#the moral of the story is to write somewhere that saves

[novelconcepts]

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

[aydafigs]

ooh I have so many thoughts on The Rat Grinders discourse okay

on the one hand, I think it's completely reasonable to be disappointed that there was no attempt from The Bad Kids to engage with TRG beyond just killing them as quickly and bloodily as possible, or no effort from Brennan to present that as an option. I agree that it sucks that these teenagers, who have been corrupted by rage crystals and are presumably being manipulated by authority figures, are being treated as irredeemably evil and therefore condemned to hell forever for their crimes - and I agree that it feels incongruent narratively, when a big arc this season involved 'redeeming' a corrupted goddess, and a key theme has been the power of utilising doubt to overcome rage. I also think it's a shame that Fig's past attempts to engage with Reuben were ultimately forgotten about and rendered useless (and I definitely got the impression that Emily herself was also frustrated about this).

however! I do also completely understand it from a gameplay, genre, and storytelling perspective.

firstly, mostly just as a sidenote, I think it's worth acknowledging that a lot of 'real-world' thinking and logic surrounding death and ‘redemption’ and the moral complexities of 'good vs evil' don't always work within Fantasy High or d&d. death is treated much more flippantly in a world where characters can and do regularly plane-shift to the very real and tangeable afterlives. it's harder to think of death as truly an end to someone's life when it is known for certain that those who die are actually continuing to live alternate lives on different planes of existence - and I think from a meta perspective this inevitably affects the way players think about killing NPCs within a story. no one is ever truly gone; they're just living somewhere else now.

additionally, in-universe, the prospect of dying or being killed is an accepted risk for those attending Aguefort. they're training to be adventurers, and as fucked up as it is, a key element of the universe and genre that this story takes place in is that people - including teenagers - die on adventures, and this risk is entirely normalised and considered unfortunate but necessary. it's one of those genre-specific tropes that you have to accept for the world to function. this is d&d, this is fantasy adventuring high school, teenagers have to save the world from other, villainous teenagers. it's every teen supernatural/fantasy drama. it's Teen Wolf. it's fucking Riverdale. as Brennan has put it before, "it's adventuring school. people die."

The Rat Grinders are not the heroes of this story - and what is so interesting about them, at least to me, is that they know that. there's a lot of excellent analysis of TRG as existing on a meta level even within the story; they're power gamers, they're XP farmers, they know they're NPCs; and this is the source of Kipperlilly's anger. Kipperlilly's rage stems from knowing that she is ordinary; that she doesn't have a tragic backstory, that she will never save the world, that she and her friends aren't a notorious adventuring party or 'found family' or anything other than regular. so she set out to become Not Ordinary by any means necessary - and if she and The Rat Grinders couldn't be the heroes, they had to become the villains. whether or not TRG 'deserved' to die or not is a moot point, I think. it's not about what they deserve. their story, and especially Kipperlilly's story, is a tragedy in this way; she was doomed by the narrative from the moment she started to write herself as the villain.

The Rat Grinders are, narratively, the Big Bads of the season; the Final Bosses of this game of d&d. this final battle is necessary to conclude the story in an exciting and climactic and satisfying way. it would simply not be as exciting, either for the players or the audience, if this season ended with The Bad Kids talking it out with The Rat Grinders and convincing them to switch sides. at the end of the day, this isn't a movie or a TV show. this is a game, being played in real time by real people who are improvising and having fun while collaboratively telling a story together. of course, the storytelling on this show is phenomenal - but it's never going to be able to do everything. they don't have a room of writers pitching ideas to write perfectly timed and paced scripts for character arcs and resolutions. they're a group of improv comedians playing a roleplay and combat-centric game together. they're playing d&d. they’re playing heroes fighting bad guys.

I do think there's a lot of valid criticism around rage and manipulation and who is considered worthy of 'redemption'. I just also think there's a middle ground somewhere between "The Bad Kids killing The Rat Grinders is awful and evil and bad storytelling and everyone involved should feel bad" and "haha suck it Rat Grinders fans, told you they were always evil". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk. it's all love now. [smooch]

[mybookhaven]

The Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson

High fantasy - Detailed world building - mental health

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

I will not be the first person to be completely taken in by the depth of the worlds created by Sanderson, but I couldn’t just ignore the huge crater they have left in my mind. I have grown to care deeply about all the characters of this series (MINOR and major), and would consider these books to be amongst my favorite reads ever. The scope of the plot is absolutely enormous yet very easily understood thanks to Sanderson's magical abilities (yes magical abilities because goodness he CAN WRITE), and i cannot wait till i've consumed every single book ever in the Cosmere.

The series follows a group of humans that come from very different backgrounds as they try to save their people, and the planet they call home from "invasion" by what is known as voidbringers. Sanderson introduces us to Kaladin (the sad wet cat baby boi we all love) as the first narrator of the books and how he struggled for years with high-borns, war, and slavery events that were responsible in part for shredding his mental health to pieces. We then meet Shallan (THE CHARACTER for me) who has evidently been through a lot (also shredded mental health) that we will slowly figure out as events unfold. Jasnah, sister to the king, scholar royalty, with most probably a mixture of some kind of shredded mental health, autism, and "aro" something that is not very clear relationship with romance. I will limit myself to these three characters because i could go on forever with every single person in this series (i am not exaggerating).

The writing style is very much accessible. I'm used to fantasy having all kinds of complicated narratives that get in the way of grasping the progress of the plot, but this series is anything but that. Every character's point of view is written in their unique sound (fascinatingly so with Shallan and her ehem buddies) and interestingly we get to experience two sides of every character, their own pov and the way other people perceive them which was very beautiful to read (and incredibly obvious with Jasnah).

These books deal with so much heavy and morally ambiguous topics in surprising detail that i felt i was reading actual events about a place that exists somewhere in our universe. Metal health, slavery, colonialism, war, religion and so so much more that i really cannot understand the power behind the creation of these books.

Most importantly, as it's something i struggled with when i first decided i wanted to read Sanderson's work, these books are very easily understood without having to read the other books in th Cosmere, but people who do will experience a much bigger world with more connections to other events, worlds and "gods" that actually reflects the scope of THE STORY Brandon Sanderson is writing.

I am definitely going to read the rest of the cosmere and will attach a youtube link to anyone interested in starting that suggests the best way to get into the Cosmere that will put events chronologically in a sense.

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[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Wait im sorry if like youve talked about this before but what is everyones roles in the fantasy au 👁️👁️ or jobs?

i've just Thought Aloud in bits and pieces but hey. i feel like talking today so i'll put it all in one place with Updated Thinkings

(i like to imagine that they all kinda Quit their initial jobs/lives to go adventuring with each other, either by choice or... not. except Howdy, who's a multitasking king). the Neighborhood party earns their wages by completing jobs/quests, though some of them have minor supplemental ways of adding to the coin collection

Wally, of course, didn't really have much of a Before. he didn't intend on becoming a warlock/wizard - that choice was kinda made for him by the circumstances of his existence. but Wally had to pretend to be a wizard for his own safety, and wizards have a sort of societal expectation to be Helpful and Magical and Wise and Existing For Public Service. so while Wally would have rather just been a painter, he's obligated to be a wizard - that's technically his role/job. within the Neighborhood party, he's a bit of a distance fighter/support! he doesn't really do the whole up-close / physical aspect of battle, though he technically knows how. He casts spells from afar, which tend to be widely benign. artsy little cantrips and inconveniences to make it harder for the enemy to fight. he's also a bit of a bloodhound - illusions don't trick him, he can "see" most magic, and he's really good at getting around unnoticed. if they're stuck somewhere, Wally can probably get them out

Barnaby's "job" before going adventuring with Wally - it started out as just the two of them! - was just working on the farm with Ms. Beagle, where he had been his entire life. Sure he'd sometimes do public performances/acts in town, which would earn him extra coin, but that was more of a paying hobby than anything (a paying hobby he will Continue) in the Neighborhood, he's... uh. their cheerleader? that's not entirely inaccurate! he's not big on combat or effort i'd reckon, so he prefers to just keep morale high. offer background music, funny commentary, jokes to lighten the mood, mediate tensions, etc. if necessary, he makes good backup - he has his illusions of course, and he Does pack a mighty punch if need be! he's also very helpful when retreating - he can grab the smaller party members and run

Wormie is the group mascot <3

Sally was a bit lost before joining the party - i like to think that she was constantly on the move as part of a traveling theater troupe, but she wasn't the star or director. she was just part of the group, uninspired and with a full well of untapped potential. one day she up and left (dramatically) to find her own inspiration/muse & path to stardom, which ended up being several years of wandering until she happened across the budding Neighborhood and went "this! this will be the source of my stories!" as for her role, she's a bit of an everyman. front lines fighter, entertainer, mediator, etc. she views herself as the party "leader", or rather, their Manager. she keeps the party entertained with stories, and bolsters their reputation in the same manner. in a battle she's a bit of a powerhouse - her light magic is useful both in combat and entertainment! she keeps a "book" of the Neighborhood's exploits (she swears it will be edited/published someday) holy shit she's moominpappa, and in their Extended downtime she writes and throws plays inspired by their adventures at their home base (town).

