#sorry I love talking about books

[razzafrazzle]

Just Checking In! (aka Something About Red Triangles)

[bruisedboys]

omg tbosas!!! i just recently finished that actually i loved it sm i didn’t know what to do after <3 i’ve been reading a lot too though omg!! though for me i always read a lot in the beginning of the year and slow down later LMAO rn i’m reading the invisible life of addie larue <3 do u have any recs or anything? ily kiss kiss <3

— @inkluvs / ivy

omg twins!!! I’m not far in but I’m already hooked, it’s really good! idk why I put it off for so long because I’ve owned a copy since like my 17th birthday or something 😭

tbh that will probably happen to me too, I’m on a reading buzz rn but it might slowly fizzle out as the year moves on … but I’m hoping it doesn’t!! I love being back in my bookworm era <3

oh my gosh addie larue!!!! I loved that book so much, it was one of the few booktok books I think actually deserved the hype. I’d love to give some recs!!! I will always always recommend the book thief, it’s incredible and so so heart wrenching. summer’s edge by dana mele which I read recently and loved! gone girl is quite good if not a little dark, and I also recently read tress of the emerald sea by brandon sanderson and I adored it!! ilysm mwah <333

[egophiliac]

What do you like about the Diasomnia boys if I may ask?

I always love hearing about the different reasons people enjoy characters.

I mean, c'mon. he has split custody over Sebek okay

also, Lilia in particular has maybe the best timeskip character development of all time

[octaviusing]

Taking your Husband home to your dimension is Similar to taking your cat to the vet

[hhhhleb]

inspired by The Rebel by Albert Camus (just an excuse to draw Sci :D)

[helenofblackthorns]

city of heavenly fire is the tsc book if you think about it like it's so good. ended tmi with such a bang that it evaluated the series to new heights. wrapped up a six book series while setting up the next one, and on top of that incorporated the prequel and managed to do all three well. literally so many iconic and funny moments come from this book. also ended on a really hopeful note with the found family reuniting and being together after everything like 10/10. truly the cornerstone of this fandom.

[leojfitz]

young royals rewatch: season 2, episode 5

Did he say he would give up the crown for you?

[findingcrow]

Can we talk about how breaking the burning bridge is for a second. Will goes off on his first-kinda-not-solo-mission and halt, who has come to love this fucking dumbass as his son, loses his mind for a little bit. He just starts throwing people into moats, and it gets so bad that Alyss has to go with him and he STILL THROWS SOMEONE IN A MOAT. And meanwhile, Will is panicking because his best friend and this random girl (who turns out to be THE CROWN PRINCESS) are RELYING ON HIM to get them out of danger. AND THEN HE HAS TO BURN DOWN A BRIDGE WHICH IS GOING TO BE USED TO TAKE OVER THE KINGDOM. And even though he’s never done any of this, even though he’s only been an apprentice for a YEAR, he does it without hesitation and SAVES THE KINGDOM. And then he gets kidnapped. And put in even more danger not only because he burned down the bridge, but because of a necklace he wears. THE GUY IS THEN SHIPPED AWAY. And Halt realizes what’s happening, he’s running so fast that he’s fucking up his steps- the one thing he was always trained to never do, and. He’s too late. No matter how many arrows he shoots, no matter how loud he calls, he never hears Will call back to him. Will can barely hear him. It’s over. Morgarath is defeated, but Will is gone, and the chance of his survival is so low that Halt is seen as crazy for committing treason for him. And Halt copes with the loss of his bright, kind, intelligent apprentice by making him a new bow. He cries about him, claiming that he was worth the tears. Will, meanwhile, only wants to go home, but because of the warmweed, he doesn’t even remember where home is. He doesn’t remember halt. He doesn’t remember the cabin in the trees. He doesn’t even care if there’s a future left for him. But Halt travels across seas, across countries, through every obstacle imaginable to get to him. And when they reunite, it’s been a year since they saw each other, and Will is just rambling and crying and hugging him and Halt cries too and god they make me sick

[spielzeugkaiser]

[MASTERPOST]

