#tolkein deserves better

[missourielephant]

It was already shown that only 37% of American viewers even finished the first season of Rings of Power (it does not deserve proper italics). That was already a hilarious fail, but more numbers have come out. Over the course of 5 days, the viewing numbers for the Season 2 Premier were roughly half of what the Season 1 Premier did in 4 days. This worthless terrible show is one of the biggest disasters in the history of television, which can only be a good thing.

Because here's the thing, the best way to describe this show isn't terrible, or boring, or cheap looking, or failing the source material. It is all those things, but the best word to describe it is hateful. This show is Hateful. The contempt for Tolkien and fans of Tolkien drips from the showrunners, writers, and actors. The number of changes they've made can't be explained in any other way. One explanation is that the recognize the true genius, imagination, and talent that Tolkien had; and lacking those things themselves, hate him for having them. The other is that they hate him for being a Caucasian Catholic Male.

The only other show that seems to have a similar hatred of the source material is Velma. The Acolyte and the most reason season of Doctor Who certainly hated the established fan base, but even they didn't show such blatant disrespect and hate for the source. Kathleen Kennedy on the other hand, does seem to hate everything that George Lucas created.

And the only thing the showrunners, writers, actors and fans can say in defense is "If you don't like this you're a bigot! You're a racist, misogynist, homophobe, etc."

I can only shake my head that entertainment has fallen so far and celebrate the failures of such awful shows made by such awful people.

[onesizedgirl]

Naur because why the costumes in r*p are so horrendous good god what was the budget? Three peas and a leather boot?😭

[overthinkinglotr]

Everything in the Amazon lotr series makes perfect sense when you learn that the show runners have literally no experience working on tv shows. None. 😂 J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have barely any experience in the entertainment industry. And like if you check their IMDb, their only credits are a Flash Gordon screenplay for a movie that wasn’t made and “uncredited” writing on the 2016 Star Trek movie (meaning they weren’t an official part of the production but talked to J J Abrams every now and then.)

The only way I can praise the Amazon show is the way you’d praise something written by a kid…”like wow this is your first try? Your first time ever working in tv and writing a fantasy story? This is good for a first try! Nice work! Your mom should hang it on the fridge!” The real question though is like, why didn’t they give biggest budget of any tv series ever made to people who had literally ANY experience showrunning ahsjndndnd.

To be honest I’m baffled at people who say this show is “desecrating tolkien” because like…first off, desecrating tolkien can be super cool. He sucked sometimes. Second, “desecrating tolkien” implies they were creating a story that had something specific to say about Tolkien, and they knew how to use their medium to convey what they wanted to say. But like…they didn’t. The Amazon series can’t desecrate tolkien, it’s relying on tolkien as a crutch to tell an amateur story that would be literally totally incoherent without you filling in the blanks with prior knowledge gained from the books and from other better adaptations.

I’m baffled at people trying to act like Amazon is being progressive with this series when its sorta like…the peak of conservative Hollywood nepotism? Two upper middle-class white dudes with literally no idea how to run a tv show because they have never been part of the process, ever, were gift wrapped the highest budget for any tv show ever made— not because they deserved to make the most expensive tv series ever made, but because they were upper middle class white dudes who happened to know famous people in Hollywood. People work in television their whole lives for the chance to be a showrunner and these two mediocre white dudes who have barely done any professional writing were handed the most expensive tv series of all time.

And it shows! It explains why the show doesn’t feel as expensive as it is. The process was “run” by people who literally have never needed to understand how creating a tv show works.

Everything feels so clumsy, unfocused, and generic because it’s being showrun by people who do not have enough experience to know what they’re doing.

It feels like someone’s first published work because it is. there’s some vague generic theme about being corrupted by darkness but it’s portrayed with all the grace and subtlety of showrunners who have no experience telling stories professionally, don’t understand how to do it, and so are just turning to the audience and flatly saying what the themes are supposed to be in bland boring language. (They couldn’t even find relevant quotes from the books to use instead— at least then it would sound pretty. Tolkein’s language is almost entirely absent from the show. :P)

There’s a lack of specificity— the tone veers wildly from “epic and idealized like the Pj films” to “relentlessly gory and cruel like GOT,” and almost no quotes from the books appear in the show despite language being so important to the feel of middle earth— because the showrunners are too busy struggling to learn the basics of showrunning for the first time to figure out things like “how to set a consistent tone.”

Characters turn to the camera and spoon-feed the audience information like we’re stupid and constantly reiterate exposition from previous episodes because the show runners have never worked on tv shows before, and don’t have enough confidence to trust the audience to understand anything.

The pacing is so bizarre and wonky, and the introductions of important characters/McGuffins is so clumsy, because the showrunners have never done this before ever on any tv show.

The show doesn’t look like the most expensive tv show of all time (even though it is) because the show runners don’t understand how to budget visual effects effectively. Tons of expensive labor is wasted on dream sequences and meaningless one-off plot beats that don’t add anything to the story when they could’ve been spent on the actual important emotional story moments.