Eddie was still, originally, a mailman. or i suppose in a fantasy setting - a courier! until one day he saw a group of people being attacked by some bandits, managed to fight them off, and immediately got roped into helping rescue the folks' entire town from the bigger group of bandits. then they told others about Eddie's help, they wanted his help too, one thing after another and now he's got a full set of armor, a sword, a shield, and his whole thing is saving people. huh? how did that happen? he was delivering letters a month ago! if i had to give him a title... i'd say he's a Protector! he seems like the type! he always has his fellow adventurer's backs - i bet he has his hands full trying to cover everyone at once. outside of combat, he's still very helpful and does whatever is asked of him / needed. collecting firewood! pitching tents! stirring soup! getting Frank to remove a centipede from camp! in downtime he probably takes small bodyguarding gigs. he also is a minor healer - he took some sorta oath for some sorta god (or virtue) that he can't remember, but he has minor healing/cleansing powers. he's also good at sniffing out evil & dark magic! some would joke that he's the party's guard dog

Frank was raised in a monastery that believes in "using your body to fight for the greater good". this was not his job when they became old enough to actually Act on his training! nah they ran away in his mid teens because they wanted to fight things on his own terms. also they want to study bugs more than anything, which he does! for a long time! then they meet a certain princess, befriends her, and helps her run away. he only joins the Neighborhood because Julie wants to, and it's a good way to travel - read: study more arthropods - and earn coin. fighting is a bonus aspect Frank's role is... front line fighter, bookkeeper, and the Guy Who Knows Things! what monster are they dealing with? what are its strengths/weaknesses? Frank probably knows! can they afford a room or two at an Inn? Frank knows (no, they cannot)! who's throwing themself into direct mortal danger with gusto? it's Frank! no but really, Frank is like their resident nerd who can beat pretty much all of them in hand-to-hand. in downtime he probably has a garden purposefully full of plants that can be left alone for long periods of time... maybe they sell half the things grown for extra coin!

Julie, of course, was a princess! that was her whole job! it was incredibly boring and restricting, so she ran away with the help of a funny nerd. after that her whole life was just "avoid getting recognized while figuring out how to live in a world without the comforts/ease of castle life". i'd think she much prefers her new one! as a role, Julie joins Barn and Sally in the "entertainment category". while they entertain with humor/stories respectively, Julie goes straight for games and activities to fill the lull between action. keep the blood pumping, spirits high, and bonds Solid! camp games, road games, locked-in-a-dungeon games! in combat, she's on the front lines with her oversized sword. i think another fitting role would be "navigator" - she can ask plants for directions! technically Julie is a secret powerhouse. her flora magic is insanely powerful, though she prefers not to use it for several reasons

Poppy, i like to think, did indeed have a bakery. it was well-loved in her community, her staff were wonderful people, and it all burned down in a night due to raiders. luckily for Poppy and her town, Eddie was nearby and got on the case to get rid of their problem - maybe Poppy felt obligated to help in some shape or form, and Eddie wound up inspiring her to learn healing magic. She moved into the town that would become the not-yet-existing Neighborhood's HQ to try and restart her business, but it just wasn't the same, and she had gotten a taste of what it would be like to directly save/heal people Poppy is the party's cook, healer, and ultimate voice of caution! the most she'll do in battle is sprint into danger to drag an injured person to safety for healing - she doesn't have a combative bone in her body i'd guess! does she enjoy being in the Neighborhood? eh... it's stressful and terrifying, but she couldn't live with herself if she let them all brave the wild without an adequate healer OR an adequate cook. i like to think that she saw the state they were traveling in and went "oh no"

Howdy, of course, has his tavern! it's a popular hub for travelers, townsfolk, pretty much anyone and everyone. of course it helps that it's the only tavern in town! the only reason Barnaby managed to convince Howdy to join the Neighborhood on one of their jobs is because Howdy realized that he can widen his net & sell to new people On The Go. finally, a use for that magic backpack collecting dust in his room! Howdy got a taste for adventuring and joins the Neighborhood every once in a while, usually only for shorter jobs - he doesn't want to be away from his tavern for too long his roles are support, professional haggler, sarcastic commentary. he doesn't have a crumb of magic in him, but he's clever! he's learned how to make his own support items - including his fancy revolvers with magical crayonsbullets. Howdy rarely fights, choosing to watch over his pack, dole out items when needed, and listen to Barnaby's running commentary. when it is necessary that he join in on combat, he can usually clear the playing field in a matter of moments. he's skilled with both the revolvers and using his own items - he's a one man four armed army!

Home's job is "keep Wally upright and powered". they prefer to be an observer in all situations, even after their existence becomes common knowledge to the Neighborhood. the most Home will do is nudge Wally in the right direction or alert him to something important. Home's literally just hanging out behind Wally's eyes w/ a bucket of popcorn. unless something happens to his beloved little puppet, in which case Home becomes the biggest baddest bitch around and sends everyone else to the bench

tl;dr: Wally: support fighter, magic geiger counter, escape artist Barnaby: entertainer, backup Wormie: mascot Sally: storyteller, fighter, Manager Eddie: protector, minor healer, "paladin" Frank: bookkeeper, fighter, scholar Julie: activities director, navigator, fighter Poppy: cook, healer, overthinker Howdy: tavernkeeper, inventor, support Home: just keeping an eye out

[utilitycaster]

In the most recent CR episode I found it really interesting (and really concerning) that it Laudna's truth about wanting Bells Hells to ripcord out of saving the world came hot on the heels of Imogen's truth about not wanting to save the gods

Idk it could just be me, but it seemed like her truth was just another attempt to placate Imogen's moral confusion, while simultaneously pushing those things back onto the whole group

All it makes me think of is the fanon and 4SD discussions about Imogen and Laudna retiring to a farm and living happily ever after. What are either of their reasons for remaining with Bells Hells at this point, if their truths are that they don't want to save the world?

See, that actually seemed fine to me! Fearne had earlier admitted she felt they were ill-equipped for the job and likely to fail, so it's not just them who feel it, and honestly I think that Laudna's confession was one of the more valid ones that I hope get unpacked. Fjord and Jester made a very similar admission to each in both episode 72 and episode 118 of Campaign 2, of "hey, wouldn't it be nice if we just ran away somewhere quiet and never had to deal with this again" and I think that having that admission and then finding a way forward anyway is a really great moment. I didn't write at length about how Orym's "but we have to work together and do this" has also been a really big factor in the party's dysfunction because I covered a lot of that in my discussion of how he handles his own grief well and the grief and pain of others very badly, but honestly it's good that Fearne and Laudna are getting to "we don't have to do this, this was always thrust upon us because an old guy brought us to a cool orc who hired us to look into some stuff and in the process found out that the comparatively small-time political crook was tangentially involved in a a vast cosmic death cult conspiracy that several of our parents are also involved with."

My issue with Imogen is that she literally said two episodes ago she's never prayed and now she's claiming the gods never listened to her, as well as that her reasoning is the horrifyingly self-absorbed "they don't love her", but I actually think it's fine if this party does not wish to save the gods on the grounds of "we feel underqualified and overwhelmed and like we've been at the mercy of many (mortal) masters with no time to pursue our own interests." And I think that Laudna didn't force this specific thing on the rest of the party; she said they could all ripcord, but didn't say who should do it or who felt that way or force them into agreement.

I've talked about the campaign's earlier pacing at length and I don't want to revisit it at length because it evened out, but more so than any other party, Bells Hells has rarely had self-directed adventures. That's a big reason why they're such a mess; they didn't need to develop the tools to come to consensus because Eshteross or Ryn or Keyleth would give them tasks, so we never actually have delved particularly deeply into what most of the party members want to be doing, which is why we're here with this group that's mostly stuck together because they've had jobs to do. I think acknowledging that is an important step, because the task at hand (scouting on Ruidus) is in my opinion within their abilities, but they've been pushed and pushed and have finally reached a point where they can't just keep going. (This by the way is the underlying premise of this post; this is the fundamental reality of Bells Hells as a party. If you like that the most then hell yeah, but a lot of people who claim to love C3 are blaming the entire plot of the campaign for why the party is a mess which is like, so you like the premises of these characters and dislike the vast majority of the actual story in which they exist, and you really just want the story of Campaign 1 or Campaign 2 but Ashton is there.)

With that said though, I do agree that's kind of at the core of Imogen and Laudna. They're so insular, and that's been claimed as a feature, not a bug, for much of the fanon of that relationship. Like, I think Laudna is valid for this specific statement, but unlike Fjord and Jester, who had established in through the course of the campaign both deep ties to each of the rest of the Mighty Nein and a profound sense of responsibility in general, I find myself wondering why Imogen and Laudna don't go off and live in a cottage together and leave the rest of the party to handle this. I mean, Imogen is also impossibly tied up in the fate of Ruidus, but she dithers about the approach so much I wonder why she doesn't decide that perhaps she should stay out of it altogether and retire to that cottage with Laudna until it's all over.

Personally, my thought is that Imogen does in fact secretly like being the special Ruidusborn Exaltant On The Other Side, especially since she's realized her mother wasn't that (as she had hoped). I agree with the fairly common opinion that Imogen and Ashton are in many ways extremely similar people, but whereas Ashton just got a very brutal wake up call of "your parents did fuck up and you're not built different and your desperate attempt to be something special could have hurt everyone" Imogen is still out here going full Javert on everyone's personal thoughts. So I suspect she won't ripcord out in the end, and therefore Laudna won't. But I do think it's valid for Laudna to bring up, and indeed, one of the many things that would make great progress in fixing this party dynamic would be Laudna independently expressing her own needs some more instead of being Imogen's Yes-Woman or projecting her own desires onto other people as I suspect she's doing with Fearne and the shard.

[mothsvein]

Morality Questionare for Character Development 🕯️🧭

A lengthy questionare about your character's moral compass, or lack thereof. Meant to be used as an exercise to think deeper about a character's morality at any point in development.

꧁ ༺ ─── ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ─── ༻ ꧂

Does your character consider themselves a moral person?

Does your character consider themselves morally flawless, morally bankrupt, or somewhere inbetween?

Would your character be willing to break their moral code for self preservation?

Would your character be willing to break their moral code to save another person?

Would your character be willing to break their moral code to save someone who was immoral?

Would your character be willing to break their moral code to save someone they didn't know at all?

Can you describe your character's moral code in 3 words?

Can you describe your character's moral code in 1 word?

Could you write a religious text about your character's moral code?

Is your character's moral code inherent to themselves as a person or is their moral code learned from a person or a group of people?

Does your character agree with their community's morals?

Would your character describe themselves as more or less moral than the people around them?

Would you describe your character as more or less moral than the people around them?

Would your character die to defend their morals?

