#not sure I covered everything

[triflesandparsnips]

Time to knock some followers offa this train:

Trans women are women

Trans men are men

Nonbinary people are not "women-lite"

Men are just as fucked over by the patriarchy as everybody else

Metonymy is a cool word that is applicable for a lot of stuff

Bodily autonomy is also cool and guess what it applies even to body things some people don't agree with

Kink belongs at Pride

Gatekeeping is bullshit

RPF is not morally wrong

Characters are devices not people

No one should ask for or provide their personal information on the internet

Everyone should assume everyone else is lying on the internet and proceed accordingly

"Dead dove do not eat" does not automatically mean darkfic

Yes you can have sex with your clone if you're both consenting adults about it

No the AO3 does not need its own app

[palomalexa]

Always inside your mind.

[six-demon-bag]

LAURENCE FISHBURNE as Captain Miller SAM NEILL as Dr. Weir EVENT HORIZON (1997)

[rmbunnie]

It's most likely just Starlin trying to get to Jason dying faster because he did not like Robin, but the whole "Jason's spiraling because of his grief for his parents" thing they were trying to spin was honestly really weird, not supported by the rest of the run INCLUDING the parts Starlin wrote, and kinda reads like an unreliable narrator situation because all of the information supporting it is given through Bruce's narration, him speculating on Jason's thoughts and actions.

The plot thread of Jason's grief for his family affecting his behavior shows up like TWO issues after Jason first becomes Robin back when Collins was writing, and gets sorted out after one conversation where Jason gets to confront Bruce about hiding his father's death from him for 6 months. After that Jason is behaving normally until they encounter three predators in a row, and each time Bruce insists that they can't do anything because of The Rules and assorted red tape/diplomatic immunity plotlines. (The sister of a woman who got dismembered actually tricked the violent-misogynist killer who dismembered her sister (and then got his serial killings dismissed through a technicality) into attacking her, and ends up killing him in self-defense, and then Jason's like "seems fair" and Bruce is like "no. it's NOT. we need to follow laws and not take justice into our own hands. which like wtf Bruce! you are a vigilante who just used a custom tank to fight an evil televangelist! who then got ripped to shreds by his followers while you watched!)

Bruce kinda just decides with Alfred that it must be grief upsetting him and not the dozens of brutally killed women and their predatory killers who the law inexplicably protected, (all written by Starlin, so retconning it for DitF like five issues later would be an odd move) but the only text claiming that's why Jason was upset is from Bruce's POV and through Alfred's dialogue. Jason himself doesn't display any signs of grief in the story itself, or even act or speak in a way that alludes to Catherine and Willis beyond looking at a picture of them and smiling fondly while he sorts through their possessions. He kinda just happens upon the box with his mother's info by chance, and is like ok i guess we're doing mom searches now. He was only going for a walk through his old neighborhood, not actively searching out info on his family. When Jason is deciding whether or not to run off without telling Bruce, he considers telling him and then goes "no, all he cares about is being Batman, he wouldn't even understand why I want to see my mom." Which, I mean, "Bruce wouldn't get it" is a REALLY odd angle if the sole motivator for spiraling, then getting benched* and running away to search out his bio-mom, was because he was mourning his dead parents, a thing he notably has in common with Bruce. That statement only really makes sense if he's thinking about a different thing that was greatly upsetting to him that Bruce brushed past, like maybe a combo of hiding the murder of his dad for half a year and allowing several cases involving sexual violence to freely develop body counts in the name of the law.

Lots of people have written about how Jason's stay in the manor might have seemed dependent on being Robin with how he was kinda just scooped up, but (if we're including Detective Comics in our characterization,) Bruce had offered to let him resign from Robin and just live with him (a little late, but still. It's worth noting Batman proper shows Jason afraid and uncomfortable at the thought of Dick taking Robin back, which lends more merit to the housing-dependent-on-Robin-misunderstanding interpretation, but canon is pick and choose anyways.) The lack of trust involved in his choice to search out his mom kinda reads like it was bred by more than that alone, and Bruce's prioritization of the law over the protection of the people it ignores is notably upsetting to him in the prior issues. tbh I really do believe the outcomes of those cases could have informed Jason's stance that Bruce's method of justice is ineffective right alongside his own murder and his experiences in Lost Days.