And of course the way the show handles gender and race is so hollow because it’s driven by two white male nepotism hires tackling these topics for the Very First Time. They decide to handle sexism in middle earth by making it a world where patriarchy just doesn’t seem to exist(?), but they’re also not willing to actually genuinely imagine what that would look like. so we get a world where “there’s no patriarchy” but most the warriors/leaders are still men, all the women still dress in feminine clothing/hairstyles and all the men have masculine clothing/hairstyles, no women are butch and no men are effeminate, a woman fighting/showing up in battle armor is framed as a big cool reveal, and every single relationship is suffocatingly heterosexual (and there isn’t even the possibility of queer relationships/homoerotic subtext.) They had three POC play some of the side characters but were careless in how they handled them, in a way that’s a disservice to the talented actors— for example the character they marketed as “the first black elf in tolkien” is immediately thrown into a plotline where people are racist to him for being an elf and then he’s captured into slavery and spends a few episodes in chains driven around by white orcs with whips in a way that makes you realize the creators were too white to think about the optics of this. They also don’t tackle the root issues with the way tolkein portrayed race (the idea that different races are different Species with immutable personality traits) and just take his racist assumptions for granted. Meanwhile, every scene where people are “fantasy racist” against white blonde Galadriel for being an elf is handled with all the grace of a white teenager who just realized racism was maybe Bad writing their first fiction story saying Deep Things About Society for a high school assignment. Can you imagine how much more thoughtful writing we would’ve gotten from literally ANY of the far more talented experienced female and poc directors in Hollywood, people who understood how to tackle gender/race in their writing and who understood how to actually run a show? But no, the show has to be handed to two white dudes who have literally no experience writing for tv and no relevant credits, just because they’re white men who are well connected, and we have to trust tHese people to condescendingly explain the importance of diversity to us like we’re children. And then we have to pretend to like it because theres a massive right wing backlash against the show for being “so woke” (when it isn’t). ANSJSJJDJDJD

I just kinda…don’t understand? Why give so much money to people who have no experience and don’t know what they’re doing? People whose only qualifications are being random white dudes who know famous people?

It feels like such a waste of money and resources to throw so much into what’s essentially a training exercise for people who’ve never run a show before. The Amazon series is longer than the first two PJ films but it doesn’t feel that way because the showrunners don’t understand how to use a medium they have never worked in.

Like Peter Jackson had never directed anything on the scale of LOTR, but he had directed plenty of movies (with the writers who later partnered with him on lotr) before he was allowed to make it, AND had spent years pitching his scripts around Hollywood and helping develop the technology used for the visual effects. Heck, Ralph Bakshi had made animated movies before, and Rankin/Bass had worked on tv specials. As much as all those adaptations are flawed like?????????? I genuinely don’t understand why you wouldn’t hire more qualified people for the most expensive tv show of all time. or even just. Anyone who had literally any qualifications at all.

But I guess I’m thinking about this all wrong because…their lack of experience is likely why they were hired. Because of the complicated legal and rights issues happening behind the scenes, Amazon likely didn’t want to hire anyone who would have a coherent vision and a clear idea of how to execute that vision. The show needed to bow to the mandates of Amazon but ALSO the copyright issues (they don’t have the rights to actually adapt most of the stuff dealing with the history they’re adapting), the mandates of the Tolkien estate (who were allowed to make whatever petty changes they wanted to the story at any time) and the mandates of New Line Cinema (who were allowing Amazon to ape the style of their movies to get l publicity for their brand but are also completely willing to enforce copyright and demand change if they felt Amazon was stepping on their toes, and etc etc). Amazon needed inexperienced people who would go along with whatever they were told to do. Someone who had a clear vision and knew how to execute it would fight against the dumb corporate mandates. Someone who has literally never worked in tv before would assume Amazon knew best and do whatever they were told.

I don’t know, I feel the same way I do about the hobbit films where it’s just—it’s such a waste? It’s such a waste. It’s such a waste of time and a waste of labor, on a project that (because of weird corporate nonsense) has no clear artistic vision and only exists to be part of a lucrative Brand(tm.)

I won’t be watching the next season— I assume the the future seasons will be “better” because the show runners have now had their very first season of experience working in television ever (good for them and congrats on breaking into the industry for the first time etc etc), but that doesn’t change what a massive corporate waste the first eight hours were— again, that’s longer than the first two PJ films but it doesn’t feel like It because it’s so directionless and devoid of a clear artistic vision. Idk as long as the only Lord of the Rings adaptations we’re legally allowed to get are massive Mega corporate ones funded off the suffering of all the underpaid Amazon workers who die in the warehouses, you would think the adaptations would at least be good XD. Again, can you imagine what more experienced and talented directors with a long history of working in TV, and who were free to execute their artistic vision, could’ve done with such a giant budget? Can you imagine if corporations didn’t waste an entire season of television as the world’s most expensive training wheels for people who’d never seriously worked in tv before? Can you imagine how much good art we could get if Hollywood was actually a meritocracy? Idk dudes, idk.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

I'm looking forward to people writing fluffy aus about Celebrimbor and Sauron's relationship, just like people have with Galadriel and Sauron. Not because I like Sauron , but because I know what's supposed to happen to Celebrimbor, and he deserves so much better.

I am very angry at Tolkein for making me picture his fate.