Eskel is like "I WILL read this book about... A wolf and all his friends? Dancing and being. happy... 🥺"

[f-athr]

guess who’s read some more books >:)

[egophiliac]

happy new year Ego!!! Just wanted to let you know that I absolutely adore your twst fanart and the tags are just an absolute pleasure to read! You are my greatest inspiration for my personal twst art and I just wanted to thank you for your wonderful masterpieces <333 if possible, may I ask what are some of your headcanons for the diasomnia family? If not for diasomnia then any other characters are fine as well!

thank you, and happy new year! 💚💜💚 that is amazing to hear; it's always a little bewildering but super flattering that other people like my silly little doodles so much!

I don't think I really have any really solid headcanons and also canon keeps validating me left and right (FLUFFY DOMESTIC DIAFAM IS REAL). mostly just kind of...impressions and general thoughts, if that makes sense! lately though I've been kind of obsessed with thinking about Lilia's hair, and specifically when/why he ended up cutting it. (l-look, we're bouncing around the timeline and I gotta make decisions about these things when I draw, it's relevant) (I mean I would probably be weirdly fixated on this anyway, but.)

I think I've settled on the idea that he kept it long until he went to NRC, partly because 1) I like drawing The Ponytail, and 2) I think he thought of NRC as a chance to reinvent himself a bit! he gets to go and be a wacky carefree teenager for a few years and have fun! (officially he's there to keep an eye on Son #1, but how much trouble could he get into, really.) so he gave himself a Cool Teen Haircut to go with his fresh new Cool Teen Persona!

also maybe he had some reflection on his hair's troubled past with three kids...

...and had to weigh his vanity versus the fact that he was going off to be around hundreds of kids on a daily basis, and. the choice suddenly seemed obvious.

[transgenderfivepebbles]

compilation of my favorite lobotomy corporation and library of ruina steam reviews, ft. vertical difficulty spikes, immense suffering, and- we don't talk about it

[ruvviks]

All That's Left follows two journalists and their friends in post-apocalyptic United States as they travel from the fallen east coast megalopolis Opportunity back to Los Angeles, crossing through a harsh wasteland overrun with zombies— only to find out that there is a lot more life left than what the protected cities want them to believe. On their journey they meet dozens of people living their lives as peaceful as possible away from military forces, corporations, and corrupt governments; and they learn that the same mutated ghouls that took down Opportunity are spreading rapidly through the country, destroying everything in their path. Will this finally be the end of the world as we know it?

taglist (opt in/out)

@shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart;

@vvanessaives, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman;

@celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister;

@killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree

[khattikeri]

the thing about wei wuxian’s victims is that calling them wei wuxian’s victims in the first place is nebulous.

that isn't to say those who died or were bereaved after nightless city or the first siege of the burial mounds weren't hurt by wei wuxian’s retaliation. but calling them "wei wuxian’s victims" while ignoring that cultivation society scapegoated and hunted him down, and that wei wuxian never attacked without being threatened first, is a massive oversimplification.

sure we have minor characters like the cultivator who lost his leg or the cultivator who lost his parents, and sure mxtx writes them as part of a mob of more unreasonable people who were largely not even present for these events, but the thing is... there are major named characters who were present, or who had loved ones there, and their grief and pain are given full attention by the story. they're called jiang cheng and jin ling.

my sister/my mother died at nightless city because of you! except no, jiang yanli actually died because an entirely different nameless cultivator stabbed her, and she intentionally pushed wei wuxian out of the way to protect him out of sincere love. it wasn't the first time. she already demonstrated this when she stood up for him and called him her blood brother in front of her fiance and his family at an event they were hosting, when she had zero backing support and could've easily been dumped and had her marriageability ruined for speaking out of turn.

who's to say that jiang yanli's death wasn't the only instance of cultivators dying at nightless city from friendly fire during all the chaos? we don't know. the one thing we do know for certain is that once it was all over, the survivors attributed the (dubiously counted) thousands of casualties to wei wuxian alone.

