#the object of her affection

[cinnamonsikwate]

chilchuck spends the entirety of his daughters' visit hovering suspiciously between them and a certain dwarf. when it's time for the girls to go home and no proposals have been made, he breathes a sigh of relief — awkward coworker x family member romance route narrowly avoided!

a couple weeks later meijack shows back up unannounced, backpack laden with tools and thigh-high boots looking uncharacteristically spiffy. bewildered and betrayed, chilchuck rounds on a clueless senshi, only freezing mid-swear when meijack interrupts to ask after namari's whereabouts.

the last thing he remembers thinking is, "shit, i forgot about the other dwarf!" before promptly blacking out.

[norazingrid]

Salt hate is not acceptable (the heart is the cupioromantic flag)

[gingermintpepper]

I think a lot about the depictions of Troilus' death that feature Achilles trying to prise him with a gift of doves instead of the immediate promise of death.

I've alluded to it before, but I tend to look at Achilles and Apollo as comparison cases - maybe not explicitly foils because I'm petty and that would imply that Achilles is narratively equal to Apollo and I don't want to give him that kind of honour even in a bit of casual analysis - but certainly as characters who gain a great deal of complexity when their actions are contextualised in context of each other's. The ambush of Troilus is just one of those funny little things that gets my mind a-whirring.

Because to me, Apollo's 'Troilus' so to speak is Kassandra. Kassandra, who Apollo coveted and wished to court. Kassandra, who was offered a great gift that would have undoubtedly forever marked her as one of Apollo's if she had accepted. Kassandra, who takes the gift but rejects the god and is cursed for her deception. Kassandra, whose curse makes her experience a thousand deaths over and over with no way of communicating such disaster to those around her.

The Achilles who falls in love with Troilus upon seeing his beauty and wishes to make a conquest of him is much the same to me. The biggest difference between Troilus and Kassandra though is that Troilus' rejection is much more physical. Those doves are nothing more than a symbol of the type of sacrifice Troilus would be; if he accepted them, he would die a docile death, sweet and quiet, a necessary casualty to turn the winds like Iphigenia. Except Achilles' love is nothing like Agamemnon's and it is nothing like Apollo's.

In the face of rejection, Achilles' instinct is to maim, it is to destroy. He was always going to kill Troilus - for the sake of the campaign, the boy had to die - but there was no dove's death, no quick and easy knife through the heart, no spit into an open mouth. Troilus' death is a brutal, drawn-out thing, a chase through the sand, a dragging that bruises his skin, a ripping of his hair, a violation of his flesh, a maiming of his corpse. As far as sacrifices go, it's an apalling one. None would dare to treat an animal set to be sacrificed before a god with that kind of brutality, sacrifices were meant to be blemishless and beautiful, something the gods would find appealing. Iphigenia was given away in her wedding finery, Kassandra was dressed as though to seduce a god. Troilus was a dove with his wings broken and his feathers pulled, whose death cries must've been like the terrible hollering of all birds when they try to alert their kind to a predator.

And as fucked as that is, I love it. It sets Achilles' love as this stormy, squallish thing that bleeds into his rage, it establishes that for him, love and wrath are but two sides of the same blade. Troilus was a necessary sacrifice, but he is in no way given even a modicum of the same dignity his contemporaries are and a part of me is just continually intrigued by this.

[ash-and-starlight]

Hello Ash.

I just finished She Who Became the Sun and I’m crying. Dying. Dead. Deceased. Thank you for jumpstarting the ripping out, stepping on, roasting, and eating of my heart that has just transpired.

Aside from the obvious Zhu and Ouyang, what’s your favorite character parallel in the first book?

HIII thank you THANK YOU im so happy the propaganda got you too <33 and HMM much to think about!! I will say that it's been a couple of years (I think?) since I read swbts so the details are fuzzy but one of my fave parallels are between Ouyang and Baoxiang, especially for how strong they become in hwdtw too. They are both seen as lesser and not conforming to the "male" mongol ideal, ouyang because he's a eunuch, wbx because he's not a warrior. They both go against their roles in a very explicit and performative way: ouyang by becoming a war machine and truly embodying the masculinity of a mongol warrior despite his inability to truly ever being considered one bc of his mutilation, wbx by refusing to become a warrior and acting super feminine (genuinely don't remember how much of it is genuine and how much is out of sheer spite but id say at some point the lines got blurred for him too. the guy has Problems.) Something something "femininity" being forced on someone vs being choosen and its Consequences. They hate each other. they're scheming together. they're scheming against each other. they loved Esen. they had to kill him. being gay is a curse. being gay is a game and i am winning. they fucked each other in a parallel reality. and most importantly they're twinks. this does not even begin to cover how insane their dynamic truly is.