If your character was killed for their morals, who or what in your story would be the killer?

Does your character think its moral to keep promises?

Does your character think its moral to always tell the truth?

Does your character think its moral to always follow authority and never question their leaders?

Does your character think its moral to respect their parents, no matter what?

Does your character think its moral to never cheat?

Does your character value loyalty as a moral code?

Does your character value faith as a moral code?

Does your character think eating animals is immoral?

Does your character find themselves questioning their own morals or bending their morals to get what they want?

Does your character feel guilt for not following their morals?

Does your character think that drugs, alcohol, and other substances are immoral?

Does your character think that pornography, prostitution, or other sexual vices are immoral?

Does your character think the act of sex itself is immoral?

Does your character think cheating in a relationship is immoral, no matter the conditions of the relationship?

Is your character willing to kill?

Is your character willing to lie?

Is your character a backstabber or a snake?

Is your character a social chameleon or two faced?

Is your character a cheater?

Does your character outwardly fake their moral code?

If other characters in their world knew their true moral code, how would they react?

If they knew the morals of the other characters in their world, how would your character react?

Does your character gain anything for sticking to their morals?

Does your character lose anything for sticking to their morals?

Has your character's morals given them any social or personal power over another character in your story?

Does their community agree or disagree with their actions aligning with their morals?

Does their community agree or disagree with their actions contradicting their morals?

Does your character have or want a career that relies on a strong moral compass?

Does your character have or want a career that relies on a weak moral compass?

If your character's morals are tested, would they pass or fail the test?

If they only had one minute to decide whether to save the world or save the person they love, what would they decide?

Would your character consider themselves a villian or a hero?

Is your character a villian or a hero?

Does your character believe that they will be punished by a supernatural force for breaking their moral code?

Does your character believe they will be punished by a natural force for breaking their moral code?

If your character was in a completely different place at the beginning of their life, would their morals be different?

Do you agree or disagree with the morals your character has?

Would your readers and fans agree or disagree with the morals your character has?

Would your family agree or disagree with the morals your character has?

Would the people who love your character still love them after discovering their true morals?

Would the people who hate your character still hate them after discovering their true morals?

What is the biggest obstacle to your character living perfectly by their morals?

Do they believe in the morals of their institution?

Does your character experience riteous justice when their morals are broken or questioned?

Can other characters question their morals without fear of retaliation?

Would your character hurt others in the name of their morality?

Does your character believe in evil?

Does your character believe in good?

To you, does your character do evil?

To you, does your character do good?

If you could change one thing about your character's morality, what would it be?

꧁ ༺ ─── ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ─── ༻ ꧂

[glacierclear]

im sorry i need to dump all my thoughts about ada x leon somewhere for personal fulfillment reasons,

big disclaimer: resident evil canon/lore is inconsistent and my feelings/thoughts on all this is NOT me stating it as fact. It's 99% speculation and me interpreting context. I'm just having fun!

it's really wild that i started my resident evil experience hating Ada. I did not understand her character and the way she's portrayed is very inconsistent and confusing (probably on purpose) and, like many others, I assumed the choices she made and the pain she inflicted on others was malicious and intentional.

But something clicked recently,,,I understand now that she didn't choose this life. She doesn't WANT to be a spy. She doesn't WANT to be a mercenary. Everything she was and everything she had was taken and stripped from her. She doesn't even have a real name anymore. I think seeing the small insight of her backstory in the biohazard manga really put all the pieces together and brain blasted me with understanding. Her entire character (to me, at least!) revolves around survival and self-preservation. She is a SELFISH character, not because of ego or power, but because of a LACK of power. She no longer has autonomy over her life in a way that matters and so the only thing left for her is to stay alive.

And I just think that ties so beautifully with Leon's struggles. Both of them being forced into this life where they have to live and die at the hands of the people who control them. And, listen...listen...it's overdramatic as fuck and a VERY idealistic/romanticized interpretation of their relationship, but honestly it makes me hella emotional thinking about Leon potentially being one of the few things in life Ada wants to live for other than herself. Him being the only person in the entire series who has ever shown her genuine, selfless kindness and care,,, and the fact that her circumstance and the trappings of her life forced her to betray him and she has to live with that guilt and has to come to terms with the fact that she will never genuinely connect with people because who even is she anymore? She has no sense of self.

And her entire campaign in RE6 resonates me in such a weirdly poignant and impactful way. RE6 has some WONKED UP writing and it's so silly and stupid; but I think if it was tweaked a little bit it would be a genuinely moving story about a woman losing her agency and bodily autonomy to a violent man who wants to own her and her fighting with his fabricated, demented vision of her. It's a manifestation of his greed and possession...and then she kills her clone and immediately after she sees Leon again and his first immediate instinct is to protect her and sacrifice himself again for her and throw himself into MORE bullets for her even after the betrayal of RE2 ........ and then after that she finally snaps and FINALLY chooses to fight for HER morals and HER justice by killing Simmons' bioweapon.

Like, listen, I hate the trope of "woman traumatized being saved by a man" in most cases, but something about the way I see Leon and Ada just makes SENSE man.

The fact that she specifically goes out of her way COUNTLESS times to protect him and save him and none of it is enough to get him to forgive her. None of it will ever be enough but she keeps trying anyways. Like, damn, his entire mission is Spain is only possible because Ada saved his ass like...four times??? And you can make reasonable arguments that she doesn't care about him he's only important for her mission, and to be honest I think that interpretation is also valid, but for me personally I just think she cares about him so much but it's in his best interest to continue believing she doesn't care.

And I just want them to be happy. But it will probably never work out between them, just due to everything...they can't escape their lives. They're both kept alive by two opposing morality systems. Leon's guilt and unyielding need to fight for truth and innocence and to protect everyone he's lost and everyone who depends on him. And Ada to hold onto herself and what whittling remains of self-identity and independence she still has when it was all taken from her, even to the point of someone making a damn clone out of her.

Man I just love them so much I'M SO EMOTIONAL!!!!!!!

[thecynthh]

do you not find it a bit disrespectful to repost/rewrite other peoples fics? i understand that you’re doing it because people really liked them, or whatever, but i also feel like it’s kind of rude to do so.

personally, if i left this app or deleted my account and came back to find someone was posting my hard work, i would be genuinely upset.

if the og writer gave you permission then that’s a completely different story.

not at all hating, just wondering.

so lemme give u my perspective, i am just like everyone else a consumer, meaning i read and i comment and i like and twiddle my thumbs scroll on this app for at least 2 hours a day.

i have favourite accounts and stories with aspirations to write better and more overall and without the inspiration from the friends and writers that have deactivated i would’ve never began writing and posting my own shit

i was just as happy to find out that i could save old stories from deactivated accounts as much as people were happy to find out that i was reposting them. so coming from a writer and a consumer i don’t see that much of a problem considering my terms.

the way that i’ve made my links is if i wanted too, i could delete the whole thing unless that person tries to copy and paste it into something else entirely. so i have control and moderation about how much it can spread.

i have stated multiple times that if the author or someone close to them reaches out to me specifically asking or demanding for me to take it down i will happily comply. I have stated this MULTIPLE TIMES and in every single post that includes the actual link to any of the stories.

then again i’m not personally close with any of the writers but if they say the word it’ll all be gone in seconds. i would understand as a writer, the frustration and seeing it from an outside perspective that it is indeed disrespectful.

would i be butt hurt if someone did do that to me personally? no, because in the end yes it is someone’s personal work but it’s still just a fan fiction about a 21 year old man who will probably have moved on with their life in a couple of years.

mind you all of these fics still exist somewhere on tumblr, all of it is for the public to find. i have simply compiled it into a couple google docs while STILL CREDITING THEM.

what about u anon? are you using the links? do u enjoy the fics ive collected?

as a matter of fact who does use the links and think it’s morally wrong of me to be doing this. because in the end it’s majorities favour.

sorry for the rant/ if this came off bitchy/ i could’ve phrased this whole thing better but thank u if u even read a single paragraph.

[lopposting]

I absolutely love your lore theories for LoP! Very new to the fandom :). Stayed up all night reading your posts abt it whahaha please keep making them!

Just wanted to ask what you think, if Camille was the recorded first puppet with an awakened ego and was Carlo's mom... does that mean Geppetto let his wife be experimented on by the alchemists upon her death or???

Another thought, do you think Sophia knew Geppetto's plans? Given that she reached out to P at the very beginning and called him by name ((geppettos puppet)) She knew Simon's plans yeah. But what abt Geppettos?

Thank you so much for your kind ask!!!

I panicked briefly because I thought I lost this ask somewhere. I have a LOT of thoughts surrounding Camille and parts of the game that I struggle to put together really cohesively, so on certain topics, i'm just going to ramble.

So, there is this image from the opening cutscene.

Maybe it isn't literally Camille and Carlo, but it may be alluding to them. [And what are they shown playing here? dundundun]

There is a particular affinity and focus the game has on the Piano as well.

Music is so linked to humanity in this game, i think it's very sweet.

There was also this really interesting post about the blue fairy (in the og collodi novel) that I don't think I can dig up anymore, but I remember it was something like this. It was pointing out that, realistically, the blue fairy really isn't a good parent. She lets a seven year old child be hanged on a tree, she watches by as he is enslaved; she makes him "work" for the right to be a real boy instead of reasonably granting him it, etc. The blue fairy also appears omniscient or goddess-like, appearing as a child, a young woman, a goat, and a mother (in perhaps her most adapted incarnation).

if Sophia's knowledge is endless, couldn't she have warned us about geppetto? wouldn't she know about carlo (someone she knew as a child) being tortured in a box? was it her discretion to let us suffer, because he needs to be able to suffer to be strong? Does that make her a moral or ethical person? Can any personhood with omniscience, who, in a sense, allows evil to happen, be moral or just? Perhaps, herein lies the philosophical, inherent flaw, in any relationship with an omniscient being, but I digress.

