#so cathartic seeing Jade actually go at Kit verbally and when sparring on that beach

[chenpire]

I keep thinking about tanthamore from Jade's pov because I feel the deepest gay sympathy for this women like she's so restrained. She's grown up falling ass over kettle in love with someone who is off limits and betrothed to someone else, they're not equals in more than one way, because Kit outranks her but also because Kit is an oblivious obnoxious brat (affectionate) so she lacks the emotional maturity and combat skills to be a reliable partner to Jade even if it weren't for their status incompatibility. Jade probably doesn't think Kit is aware that there is a thing between them, and probably assumes it doesn't consume Kit quite the way it does her, that Kit just needs her because she's familiar and ever present, and because she has hang ups about people abandoning her. When she's trying to tell Kit she's leaving, primary to pursue her dreams but almost certainly on some level to protect her heart, you can see how everything about Kit in that moment is making it as difficult as possible for her; hanging off her, looking like that, saying nothing has to change and making fun of her fiance like he's barley relevant to their life together, causing a scene and going to hang performatively off her fiance who she was just making fun of in the aftermath. The way everything suggests this is always the way with Kit, that she makes things difficult for Jade by her very nature. Like she kisses Jade goodbye because it's clearly something she's always wanted to do and this might be her only chance, so she does, because Kit runs on instinct a lot of the time, but even if it isn't her intention, kissing Jade once and disappearing from her life, leaving her with the memory of what that feels like only to never have it again when Jade's been terminally in love with her for years, is borderline cruelty. And Jade is also sitting there with the knowledge that Kit can't actually defend herself, and it's kind of Jade's fault she thinks she can, but also the fact that Kit has never noticed, or addressed anything between them when the ball is essentially permanently in her court because of their difference in status...like Jade is clearly frustrated with Kit most of the time but it is a miracle she is not absolutely seething. 'Expert on breaking my heart' indeed, it's like Kit was designed to do so I'm so-

[torpublishinggroup]

Devilman Crybaby meets Marvel’s Venom in Exordia, the science fiction debut of Seth Dickinson, author of The Traitor Baru Cormorant. 

Ssrin Character Illustration by Julie Dillon

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Meet Anna Sinjari, a refugee and disaffected office worker eking an existence in New York City. Her life is about to be upended by Ssrin, an alien with eight serpent heads, no qualms with cold-blooded murder, and an appetite for turtles (yum).

The universe is governed by seven passions, seven patterns which appear again and again, across species and across time. Anna and Ssrin are bound by the last and the greatest. The cosmos itself ships their very souls. Specifically for them, that means they’ll have to outmaneuver spies, armies, and government agencies to save humanity from a diabolical alien entity, hellbent on pinioning the souls of every creature on earth.

Exordia is expansive adventure science fiction that reads like a race-against-the-clock thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton, but steeped in the irony, humor, and pain of the Internet age. An alien-human epic for those who've always rooted for the monster.