Plus, I'm a sucker for "the evil one is domesticated by the hero" type stories.

[rumalumasuns]

Living in a Fairy Tale

What would you do or say to the person you love? Choose a quote and get a fairytale. It's as simple as that.

I do hope you enjoy your journey~

! - All works are purely fictional, and are fanfictions! All vtubers used do not belong to me (obviously - they're from the Nijisanji company!). All fairy tales and stories mentioned do not belong to me either lol. Also release times are all in PST!

𝙸𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙱𝚎𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐

"Each day I love you more, today more than yesterday, and less than tomorrow" (Rosemonde Gerard) - With Shu Yamino (Shu Yamino - release 1/16/23)

"I love you for all that you are, all that you have been, and all that you will be" (unknown) - With Alban Knox (Alban Knox - release 1/24/23)

𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚜 𝙰𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚎

"I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect, and I loved you even more." (Angelita Lim) - With Ver Vermillion (Ver Vermillion - Coming Soon~!)

"You're the first boy I ever kissed, and I want you to be the last" (unknown) - With Ike Eveland (Ike Eveland - release after Hiatus)

"To the world, you may be one person, but to one person, you are the world" (Dr. Seuss) - With Ren Zotto (Ren Zotto - release after Hiatus)

𝚂𝚝𝚞𝚌𝚔 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙰𝚋𝚢𝚜𝚜…𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚊𝚖𝚎 𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐

"You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known - and even that is an understatement" (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - With Uki Violeta (Uki Violeta - release 3/16/23)

"You're not just another person, you're the love of my life" (unknown) - With Yugo Asuma (Yugo Asuma - release after Hiatus)

"I choose you. And I'll choose you over and over and over. Without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat. I'll keep choosing you" (unknown) - With Sonny Brisko (Sonny Brisko - Coming Soon~!)

"When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be" (Leo Tolstoy) - With Fulgur Ovid (Fulgur Ovid - release after Hiatus)

𝙸'𝚖 𝚜𝚘 𝙻𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚢 𝙸𝚗 𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎

"That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable." (Deb Caletti) - With Vox Akuma (Vox Akuma - release April)

"Lots of people want to ride with you in a limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down" (Oprah Winfrey) - With Luca Kaneshiro (Luca Kaneshiro - release after Hiatus)

" I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone" (J.R.R Tolkein)- With Aster Arcadia (Aster Arcadia - release after Hiatus)

"Respect yourself, love yourself, because there has never been a person like you and there never will be again" (Osho) - With Kyo Kaneko (Kyo Kaneko - release after Hiatus)

𝙱𝚎𝚌𝚊𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚈𝚘𝚞

"We accept the love we think we deserve." (Stephen Chbosky) - With Hex Haywire (Hex Haywire - release after Hiatus)

"'I trust you' is a better compliment than 'I love you', because you may not always trust the person you love, but you can always love the person you trust" (unknown) - With Mysta Rias (Mysta Rias - release after Hiatus)

"I love you, and I'll love you until I die, and if there's a life after that, I'll love you then." (Cassandra Clare) - With Doppio Dropscythe (Doppio Dropscythe - release after Hiatus)

𝙼𝚢 𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎, 𝙼𝚢 𝙷𝚎𝚛𝚘

"I promise to handle your heart with care and treasure it with love." (Mr. Senti) - With Vezalius Bandage (Vezalius Bandage - release after Hiatus)

"I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I'm with you." (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) - With Vantacrow Bringer (Vantacrow Bringer - release after hiatus)

"You had me at 'hello'." (Jerry Maguire) - With Yu Q. Wilson (Yu Q. Wilson - release after hiatus)

𝙼𝚢 𝚃𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚋𝚕𝚎𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚛

"Love starts as a feeling, but to continue is a choice; and I find myself choosing you more and more every day." (Justin Welch) - With Claude Clawmark (Claude Clawmark - release after hiatus)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hope you enjoyed your journey! Come back sometime <3

[thelaithlyworm]

Writer ask!

What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?

Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

Gonna mash up 18-21 and say: if you wrote another fic in the "all creatures fierce and bright" collective, what would it involve?

Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

Hmm.

What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work

Well, if I knew something about their tastes I'd tailor the recommendation, but sight unseen I might try:

Short, dunt need to know canon, a bit funny, a bit sweet, some pretty wordplay and descriptions and a few real feelings under the fluff.

For Podfic I'd probably go for

which is short, funny, and has a widely recogniseable canon. (With the caveat that I recorded it a while back and my voice is a touch better now.)

Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

I don't know about "dislike" exactly, but hanahaki has gone from, 'I don't know why people would want to write that' to 'I really should try that sometime.' Something about the complete over-the-top grandiosity of the premise, I think.

if you wrote another fic in the "all creatures fierce and bright" collective, what would it involve?

Probably something early in the timeline, where Xiuxiu doesn't particularly like Hei Xiazi (the common cavalryman who was suddenly taking up so much of her cousin's time and likely the reason he was cursed, was he cursed in all the twenty years she's known him? He was not) but like hell she's going to let Xie Yuchen whistle in the wind so they're going to make this exile and escapade work. And Hei Xiazi doesn't know what to make of this tiny slip of a thing (whose grandmother cursed him, what the hell?) who is now following him around and if she gets hurt Xie Yuchen will eat his eyeballs but he needs someone around for the few times Xiao Hua is lucid so by god and all the devils they're going to make this work. I like V-shaped relationships where the two outer points have to make their own bond, I think.

Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

So "Of Things Left Out" did absolutely terrible numbers by The Hobbit standards but I'm still overpoweringly fond of it. In which Thorin reads Bilbo's journal and realises the little guy has been absolutely roasting him for pomposity the whole way and... gently twits him back by improvising a completely over-the-top praise song for the occasion of Bilbo's birthday.

I liked it for the meta-ness of it. If "The Hobbit" is an in-universe text which the subjects know is being written as they go, how do they feel about it? Do they care for about the silliness Bilbo puts in, how do they want to be described? And, light as much of the fic is... in that frame of Bilbo-the-Chronicler, how fucking raw does it get when the business with the Arkenstone happens. Would Thorin want to be recorded that way? (In my version, he has an answer to that.)

And, I'm always very soft for gentle hurt-comfort fics. And a chance to compose Tolkein-style poetry, hee!

Thank you for asking!

[softmoonlightmelody]

Remember: this is for you, not the near-identical one I made about Linh's preferences.

(also, fintan, do better - you missed a lot of treats, here, in your pursuit of jr tolkein)

I didn't include Prattles and Mood Candy because those are candies, and as thus don't qualify - think of these as things Edaline would bake you after a bad day.

cite: kotlc wiki on fandom

[separatist-apologist]

What are your thoughts on Tamlin? And You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to.

I honestly feel pity for him. He loved feyre in acotar. And after that it’s like he did a 180 In acomaf. he was definitely wrong for what he did, but there was also a lack of communication on both his and feyres part. he genuinely believed Rhys to be the bad guy and just wanted feyre back. The way he went about doing things was very wrong and there was a lot that he could have done much better in.

But in the end tamlin still helped Feyre and Rhys. He brought his army to help in the war and helped feyre and Azriel escape with Elain. Heck, without him Rhys would still be dead. So yeah, I feel pity for him, but I don’t think he’s a villain.

You know how I'm always like, these books are not Tolkein and do not deserve the level of analysis they get? This ask right here is exactly why. Tamlin has all the building blocks of a really good emotional abuser but he's in the hands of an author who either didn't care to put it all together or never meant to in the first place. I can never decide which. I know the fandom loves to point out the moment between Feyre/Tamlin during Calanmai where he orders her around but that's such typical alphamale behavior for these books that its forgivable AND annoying that the red flag is...that.

I wrote a big long thing and deleted it. Tamlin DID hurt Feyre, regardless of his intentions. And a lot of times people minimize impact in favor of intentions. Was he traumatized? Yes. Did he make assumptions? Also yes. But at what point should we reasonably expect him to listen to her? When Hybern declares them mates? Tamlin, outside of demanding her mating bond be broken because he wants Feyre and refuses to acknowledge the legitimate claim Feyre/Rhys have to each other, had hit her through magic more than once.

And trauma doesn't justify that. A lack of information doesn't make it okay. It wasn't just Feyre, it was Lucien, too and you can acknowledge he was under a lot of stress, that he suffered too, that he wanted to keep her safe as best he could and in that same breath, not condone his abusive behavior. Not saying you do, anon. But I have seem takes that blame Feyre for the abuse she got? When has not communicating made it okay to hurt the person you love? Tamlin has just as much responsibility for asking, and he doesn't.

Its okay to sympathize with Tamlin. I think a better story would have made Tamlin unsettling in ACOTAR and sort of held a mirror to the reader through Feyre. He's handsome, he's wealthy...and he's locked you inside his house. When did THAT happen? He doesn't tell her anything so she's forced to learn EVERYTHING through snooping. He's kind...until you realize his kindness comes with strings.

Some of that is there but its inconsistent. I wish SJM would stop writing about this stuff because she does not do it well. Ultimately I don't have feelings about Tamlin. His redemption was in ACOWAR when he saved Rhys for Feyre. He learned something about love when he did that, and his character should have been put to rest after that.

[hislittleflower-throughconcrete]

I posted 3,588 times in 2021

230 posts created (6%)

3358 posts reblogged (94%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 14.6 posts.

I added 1,067 tags in 2021

#quote - 296 posts

#catholic humor - 248 posts

#important - 182 posts

#prayer - 137 posts

#catholic - 86 posts

#prayer request - 43 posts

#christian - 28 posts

#anonymous - 18 posts

#adventures of a catholic prospective child life specialist - 16 posts

#tolkein - 13 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#but a friend wants me to help lead a virtual retreat that weekend and at first i thought it was a different weekend so i thought i'd be fre

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

I need a book entitled “Lent for the Wounded: A Guide to a Gentle, Holy Lent for those who have experienced trauma, struggle with scrupulosity, have mental illness, eating disorders, or have a tendency to damage themselves trying to be absolutely perfect for God.”