It would make sense for Bruce to not consider his own actions while he's thinking through things that would upset Jason, because from his point of view the things there that were bothering Jason were the criminals alone, not the way that the methods with which they were approaching their crimes continually led to the perpetrators evading actual justice. During the point in DitF where he's thinking through motivations for Jason's running away because something isn't adding up for HIM, the idea doesn't so much as cross his mind. It would also add another layer to Jason's sulkiness upon Bruce's arrival if he held the belief that Bruce is ignoring the consequences his brand of justice has on victims (and the way it's affecting him to helplessly watch it play out), starts to hope that Bruce actually can understand his thought processes/relate to him when he shows up, only to be told to his face that Bruce is prioritizing his style of justice over Jason again. With the way everything that led Jason to his bio-mom was comically circumstantial and the context of the previous issues, it's kind of the ONLY way Death in the Family makes sense to me. Tldr: I feel like the grief claimed as reasoning for Jason's actions leading up to his death is mainly speculation from Bruce and Alfred and the more textually-supported reason for his erratic behavior and lack of trust in Bruce is the lack of intervention in several sensitive cases that led them to worsen unobstructed and eventually permitted them to escalate into casualties in 2 out of 3 cases.

*Also, side note, but the idea that Jason got benched for the Filipe situation, while perfectly reasonable, is not quite spot on. The Filipe situation escalated into the fight in the junkyard where his dad is crushed by a car and Bruce is all "everything you do has consequences" which is kinda big words for a guy whose lack of action indirectly lead to a girls death earlier in the storyline, but true. Jason actally gets benched because he jumps directly into gunfire while fighting the third set of predators and Bruce starts to worry he's getting a little suicidal with it. He baits a guy into shooting at him on purpose again trying to protect mom prospect number 1 later on in DitF, so Bruce might have had a point with that one.

[arcane-gold]

hi darlings i hate asking for help but i’m in a pickle this month trying to balance paying rent and prepping for a hurricane, all while going out of town next week. if you could share this i would really appreciate it 😭

i had a check coming in from a publisher that fell through, and now i have to come up with that $500 before next thursday, all while i will be in wyoming. stress

anyway thank you for your time, i appreciate you so much

thank you!! here is da link

[puppyeared]

personal character design headcanons + brainrot

Note: the re-bound!au does NOT belong to me, it belongs to @chipper-smol I’m just not normal about it lol

[iizuumi]

At least get cleaned up first!!

[walking-circles]

i cant tell things apart ! i dont know where they start !

[late-draft]

Hello, Dema here!

First off—I have fallen desperately in love with your artworks. You have a very particular style, strong and fluid all the same, and I can't help but admire the way you draw and how you approach character design.

And talking about character design...

I saw your post about Zuko's bold design in S1 when compared to what we got in S3 and—as much as I love S3-Zuko—I completely agree with you. Something I've always loved about Zuko in S1 is just how striking he was, how much of a presence he had, even when he was being tossed around by a twelve-year-old. That being said, I love Zuko, I love him in armor and pointy shoes and with a ponytail, and I loved your alternative design for him.

What do you think about his S2 character design? How does it flow with the story beats and his overall character arc? Much has been said about the Hair-Growth-Means-Character-Growth (and I find it interesting, also, that he cut his hair again before joining the Gaang), but I'd like to know your opinion on how that translates to character design and how the decisions made in the show could be either good or bad in that regard.

Sorry about the long ask! I've just been thinking about this a lot, lately, and would like to know what you think. Hope you have a good day ❤️

AAAA Dema hii!!! I'm so happy I got a message from you, I didn't expect it!!