saying that wei wuxian was the sole cause is overly convenient for cultivation society. in particular the major sects politically did not want to help the wen remnants and were content to mistreat them in forced labor camps. they thought that wei wuxian was too dangerous with his unique ghost path of cultivation and use of resentful energy, so they gathered everyone up and tried TWO different times to assassinate him. the first time just killing wei wuxian alone. the next time, taking all the remaining wens out with him.

there's a lot left unsaid about these major battles and sieges which leads to a lot of our discourse as fans to begin with-- we have such limited information about all these major events of the past! and unfortunately for us, that's the point!

that's the thesis of the book! the details of the pain and grief you go through don't actually matter! regardless of it, you have to eventually move on. you have to actively choose good, to do what you think is right for the sake of doing the right thing, and not just to act based on your idea of fulfilling debts or deserving to be repaid a certain way!

what everyone claims as indisputable facts about wei wuxian are actually skewed not only by rumors, but by politics. mxtx doesn't depict these various randos to give them a brief beat of sympathy. nor does she do it just to make wei wuxian look better.

they are there because they are also angry and bitter, stewing in the past looking for someone to keep blaming (wei wuxian; the cultivation world decided thirteen years ago it would be wei wuxian) and demanding recompense from him. jiang cheng does the same for the entire damn book.

jin ling breaks the cycle; in spite of the rocky start he eventually chooses to trust wei wuxian and argue on his behalf even in front of his elders. even though he's the heir to a major sect. even though he has been taught his entire life to despise and be angry at wei wuxian for orphaning him.

mdzs is a complex story. it also happens to be a black and white story without gray morality. there are many what-ifs, actions that went poorly or circumstances that would've shifted the course of events if only things had gone well for everyone, but nobody acts in a legitimately morally grey way.

throughout the novels there is a clear delineation between good and bad, righteous and wrong; wei wuxian is clearly the former in both cases not because mxtx wanted to more easily depict her protagonist as a good guy, but because she consistently bases these dichotomies upon the fulcrum of hypocrisy.

supporting the use of resentful energy via ghost cultivation to kill your political enemies in wartime and then immediately turning on the person doing so for you once the war is over, blaming all evils on him and trying to get him killed because he's trying to help the few survivors of the opposing side (both because it's the right thing to do and to pay back a life debt he secretly owes that only two or three people know about, oops)-- that is hypocrisy.

if wei wuxian does it and we like it, it's expected of him and he deserves no praise, though he handles it all with charm and stride befitting the son of the illustrious cangse-sanren.

if wei wuxian does it and we don't like it, he's a murderous evildoer, the ungrateful and dangerous son of a servant (whose name we conveniently never say even though we all know who wei changze was).

mdzs is a book about the hypocrisy of the upper class. mdzs is a book about grief. mdzs is a book about society and rumors and politics and the pitfalls of chasing after what you are "owed". mdzs is a book about love and sticking to your own path and principles. wei wuxian is its protagonist, and by the novel's own values, he is indisputably good.

[redrobin-detective]

So I was doing my 4? 5?? watch of Lockwood and Co the other night with a friend and I noticed something that I'd missed before. When Lucy holds Skull up to the mirror, before she passes out, she gets a brief flash of some visions. From what'd I seen in other rewatches, it looked to be a recollection of ghostlocked/dead people from the series (Norrie, Fairfax etc) but one image jumped out. I opened Netflix on my computer so I could slow it down and

Bam, it's Lockwood. Now this image certainly wasn't in the 8 episode series and it got me thinking. The previous images were of those Lucy had seen killed/ghost locked ending with a frost covered Lockwood?

It was set up for the conflict in the Hollow Boy, about Lucy worrying that Lockwood is going to die for her. Lucy got a brief future vision of the Fetch impersonating a dead Lockwood which would lead to the events of The Creeping Shadow. Basically I'm even more mad that we don't get to see Cameron all done up in frosty ghost make-up.