Most lenten books, quotes, retreats, etc.  are trying to reach a lax conscience. "Examine your conscience minutely, root out even the tiniest sin, because you are worse than you realize. Don’t be complacent in your sin, you have to strive for sainthood and holy perfection and don’t stop fighting until you get there, meditate on the sorrow your sins cause God, give up big things this year, and just do better.”

That isn’t helpful or my holiness. To a person like me, that is the voice in my head nonstop. It just tacks on at the end “You’re a worthless failure if you can’t stick to your fast and each time you fail is another thorn you are piercing Jesus with.” 

319 notes • Posted 2021-02-11 23:09:12 GMT

#4

"Inauguration day is as sacred a sacrament that exists on our secular calendar"

A sentence I had to hear with my own two ears from NBC when recapping the inauguration day when my mom watched the news this morning. They were remarking why “Amazing Grace” was a fitting tribute at the ceremony.

I honestly have no words because I’ve never seen the idolatry of politics and politicians so blatantly stated. And I thought the people reacting to the capital riot stating talking about how it is a “sacred place” with “hallowed halls” that deserves “reverence” were bad.

We were created to worship, and if we choose something or someone other than God, this is what happens. Enjoy taking selfies with your golden calf.

329 notes • Posted 2021-01-21 16:58:11 GMT

#3

Most Christians think they care about the poor and care about helping the poor.

Do you really?

Most people picture the poor as someone who is kind, humble, and grateful for help, really similar to themselves, just down on their luck trying to feed their families.

What about the smelly poor? The poor who you offer to carry their bag and your arm becomes engulfed in bugs? The rude poor? The poor that believes in “backwards” things? Poor who have voted for someone you despise? The drug-addicted, belligerent poor? The poor who turn to crime? The poor who may yell obscenities at you as you try to help them and love them? If you do not wish to serve “those” poor, your love for the poor is conditional. And that’s something you need to pray about.

541 notes • Posted 2021-07-09 23:52:23 GMT

#2

Lord, please save the souls who dismiss you due to pain rather than pride, 

Souls who hate you because of wounds rather than wrath, 

Souls who write you off because they have a false image of who you really are, 

and souls who feel the brokenness of the world means you cannot exist. 

The road to heaven of narrow, but let your mercy be wide,

Let it open the door of heaven for those beaten down by the world 

And let it heal the wounds that cloud their perception of you. 

787 notes • Posted 2021-08-03 22:25:43 GMT

#1

THIS IS YOUR YEARLY LENTEN REMINDER

If you have an eating disorder, GOD DOES NOT WANT you to fast from food on days of of fasting or avoid meat on days of abstinence. In your circumstance, it is NOT a path to holiness and God actively wills you to continue eating food in a healthy manner. God does not want you to risk your mental and physical health. This is your permission to eat because in your case, fasting is moving away from holiness. 

If you have mental health issues or scrupulosity, GOD DOES NOT WANT you to impose unduly harsh or strict restrictions and penances on yourself. In your circumstance, it is NOT a path to holiness and God actively wills you to be gentle to yourself and focus on rekindling your love for Him in simple, natural ways - not getting hung up on self-imposed rules. God does not want you to risk your mental and physical health. This is your permission to be gentle on yourself because in your case, strictness and focusing on rules is moving away from holiness.

1010 notes • Posted 2021-02-15 23:32:50 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[mikkeneko]

10 favorite female characters from 10 different fandoms

Tagged by @drowningbydegrees  :) Like her, going with "first ten that came to mind" over any other, like, universal all-encompassing criteria.

I could swear I've done a list like this before, but when I checked to make sure I wasn’t repeating characters it looked like I’d done 10 favorite overall characters, not female specifically. Always nice to have a more specific search term!

1. Cordelia Naismith from the Vorkosigan series

Cordelia has been a favorite character from a favorite series for years, but having her return in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen to show us how she’s grown and changed in the thirty-five years since we last had her as a POV character really deepened my appreciation for her. Cordelia mostly held the role of the Progressive Expat in the feudal, militaristic and overwhelmingly male-dominated society of Barrayar that she married into, and she spend her entire life fighting to bring more egalitarian and humanitarian perspectives to her adopted culture. Gentleman Jole showed us some of the changes Barrayar worked on her in return; she’s a lot harder, a lot more bloodthirsty, and a lot more tired  at the end of her career than the beginning, although she never lost hold of her core principles. Above all I really have to admire Gentleman Jole  for saying “You know what? Fuck it. Cordelia gets everything she wanted. She no longer has to put her dreams and wishes on hold to try to help her husband or son’s career along. She gets to retire to the planet she discovered and she gets six baby girls and a hot younger boyfriend and a seat on a scientific research committee. No more sacrifices. Cordelia gets everything she ever wanted.” and I for one think that’s extremely good.

2. Eowyn from the Lord of the Rings

Was just having the discussion with my fiance yesterday about how despite the fact that Tolkein is on record as saying he doesn’t know how to write female characters, he did a pretty great job with Eowyn, giving her a full multifaceted personhood with a lovely character arc of her own (which is not, despite first appearances, centered on being in love with a man) dealing with themes and issues that are still  relevant, and  doing so in a way that was specific to the female experience of the society she was written in. So either he underestimated his capacity to write female characters or he was smart enough to listen to the input of a female editor, either way, good job. It would be nice to have more  characters like Eowyn in LOTR, but no complaints about this one.