However, I think Sophia's endless knowledge that Arlecchino [sadly I write his name wrong every time] refers to is spiritual, or emotional, in a sense: that because she could manipulate time, all of it was at her disposal. When we wake up in the train car, her words are: "There you are, I've been looking all over for you!" She could not have known where we were, if she was searching for us (possibly through the blue butterfly figure we see). Also, I think she could've warned us about Geppetto.. but maybe then we wouldn't have gone to save her, and her goals are to get us to save her from Simon, which I believe she either says or suggests are "selfish" intentions (although I think she is very well within her right to have tbh). I don't think she is all-knowing in the way that Simon's world of truth would be. Maybe it's just a plot hole, perhaps it's just a "flaw" innate in writing any story with an omniscient character, but I don't think she was omniscient in that fashion.

And then coming back to Camille: One of my absolute favourite things about the game is the Saintess of Mercy Statue/Pieta Motif that we see in the Grand Exhibition. And Camille, who is inferred to have been the mother of Carlo, is said to have engineered the statue. She is directly connected to the game's central visual motif of death and rebirth. And then the statue also being diegetically[not a word apparently?] associated with rebirth and renewal ("Bring new life to puppets") in that you are "re-setting" and re-spec your character's stats there??? Equal parts beautiful and spectacular and touching.

[I feel SO sad that apparently, not every gamer got to see the statue. Opening those doors after the phone call riddle and then the camera panning up to the statue is such an amazing and special moment to me, and then the fact that it's also raining (another symbol of birth) too]

I don't know if the Camille puppet was literally the same Camille (who may have been the wife of Giuseppe), though. We know that she seems to have saved a baby from falling, on which afterwards she says "bring me back to my child". Not only is the Camille puppet a devoted mother character, she's also the first puppet to awaken (in other words, being associated with the idea of birth). "Camille" is so tied to the idea of motherhood and birth, that I think the Camille puppet is another connection here, and may not literally be the same Camille who was a technician. Although, I don't put it past Geppetto to be doing nefarious experiments with puppets, even if it were his wife. It might be a little ominous in regards to his attitude to P, that he doesn't see puppets as "people", but he does see people as puppets.

[strategicallyignoringmytodolist]

Here's my S3 theory. (I'd be thrilled to hear yours as well.)

I am writing this now so that when S3 finally drops in 24 billion months or whatever, I can look back at my notes and feel very smug and smart. Or laugh at myself for how wrong I got it.

My point is, dolphins. Or rather-- that terrible yet well-written cliffhanger:

At the very very end of S2, as Aziraphale was going up the elevator to Heaven, I'm pretty sure he knew he was going to have to work under cover to prevent the end of the world. Certainly after watching the recordings of Gabriel and what happened when HE protested, Aziraphale would realize that the bureaucracies of Heaven and Hell were determined to get to a final battle.

The Second Coming, from what (admittedly minimal amounts) I've read of it, doesn't have quite as many plot points as the arrival of the Antichrist. Jesus is supposed to show up in a burst of dramatic weather, all the humans who have ever lived are going to be immediately tossed into Heaven or Hell, and... That's about it? (I was actually raised Catholic, but I didn't pay much attention in Sunday school, and as an adult I don't really interact with religion. This isn't my best trivia subject, in other words.)

Anyway, at some sooner-rather-than-later point I think Aziraphale is going to decide to let all the angels and demons who want to fight it out with flaming swords have their go, and he is going to focus on preventing everyone else from getting hurt while that happens. Maybe the final sorting of goodies and baddies is going to involve processing all of humanity through some massive portals. And maybe Aziraphale is going to use his new position of power in Heaven's bureaucracy to change where the portal exit point is. There have been sooo many references to Alpha Centauri in the first two seasons, and that's presumably where Beelzebub and Gabriel went at the end of S2. I bet they would be willing to help with portal setup and receiving refugees on their end.

I'm not entirely certain what Crowley's role will be in S3. I can totally picture Aziraphale coming to him and saying, "Let's run off to Alpha Centauri together, only I've got several billion humans I want to bring with me." Maybe Crowley will have to help with portal setup down in the basement offices of hell. Or maybe he will need to convince Jesus to join Team Save Humanity (Crowley was friendly with Jesus once upon a time and did show him all the kingdoms of the world, after all.)

I think there are going to be some funny bits with the Nazi zombies from past seasons and all the other people who are being raised from the dead.

In the original book, Adam said that Heaven and Hell were a lot like his gang, the Them, and their rival gang, the Johnsonites: They were always trying to beat one another, but it wouldn't be any good if one of them actually did win. Having a rival gives you something to do, after all. I don't think there can ever be a final resolution between good and bad. They're kind of like death -- baked into the system. It's going to be a stalemate.

I also suspect that God is playing a many-layered game. All the demons and angels are helping to judge and deliver consequences to humans for their use of free will. But maybe God is watching all the angels and demons to see whether they understand that being on a team doesn't mean that you can't make your own moral decisions and act outside the party line.

Ultimately I think the battle will end and the human refugees will return to Earth. Our favorite supernatural couple will buy a flat with a garden somewhere, and that's where the story will end -- in a garden, just as it began.

[butwhatifidothis]

1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 12 for rhea? :3

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

I like Rhea because her story brings with it so many interesting things to think about, and the choices she's made throughout it are also thought-provoking. Yes, she's tried to do the best she could with the options given to her, yes she's tried to do everything in order to bring peace to Fodlan, but that doesn't make her choices any less morally ambiguous or debatable - something she acknowledges, and even wishes to make up for when she's felt she'd made bad choices!

Plus her being fairly shy about mingling with others due to her status making her feel as though she'd bum down the mood gives her a real sweet quality to her lol. Makes me wish even more she was allowed to talk to more characters.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

That she put her identity out on blast in Shambhala in order to protect everyone. She also does this during the siege on Garreg Mach, but her initial transformation was away from everyone; in the second time she does is in front of everyone, but she cares about saving people more than her own safety at that moment. Considering how long she hid her Nabatean heritage from the world, it feels like a huge step forward for her, Nabateans, and Fodlan as a whole being able to put behind the horrific massacre of the Nabateans. She isn't deemed a monster by anyone, no one tries to kill her in her dragon form; they all just admire that she went so far to keep them safe! It's just a really good moment (that's uh, fucked by either her dying for sure on VW or her randomly going berserk on SS, but still!).

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

The above mentioned going berserk thing in SS is easilyyyyyyy my least favorite thing about Rhea's writing (because due to the nature of Rhea's character I don't really find myself outright disliking any aspect of her character). It's stupid, it comes out of nowhere, it makes no sense (even with FEH trying its damndest to throw out a reason), and it just kinda fucks with SS' pacing more than anything. She's only the final boss there because SS needed a unique boss and no other reason and it sucks major ass.

Even the suggestion of her going berserk on VW and Nemesis being the final boss of SS just kinda... moves the problem somewhere else, not actual fix what's wrong with it (the lack of foreshadowing that anything like this would happen, the fact that it doesn't happen on the other route where the exact same thing happens to Rhea but nothing happens to her there, the nonsensical nature of it, etc.). Definitely the weakest part of the writing of her character, imo.

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

Not the song question 😭😭😭 imma be straight up with you I do not think of any song for any character like almost ever sorry for the lame answer but I don't got shit for this question

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

We both love cats!!

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

i like when they write her in character I like when fandom allows for Rhea to genuinely grow close to other characters, rare as it is to see happen. She has such an interesting viewpoint and has a lot of similarities to a lot of characters, so seeing that get expanded on and not just have her be The One True Bad Guy Of 3H For Totes For Realsies Pinky Promise is always nice lol

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

On AM/SS after the war she lets herself openly baby Flayn as her aunt instead of withholding outright doting due to her archbishop position + hiding their familial relation. She gives her gifts and teaches her constellations on her star chart and does up her hair and tells funny story about Seteth that make him look silly - she just gets to be family with her niece!!

[ghostenluvs]

story where some random woman becomes queen of a kingdom where the throne is said to be cursed because of all the coincidental heir-to-the-throne deaths and is absolutely not on board with this, she was perfectly content with her edge of the land territory where she could actually have a moment of peace bc people weren't constantly kicking down her doors all day about the land's horrible management problems because she actually did her job looking out for the welfare of her citizens and the entire kingdom wasn't aggressively debating her legitimacy.

so what does she do? abdicate like a normal person? no. she's extra and I want her to do things impractically so I can have a story.

so girlboss just engages in incredibly and increasingly convoluted plots to stage her own dethroning and every single time it just does the exact opposite of what she wants it to do.

fake someone else having more legit claim to the throne? accidentally uncover irrefutable evidence of the next five people in line actually having committed treason.

try and hire someone to stage a fake coup? the guys she hired fail so badly at it that they accidentally storm the wrong castle and now they're wanted next kingdom over for the most pathetic attempt at a hostile takeover in the past 600 years of recorded history.

try and get a fortune teller to fake prophesise that she'd suck as queen and needs to leave? the wizard advisor who got rid of the last 16 heirs because their vibes all sucked slides the fortune teller 20 bucks extra to prophesise the opposite.

so these two people are engaging in barely concealed to the court antics in attempts to either Not have to deal with all the crud rulers have to deal with or keep the current one in place because the past guys were all pathetic and she may hate it but she actually does her job pretty okay.

she may hate being queen but it's not like she's going to screw over the kingdom at large and it's citizens to get out of it.

eventually she gets desperate and tries to fake her kidnapping by like a dragon or something in exchange for some gold and the dragon and the wizard are old pals from fantasy hijinks college and this woman is halfheartedly yoinked from a picnic and dropped in a really tall tree literally anybody with rope and a ladder could get up and she's back grumpily drawing up ethical infrastructure upkeep plans in less than two hours.

wizard advisor grinning smugly at her while she, exhaustedly and frustrated that nobody would do this before her, signs union protections into law while her attempt of the day to go off and live in a cottage somewhere fails loudly in the background.

she just wants to sleep in past 6 am and not have to deal with big social minefield parties and also not have to deal with assassins from the families of the past 16 terribly pathetic rulers for ten seconds meanwhile court wizard ameilia is forcing her to attend alliance meetings and bringing to her attention the egregious policy failings of the past rulers that she can't just LEAVE LIKE THAT.

so this goes on until eventually most of the glaring issues have been addressed and she just realizes hey wait why didn't I just coordinate a coup with wizard ameilia so she could do all this instead since she's so insistent on fixing everything.

and then she asks and wizard ameilia admits that she also hates paperwork but somebody had to do it.

and then she just pettily throws the contents of her inkwell at her and goes back to reversing some random past king's dumb law he made because he wanted to save face for some dumb embarrassing thing he did while also writing herself a not to assign wizard woman ameilia nine extra court responsibilities and an apprentice so if the next ruler after her sucks at their job they can force some random person with some level of morals into enacting ethical policy too.

this probably makes no sense and I am writing this 46 minutes past midnight but I think it's funny and if I actually put this into chaptered writing I am not really focusing on the ethics or political side of things. I am entirely doing this just to see how far into absurdity I can push this woman's 'someone please dethrone me I need a nap' plotting.