I'm super glad to hear, I'll wear it as a badge of honour and I must tell you that I also love your art, you wonderfully do volume and the shading done through a contrast of sharp and soft areas! Super solid anatomy too and I'd be lying if I said I didn't look up to your art!

Yess the character designs in the show actually are rather strong, I like a good balance between memorable and functional. Zuko is just *chef kiss* but, considering just how many appearance changes he goes through, some are bound to be weaker than the starting one. That said, I'm gonna go through a few of his S2 looks and make this reply long, ha!

The starting one when he ends up huddling with uncle Iroh with other poor refugees, fits extremely well for the narrative at the moment. It's actually one of my least liked looks for him, and that's great!! It's precisely how it should be, because he's also arguably at one of his two lowest moral points in the story - he basically lost almost all hope, no clear goal, nothing to fight for, he's desperate precisely because of the lack of orientation and thus his morals degrade and sink veeery low. He gets on my nerves so goddamn much in this period LMAO I want to beat him up, he looks like a recovering drug addict... annoying, entitled whiny jerk stealing food and anything shiny for his uncle, but even then he just does not cross the moral event horizon. Excellent characterization. He just looks atrocious and it's great because it fits this low point.

Next he gets the standard boyish square of a hair, no notes here...

But theeeen, he arrives at one of my favourite looks of his, and it's not just because the clothes fit him very nicely (I've seen fandom say they look too big for him which, maybe?? But it doesn't look like he's swimming in them to me) And a thing I've noticed which, maybe it was just an accident on design part but I'm not sure considering they colour coded the entire cave scene; in this part his clothes match the shape of Katara's, first one in bottom then the one in top. The collar is the same haf-circle design but I don't know, maybe there was a limited pool of clothes designs guide which they cycled through. Or, he really is meant to come close but miss Katara by a beat, like sine and cosine chasing each other.

But besides this outfit fitting the inconspicuous Earth Kingdom customer service persona, it also (perhaps inadvertently) does this VERY cool thing:

It makes his shape look closed off and guarded, supposedly non-threatening. It's most visible in his fight against Jet, whose shape is open and goes in many directions like an aggressive star. But then look at what Zuko's shape does:

When he attacks, it opens up to reveal the hidden aspect, again the aggressive star shape shows up! The same thing happens in "Zuko alone" episode but I think it's most clearly visible in this fight against Jet because here he has a direct contrast and comparing with Jet. I think this is an example where the outfit, whose similar design exists irl, overlaps with a great visual metaphor and enhances the narrative at that moment in story. He's still that combative firebender but he has to keep that aspect concealed most of the time. Plus it just looks badass as hell!!

Animators really knocked it out of the park with many frames. I think Jun was too early and missed his better hairstyle, but Katara was just in time.

I agree it's super funny how his hair in the Beach is awfully long, covers his face to an uncomfortable degree and then he apparently shortens it before joining the Gaang, insane behaviour Truly an "I'm so angry and depressed I won't show my face nor be capable of seeing anything because there's nothing nice to see in my life" look...

I guess all his appearances in S2 cover his mental states, but only one of them is extremely Extra (the tea server, doesn't even take the apron off and goes to fight) and I don't see any spot where a similar tier design could be shoved in, narratively speaking. So all in all, S2 did as much as S2 could have. More tea server arc please though, the Guru episode really feels like it skipped 800 km of plot and everything that happened in it is so crammed and pretty sus in terms of character behaviour.

[josephtrohman]

hey did you guys know there's been a second angle of the joetrick wrigley hug this whole time

[h0neybane]

"i am hungry. i have been hungry. i was born hungry. what do i need?"

Morwenna Veil Lore UTC.

CW: cannibalism, child death, violence. seriously if u dont wanna read it its ok this is DARK

'You want your mother, you think. You don't think the words, for you've just been born and have not learned any, but you can feel that you want your mother. The cold bites at you like a parasite. You want to burrow deeper into your shell. But you reach outwards, tentacles uncharacteristically slow for a mer of your kind. You're hungry, ravenous.