3. Vin from the Mistborn trilogy

Sanderson generally writes pretty good female characters, although they don’t always overshadow the male characters in the same books. Going to pick just one from Sanderson’s stuff it was either going to be Vin or Vivenna, and I came down on the side of Vin because she’s just pretty great. I think my favorite thing about Vin is that she became a legend in the world that came after Mistborn,  and that as much as she is admired for her achievements Marasi still points out, correctly, that not all  women should have  to be the Ascended Warrior, there are other valid ways of being a woman (and a hero.)

4. Gideon Nav from the Locked Tomb trilogy

There’s something extremely, extremely refreshing about how pure of a himbo Gideon Nav manages to be, and I adore her for it. Gideon Nav saw a giant skeleton juggernaut with swords for hands and her immediate reaction was “I want to fight that.” Icon.

5. Sophie Hatter from Howl's Moving Castle

There are a lot of really great female characters in Diana Wynne Jones so it’s hard to pick just one, but Sophie is one very dear to my heart. Suddenly finding oneself to be ninety years old and taking that as an excuse to fling off all the ridiculous social restrictions of your age and gender? Mood. Feeling like a failure despite your repeated and provable talents as an organizer and your newly discovered talents as a witch? Big  mood.

6. Kiri from Madness Season

I am always at a loss about what happened  in C.S. Friedman’s other books because she can  write female characters well! Kiri and Hesseth prove she can! She just... doesn’t. Anyway Kiri was the best part of The Madness Season,  being an unimaginably old alien from a race of energy-based shapeshifters who mostly regard the antics of the ‘embodied’ species with tolerant fondness. Her species and society rely very heavily on having symbiote partners of an embodied species and she spends most of the book slapping the protagonist character upside the head and yelling “You! I choose you! Get your head out of your ass, get your immortal shit together, because you’ve got to be my partner now!” And he does, and in the process saves the galaxy, it’s rad.

7. Agatha Heterodyne from Girl Genius

Agatha Heterodyne is an absolute Mary Sue of a character, a busty blonde knockout who one day discovers herself to be the secret genius heir of a continent-spanning mad science empire, and people come from all over to swear either loyalty or lifelong enmity with her. And you know what? She’s valid.

8. Miriam from Spinning Silver

Spinning Silver contains a very excellent trio of great female leads, but Miriam is IMHO the best for the sheer spite-fueled power of “fuck the world that’s done this to my family, fuck the Winter King who thinks he can ride in here and walk all over me, and especially fuck you demon-infested tsar who is at least partially culpable for BOTH of these things!” 

9. Parker from Leverage

I didn’t want to leave one of my favorite TV shows off here, but mostly I admire Parker for how much she learned and grew; she starts off the series with an extremely specific set of skills and very narrow set of priorities and over the seasons that follow, she grows to encompass more wants and obligations and dreams and she grows so much  in skills that by the end of the series she’s the Mastermind, and she deserves it.

10. Wen Qing from The Untamed

Wen Qing deserved better than she got, she was placed in an impossible situation and she did everything she could to protect her family, both immediate and extended, from callous warmongers who wanted to use her. She never lost her pride or her principles even when the world was busy grinding her into the dust, she tried so hard, she got chewed up and spit out by a cruel society and unlike the main character, she never was given a second chance. I cry for Wen Qing.

Tagging in turn @faux-fires, @ushauz, @fairandfatalasfair, @curiosity-killed, @cersee?

[ourlittlebitofnothinguniverse]

fili kili and thorin deserved better than That

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

The Matchmaker: Thirteen

The fire crackled in the hearth and Bucky stretched lazily, half awake. You had really picked a nice couch. Plush and soft. Good for napping. Or, the activities that he’d just been doing on the sofa with you.

He looked down and smiled a little, adjusting the blanket gently to cover your bottom where it had bunched up and was leaving you exposed. He didn’t want you getting chilled.

His belly was comfortably full of pasta, he’d had a few glasses of wine, and he had the love of his life asleep on his chest. It was a nice night. A quiet celebration to mark the last of your doctorate work getting done.  He knew you were worn out when you’d walked through the door.

It had radiated off of you. You looked exhausted and stressed. He always hated that. He looked up from the pasta sauce he was stirring and held out his arms, “Hey, Princess,” he said smiling, “Why don’t I run you a hot bath before dinner, huh?” You make a soft miserable sound. You’re cold and wet and it feels like the sides of your stomach are stuck together. You’d been too anxious to eat more than a couple bites of the chocolate chip pancakes Bucky had tried to get you to eat that morning. And what you had eaten you’d thrown up just from the nerves.

“I just wanna go to sleep,” you murmur, “I don’t even think I can eat.”  You walk into his arms and thud your head gently against his chest. 

He frowns and strokes your back tenderly, “What’s wrong, Sweetheart?”

You shake your head and sigh, “Nothing,” you murmur, “I’m just tired.” 

“At least go put on some dry clothes,” he says softly, “Get comfortable. Let yourself relax a little. Let your body realize you’re not running on adrenaline anymore.”

You nod and take a deep breath, “Okay,” you whisper.