[lesbiangracehanson]

another day, another j7 scene that makes me feel insane 

[makotonaegiunderstander]

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”

[taylor-titmouse]

If the androids have a written-out script, how do conversations work? Do they only respond to keywords? Do they ever take bits and pieces to make new phrases to keep up with their audience’s whole sentence?

honestly it's "whatever is most convenient for me as the author" but i do try to make them come off as like, stilted, and as having multiple systems running at once to determine how to respond. like mari-ko*, the receptionist, is running a receptionist program that tells her who employees are, what the business hours are, and all the most likely questions she would be asked. but she's also running touma's handwritten software that would activate if she's placed in a sexual situation, and that would be comparatively less dynamic at the time the story takes place because it's in-progress.

so it's like. at least in the current draft, they're not having real conversations, they'll repeat the same phrases, or they'll only respond if spoken to and will respond with that they think the person talking to them would want to hear, based on programming and previous experience with that person. they have Some learning capabilities but it's more like remembering preferences and settings.

[cosmichorrorlesbians]

dissertation title planning (I know what I'm doing (<- lying))

[cursedvibes]

Shoko getting treated worse than the actual villains of the story. Fans better leave that poor girl alone she’s been smoking herself into lung cancer ever since the Shibuya Arc 😭

Yup. How dare she not sacrifice herself to bring back our glorious blue-eyed king 😤 after all being the third wheel to Gojo and Geto is all she's good for...

Certainly didn't help that TCB translated Gojo's words way more harshly than they actually were. He simply said he's a bit annoyed/irritated that she didn't object and it's clearly not meant as serious criticism. He's not that upset over it. TCB generally made people swear way more this chapter than they actually did. They even made Nitta talk casual despite him using formal です/ます style. Sometimes their creative liberties in the translations can be a nice addition, but in cases like these it's really not helpful and messes with the original intention and characterization.

But anyway, I think Shoko has a similar attitude here to when Geto defected and killed the people in the village. It's fucked up, but she's just gonna go along with it and do her job. She probably expected Gojo to not object to it. Like you can see throughout the chapter that she's not hell-bent on getting Yuuta into Gojo's corpse either. She wouldn't force Gojo to agree to this, she just plays her role. Maybe she thinks it's better they do it with her support than on their own and potentially mess up even more. She cares about Gojo, but they clearly don't have a very open or emotional relationship and keep their distance, not really talking about what they're currently going through. Might've been nice to see Gojo and her actually talk about this face-to-face, but I don't think this is ooc either. She's always been like this whenever there was some big dramatic shift in their trio. It still stresses her though, even if she doesn't say anything, as seen by the cigarettes she smokes while Yuuta is screaming about possessing Gojo's corpse.

[p1x1x]

wonderful tears,,

[dreamieparadise]

@mimiruku Jojo designed the Namimori HS uniforms for our khr verse! I think she did amazing 🥰

From left to right:

Momina Luqman [5'2''/157cm]

Konno Chiyoko [Chiyo] [5'0''/152 cm]

Edagawa Hisa [5'7''/170 cm]

Kobayashi Sakura [5'3'' 160cm]

Didn't render, so it'd be easier to reference their colours, hehe.

[manmilkers]

We are supposed to believe, Armand, capable of controlling a theatre of +100 people without breaking a sweat or any visible strain, stopping time, mind wiping other vamps, able to withstand sunlight, wasn't capable of stopping Santiago, who is removing what Armand's perceives as his one obstacle to Louis, Claudia, and Madeline, a vampire Armand did not want made? But Lestat, who goes off script to align himself with the accused and speak in the defendants favor and who cannot control a dozen inebriated soldiers without bursting blood vessels and bleeding from the ears and not being able to stand upright after and is +2 centuries younger/less powerful than their leader had the more active role in the orchestrating/controlling the lynch mob- trial? There is an obvious difference in power here that belies the narrative being spun as well as onscreen actions being taken by each of them, that Lestat showed up for vengeance and Armand “could not prevent it” 🙄, as well as a disparity in what we know these characters motivations are. Both of these people have an obvious pattern of taking fairly extreme measures when they perceive Louis as spurning them for someone/thing else or being more taken with another. Only one of them has ever forcibly forbade Claudia from leaving Louis and the other had control of the coven that killed her.

[razrogue]

channeling energy (Minthara x Tav)

It takes Minthara some time to come to terms with the force that Gan is.