Your teeth tear into more flesh. It's raw, warm. This would've been your sister— no, it is your sister. You're eating your sister, and she's warm against the cold of the sea. You're glad most of her upper half is already gone.

You want your mother. Yₒᵤ wₐₙₜ yₒᵤᵣ ₘₒₜₕₑᵣ.

Ỹ̸͉͇̙̑̔̉͋̋̆̒o̷͇̤̙̤̓̌̈́̚u̷̖̫̘̤̥͗̀͝͝ ̸̡͈̜̅̍̈̓̓̇̒͝w̴͔̘̼̣͙̝̗̌͊̽͆͛͗͜a̸̩̭̗̭̻̪̦̹̟͖̾̒̌ǹ̶̨͇̖̫͙̈́̀t̸̺̩̞̥̮̹͈̩̽̅͜͝͝ ̵̜͈̉̍͠y̷̥̟̝̣̣̺̌͜ỏ̷̟͍̞̥̞̟̖̪̌́͐̂u̶̜̩̺̬̲͕̜͆̒̋ͅr̸̨̺͙̠̟̱̤̗̰̲̆̈́̊͆̈́͘ ̷̨̻̪͉͍͖̖͋̂̅͜ḿ̶̯̹̲͓͓̺͕̐̏ỏ̴̮͈̳̙̹̦̻̱̘̞̿͝t̴̨̯̠̥͍̓͌́͗̂͒̌̇͜h̵̛̙̤̙̑̇̇̌̄̕e̶̯̬̦̺̦͉̩͎̾̐̏͆̈̽̅͑ŗ̴̧͙͚̋̎̋̓̚.̵̡̫͉̻̠̺͖̺̹̌͑͊̀̐͒̚'

uhhh hey...... YAYYY FIRST OC LORE DROP!!! here's a summary of the first part of her actual backstory so you can understand more!

Morwenna is a Humboldt Squid Mermaid, and was born like one too. Humboldt squid will lay gelatinous egg masses that are almost entirely transparent and float freely in the water column. These egg masses usually contain at least a million eggs, having humboldt squid take the crown as the cephalopod with the highest amount of eggs laid at once. For the sake of believability, as one million mermaid eggs sounds ridiculous, we are going to reduce this amount to one thousand eggs. Assuming that a large amount of these eggs will be eaten or destroyed and not make it back to their mother, this feels reasonable.

In the darkness of the deep sea, Morwenna and her sisters and brothers laid silent in their egg mass. Usually, the egg masses would be left to their devices, and the baby mers would find their way back to their mothers on their own. However, Morwenna’s mother is on the more sentimental side, and she would frequently come to check on the eggs. The eggs began to hatch a few days earlier than planned, maybe around an hour before Morwenna’s mother arrived. Morwenna slowly emerged from the membrane into dark, cold waters. 

A sperm whale found the egg mass. It devoured a majority of the eggs and babies before leaving to find and attack the adults of Morwenna’s family. In the midst of the chaos and the blood in the water, Morwenna pulled the half-eaten corpse of her sister sticking out of one of the eggs and hid inside, cold, dark and alone. Morwenna and her siblings spent three days and three nights alone. They ate the remains of their dead siblings to survive. By the time Morwenna’s mother made it back to them, there were three (including Morwenna) babies left. 

This incident has deeply affected Morwenna in the coming years. Although the birth of a mer isn't usually tender, Morwenna’s experience is exceptionally cruel even compared to the average. In the coming years, Morwenna has developed claustrophobia and a fear of sperm whales.

taglist (ask to be added!): @taruruchi @honeyedpearcrushh @teighveepao @boopshoops @scint1llat3

@h2llish @viperbunnies @buttholesparkles @oya-oya-okay @cheerleaderman

@qsoap + @beneathsakurashade since i know you love morwenna

[0m3n-0f-d3ath]

Gods favorite little idiot

(This is a bad thing)