[reachexceedinggrasp]

I have a feeling you might relate to this or you might have even related this on your blog already, but I was just thinking of that Ghoul quotation water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

I think probably my favourite, maybe ever, quiet point of characterisation in a sort of villainous or Beast love interest is his or her having a poet's soul... whether that is conscious or unconscious romantic meditation. It's like Kylo musing to Rey when he says 'You have that look in your eyes. From the forest. When you called me a monster' I love that sort of wistful observation, especially because it evokes such potent imagery ('when we fought together in the forest and then you marked yourself on my face'). Or more literally something like Ghoul citing a line of literature, even when none around except for Lucy would know what he's referencing, it's for his own arrestment and amusement, this is how he sees/interacts with the world

I guess in that way, it reveals something new about their perspective on the world, even when they're somebody seemingly cut off from it - monstrous, othered, repellent, ugly - when they're able to articulate a certain beauty which other characters may not remark upon. It's sort of covetous in that sense, but I think it also sort of helps explain what might interest them about a Beauty, after all, there's something they long for and value (spiritual, aesthetic, existential beauty).

I thought you might be able to relate 🥰

Oh, totally. And with Cooper and Ben, specifically, which is a parallel I hadn't actually noticed until you've just pointed it out, we're being shown their sensitivity as characters. Not in the sense of being considerate, but that they're aware and alert to beauty and meaning in the world despite currently occupying a narrative role which might make us think they're simply destructive or nihilistic figures. And despite the cynicism they're both ostensibly espousing.

Cooper quotes or alludes to literature practically constantly relative to how little he speaks, always knowing people almost certainly won't understand him, and that's especially fascinating because he didn't make those kinds of references in the flashbacks. We could take this in a whole direction about how he created the Ghoul as a character to shield himself from the things he had to do to survive and is living within a meta-narrative deconstructing the reactionary anti-hero who overtook the white hat sheriff he used to play in his movies. The anti-hero he never wanted to be. He makes allusions because his life has become a story he's telling himself to stay sane. He's his own wry Dickensian narrator making asides to an imagined audience about dramatic irony and social commentary.

And an important part of his presentation to others before the war was painting himself as not sophisticated. Just a cowboy and then just a guy who plays a cowboy in the movies. He wants nothing to do with politics either in an interpersonal or broader sense, and disclaims any pretensions to being savvy despite being in a theoretically powerful position as a rich, well-connected major film star. I think he was genuinely naive, but I also think he often played dumb to avoid social conflict. He was complacent and his image helped him remain complacent. Obviously he was very willing to be confrontational when he saw wrong or injustice right in front of him (he goes after Bud Askins directly to his face about marines getting killed by shitty equipment, he challenges Moldaver when she calls him out), but pre-bombs he mostly uses his empathic perceptiveness and charisma to keep everyone around him happy.

In the wasteland we often see him doing the opposite and deliberately riling people up in order to gather information and assess or eliminate them as threats, but he's also only gotten better at disarming people when he wants to. As a handsome charming film star he pretended not to know anything, as a scary intimidating monster he pretends he knows everything.

What I'm wondering about as far as all this goes is whether Cooper always had a secret nerdy side and read all the classics as a teenager or perhaps while waiting between shots when he was working as a stuntman, or whether he wanted to fit in when he started to make it in Hollywood so tried to become cultured before realising that wasn't what anyone wanted from him. Or if he just spent 200 years alone and read anything he could find as a way to cling to his humanity. We know he was at least a bit intellectually curious before the war, because of his reading and retaining some article about studies on torture.

But YES, him quoting poetry and being so interested and insightful about Lucy, specifically is a huge part of how he's framed as a romantic figure. And he's already by far the most romantic figure in the show. If it were solely about his tragedy, you'd think they would emphasise the contrast between his pre-fallen and post-fallen state by stripping him of his heroic trappings, but they don't. He's actually more romantic post-'curse'.

It also gets me because he's an extremely smart, socially adept person who doesn't let others see him for who he really is both consciously and unconsciously on multiple levels and that layers of identity shit is my crack. He was a profoundly honest man who thought he was simple, but actually he was a glorious maze of contradiction and complexity waiting to happen who has now come into his own as a master manipulator.