Someone being so in sync with her and wasn't trying to kill her to take it all was like a fever dream. All the right words are said, almost all the right moves are made, Minthara found it unsettling at first. Many nights she wanted to push into Gan's mind to really find out if there was a dagger waiting for her. The one night her curiosity got the better of her and she did, it was illuminating and incredibly frustrating.

Gan felt Minthara's tadpole engaging hers as they got situated in Rivington. She knew it couldn't really be anyone else because it was a sensation she'd known before with Minthara given how she often intruded into her thoughts long before now. Minthara hadn't done it since before the shadow cursed lands when she last saw her after the party so Gan was a little annoyed at the intrusion now. She dropped the bag she'd been holding and stared at her, waiting for her to use her words. It surprised Minthara for a moment before she finally tells her.

She wanted to know if this was all a dream. If she had to be worried that they would eventually end up on opposing sides. Gan looks at her before finally agreeing to let her in. Minthara is hesitant at first. She had to admit to herself that her intrusion was not entirely about finding out if she was only a rest away from a dagger to her throat, not unlike how she'd once done to her. Whispers of companionship had also crossed her mind. She knew the elf was coupled with the vampire spawn. She'd seen them cavorting about but he was of no consequence to her, he barely registered as a threat, let alone a rival. Minthara did find it puzzling how such a formidable person had gotten tangled up with such a fiend but being on the surface had introduced her to many strange customs.

The two of them went into the barn, away from prying eyes, and allowed their minds to mingle.

Minthara pushed in, gently at first, bracing for whatever lie in the thick of it all. She found herself greeted by hesitation of Gan wondering if they should trust them then admirable scenes of the two of them side by side slicing and smiting their foes. It brings Minthara joy to see them removing threats to their claim. But then Minthara pushed further and saw something a lot more personal. The two of them embracing each other by firelight. Gan lying beneath her, hands palming her ass, running her tongue along the edge of her ear. Quickly nibbling its point as she slides her hand further down until it reaches warmth.

Minthara pulls back. It is a revelation indeed. She tells her that she is a little surprised, not that they had not connected physically before. But the vision Gan had shown her held far more intimacy than she anticipated.

She reached for her hand, letting her know her feelings were not one sided. Then she had to lay everything out - that she did not share those she cared about.

Gan runs her thumb across the back of her hand, along a freshly healed scar. She understood that Minthara felt that way but she could not live like that. She told her how she grew up in a family with many parents who all loved and embraced each other freely. She found it incredibly selfish to want to consume someone wholly when you are capable of loving many as love and the capacity to love was not finite. The irony wasn't lost on Gan how she could be unapologetically selfish in so many aspects of her life but loving and sharing herself with others was not one of them. She understood that Minthara felt how she did but she was not one to hoard her affection for others. Gan grabbed her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm as she stood up. 

She valued Minthara, not only as an ally but as someone she was starting to care about in a sense, but she would not be made to conform to someone else's definition or expectations. And so Minthara takes that knowledge and response in stride.

It was not her way and she knew the surface folk moved very differently than those in the Underdark. She couldn't fathom having to share her affections with others because when she loved, she only wanted to love one.

But time and insight had a way of bringing clarity. When they were engaged they were no less attended to than the spawn was. Even if it hadn't been in a romantic capacity at the time, Minthara felt no less important to her. Minthara slowly came to see what Gan meant. It may not have been her way but it was a sight to see and to be a part of. So when she finally decided she was willing to partake, she did so with the full knowledge that she wouldn't feel lesser.

[grandwretch]

do you not what? I have a bigger appreciation for Reynold than Derrick because I feel like Reynold was at least... very pure in his hatred of Penelope, like it would make sense the way he feels about her after losing his baby sister, and it's not his fault that he followed the behavior his brother and father modeled for him since he was so young. He even becomes protective of Penelope without much influence from the isekaied soul.

Derrick on the other hand is... gross. He wants Penelope to be his, and yet doesn't want her to return his affections, so essentially he wants her by his side and miserable. She also can't be with anyone else, or show anyone affection, not even their own father. He doesn't trust her or try to take care of her, only idly tries to seduce her with money and precious items but doesn't really care what happens to her in the day to day.

And I've realized that I would really like to Reynold beat the crap out of his older brother for being so possessive and gross about their adopted little sister for who knows how long :)

[sheepalmighty]

Wanted to explore the dynamic for this ship a little more with a fun-to-draw piece

[yunmeng-jiang]

workin on my first scum villain fic!!