[foxx-queen]

an attempt at a different history (that doesn't imply the elves are to blame for their own suffering, or that the elves and the dwarves aren't 'real' people, unlike humans)

the titans were the first of the dwarves. their children were many, and smaller by necessity. the titans created great caverns in the earth for their children, and the dwarves built their cities on top of them, so that they would always be close to their ancestors. there wasn't room in the growing world for the titans to roam, but they were content to feel their children thrive, and to share their experiences through the song that connected them. the evanuris were what the dalish believed them to be; their creators. whether they were powerful spirits or gods, they gained power through their peoples' belief in them.

both the dwarves and the elves thrived for a long time, distinct from each other but coexisting together.

then came the forgotten ones. the forbidden ones. they lived in the void, and their followers were the first practitioners of blood magic. they killed dragons to use their blood to augment themselves, until it twisted them into something unrecognisable. they became the scaled ones. while the forgotten ones waged war against the evanuris on the surface, the scaled ones began attacking the dwarves. andruil, who'd spent a lot of time among the dwarves (which is why there was a dalish belief she might've been a child of the stone) began to hunt them, ignoring calls for caution from her fellow evanuris, until she tracked them into the void. her armor, crafted from lyrium (a gift from the dwarves), became infected with the blight, and it drove her mad. she returned from the void and brought the blight with her, corrupting her lands and her people, until mythal fought her and removed her armor, but andruil remained infected, though the madness left her.

ghilan'nain began experimenting with the blight to search for a cure. those experiments eventually led to the creation of the griffons, but she was unable to find a cure. it became a desperate obsession, and through her experiments she became infected with the blight herself, but found that she was able to control it to some extent. she began to believe that if there was no stopping it, no curing it, perhaps controlling it was the next best option. her experiments became more focused on controlling it rather than curing it the more it corrupted her.

with the blight and the forgotten ones to contend with, elgar'nan called for harsher measures to be taken, and many of the evanuris sided with him. meanwhile, solas had been slowly working to gain the trust of the forgotten ones, in an attempt to learn of their weaknesses, and was able to move freely between them, with mythal covering for him with the other evanuris. she continued to push for restraint instead of all out war, fearing what the destruction would do to their people. the other evanuris eventually became suspicious of both this and solas' actions, and believed she'd been corrupted by the forgotten ones. in the ensuing confrontation, she was killed. the other evanuris, who had genuinely loved her as she loved them, and who had never experienced death before, lost themselves to grief and despair, and without her hand to temper elgar'nan's desire for vengeance, all out war seemed inevitable.

and so solas created the veil, separating the evanuris and the forgotten ones from the world and containing the blight in the process. his hope was that with time and patience, he'd be able to talk the evanuris down from a path that led to more death and bloodshed, by communicating with them while they slept, unaware that the energy it would take would send him into centuries of slumber. the fade severed the titans' connection to the dwarves (but did not render them tranquil), and the elven civilisation crumbled.

centuries later, the forgotten ones reached the tevinter magisters in their dreams, established themselves as the old gods, and led them to break into their fade prison, releasing them and the blight upon the world.

when the dwarves of kal-sharok were cut off from the deep roads in an attempt to save the dwarven civilisation, they discovered one of ghilan'nains labs. using her research into blight and her creation of the griffons, they became 'like the darkspawn'. these were the first wardens.

[kinokoshoujoart]

the coolest kids in forgotten valley!!☆

(…it seems there may have been a stretch of time where rock and lumina were the only kids in forgotten valley…🥲)

poseref

[vigilskeep]

hi! ive seen you talk about your surana a bunch but i dont know if ive seen her full story. what were some of the pivotal decisions she made? i love hearing you talk about your ocs, theyre always so in depth and thought out!

oh thank you!! :) my surana is my Eldest Daughter from my very first full playthrough of a dragon age game, so i think a lot of people newer to the blog (like... from less than a year and a half ago probably lmao) have less of the context in complete form. so i will attempt to summarise!! it may be... long...