[butterflydm]

wot reread: towers of midnight (chapter 8-13)

spoilers for towers of midnight

1. Hmm, we open this Mat chapter with him pondering over the (still-sealed) letter that Verin left him and admiring the beauty of the female tavernkeeper (quickly slapping a “but I’m married” bandaid over his admiration). Strike two.

2. I genuinely am very curious about what notes might have been left behind about Mat (and Mat’s marriage) because... from Sanderson’s other writing, this doesn’t feel like an idea he would have necessarily come up with on his own? He admits that he’s a bit of a prude and his main go-to ‘romance’ route in his own books is “wow this arranged marriage is working out surprisingly well!”. So I’m really curious if post-marriage horndog!Mat was noted somewhere in the stuff Jordan left behind. And I’m keeping track of the moments because I want to see how much of a pattern it ends up being over the course of the ~post-marriage~ books.

I am also going to keep track of whether or not Mat notes any specific qualities about ~absent wifey~ that he likes and, if he does, if those qualities are things that we’ve witnessed her actually showing at any point.

3. Also, just to note: while Mat is trying to remind himself that he’s married, his ~wife~ is engaging in hostile combat actions against his friends, and will be enslaving forty Aes Sedai and killing an additional unknown number of Aes Sedai, Warders, and people who live and work in Tar Valon. But, you know, it’s her empire that’s his enemy, not her.

(that line really is... the sad thing is that line is actually great out of context but, wow, it makes absolutely ZERO sense in terms of Mat’s actual relationship with ~Fortuona~. It’s such a bonkers delusional line for Mat to have said at any point during their relationship as it exists in the books. It really does feel like Jordan thought up that line first and then never got around to actually writing a relationship that could live up to its sentiment but jammed it in anyway because he couldn’t let it go even though it didn’t fit with the relationship as-written. But leaving it in really makes Mat come across as extremely reality-denying in terms of his relationship. And, hey, maybe that was what Jordan was going for, idk)

4. Verin is betting here that Mat’s curiosity is stronger than his desire to stay away from Aes Sedai plans, but she doesn’t know that the narrative has spent the last few books beating his curiosity and critical thinking out of him and turning his irrational dislike of Aes Sedai up to bizarrely high levels so that he’s willing to make out with a slaver. Verin should have just ALSO shared the info in the letter with Egwene when she was with her, but it was Verin’s turn to hold the Idiot Ball of Making The Plot Happen, so she did not (honestly, either Mat reading the letter or Verin telling Egwene the contents of the letter would also have saved us a bunch of time in the story).

5. More of weird fey creature Mat here, who acts like he is bound by his Oaths in a bizarre metaphysical way, instead of him just reluctantly keeping his word because he’s a good man. Like... you haven’t sworn on the Oath Rod, Mat. If whatever Verin is telling you to do actually goes against your morals just... break your word. You were willing to do it when it came to the Seanchan Oaths, because an oath under duress is not binding, and you seemed to be aware of that back during WH. The whole “you must follow your oaths to the letter even if they lead you into immoral acts” belief is NOT honorable. But this ties back into the way that Jordan had Mat acting with Tuon in CoT & KoD -- the logic of going “because she’s ~my wife~ (by Seanchan law), I am ~legally/morally obligated~ to support and protect her, no matter what evil deeds she may choose to commit and no matter how much she might be hurting other people”.

So now keeping his promises is about Mat operating by Fey Rules of Literally Obeying His Word, rather than keeping his promises because he’s a good person despite his protests. Because a good man wouldn’t support and protect a slaver, so Jordan had to throw away the part of Mat that was a good man in order for Mat x Tuon to ‘work’. But then (this ties back to horndog!Mat), it also leads to it feeling like Mat doesn’t cheat on Tuon right now only because it might break his Mystical Fey Creature Oaths rather than him actually feeling any personal inclination towards being a faithful husband.

6. At the start of this chapter, Mat thought to himself that he wouldn’t give Melli his ~best smile~ on account of him being a married man and... well, guess what he does only two pages later? Yep, gives her his best smile that he personally believes melts women’s hearts. Two pages! Also, he thinks that he’s Not Allowed to stare at her lips (because he’s married) even as he’s calculating the precise fullness of said lips that he’s Definitely Not staring at, lol.

7. Mat notices a pretty serving girl and tips her a coin for her smile. For, um. For Thom’s sake. lol. Strike three. Technically, Mat is already out, but I will continue to count strikes.

8. lol, the bouncer at the tavern, Berg, is as dubious about Mat’s future faithfulness to ~his slaver wife~ as I am. Berg gives Mat a suspicious look despite that fact that Mat. This is hilarious. Mat SAT HIM DOWN and talked to him about how he wouldn’t be wooing away the woman that Berg is in a relationship with because Mat is MARRIED NOW. lol, no wonder the man is so suspicious of him! That just sends so many alarm bells ringing. Portrait of a Man In Denial over how unhappy he is about being married.

9. Strike four, Mat notices the golden hair, nice eyes, and full bosom of one of the women he’s gambling with at the next tavern, and tries to convince himself that he doesn’t actually find full breasts incredibly attractive anymore (he noticed Melli’s “ample bosom” only a handful of pages ago so... um, yeah, that’s a boldfaced lie to himself. Sanderson might mention breasts less often than Jordan does but when he does mention them, it’s been in Mat PoV so far). We’re several pages into Mat’s PoV at this point and we’ve mostly focused on him doing his best to pretend he feels no regret over being married and Not Being Allowed to notice all the women that he’s noticing for, um, Talmanes and Thom. He also tries to give his fellow gambler one of his heart-fluttering smiles (that he said at the start of the chapter he wouldn’t give out anymore on account of being ~a married man~) and tries to pretend that he isn’t disappointed when she doesn’t react.

10. Anyway, the plot important thing that happens here is that Mat finds out that the gholam is in Caemlyn (people found with their throats ripped out). That finally draws him out of his depressed-over-being-married funk.

11. We learn that he’s sent a letter to Elayne and gotten no reply and he’s actually QUITE worked up over it, and over the fact that Elayne has never so much as kissed him on the cheek to thank him for saving her life. And it’s an interesting change that his internal objection here doesn’t end up being “but of course I wouldn’t want Elayne to kiss me because I’m a married man” but is instead “I don’t want royalty to kiss me” which sends him down a spiral of thinking about how he’s trapped into the Seanchan nobility now. Hmm. Interesting. Anyway, that’s strike five.

12. Mat does bring up three positive qualities of Tuon here (that aren’t related to whether or not he’s capable of being attracted to her: as we’ve just been witnessing, Mat is capable of being attracted to the majority of female characters in the books, so physical attraction is fairly irrelevant here):

a. good at stones: verified true

b. keen of wit: no textual evidence that this is true

c. ‘good for talking to’: negative textual evidence that this is true; most of Mat’s conversations with her in CoT & KoD seemed to end up in frustration or unpleasantness (he even mentions here that she’s frustrating ‘most of the time’), with him thinking on at least one occasion late in KoD about how he hates that she treats him like he’s her property

So... we’re at 33% Verified True on Mat’s accuracy scale of Tuon’s Good Qualities, 33% Just Lying To Himself, and 33% is a question mark.

(though I would argue Tuon’s lack of insight or critical thinking in her own PoV chapters argues against her being ~keen of wit~, unless Mat just means she’s good at puns or something, which is also not in evidence. I suspect this is more of an Informed Attribute, where the author(s) hope that just repeating over and over that Tuon has a keen wit will make people believe she does even if she never does anything to prove it).

13. Mat feels guilt over leaving Tylin tied up for the gholam to kill back in Ebou Dar. Tylin’s relationship to Mat really does feel like it’s married so tightly to Tuon’s relationship with Mat, a transfer of ~ownership~ in a horrible gross way. Tylin’s abuse of Mat is what kept him in the situation he was in when he met Tuon, and Tylin’s abuse of Mat really does feel like it foreshadows the way that Tuon treats Mat as well, which is definitely a Bad Omen for his future.

14. Awww, for all that Mat was negatively thinking about royalty earlier, he thinks here about how the right Queen is now on the throne of Andor (with the emphasis Mat’s!).

15. Strike six. Mat sees a stately older woman in the inn where Thom is performing and thinks about how he’ll keep her in mind for later. Hastily adding ~for his men~ onto his thoughts. He tells Thom about the gholam and they leave for Mat’s camp.

16. Mat thinks with frustration about how Bayle Doman and Leilwin née Egeanin no longer have any affection for him (it’s because you’re married to a slaver and they have rejected the empire; hope this helps). We also get a reminder about the holes in his memory (foggy patches from when he picked up the dagger in Shadar Logoth until when he was healed of it in TDR).

