#note from the author

[uekiyoshi-archive]

chapter 19 illustration

Shoichi Usui || November 5, 2024 || Twitter [link]

[yuesya]

As a heads up, I am changing internet providers tomorrow. If things go awry and I don't have access to internet on Friday, regular updates this week will be delayed.

Ko-fi update tomorrow will still be fine, though, since those can be scheduled in advance. :3

[warwickroyals]

⚠️ warning ⚠️

Today’s post at 6 am references suicide and (maybe) spousal abuse, depending on how lenient you are?

None of it is tagged because it’s not really graphic or anything serious, though. It’s honestly just someone saying they’d kill themselves in a hypothetical situation.

Stay safe, friends!

[j-eryewrites]

Hey y’all, I promise I’m still alive. Life has seemed to hit me super hard right now with car crashes, school, work, among other things. I doing my best to keep writing but I don’t know when I’ll be posting again. Thank you all for continuing to support my work!

[glassgob]

[Image ID: Digital illustration of Tech from Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Tech is sitting on the open hatch of the Havoc Marauder, holding onto a pulley cable with his right arm. Slight design edits have been made to his mercenary armor: most notably are stronger orange and pink accents. The second image is a close-up of his face. End ID.]

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[nellasbookplanet]

Mentioning Tusk Love and the potential of other independent stories set in Exandria reminded me of an old discord conversation about how they could Fix the courting of the crick for publishing (seeing as it's canonically a Bad Book due to being super dry and also racist towards drow) without breaking canon:

Rename it 'The Courting of the Kryn - a Reimagining of the Classic Story, by Jester Lavorre'

Present it as an in-universe fanfic-ish rewrite. There's a foreword where 'Jester' elaborates on the inaccuracies of the original, the impact the story had on her, and the importance of Dynasty-Empire relations. There's an acknowledgement section where she thanks Caleb and Beau as 'consultants on Empire culture', as well as an unnamed/under fake name/clearly Essek as an 'expert on the Luxon, dunamancy and Dynasty culture'. All his information on spy networks is eerily accurate and has his former co-workers scrambling. (He makes her keep all the dry historical accounts, but now it's accurate (with added dick-related puns)). She mentions that she reached out to the Bright Queen who reluctantly (after 5 messages in a row) gave some pointers. In her frantic research she possibly made some breakthroughs on the nature on the Luxon that has Essek reeling (there's a 'further reading' section where she lists the academic paper he wrote building on her discoveries and an entire list of the sources her consultants used).

For extra fun and meta-ness, include footnotes where she comments on things she changed/removed from the original and why, how various scenes may have been inspired by a real life couple or events, etc. Some of the footnotes are written by her consultants. Caleb and Essek get into arguments on dunamancy theory which is actually thinly veiled flirting. There's anatomically accurate drow sex (it's unclear whether the consultant was Essek or Caleb or possibly a certain brother, who was also consulted on Dynasty military practices).

[satorusluver]

Sorry but "slightly evil" canon L is just so interesting to me.

The L who calls himself justice, but the real reason he's spent his life catching criminals isn't out of a sense of justice; it's because it's fun for him.

The L who's willing to lie and cheat and break the law, to use thieves and conmen to achieve his goals. Because it's all a game to him and he'll do anything to win.

The L who's incapable of trusting anyone, perhaps partially because he projects his own sly nature onto others, and because he's had no one get close enough to him to change his mind.

The L who doesn't know how to love in a healthy way, or how to love at all, and isn't sure he's even capable of it, but who knows that he feels something for you he's never felt for anyone else.

The L who would have no idea what to do with the emotions he feels for you, who wouldn't know how to open up his heart and his life and be vulnerable with another person, but who finds himself for the first time in his life wanting to try.

The L who knows he is a monster, and has always been content with being one, until you managed to work your way into his heart.

[moeblob]

Gavin mentally: wait... that doesn't add up........

