note over and over again. they kind of do what they did in The Cruel Prince -- be mad at each other and have some sexual tension -- but just for the span of a book. it feels like there wasn’t any development, other than getting to know each other a bit more, having sex, getting close to becoming somewhat honest and then at the end that’s just obliterated. with cardan laughing a beat too late from the rest at the end, i know he has to have some plan set in motion, and it’s the only plan that will keep jude safe, but it’s still ?????? you got married literally the night before. which it wasn’t even a marriage “ceremony” that sat right because this is where they should’ve been honest about each other, at least to some noticeable degree. it would’ve made the betrayal at the end better, too! 

the betrayal/ending felt incredibly rushed. i remember checking the amount of pages left and being like...what’s going to happen in such few pages? and for an entire ending that leaves the reader shocked as well as an epilogue (which did nothing, really) to happen in such a short time felt very rushed.

there was also just /another/ time skip of another month. so we essentially skip over 6 months total in this book, and it feels...incomplete. i think the book needed to be double its length in order to carry the amount of development that it needed. it needed more build up toward all of its major plot points -- ghost betraying jude, taryn betraying jude, and prince cardan suddenly being in full control of his powers.

the last one, in particular, bothers me because we spend the entire book seeing him as a king that is more clever than he lets on but is ultimately still messy and rather naive. we get no build up toward him being more in tune with his powers -- it’s not something even jude knows at the beginning, and with being outcasted from the family his whole life, i doubt he received much training. it’s glossed over as him “learning scheming” well in the month that jude spent underwater but...again, that does nothing for the reader. it didn’t feel cheap, but it just wasn’t developed at all, so i was confused as to how he suddenly had perfect control. you need subtlety in books, but you also need to build up to certain things. 

locke explicitly trying to kill jude also felt ????? he’s always been extremely shady even from the beginning of the cruel prince, and jude does threaten him pretty explicitly here, but we’ve gotten no hint that he’s capable of murder before, as far as i remember. he’s been conniving and sneaky and trashy and unfaithful, but he hasn’t been shown to even think of murder as a valid option. taryn and him are annoying and this entire family thing should’ve been resolved, or reached a climax at least with all parties aware of everything, in this book. like...he can’t just have murdered jude and then he mostly disappears from jude’s mind and the general picture until the next book lol. 

i feel like holly black has created this amazing universe with such fascinating characters but isn’t letting them get the time to develop. we could’ve gotten so much more about nicasia, her mom, the blacksmith who is suddenly a really important player but that we see in two freaking scenes, about the court of shadows (especially ghost since????????????????? like yeah you served prince dain but bitch he’s dead now lmao WHAT you’re siding with what will destroy the land???? okay go off i guess), taryn, just...everyone. i’m puzzled as to why some scenes are in the book, like heather being turned into a cat or whatever and the scene with eldred’s past lover who just decides not to help jude even after opening up to her (which was a nice character building moment, yes, but he’s not even a major player in this and it wasn’t a necessity since he didn’t even help her and the scene doesn’t do anything meaningful for her)

trying to remove my bias as a shipper and lover of good romance, i find myself unabel to agree with people when they say romance isn’t at the forefront of this story. sure, political intrigue, war, scheming etc might all be at the forefront...but so is romance very much. the book’s synopsis touches on the romance. the book’s title is a reference to jude’s love interest. jude and cardan are the only two characters that get page time throughout the entire book (even if i wish there could’ve been more cardan, though i’m not sure if this is becuase i love him so dearly) and are the lead characters. the romance /is/ a very important part about this story, it’s why so many things (including the ending) happen. and i’m sad that what is the best enemies-to-lovers trope i’ve come across was just...nothing close to that at all in this book. it’s a messy relationship, they’re messy people, but i feel like we should be somewhere else with them if the next book is the last. the pacing was really not great here, at all. some people complained that the first book took too slow to start, which i found the pacing to be on the slow side but i was more than okay with it, but this was way too fast. if all these events spanned from the front to back of this book, then sure that’s fine but it needed to be a longer book. many things feel underdeveloped. 

i read it in one sitting so sure, it went fast for me. i’m a huge fan of the first book and this is the first book i’ve anticipated so strongly in a very long time. but i was hooked on the first book, as well, and not only did i not read that so fast but there was also proper development for everything so i was very satisfied at the end despite it being technically more of a cliffhanger than the end of this book.