minerva surana is a manipulative, driven elven circle mage, heart-breakingly willing to sacrifice whatever she believes is necessary for her Grand Goals, who is often so busy playing 5d chess she forgets she’s a twenty-one year old with no experience of the world outside the tower

okay it did turn out fucking long the rest is under the cut its like 9 bulky paragraphs enjoy

her family were tevinter liberati, elven slaves who had devoted themselves to buying their way out and very recently succeeded. her parents were desperate to see her and her elder sibling grow up knowing only freedom, and sent their children south with another part of the family while they remained to pay off the last of their debts. the journey was long and difficult, and they had little left when they ended up in the denerim alienage. in a twist of bitter irony, magic that might have made minerva someone of value in the imperium saw her freedom once more revoked in the south. minerva remembers nothing of tevinter, and only a few fragments of what came next: of light through the vhenadahl’s branches glinting on a templar’s blade, of her sibling fighting them and being knocked to the ground, terribly still, with blood in their hair, and of her grandmother saying what she might have said many times on that long journey south: we can survive anything, as long as we never look back. ironically, minerva often took that to heart by denying all memory prior to the circle.

young apprentice minerva was a sullen child, with few friends; karl thekla took an elder brother’s interest, and jowan clung to her talent. she only really flourished when, after her terror of her natural gift for spirit magic saw her self-hatred turn dangerous in her early teens, first enchanter irving took an interest. he was a father figure to her, and he showed her how to channel her power into control, and her distress into ambition. newfound devotion to elemental magic saw her hailed as a prodigy, and surely a future first enchanter with irving’s tutelage. (only irving considered her too headstrong for the role. he never told her, fostering the drive he had cultivated, both fearful for the state she might return to if he didn’t, and curious as to what else she might become.) she grew up arrogant and beautiful and deeply loyal to the circle, learning that it was only the weak and the defiant who would fail to thrive there, and convinced she was neither. many of her peers wanted to be her, and few of them wanted to spend much time in her company. except jowan, still the little brother hiding in her shadow, and halliserre amell, a rebellious rival with a winning smile, who made up for their lack of her discipline and raw power with sheer brilliance, and whose heated arguments eventually developed into... ah, something else heated.

not long before the start of the game, amell told her they were going to accept tranquillity. it didn’t matter how clever they were; with their weak magic, they would die in the harrowing. they’d only been so defiant of the circle before because, having accepted their fate, the risks were nothing to them. furious and unable to admit it was because she was in love, the last thing minerva ever said to them when they were whole was that they were a coward not to try. when jowan told her he feared he too would be made tranquil, minerva was still recovering from the loss, not to mention flushed with even more arrogance than normal from her own successful harrowing. she had been the perfect circle mage all her life, twice as good as everyone else to make up for every rumour about where she was from. surely she had earned one defiance. surely she could save this one thing, her oldest friend. and she is a loyal person, in her way, emotion powering her fierce drive, incapable of abandoning what she has set her heart on. irving, from whom she had learned everything, was ahead of her every step of the way. he arranged for her to be taken in by the grey wardens. she had proved herself as headstrong and unsuitable as he had feared—and she was shocked and bitterly betrayed to finally see that—but he also believed this might bring her to where she would truly belong.

as a grey warden, minerva’s highest concern is perception. when the stakes of the game are revealed, she has enough hubris to see it as a chance to not just save but change the world. defeating the archdemon isn’t enough. she needs to be seen defeating the archdemon, at the forefront, as an elven mage; she has enough idealism to believe it will really matter for her and people like her, and enough shrewd cynicism to consider what she may have to sacrifice to achieve it. mostly she approaches problems with the skill for diplomacy and management that irving taught her, with that good good Master Coercion skill. she gets many of the “better” and certainly more peaceful quest outcomes, not always motivated by altruism, but determined to be remembered well when she leaves each faction behind. her one great sacrifice of this goal to be seen as the perfect mage is when she takes up blood magic, determined after she sees its power that she alone can handle it, to get the job done and keep what’s hers alive fight after fight. but that only makes her more dedicated to her actions elsewhere