[mummer]

😦

[uekiyoshi-archive]

chapter 20 illustration

Shoichi Usui || November 11, 2024 || Twitter [link]

[incorrectpmmmquotes]

Kyoko: I would kill for you

Sayaka: Thank you

Kyoko: Please ask me to kill for you

Sayaka: No

Kyoko: Damn

[warwickroyals]

So, we are very close to beginning the James mini-series, which was little excerpts from his diaries that were stolen from the archives by Crosby. Since they are journal entries they're written in first person, present tense and might be slightly more narrativized than a typical journal entry, just to keep things interesting.

The excerpts we see take place in the summer of 2016, so roughly a year before James's death. It deals with a lot of sensitive issues such as mental illness, suicide/death, pregnancy loss, substance abuse, and generational trauma. The entries also deal a lot with sex and physical intimacy. These posts won't have any visuals depicting any of these topics, they are 100% prose, but please be mindful of these topics going in. Everything will be tagged appropriately.

These posts will go live at 6 am EST on update days, which are usually every three days. I'm aiming for the first one to go up this Friday. I'm so excited for you to see what I've been working on: the answer as to why the palace was so anxious to bury James's journals in the first place. Also keep in mind that what we read isn't the entirety of what Alex has read, just bits and pieces.

[somerandomcockroach]

Ahaha.... so, finished "Till all are one", will just put a few screenshots I liked because who will stop me

Starscream and Bumblebee being an unhealthy in the most healthy possible way married couple... Just... I mean, I'm not sure if Bumblbee is real (like some spark dust) or really is his hallucination, but the way they talk, the way it helps him keep the sanity while he looks insane, the way he is alone once he really leaves

And just sassy Starscream, his fear, the REAL him, OH MY GOD LOOK. LOOK AT IT, I was kicking my legs, I love Starscream being a sassy rat stabbing the backs, so seeing all these was a big surprise... Broken villain, somehow reminds the path Megatron had to path through... (Also, his true design reminded me of a Senator Shockwave haha... I have trauma, just the fact that it reminded me and the fact that it is the TRUE form, and the fact that Senator Shockwave was so close to that form)

BLURR. I LOVED Blurr even before BUT, when you see first hand more of his character. A great owner of the bar that collects all kind of bots and all of them are in peace, he doesn't allow people with bad mind inside. He also has the opinion of most, he wants what they want and speaks for them. Everyone wants the better leader, who will hear them and fight for them, he collected all the people with that opinion, his bar is literally that little heaven

Bonuses Knockout being a lovely husband...

Just Swindle ehehehhe little pretty boy being reborned

The great knowledge of Vortex XDDD

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

I’d honestly rather not talk about this topic because of the fandom toxicity that always surrounds it, but I think one of the more…should I say….interesting things to witness post HOTD has been the way fandom treats Jon Snow’s relationship with House Targaryen, and the effect that has on how they perceive his role in the larger (unfinished) narrative. Jon’s association with the Targs is more implied in the books because his parentage has not been revealed yet. But when you read the many companion stories released over the years like the Dunk and Egg novellas, The Rogue Prince, and Fire and Blood, you realize how much of House Targaryen is built around having Jon Snow as a foundation. I’m talking entire characters being Jon Snow clones or being created as a tiny hint-hint, nudge-nudge for ‘Jon the hidden Targaryen prince’. Sometimes, multiple characters within a certain period have elements of Jon; e.g., Jace, Addam, and Alyn Velaryon all being Jon Snow clones to varying degrees.

Jon was one of the very first characters ever created in this story many, many years ago. The first scene GRRM envisioned, of a family finding direwolf pups in the snow, gave birth to two characters who would be central to the entire series’ resolution: Jon and Bran. Then you read GRRM’s leaked outline and though he has since denounced it, it still says something important: Jon was always meant to be a secret royal prince. We can comfortably assume that he was created before most of the world’s history was set in stone. So when GRRM is building upon House Targaryen, which has thus far occupied the vast majority of the supplementary material, he injects elements of Jon into those characters. For example, Egg from D&E is very similar to Jon Snow personality wise. Bloodraven, who is from the same era and even has a role as Bran’s mentor in the main narrative, is created as foreshadowing for Jon Snow. Baelor Breakspear, also in these novellas, is how GRRM shows that Targaryen princes don’t always have the typical Valyrian look. Baelor favored his mother, as does Jon. Beyond just those novellas, he exists to inform on Jon, not just in look but in character too. Sometimes, Targaryen history is written to inform more tangentially on Jon’s own origins. Case in point, Prince Duncan and Jenny of Oldstones as parallels for Rhaegar and Lyanna.