i just...i’m sad to be disappointed because i’ve been thinking about this book nonstop for months? : ( i love this series and jude and cardan dearly so i’m sad to feel so disappointed. to bring up another author whose books I’ve enjoyed, Sarah J Maas tends to fluctuate in quality but she spends /so much time/ developing everything, from the world to her (arguably less interesting) characters. if this book incorporated that aspect of her writing, we would’ve learned more about the lower courts, especially the court of termites, learned more about this entire universe teeming with so many possibilities. A Court of Mist and Fury, the second book in the A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy, is a stupendous book. it’s dedicated to some action and plenty of political intrigues, but it absolutely nailed developing every single main character in a pretty sizeable cast -- especially the main couple, which desperately needed the development since they were enemies in the first book. Heir of Fire is the middle book in the The Throne of Glass series, and that entire book is dedicated to developing the protagonist, her relationship to the world and to who becomes her real love interest. 

these two books in those series are really popular because they spent so much time just simply fleshing everything out...i feel like The Wicked King just jumps from event to action at a rapid pace, with some minimal character building in between. i loved seeing an even darker jude, but there’s something missing in her characterization that i can’t quite put my finger on, and while i loved cardan’s development, i feel he wasn’t around enough. maybe if the book was longer, i wouldn’t have these issues, because it’s the easiest way to fix them. idk. i’m usually not one for multiple POVs (i don’t mind or love them, whatever fits the story best is fine) but i think this book would’ve really benefitted from that here.

tl;dr i’m v sad that i’m disappointed in what was totally my most anticipated book...maybe ever? ;o; especially since a lot of people seem to have loved it, some even more than the cruel prince, and while i totally respect that and see where it comes from, i can’t count myself among those folks. idk. i’m sad and impatient for Queen of Nothing!! feel free to reply/cry with me if you’re disappointed with anything or just dealing with the nearly unbearable sadness and emptiness of finishing a book of a series that you care so much about. 

@ holly black 

[fiorilithe]

OMG. Almost identical as mine.

I started shipping them when I was 8 years old (7-8; somewhere between that haha that’s the range). I watched my dad play the Night Elf campaign and I was deeply intrigued by these two. They had this ineffable chemistry and it’s really weird to detail it out because even myself, as overreacting as it seems, cannot find the right words to describe how I’m feeling about these two idiots...

When I was 10-11 years old, I stumbled onto an old computer and that’s the time where I’ve decided to play the Night Elf campaign, a.k.a the story of how and why I was being swirled into the spiralling vortex of hate/love drama, intense chemistry and repressed feelings 🤣 I even stayed up late at night reading fanfictions of these two; squealing like a 4 year old child and also, lots of dying whale noises were heard, of course🤣

And yeah, my shipping life was pioneered by them, obviously. When I watched TFA for the first time, I had an impression of Kylo and Rey; giving off vibes like them and I was also enchanted the same way as I was enchanted by Illidan and Maiev. Long story short, I’m now a shipper of Rey x Ben, Zuko x Katara and any sassy (as you’ve said), hate/love ship out there when time comes I’ll find one again (looking at you, jurdan even though I haven’t bought the book yet XD)

I finally did it, I’ve solved the mystery

a while ago someone asked how I got into fanfics/what was my first ship, blah blah and like. I don’t even remember?? so ive been trying to find out.

Originally thought it was some bad rpf stuff from eigth grade (before I decided I really didn’t like rpf) But no. So ok, maybe blackbutler in 7th? No, it was before that. okok, maybe either ouran or more rpf in 6th? No, no I distinctly remember before that. okay, cool. hmmm. Okay, well before anime and rpf there was Mortal Instruments. So was it Simon/Jace? Malec? Simon/Clary? Nope. Welllll fuck. Okay. Gotta dig deeper.

it was fucking Maeive/Illidan. That was it. That was the original otp, back in like 4th(ish) grade. I was like 9-10, and just loved the banter between those two, and I wanted more, so I found fics on some shitty little website that I cant even remember but I don’t think it even exists anymore??? (also throwback, I was on quotev when it was still called quizazz for several years before it switched ;) )

and like. Going from that, what are the ships I have today? Kylux, Newt/Herman, Jon/Ygritte, Spider-Man/Deadpool, etc. The constant? Ships that are sassy af and have some kind of rivalry.

I can’t believe a 10k year obsession between two crazy elfs lead to what my life currently is lmao

oh and for anyone interested, it was doing the Cathedral of Eternal Night dungeon that triggered this for me. Specifically the bit of convo where Illidan says “Posture if you must Maieve, but for no do what you do best, and follow me.” (that had me fucken screaming, I love it)