the real test and most pivotal moment of her arc is at the landsmeet. she has arranged anora’s marriage to an alistair hardened for the role (once more following irving’s example, learning to teach ambition as he had taught hers. is there love in that, or just selfishness? she doesn’t know). all that matters is that the joint rule neatly fulfils her desire for compromise to please all parties. but then she struggles between two aspects of her goal: she wants to be seen, personally, as the victor; she does not want every noble in ferelden to see her kill the hero of river dane with magic. she knows how that scene will be remembered, in the end. when riordan suggests recruiting him instead, it seems the perfect solution to everything, the salvation of the day. and then she realises she’s broken alistair’s heart, just when he’s breaking hers. she is incapable of backing down in front of them all (it’s only to alistair, her alistair, but she can’t do it—not to a human, and not to someone part of her will always see as a templar—not when everything she wants was so close.) he abandons her for the throne she taught him to want. she goes on with loghain in the party, and eventually—unable to let loghain snatch the final sacrifice from her grasp, and realising she does want to win and live, after it all—convinces him to do the dark ritual.

in terms of her most important relationships with companions: minerva traditionally romances zevran, who is in many ways uniquely her match having learned the same bitter lessons with the crows that she learned from the circle, and who is so dear to her and capable of lightening her heart when no-one else can. i’ve also experimented with the idea of her romancing alistair, to really dramatise the Landsmeet Divorce and capitalise on future political shenanigans where she could one day be his mistress, but more traditionally they are simply an extremely closely trauma-bonded pair of people who are incapable, at least that year, of really understanding each other deep down. it falls into a pattern where she loves someone with all that fierce drive, enough to die for them, but she will always prioritise what she thinks they need over what they are saying and what they want, often with misjudgements and terrible consequences for them both. it was true with amell, it’s true for many others

she has something very intense and homoerotic going on with morrigan, she has a strained relationship with leliana and wynne, and she has respect and comradeship and a fair bit of fundamental disagreement with sten and loghain. the awakening squad are the people she will consider family for life, most notably nathaniel who she started out not liking at all and is now her work wife, her right hand, can finish her sentences, etc.; anders, who remembers her as karl’s annoying teacher’s pet telltale little sister and is still sometimes baffled by who she’s become; velanna, who makes minerva her most genuine self by having regular screaming matches with her as a sign of affection; and oghren who tried to quit drinking at the same time she tried to quit blood magic, leading to many conversations that deeply baffled everyone around them.

the “current” minerva surana is a sharp-tongued leader who was born for the role of warden-commander, who loves her work and that it matters, who has a truer confidence that is less blindly arrogant and more willing to admit to mistakes, who has worked her breathless way up to h*lding h*ands in public with someone she loves, who has finally learned the hard lesson that the world needs more than an heroic example who followed all the rules to truly be bettered... and who, as rebellion brews, has never been one to sit back and watch while others changed the world

[ruvviks]

Mikhail and Vitali were inseparable; when they weren’t studying or getting into fights, they would hang out at Mikhail’s place to smoke and get drunk on cheap rum and vodka, to then pass out in each other’s arms and sleep most of the next day away. They promised each other— no matter what would happen— they would never leave each other’s side. Yet after starting university and college respectively, they did not see each other for a little over six years, leaving them both heartbroken and wondering what went wrong.

by lucas expedidor // catch me if you can; eden // clementine von radics, from 'courtney love prays to oregon' // sam sax, cruising: a broken tiara // 'ceramic home' by heavensghost; quote from john murillo // 'something's changed' by laiikastears // i don't want to watch the world end with someone else; clinton kane // fortesa latifi, from 'the truth about grief' // audre lorde, the evening news // frank o'hara, biotherm (for bill berkson) // heading home; ruben // 'preface to a dream' by alessandra casini // tokyo; caroline kole // langston hughes, poem // haruki murakami, norwegian wood // julie buntin, marlena // by lute // by aleksandr popov // anyway; noah kahan // christa wolf, cassandra: a novel and four essays