17. Mat comes across as pretty desperate for validation & affection here (specifically from people that he already knows and respects). That’s really standing out to me -- he thought about it a lot in the last book too, about how much he wanted Joline, Teslyn, & Edesina to be grateful to him for saving their lives. He thinks the same here about Elayne, and about Doman and Leilwin née Egeanin. And he doesn’t want to think about how his own actions (being abrasive towards Elayne & co; picking the slavers over the slaves) might have made people turn away from him or think less of him. Save someone once, and it shouldn’t matter how you behave in the future, right? (wrong) It’s also interesting how the clear loyalty of his soldiers doesn’t scratch that itch for him at all. Maybe because he attributes that to the memories in his head and his luck rather than himself as a person?

18. When Mat claims to Thom that he’s a good judge of character, he gets a very doubtful raised eyebrow back. Thom’s relationship with Mat in the last few books has been... honestly, somewhat weird. I almost wonder... we haven’t gotten any Thom PoV for quite a long time, I don’t think, so I wonder if Thom is just masking his actual feelings about Mat because he knows that he needs Mat in order to rescue Moiraine. Because, for the most part, Thom has just avoided Having Opinions about the mess that is Mat’s life and choices, despite the fact that Thom is (supposedly) fond enough of an Aes Sedai that he’s desperate to rescue her from captivity, and also deeply fond of Elayne and friends with Juilin. Is Thom playing Mat the way that Mat was playing the Tairen nobles at the start of TSR? Letting himself appear to be a non-critical buddy because there’s something that he wants out of Mat? I will have to keep an eye out to see if Thom shows any affection towards/inclination to hang out with Mat AFTER Moiraine gets rescued and he doesn’t need Mat anymore. Thom is, after all, one of the best players of Daes Dae’mar in the series, we are told.

19. Mat talks to Teslyn here, internally noting that she has lost most of the “nervous skittishness” that she’d picked up when she was enslaved as damane. He likes Teslyn, he thinks, but he does not trust her. Despite Teslyn never doing a single thing to breach his trust, unlike SOME people that I could name. Ah! There are rumors in Caemlyn about the Seanchan assult on the White Tower but (just like he dismissed Tuon’s threats back in CoT/KoD), Mat has dismissed those rumors as just “stories of raken drifting up from the south” (I wonder if I should be keeping track of all of the “Mat Forces Himself Into Willful Denial Over Tuon/the Seanchan’s Evil Choices” moments). Teslyn and the others are planning to leave now to go join the reunited White Tower (which is what most of the rumors talk about).

20. Hmm, Teslyn thanks Mat here for helping her escape the Seanchan but then she talks with him about the importance of maintaining “illusions with yourself”. I actually did wonder, when I was doing my reread of CoT & KoD, if Teslyn’s patience with Mat, even when he was being a complete asshole, was due to her seeing how much he was lying to himself to try to make himself accept his fate. I think I may have been right on that. And she gives him an escape route, if he looks for it in the future -- that if he ever decides to seek out the White Tower, he has a friend there willing to help him. Considering that she knows that he’s married to a slaver (one who actively tried to re-enslave her personally), that is a HUGE offer. A way out of his trap with the Seanchan -- protection at the White Tower. And Mat, who has been desperate for validation since the start of TGS is now “feeling as unsettled as if someone had kicked his legs out from under him”. Teslyn has also, in this one conversation, shown him more kindness than Tuon has shown in their entire relationship. So... Mat has at least one place to run to now, if he runs away from ~Fortuona~ post-canon. Teslyn has seen the worst of him and extends him this offer anyway, so he knows that she won’t turn him away if he comes to her for help. This conversation is SO good. Mat is thrown so off-balance by Teslyn’s kindness and genuine care for him.

21. *sigh* I really wish that Mat were caring more about Nalesean and the Redarms being murdered by the gholam than about Tylin’s murder. I do understand why -- because Mat feels responsible for her death in a way that he doesn’t for Nalesean’s -- but... ugh, kinda sucks that his guilt over Tylin’s death is now the biggest part of how he feels about Tylin, given how much misery and pain she caused Mat when she was alive. Not necessarily... incorrect, in terms of how people’s brains can work in this sort of situation, but it does suck. Anyway, Mat is now the prime object of the gholam’s attention, having been sent to personally murder him (likely by Moridin, I would assume?). Teslyn saves his life during this fight btw, using the Power to pull him back before the gholam can kill him (she can do this because he took his medallion off to fight it). Five people were successfully killed by the gholam in this attack before it runs away (it has been ordered to try to avoid too much attention).

23. Oddly, Tuon is one of the people that the gholam threatens to kill. Honestly, I feel like it would have been smarter for the Shadow to court the Seanchan/Tuon instead of going against them, since ~Fortuona~ is already so hostile to Aes Sedai. But the Shadow cannot always make smart moves, I guess. The gholam doesn’t threaten to kill Olver but does threaten Tuon, Thom, and Noal. Given that it apparently got its information from a Redarm that it killed a few days ago or from observing Mat’s camp, you’d think that Olver would be on the list either way (and it really makes no sense that Tuon would be on the list? She hasn’t been traveling with Mat for at least a month at this point).

I suspect that the general reader is supposed to care that Tuon is under risk of assassination? But it’s baffling to me as to WHY I should care when she literally JUST had her people assault the White Tower, kidnapping and enslaving forty women and most likely also killing more people than that in total. The narrative has never given me a good reason why I should care about whether or not Tuon gets assassinated besides “vague marriage prophecy bs”. The narrative has never shown that Tuon is actually a better candidate for empress for the Westlands Seanchan than some other random High Blood would be, as long as they aren’t a Darkfriend like Suroth; it just wants us to assume that she is. Her behavior has been just as horrible as any other High Blood’s. Why should I believe she’s a better choice as empress than the next High Blood down in rank? We have never been given a reason.

Now, if Tuon had had even a single ounce of positive character development during the circus storyline, then this would be an entirely different ballgame! But she not only didn’t, she has actively doubled-down on her fear and hatred of ‘marath’damane’.

So, yeah... why on earth should I be invested in Mat wanting to save her life? The narrative never gives me a reason to believe she’s capable of becoming a worthy leader of people. She’s petty, arrogant, and cruel. Basically, a younger version of Elaida with even more power and less self-awareness than Elaida ever had.

24. Note that I do not consider Mat acknowledging Joline as pretty to be a strike against his marriage because it’s not him noticing with any kind of intent that he then tries to pretend doesn’t exist -- he genuinely does not find her an appealing temptation at this point, due to their personal history (though said negative history is pretty much entirely Mat’s fault #JolineDeservedBetter).

25. Ah, Perrin and the others have arrived by the statue that Rand told Nynaeve about back in TGS, so I’m guessing that Tam will be leaving soon to go get nearly killed by his son. Anyway, Perrin and Galad meet here face to face and agree to have their armies fight each other. So... that’s going... well?

26. ELAYNE! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

27. Trying to figure out a way to get the Andoran nobles to actually unite before the Last Battle rather than squabbling for power, Elayne decides that it’s time to claim the Sun Throne. Hmm, I do feel like Sanderson’s more casual style of narration is more pronounced here with Elayne than it’s been with the other characters. All off a sudden, it just feels like the narration is in a hurry, almost more like an outline than prose.

28. Ah, we learn that the reason that Elayne never responded to Mat’s first letter is that she never received it. Her secretary, Master Norry, dismissed Mat as just another leader of a mercenary band, which is why he was granted a space outside the city but no audience with Elayne. He does give her Mat’s second letter, telling her that the captain of this mercenary band is being particularly persistent. Elayne is keeping all these mercenary bands around because they will likely be needed for the Last Battle because, unlike Perrin, SHE isn’t a FOOL.

29. Reading the letter (which does have a lot of misspellings, etc in it, but Mat also mentions that he was planning on rewriting it to be pretty if Thom would have stopped laughing at him) gives Elayne ALL the emotions as she realizes that Mat and Thom (and maybe Olver) are alive and have escaped from Ebou Dar. Mat mentions here that he thinks Elayne’s ass is pretty but also that he barely looked because he knows that she would have kicked his ass and also he’s married w/e, which I feel like should count as strike seven even though it’s Elayne again, because Mat has an emotional attachment to Elayne that he doesn’t have to the more random women that he’s Noticing all over the place, but I’ll only count it as an additional tenth of the point and say he’s at strike six-point-one. Birgitte, upon reading the letter, mentions that Mat also has a nice ass, so I guess she was Looking in Ebou Dar.

Confirmed nice butts:

Elayne & Mat (here in ToM)

Aviendha & Rand (in TFoH)

Probably Min too, I guess

Mat being so worked up over Elayne not responding to his first letter actually makes me wonder if he deliberately put in things into this second letter to try to make her react, if only to fuss at him or tell him off -- telling her she has a nice ass, telling her that he’s married. Because he assumes that she did read his first letter and actively chose not to meet with him.

30. Elayne tells Norry to arrange a meeting with Mat immediately and to tell him to make sure to bring Thom as well. She also begins to think about how Mat and the Band could potentially be useful for bringing Cairhien to her. We get some more insight into her reasoning here as well -- after Rand dies, Andor is one of the biggest potential targets for the Seanchan empire to the south, and they cannot afford for it to merely be part of ~the Dragon’s Empire~ that will potentially fall into chaos after his death. She needs to do strong nation-building NOW, before the Last Battle, to try to make sure it will survive after the Last Battle. “The woman in her cringed to think of planning for Rand’s death, but the Queen could not be so squeamish.” She notes that, as far away from Rand as she currently is, all she ever feels from him these days is a cold anger. Don’t worry, Elayne. Min was literally right there with him and that’s all she ever seemed to be able to sense too.

But this is actually very similar to how Rand wanted to make sure that Arad Doman chose its own king to avoid falling into chaos after his death in the Last Battle, so Elayne and Rand manage to be on the same wavelength even if they are still cruelly separated by the narrative. This is one of the things that @markantonys and I strongly agree on: that a big part of the reason Elayne and Rand are separated for so long is because Elayne is the one person who could have helped Rand with his rulership struggles as an trained leader who understands the issues and understands that you NEED to be ruthless sometimes (but also understands when not to be ruthless).