“Good girl,” he praises gently, nudging you towards the stairs, “One step at a time.” He watches you go and shakes his head. He’s a little glad you turned down working for SHEILD. Some types of stress you could handle really well. A frenetic work pace. Lots of things at once, fine. All fine. But prolonged stress, being stressed out for days on end while you unsnarled tangles and had no apparent end to the worrying? Nope. You were built for sprints, not Marathons. SHEILD was constant stress. Constant pressure. He didn’t doubt that you could adjust but he’d prefer you not have to. The effects on your body aside, he wondered what it would do to your heart. 

Bucky listens with half an ear and nods to himself when he hears the shower start, adjusting the temperature of the stove and starting the water for pasta. He knew you’d sworn off carbs for right now, but he also knew that you were miserable. He figured breaking the diet that he didn’t even think was necessary wouldn’t hurt. Not for one day. Not if it meant that you went to sleep with a full belly and he didn’t find you awake at 3am possessed by some manic cleaning demon after an anxiety-induced nightmare vaulted you out of bed. Fully awake and already in a panic. He hated that too. How easily all the shit your older sister had said and done to you instilled that you were never going to be enough. How all the things stupid boys, who didn’t understand you, had perpetually made you question if it was a trap if anyone asked about things you were interested in. It was only now that he lived with you that he really noticed it. 

For a moment he’d thought you had a double life or something. But it wasn’t that. It was a massive, sprawling, fantasy epic you had spent the better part of 15 years writing and refining. There were multiple languages, cultures. All this detail and illustration... It had made his head spin when he’d found the stacks of journals and loose-leaf papers in binders. You’d very cautiously, shyly explained that it was how you’d put in to practice some of the theoretical things you read about when you were first wrestling with it. Without any real-world experience to really draw on. Or access. You’d just crafted one to test things out on. “Like Tolkein but like... Less racist and somehow more pretentious,” you’d told him. You looked like you were waiting for him to laugh at you. He couldn’t really do anything but stare. At least not for a moment. 

“Can I read it?” he asked. 

“No,” you answered hesitantly, hugging the binder you’re holding to your chest, like he might take it from you. Like someone probably had before. 

He hadn’t pressed. He’d simply nodded and very carefully added the journals and binders to the shelf next to your desk. Where you could get to them if you wanted them. 

Your quiet footfalls on the wood floors make him lookup. You’ve stolen one of his t-shirts and found a clean pair of pajama bottoms. Your hair is still dry, but your skin is pink. The water must have been hot. A lot hotter than Bucky liked it.You look better. Kinda. At least less frazzled. 

When your arms wrap around his waist and your cheek rests against his back he smiles, “Baby, I got a fire going before you got home,” he coaxed, “Why don’t you go cuddle up with a blanket... I’ll bring you some dinner and a glass of wine.”

“I still feel nauseous,” you tell him groggily.

He frowns, “At least try, Princess. You need to eat. You might even feel better if we get a little something in your stomach.”

He watches you go as you shuffle through the doorway and frowns. You really do need rest. He can practically see the anxiety and the depression it leaves behind gnawing at you. He knows this is a temporary state. A rudderlessness left behind after your life’s work this far getting handed over. But. He’d much rather drown you in pasta and cuddles until you fall asleep than just let you fall asleep face down on the bed like you are. 

It doesn’t take long to have a couple bowls and a couple glasses of wine put together on a tray. The TV is off but you have the record played on and playing softly. He smiles a little, you’re wrapped up in the fluffy throw off the couch hugging the stuffed dog he bought you as a joke when you asked for a puppy. “Here, Sweetheart,” he said handing you a bowl and a glass. When you take them your hands a trembling just a little and it reaffirms his assessment that you need food in your belly. 

You take them and take a deep breath. “Thank you,” you murmur. Bucky nods and sinks into the couch gently, “I made brownies too,” he said, proud of himself.

You smile up at him and take a sip of wine, “You’re getting pretty domestic,” you tease, “Don’t worry I won’t tell Sam.” Bucky grinned, “Well, I gotta get some skills. You know. Since you’re gonna be a Professor. And a Consultant for the UN... Once I retire I’m practically gonna be a trophy husband. I gotta keep you interested in me somehow.”

You laugh softly, “Well I appreciate the efforts. Even if you are gonna make me fat.” Bucky rolled his eyes, “Baby, you’re perfectly healthy. Fuck that magazine. You’re healthy. You work out more than I do. You can eat whatever you want.” You sigh, “I know. It’s still not nice to read while I’m trying to get groceries.”

Bucky nodded, “I know, Sugar.” He kisses you gently and smiles a little, “But let’s not worry about those assholes now, huh? Just relax and let me take care of you. You worked hard. You deserve a treat.” You nod and take another sip of wine, “Okay,” you sigh, “This actually looks really good... Food Network?”

“Facebook,” he said grinning. 

____________ 

He managed to coax you into most of the pasta and a brownie between two glasses of wine. You unwound slowly and Bucky felt better. He hated it when you had yourself worked up. 