Then we get to Fire and Blood which focuses so wholly on House Targaryen. And what I find interesting, and then frustrating at times, is how HOTD has morphed how we discuss this book. Because outside of HOTD, it’s easy to see how GRRM builds on Targaryen history with Jon in mind. And then we have the Dance of the Dragons. And this is where HOTD fucks up beyond measure. A lot of characters who existed during the Dance inform on Jon and his potential future. I’ve already mentioned the two Velaryon brothers, but I want to zero in on Jace because as one of the key players during this conflict, he is one of the most important ways in which GRRM links these historical characters to the (currently ongoing) main narrative. Jace is pretty much “Jon Snow if his Targaryen parent was actually the woman and he was raised as a prince”. He is so very similar to Jon in character, almost to the point of being an outright clone. And this important because one of his greatest accomplishments during the Dance was his alliance with Winterfell’s lord, Cregan Stark. This birthed the Pact of Ice and Fire, a union between the two most powerful and important families in the meta-narrative. This union went unfulfilled in Jace’s and Cregan’s lifetimes…..but Rhaegar and Lyanna flipped it over its head. Originally meant to be a union between a Stark lord and Targaryen princess whose children would have direct claim to Winterfell, the actual fulfillment of this Pact was that a Targaryen prince sired a son by a Stark lady. The result of this union, Jon, now has claim to both families’ legacies: Winterfell and the Iron Throne. Through the Pact of Ice and Fire, Jon Snow becomes one of the most important and most direct cases of narrative continuity between the current era and Targaryen history. The Dance of the Dragons unknowingly gives birth to Jon Snow.

What HOTD does is to entirely erase one of the most direct consequences of the Dance from its narrative. The show makes no meaningful reference to Jon, or the Pact, even though the author of the source material was careful in laying out just how important Jon is to the central narrative. What’s frustrating is how then they spend a lot of time talking about the prince that was promised whose song is the song of ice and fire. But then they erase Jon, the result of the pact of ice and fire, from the narrative. The worst thing about this is that HOTD has taken such a large space in fandom discussion, such that people use events from the show to inform how they engage with the written text. For all intents and purposes these have been two different narratives, but now I have to read the worst blood-supremacist takes about Jon; which is incredibly ironic given the subject matter.

I often see people celebrate that HOTD doesn’t talk about Jon, which has been a pretty big clue on either one of two things:

Many people who engage in fandom discussion post HOTD don’t actually engage with the text in its entirety. They’ve either never read the books and have only consumed them based on their online fandom bubbles, or what they have read is severely limited in scope.

Some of those who have read these books don’t like ASOIAF for what it is. They like it for what it should be for their headcannons and character-limited perceptions. Thats why they like it when certain sections of the text are outright ignored, because it’s better for their headcannons that way.

Beyond wanting new material, one of the worst consequences of these books going unfinished for me is that large sections of this fandom will be primed to ignoring one of the central characters, because all the material that’s been released outside of the published material has greatly mischaracterized the text itself. We’re now relegated to unhelpful (sometimes idiotic) arguments such as “HOTD says so, so it must be true in the books”. HOTD is taking creative liberties, and we should respect that. And we should also acknowledge that some part of HOTD is continued from Game of Thrones, which didn’t do a very good job of adapting ASOIAF or its characters in the first place. Cutting out the Pact of Ice and Fire (as far as we know) is one of the worst narrative changes made by the HOTD show runners in terms of establishing common context with the story many viewers are already aware of. And it sucks that with that show’s massive popularity, future ASOIAF adaptations will follow suit in completely disregarding important elements of the overall narrative. But hey, at least dragons look good.

[bluishfrog]

Inspired by "complete" by norethor

Fic Art Friday - event tag - event description