31. With Elayne, we were still pre-epiphany but when we jump to Min’s PoV, it is decidedly post, as she can feel warmth in the bond and not just Rand’s cold anger.

32. “Alanna didn’t often reveal her intimate connection to the Dragon Reborn.” lol, except for all the Wise Ones, in order to wiggle out of punishments. And all the Aes Sedai, to try to establish precedence. Except for that. Anyway, she’s disappeared from her rooms in the Stone of Tear.

33. When Cadsuane and Min point out that Cadsuane cares that Alanna is missing because she’s a ~tool~ to use on Rand, Nynaeve says that Alanna is “no more helpful” to Cadsuane than Min. So... she tells Cadsuane everything and obeys her frequently? Why is the narrative trying to pretend that Min isn’t constantly helping out Cadsuane? It literally just happened again at the end of TGS! She’s been obediently telling all her viewings to Cadsuane for her to dissect! Nynaeve was IN THE ROOM when this was happening! Or is this meant to reflect Nynaeve’s own distorted view of Min?

34. oh, lol, when Min reacts to Rand arriving in the bond, her Maiden ‘guards’ promptly abandon her and race off to find Rand. So, I guess the Min-Maiden relationship is still... not great, lol.

35. Rand shows up and I really dislike that all of this new!Rand is filtered through outside PoVs. It makes it hard for me to emotionally relate with zen!Rand because I can’t see his interior world. This is also a place where the timeline fuzziness kinda hits the worst, because we’re going right from cold!Rand in Elayne’s bond to warm!Rand in Min’s bond. Moving Rand’s epiphany further back in this set of books would help with that. Min actually panics for a moment, upon seeing Rand, because his eyes look older and he doesn’t seem familiar. “Had the Rand she loved been stolen away, replaced by some ancient force of a man she could never know or understand?” Hmm.

And then he smiles and she does recognize him -- responding to her panic in the bond, maybe?

36. I will, uh, note that Rand did not go directly to Min when he arrived in Tear. Just gonna quietly note that down. He waited for her to find him.

37. He talks to Rhuarc (and the assembled Aiel, including the Maidens) and tells them that he knows that he has toh to them and that he is prepared to meet it. And Rand finally seems to have his relationship with the Maidens back (with Min still baffled at the interactions between Rand and the Aiel).

38. It actually seems clear here (even filtered through Min) that Rand is still somewhat of a boiling pot, though the wound has been lanced. But now he really FEELS the pain over Lan heading towards Tarwin’s Gap, when before he was able to numb most of his emotions through the general ice-cold/molten-hot anger that he was constantly repressing with the flame & void. Now he’s feeling again and that can be... difficult. But he’s still rush-rush-rush and talking about potentially dying soon. So it’s clear that there’s complicated stuff going on in his head and we are TRAPPED in Min’s PoV and only get hints of it second-hand through the bond! But he does promise Nynaeve that he will send Lan help.

39. Rand gives Min the mission to find out why Callandor is key to the prophecies. lol, sure, whatever. I guess we have to give Min ~something important~ to do because she doesn’t actually have a plot purpose and hasn’t had one in quite a long while. Hey, if it means she’s actually doing something and not just surgically-attaching herself to Rand at all times, then I guess it’s worth it.

40. Anyway, Rand tells Cadsuane that she succeeded by failing, lol.

41. Min bashing on the nobles for not having a purpose when she only has a job because her boyfriend gave her one, lol.

42. Anyway, Rand lines up the nobles and susses out that Weiramon and Anaiyella are Darkfriends. If I recall correctly, I’d guessed on Weiramon back during my initial read of TPoD (way back when it was first published) so it was very vindicating for me when he was finally called out as a DF lol. I remember feeling vindicated, anyway, lol. Anaiyella was one I could have gone either way on, but it makes sense for Weiramon to have an accomplice. I... don’t mind Rand’s Darkfriend-vision because, yeah, let’s move the plot along, lol. I just, again, wish that it had been pushed towards the end of this book instead. But the talent itself kinda goes along with the other stuff Rand has been saying about how he’s a bright beacon for the Shadow now and cannot avoid TDO’s eyes.

Instead of killing Weiramon and Anaiyella, he sends them off to bring a message to the Shadow that they will no longer be able to hide among his allies.

43. There’s a great moment with Rand and his dad, though I kinda roll my eyes at Min needing a ~very special~ formal introduction to Tam (who she already knows at this point because he’s been hanging around Tear for three days).

Ah, well. If I do my best to ignore Min, lol, I really liked that scene.

I really do wish that we’d had even a tiny bit of Rand PoV, though. It’s very frustrating only seeing him through other people’s eyes.

I feel like this has gotten long enough (I spent... a lot of time talking about Mat, as I’d suspected that I might, lol) so I will end this post here.

[ikarus-wax-wings]

5am Tea

( an outpouring of thoughts)

It's 5am.

I'm sitting on my kitchen floor. My mother sits in the next room, newly awake. We have not spoken. She is up to start her day. I am up because of this ache in my heart.

There are many things living inside me. There is this graveyard of houses, and the way I have started to bury this one while I'm still inside.

There is the story of the mermaid who's bought legs cost the feeling of stepping on swords. She whose prayed future ended up being nothing she wished. And despite her tale having been penned, the quietness of her pain and sorrow is never noticed. Her pain and sorrow, too, are rarely recounted.

No one likes a sad story. Especially quiet ones. Ones that speak of deceptive hope.

This tiled floor is cold. I'm cold. I put sugar in my tea. More than usual too When did I stop being able to do even that? Why must it be an achievement that I do it now?

God, this weight is neverending- It's this asphyxiation that lasts years. Turning my lungs to stone, tiny particle, by tiny particle.

I too, am a sad story. One no one wants to hear of. I live in grief of the end of my own world, Which crawls at me so slowly it's imperceptible to most others. And that's no heroic tale.

Why can I not change my ending? If it comes at me so slowly? Why can I not be some bold-faced protagonist who doesn't accept fate's wishes, who works and bleeds- not to bleed- but out of triumph and dedication? Why can't I own myself? Or at least entertain and inspire.

Maybe if I was a story and not a person, this would all be easier. My tragedy would be a tragedy. My words would be read. I would not have to die so slowly no one sees it. I'd have people to mourn me. Someone who'd understand.

But I am not a story. I am a person- with this disgusting body and unexplainable mind.

This tea tastes like tears. I've been learning to cry. It's the first thing a baby knows how to do. And I forgot how somewhere along the way. Like forgetting how to breathe. Or how to eat- I am an infant with no mother. Worse than an infant because I have lost my instincts.

My humanity is uneven- a little broken. The edges don't quite fit together. And I shove them against each other, trying to will these imperfect pieces to become whole, to make sense. I laugh to the people around me, ' How funny! I don't know why it's not fitting. It fit just this morning, I swear!' And they watch my desperation with pity and disgust. They know I am simply not one of them. No amount of trying to fit the pieces of my humanity together will fix me. They know this and I do not.

I cannot. To know this is to die.

And, God, I want rest. But I seem to have too much suffering left, No way I've justified an exit ticket by any god. And I'm stuck here. Weighing the questions of hope and morality. Because if God won't give me rest, Do I tuck myself into bed? Am I that selfish yet?

Because here I sit, and what I refuse to think of, yet think of almost solely past my flitting self pity, Is the person I love who is hurting.

I can barely write it.

Barely explain the type of pain and the fear that holds me- a hand around my sternum, tugging the soul of me out, Each line of me, through my stomach, through my chest, coiled in my heart, up my spine and in my neck and tied around each turn of my intestines, The strings are all being pulled out through the centre of me, by this hand- This hand which feels more like God than anything else I've experienced.

How can I feel this and none of the softness I was promised? Is it that I never learned to feel the good, Or that it wasn't there?

I have returned my grief and anger for desperation again. I stopped asking favours a long time ago. Stopped pleading to be saved. To be good. Or to be killed as some pest. I stopped asking for safety.

But now I scream out with this hand squeezing my soul and tugging it out of me. I scream and I sob and prayer seems too soft a word for whatever it is I do. And I do not pray for myself, but I am still selfish in my selflessness.

I am hoarse when I beg for God to help my Lovely. I go blind with tears and lose all breath.

He brings back some part of my humanity. The part that needs God. The part that cries. The world found some piece of me in him that had not been shredded to numbness yet. Why does their pain hurt me more than my own?

They handle themselves and I do what I can and I stay in reach and I try to be solid- or really be anything Anything, anything And this hurt and panic fills me. I am nothing if not a pitcher of fear.

And they're okay. He's doing what he can. He's doing what he needs to. I'm doing all I can. And it's enough. I know it's enough and it has to be enough

And it's not enough.

All the words I have are to explain how words fail me. How it is not enough to explain. How I've not figured out the way to describe it.

I am sick for my Love. I can't find a cure. And I'm searching- yet I fear the absence of fear. That in the moment I learn to be calm- Will be the moment I keep my eyes shut a second too long, And am not there when I'm needed. Maybe first for a small moment. Maybe then to lose them.

What do I pray for besides their peace? To not lose hope? Or like myself, to not become selfish- As if it's my right to say that-

When I mean ' Please don't leave me' ' Please care' ' Please see me, see me, don't black out yet, don't forget, just see my hands here, and how they cling to you, and please care that they do, please care to not leave me behind- at least that, at least that.'

And what hypocrisy that would be, For someone like me who yearns for rest, Who's world grows gray and who stops seeing other's hands reaching out to keep me here. I beg her to be what I can barely be- What I am dishonestly. My presence offset by an open window.

But for them- For her- I cannot bear to leave or be left. And yet I cannot bear to feel her pain.

I'll curl up in bed. Pretending I'm holding her from far away. Whispering one last prayer, One with broken voice and lacklustre expression: Please just this once, let him feel my arms hugging him from afar.

