#she says hopefully

[luv-again]

she is back, she is exhausted but she is determined to bang out this fic and hand that bad boy in

[beardedjoel]

i have a week off of work 😭 over half of it is being used to travel and visit my family/hometown HOWEVER this bitch is gonna be writing!!

[felagund-fiollaigean]

can't wait to catch up on my favorite podcast skyjacks! can't wait to see what's happening to my favorite character travis matagot.

[hoffnungswolke]

Another trip around the sun. Over halfway through my 30's. Still not exactly where I want to be but getting there. Looking back ten years ago, I'm much more mentally stable (I say after being very unstable last week.) But it's the little things that are much easier nowadays.

[songofwizardry]

ways we know that i have a mountain of work-related stuff i have to get done before term begins on monday: i have just spent two hours reading about different plasmodium species and going down a rabbit hole of malaria prevention programmes and finding on youtube those very 2000s videos that used to come on tv about using mosquito nets

[uhcasual]

"This place is called the Burial Mounds. The hatred is intense, isn't it? And the resentment too? When a living person enters this place, there's no coming back-- for the body or the soul. They can forget about ever escaping. Wei Wuxian, you, too, can forget about ever escaping."

(full resolution here)

[somnimagus]

My page for @sheikahzine; about Impaz's duty to her village, empty of people and full of memories.

[id in alt text]

[obsob]

love is stored in the parallel play

[accirax]

Happy 5th Anniversary DRDT!!!!!!! and happy birthday Mai too :D

[teyrnacousland]

I've seen the headcanon that Lucanis' mother, Caterina's perfect heir, was actually similar to Illario in some ways. That she was calculating, ruthless, ambitious, obedient... all the things Caterina overlooks in Illario because Caterina sees her favourite daughter's deep brown eyes and quiet, controlled demeanor and careful planning in Lucanis.

But I am also attached to the idea that the opposite is true too. That Illario's mother shared similarities with Lucanis; that she was empathetic and stubborn, with a slight rebellious streak. But she was always outgoing and charming, was more impulsive with her emotions, and was always sharper with her tongue than with a sword, so Caterina only sees her in Illario.

I just love the idea that Caterina can't look beyond the surface and see who her grandsons really are because on some level she can't see past the ghosts reflected in their eyes. She can't see that the quiet brown eyed boy is is more of the gentle hearted rebel, and the one with blue eyes and a shining, fake smile is the ruthless leader who would do anything she asked.

[mynameismysecret]

Did you enjoy the American elections? Wishing for a sequel? Well look no further than the second and final round of romanian presidential elections! In which players will have to choose between two equally terrifying candidates: a far-right, pro-russian, anti-eu extremist who nobody expected to see in the finals AND (drumroll) a woman!

[daily-odile]

head pats...

[princessjadyn15]

EVERYONE SHUT UP AND LOOK

ITS OUR GIRL MONA LISA

[starry-eyer]

omg the ‘is arya pretty or not’ discourse is genuinely insane.

arya is young. she hasn’t even fully matured or grown into her features, and yet she is still called pretty by multiple outsiders.

"I'm sorry, my lady." Arya suddenly felt bad for her, and ashamed. "I'm sorry I tore the acorn dress too. It was pretty." "Yes, child. And so are you. Be brave." (ASOS, Arya IV)

if you trust the opinion of arya’s bullies over lady smallwood’s, that says more about your bias than anything else.

while i understand that people struggle to place unconventional beauty in their worldview, which often leads to the fandom being unkind to characters with the stark look—even if these characters are called ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful’—but istg this fandom seems to be regressing into even more conservative takes on the topic, so i need to rant about it:

a recurring theme in arya’s story is ‘beauty,’ and it is not wrong to want to engage meaningfully with such an important theme that is part of arya’s wider struggle with identity, gender, and conformity. treating people who care about this topic as ‘odd’ is nonsensical and oftentimes more than a little hypocritical.

westeros has a rigid beauty standard, and young girls—especially noble girls—are expected to conform to it. arya, however, defies this expectation.

the narrative’s engagement with the theme of beauty in arya’s story is not about her actually being ugly and coming to terms with it—it’s about challenging rigid beauty norms and showing that she doesn’t have to fit a narrow standard to be seen as beautiful and worthy by others, because she already is and characters already acknowledge that she is both.

and honestly, this reminds me of the real world beauty discourse. can an unconventional nose be beautiful? what about thin lips? big lips? can people with monolids be considered pretty?

the point is that limiting beauty to specific traits is regressive, and the way people talk about arya shows just how deeply ingrained those biases are. a long face doesn’t make arya ugly, and neither does having darker coloring!

look at lyanna stark—she is called a wild beauty and not just a beauty because her features were clearly unconventional, but she was still seen as beautiful. the same likely applies to arya who is said to look like her. to repeat myself: arya’s features don’t fit the standard, but that doesn’t mean she’s ugly.

we don’t need another female character whose story explores beauty by emphasizing that she isn’t pretty and has features considered universally unattractive. brienne already fills that role. having arya go through the same journey would be redundant and directly contradicts what has already been established in the narrative.

ask yourself what’s more interesting:

• having another character whose features are ‘ugly’ and whose bullies were right?

• or a nuanced take on beauty, where a girl learns to love and accept her unconventional features and finds them beautiful like others already do, which reminds readers that beauty isn’t about conformity?

[xxivletxx]

rosado: adorable artist

[sporeclan]

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Leaf-bare again and we're already off to a bad start :')