#monstrous: book one

[tearblossom]

[vampirehizzies]

the cato to annie pipeline is still real to me btw and something i think about because katniss is here thinking about both of them like "wow they are mentally ill" except she's legitimately scared of one and sees the other as docile/meek/an extension of her boyfriend/odd/non-threatening.

but what katniss doesn't seem to remember is annie came from a career district so not only could annie have easily been (and probably was) raised with a similar rhetoric/propaganda/mindset as cato but she also could have terrified the other kids in her arena the same way he did. they became trained killers but they're both exposed to the harsh realities of the arena, watch someone they care about die in a horrifically violent way, and lose themselves/their minds/what they were raised to believe in because of it

[uchanuku]

I feel like Jackrum and Polly both do “funny as long as they were useless, and safe as long as they were funny” thing. Jackrum plays up the jolly fat man routine to manipulate people into getting what he wants and discouraging people from further investigation, just as Pols acted like the ditzy bargirl to avoid abomination and convince people let their guard down. I think they both got it instilled in them for similar reasons, being a girl in an overly conservative and militaristic country. They both use it in the regiment when dealing with the higher ups.

This isnt as articulate as I would have liked but whatever.

[do-you-know-this-queer-character]

Do you know this queer character?

Jack is transgender and MLM, and uses he/him pronouns!

[cosmicrhetoric]

REVENGE IS NOT REDRESS. REVENGE IS A WHEEL AND IT TURNS BACKWARDS. THE DEAD ARE NOT YOUR MASTERS

[eisthenameofme]

Reading the Sabbat: The Black Hand v5 book, and it is apparently impossible for me not to see the Sabbat through a Queering Vampirism lense with some of the ways they're describing it. It's very obviously not what they're Trying to do, but that's the impression I'm getting anyway.

Like they start by saying the Purpose of the Sabbat is fundamentally to challenge the status quo, right before calling them fundamentally evil/monstrous antagonists and right after describing how scared all the other kindred are of them and how inscrutible they find their motivations. And then they go right into talking about the philosophy of embracing the Beast and fundamentally Cainite traits and inhumanity/monstrosity (what they are and what seperates them from the rest of society, the Other, which in this reading is also Queerness), to the horror of everyone else, and it's considered fundamentally an aspect of self destruction (see: how people act about trans surgeries). Also, treating something otherwise extremely taboo (ex. diablerie) as a "sacrament", like treating what is normally taboo/reviled as divine isn't also incredibly queer. Also alienation from society and difficulty forming connections.

You couldn't create a queer allegory more like catnip to me if you tried, is what I'm saying

[seefasters]

i have to wonder why "an autistic coded character with a very specific special interest" seems to be a trope in terry pratchett's books

[libraryleopard]

reading monstrous regiment and wrath goddess sing at the same time is really wild because they're both fantasy novels about gender and the patriarchy during wartime that also include a dead god and characters trying to get into the enemy's stronghold but they're completely different in tone and plot

[cirr0stratus]

George MacKay you are wazzer goom To Me

[mareastrorum]

Brevyn isn’t a D&D goliath blood hunter. She’s a WoW Kul Tiran enhancement shaman.

D&D Blood Hunters:

Are a martial class with the crimson rite ability to spill their own blood to temporarily enhance weapons with cold, fire, lightning, necrotic, psychic, thunder, or radiant damage (there is no rock/earth/lava version)

Don’t use fist weapons because D&D has no such weapon category (requires homebrewing, or just unarmed strikes, which generally suck for every class but monks or BH lycans)

Some subclasses have limited self-healing (Ghostslayer rite revival, Lycan regeneration, Mutant reconstruction mutagen), but only the Profane Soul subclass with a celestial pact can heal others with blood maledicts

Can be goliaths, which is a D&D race of humanoids distantly related to giants (implying they are more human than giant) that have skin reminiscent of stone.

WoW Enhancement Shamans:

Are a melee specialization that, along with the other shamans, have/had the ability to enhance weapons with fire, water, earth (which went through multiple iterations before ultimately being removed from the game in 2020, but still exists in WoW Classic), or wind at no cost

Can use fist weapons, including an iconic set that is literally molten lava fists (player characters can use this appearance as long as they have previously looted the item, so this has been a popular farm drop for shamans for more than a decade)

Always have access to a standard healing spell that can be used on others despite being primarily a DPS subclass

Because WoW has race/class restrictions, the only humans who can be shamans must be Kul Tiran (human, but Bigger), a race which was first added to the game in 2018 and playable in 2019 (when Madeleine Roux played the game (especially Classic) to immerse in the lore while writing a WoW novel, which featured several shaman characters, but none of which were Kul Tiran)

Here's a picture of the in-game item:

Man, that sure looks like molten lava claws wrapped around fists, just like the names of the twin weapons: Fist of Molten Fury and Claw of Molten Fury.

Brevyn:

Spilled blood so that "[h]ard, black stone rippling with molten fire formed around her hands"

Otherwise used bare fists instead of a standard D&D weapon

Healed other characters and had no reference to a patron or Profane Soul abilities at any point in the novel

Was a “half-goliath” with normal skin, as opposed to a D&D goliath, implying even less giant ancestry than a typical goliath (human, but Bigger)

The only thing suggesting that Brevyn isn’t a WoW shaman is that she didn’t self-rez, but you know what? Skill issue.

[just-spacetrash]

how do i make you guys read monstrous regiment without spoiling the whole thing

[tearblossom]

[corporalmaledict]

Reading Discworld novels "out of order" can give some whiplash. By "order" here, I mean the in-world timeline

Going backwards in Moist von Lipwig's trilogy was absolutely hilarious, seeing him go from train master to banker to postmaster.

The whiplash gets extra when you go from a book where a character died to a book where they were alive, well, and present in the story

[ninashiki]

tagged by @thecactifindahome <3

i tag @lipid, @menstits, @sunieepo, @cocovet, and @kotoneshiomiofficial! but don't feel obligated to if you don't feel like it ^_^

[des-fangirl]

if i ever were to flirt i would just show em my comfort book shelf and wait for the reaction

[cosmicrhetoric]

but it is extremely funny that when mal finally gives up the ghost and says something about the a at the end of his name the only reaction he gets is jade going "dat's nice :) 👍" and polly going "yeah yeah whatever. huh i'd be cleaning the toilets right about now"