And I let these few tears out against my pillowcase, The last grains of sand through the hourglass.

[thebramblewood]

Hey! :) First I want to say I just loveee your story and the universe you created and the lastest update is truly heartbreaking but I was super curious on the spellcaster vs vampire dynamic in your world and what are the limits of it, especially morally for Caleb:

If giving the chance, would Caleb have turned Morgyn and the sages to vampires in order to save them? Would Caleb even want to do that, would that even be saving them in his eyes or would it be condemning them - a fate almost worse than death?

Thank you soooooo much! I'm having so much fun writing, sharing, and discussing this story with you all, even when it's painful. 😭

Before I get to these questions directly, I want to reiterate that this all originates from me deciding to kill off the Sages as an inciting plot point in the legacy-based story I started this blog with, Escape from Windenburg. I posted that story here in short snippets, but in its original form it was essentially written like a novel. You can read it at my retired blog if you're so inclined. (Yes, I was doing all that for nobody but myself.)

Since I know most people don't have time to casually read a 17-chapter story, I'm going to link the most relevant parts. The attack on the Sages (which is shown but using EA animations, so it's not terribly graphic) and Misael's defeat is here. An explanation for why the Sages cannot be revived is here, and I semi-rewrote this for Caleb's talk with Grace a few weeks back. Honestly, the reasoning behind why the Sages are dead dead has always been kind of hand-wave-y, but the essence of it is that they'd been using magic to extend their lifetimes already and since they were already overdue for death, the universe literally refuses to give them back, even if methods of revival technically exist.

Combined with that fact, I know there are lots of different takes on vampire creation lore, but in this universe it's only possible if the person is still alive. They might be barely hanging on (like Helena), but they can't be fully dead. Therefore, Caleb still wouldn't have been able to fly to the Realm after getting the news from Grace and save the Sages by turning them. It was far too late by then. Now, if he had gone as soon as he started to worry and found them still alive, would he have actually turned them? This is a trickier question!

Keep in mind Helena is the first person he's ever turned, and he was faced with a similar conundrum - let her die or "save" her by turning her. In his mind, being a vampire is a curse, but if it's the only way to prevent an otherwise untimely and undeserved death, maybe it's worth it. Of course, as much as he'd like to downplay the role it played, the fact that Lilith begged him to do it can't be discounted. Would he have intervened if Helena were a random person attacked by a random vampire who he just happened to stumble upon in an alley somewhere? Probably not. He's not really the type to get involved in a situation if he doesn't have to (unless it's one created by his sister).

But if he was willing to do it for Helena, he would have absolutely turned Morgyn if given the chance. He certainly wouldn't have been thinking rationally, and he would've seen turning them as the only way to hold onto them. They were the one person Caleb had fully let know him and let himself fall in love with, and he would've done anything not to lose that. It would've been a selfish move, and he might've had to deal with the consequences later (especially if it wasn't what Morgyn wanted), but it would've felt like the only choice. As for the other Sages, if his tunnel vision even allowed him to register them, he'd hesitate at turning them because he has less of a personal connection. (Simeon and Faba were older and more traditional, so Morgyn didn't see much of them outside work and Caleb barely knew them).

I know that was a lot, but I hope it satisfied your curiosity! There's sometimes so much context crammed into my head that I can't fully fit into the posts themselves, so I always welcome questions or theories! 💜

[vesperstardust]

I think my life is done falling apart/together for now

I don't even know how to transcribe the chaos that has been happening in my life the last...forever...but specifically the last 6 months and especially the last couple of months

2020 and 2021 were the best years of my life, maybe that tells you something. They were the years I felt most secure and became most aligned with myself. I've always been a survivor who thrives in liminal spaces.

Falling apart and falling together look remarkably similar. If you take away anything from this post, remember that.

I want to move forward and stay still and let myself be happy and do the things I've been wanting to do but I also want to remember every twist and turn that brought me here. Because I'm grateful how it all worked out.

Wish I could do a cut under a cut Here is the story, I suppose, of what happened.

There is even more I can't write, but the present trials feel like they truly began when I lost my hair from alopecia during 2022.

I've struggled with alopecia areata, one of several chronic illnesses, but that was the first time I became bald. My long auburn red hair I saw as part of my identity, gone. Who am I? I had to find out quickly who I really was and find strength to keep going that I never knew. Cutting or shaving hair as humiliation against one's will, to break one's spirit, I understood why. I didn't recognise myself. During this same time I also had a traumatic experience with people I thought were my friends that was directly related to my experiences with alopecia.

It took months and along with a newly-approved-by-the-fda medication for alopecia and continued scalp injections, it's growing back fairly well. But just as this was happening, we became financially unstable when my partners gig job dried up and he began experiencing a severe health condition at the same time.

Things were stressful and challenging at this point but manageable. Then we lost our food money. At points we were half-starved (I say this without exaggeration - support your local food bank it will save someone's life). The morale blow/raise of losing/gaining treats is not to be underestimated. And people who have never been food insecure don't realise how little other things matter when you can't eat. You can barely think to do other things. I was food insecure growing up so at least that was something I knew how to deal with. But it's still a terrible thing to be hungry.

After going through the winding maze insurance companies so often require even for life-changing prescriptions, my partner finally received the medication he needed to recover his health to a manageable state.

But eventually we faced eviction from our apartment with one week's notice after attempted financial aid fell through. It's traumatic and frightening and sorrowful to have to leave the place you call home under circumstances beyond your control. My partner was interviewed and hired for a perfect job after no luck for months within DAYS of the eviction, ensuring that no matter what happened, we'd finally have food and other resources.

But we still only had a week to find somewhere to move.

One day, management (who had a history of being unreachable, including during the time we tried to seek financial aid and work with them) showed up and tried force their way in (the door chain stopped them) and then proceeded to lie and tell us we had to be gone that day even though legally we did not until 24hrs after the notice had been placed on the door, which it had not yet. That was scary though. And they had sent their newest person, and it's possible she didn't even know it was a lie. But we had the paperwork and emails to prove it. I remember physically trembling, the paper shaking in my hand as we tried to explain. Another time pest control tried to force their way in. I'm sure management sent them too, as the email had only said you could sign up for a visit if you were having issues, which we were not and never signed up for. At an apartment complex, a door chain is such an extra sense of security that prevents people from unlocking your door and just walking in whenever they please, as was proved to me many times.

So we had a week to find somewhere to live. Friends (true friends) helped us more than we can ever repay, in ways that money alone could never repay. We got everything into a storage unit in record time. Our Winter Solstice was spent moving the largest pieces of furniture. Darkest night made bright with their help.

Some places wouldn't even give us a tour because of the eviction now on record. Most things I read during this time about renting with an eviction seemed so bleak. We found one apartment we thought was perfect and applied. They denied our application - but mysteriously accepted it a few days later without us even appealing. Was it because of all the construction at this complex and they were desperate? Did my partner's words somehow sway them? I don't know but I was considering the lilies of the field very, very hard at that point

So we had a place to move to on the 2nd of Jan but in the mean time we had to wait it out at our other apartment, unknowing when we would finally have to leave. A couple weeks sleeping on an air mattress in a near-empty apartment. Merry Christmas. We still had our tiny tree. Happy New Year. Our New Year's Day meal was a single heat and serve bag of basmati which we split, a tin of sardines and some corn. It felt like a small feast. Looking back, all symbols of prosperity and abundance.

On the day we were to move in, my partner's workplace somehow messed up (holidays at least partially to blame) and he still hadn't received his paycheck though he tried everything he could. So we had to scramble to borrow the deposit money from my mom. It's a long walk up to our new apartment at the moment because of all the renovations going on putting out the elevator. And when we got there, we realised they had given us the wrong set of keys so we were stuck outside in the hallway outside the door for 45min with the birds and our small carry items because she'd said she'd bring the correct sets of keys up, meanwhile I also had to go to the bathroom intensely. We'd laughed a lot through all of this when we weren't near-consumed with stress and fear of what would happen next, but it was nice to have a moment that was just purely funny.

The paycheck drama continued for another week so we had to work around that as well. But we had somewhere to live. Somewhere safe.

By the time it was my birthday about a week later. I slipped on the carpet running to say bye to my partner. It could have been worse but I scraped up my knee and hurt my leg. My knee/leg still hurt :') That same day our car also had trouble and stalled while my partner was on the way to work, so our plans to finally go out were dashed BUT he ordered Indian for us so we had a great meal nonetheless.

I love this new apartment. The layout is interesting and unique, one of the reasons we were drawn to it. The closet shelving is threatening to collapse but that can be fixed. Lack of bathroom counter space and large mirror is the only real downgrade from the other place but I can honestly say everything else here is equal to or better. Most important, you can see the moon from the window, and the best view of the sky.

The construction here is intense at the moment but inside the apartment itself is a haven, despite the chaos outside. I don't mind it because, after all, it likely played a part in how we were able to live here.

It sounds so small somehow when I write it all down. But it's not comparable to be on the other side of an ordeal where you can see how it all played out all at once and what you dodged and how you survived. When you're in it you have to get to the next day. Sometimes the next hour. I felt real fear during this time, an emotion I wasn't very familiar with. Throughout my life I've been through what some people might call "a lot", since early on. I've had people tell me I'm the strongest person they know. I've learned to handle many fears of many things. But this was an unfamiliar unraveling. And once I realised what it was, I was able to deal with it better. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. Frank Herbert was right.

My last time at the other apartment was happy, peaceful and filled with relief. It was a nice place for the time we lived, but everything good came with us. There were things I loved about it, but there were also things I won't miss and am glad to get away from (like living by the highway).

Thanks for reading this post if you made it all the way through. I wasn't sure how much to tell strangers on the internet but - we're friends here :)))

Adapt. Survive. Survive. Thrive.

Outside our window currently looks like the blitz. But only in the best way possible. Because the chaos doesn't bring any grief or fear - just a way out.