It also hadn’t taken long for him to work you back up again in a completely different way. He applied considerable efforts into getting you sleepy and relaxed. He figured a slow, snuggly round of lovemaking would probably be just the thing. When he had you naked and squirming under his hands, he pinned you gently to the couch and lavished kisses down your body, nuzzling your stomach affectionately. There wasn’t much talking but there didn’t need to be. He knew what you liked. You knew that in the back of his mind, he was thinking about how pretty you’d look growing his baby. 

“I love you,” you’d panted, your legs wrapped around his waist to pull him closer. 

“Who doesn’t?” he teased, kissing you hungrily.

After he’d spent inside you and you were pleasantly tired instead of mind-numbingly exhausted, he’d held you. You’d snuggled into his arms and hid your face in his neck. 

It hadn’t taken long for you to fall asleep. The comfort of a full stomach, a gentle orgasm, and a warm body to cuddle paired with the sweetness of Bucky humming along with the record he’d put on had you fast asleep in a few minutes. 

Bucky felt like he was in heaven, drowsing there in a hazy, twilight state. It was a level of comfort he never thought was possible. He never knew it was possible to be this content. This blissed out. 

He adjusted the blanket over you gently and stroked your hair. This was home and he couldn’t wait to be a trophy husband. 

Tags: @lancsnerd​ @stevieang​ @golddaggers​ @blameitonthecauseway @qxeen-of-hearts​ @process-pending​ @xmarveled​ @beautybyfire, @etherealwaifgoddess, @mschellehitt, @mistressoftorture @thorfanficwriter, @ctinadiva, @innerpaperexpertcloud @amalthea9  @cdwmtjb8 @notyourtypicalrose

[dysphoric-dumbass13]

All of the bookish asks. I hate you. And your stupid fucking face. Im so tired dude i stayed up ridiculously late to finish that

Hey I stayed up ridiculously late to finish mine too. Well not ridiculously late because me and then I couldn't fall asleep anyways but whatever. And you literally love me you jackass.

1. (what book did you last finish? when was that?) Willingly? Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, in July. For school? Of Mice And Men. I didn’t care that much, and I forgot to finish A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I still finished my project fine without any issue whatsoever and should get at least a B, if not an A. But whatever.

2. (what are you currently reading?) The Odyssey, for school. But also I’m like ¾ of the way through What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli. (what book are you planning to read next?) Well for English it will have to be A Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass, Night by Elie Wiesel, Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, or Lord of the Flies by William Golding. However, I really want to read The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. And I’m also trying to get a hold of the Harry Potter books because I haven’t read them since I was 7, and I was a compulsive moron so I read them out of order based on length and the title. I did that a lot.

3. (what was the last book you added to your tbr?) I don’t fully know what it means by that, but I’ll give this a try. The last thing I remember actively seeking out that I need to read again (for writing purposes, and the fact that I’m a nerdy bastard) was the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

4. (which book did you last re-read?) Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli, I loved it so much that I read it twice in one month. I also re-read Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli twice before moving to the former.

5. (which was the last book you really, really loved?) Again, Leah on the Offbeat. I loved that book so much oh my god.

6. (what was/were the last books you bought?) I actually bought 3 books in September (after I got all my books for English), which were Leah on the Offbeat, Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda, and The Song of Achilles.

7. (paperback or hardcover? why?) Paperback. The hurt less to hold while reading, and they’re cheaper so I can buy more of them. But I do love a hardcover book if the cover is really intricate and beautiful.

8. (ya, na, or adult? why?) Idk. To me it doesn’t matter all that much as long as it’s a good book. I really like anything that isn’t racist, sexist, super heteronormative, transphobic, or hating of any particular religion (except like if it’s vaguely poking fun at catholicism and christianity because we deserve it)

9. (sci-fi or fantasy? why?) Fantasy. God I just fucking LOVE fantasy. I wrote a 20,000-word oneshot that was of the fantasy genre. I just love it too much.

10. (classic or modern? why?) Idk. Doesn’t really matter, again, as long as it isn’t racist, transphobic, against a religious group, or too heteronormative.

12. (political memoirs or comedic memoirs?) Idk man. But I hate politics in every way, shape, and form, so I’m gonna go with comedic memoirs.

13. (name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaptation) Um………. idk. I’m gonna go with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire simply because of the fact that they cut so much out and, sorry not sorry, if the whole series was written by someone not transphobic, homophobic, and antisemitic it would be better. It’s great, but it could be so much better.

14. (name a book where the movie/tv adaptation was actually better than the original) Again idk. I’m gonna say The Princess Bride because that movie is so fucking good guys.

15. (what book changed your life?) I know it’s not technically a book book, but Unknown Colors by Gabriels_Wings on Wattpad. It got me into reading again and that’s only benefitted me so far (except for distracting me from homework, but who cares).

16. (if you could bring three books to a deserted island, which would they be and why?) Well, obviously, Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda and Leah on the Offbeat (ok I’m gonna some up with abbreviations now, LotO for the latter and SvtHA for the former), and the last spot would be between The Song of Achilles and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein. Because they’re good books. And I’m gonna end up dying on said island and I need my gay fix with me.

17. (if you owned a bookshop what would you call it?) Oof, that’s hard. Probably….. Narnia. And it would be a very gay place with beanbags and a small coffee shop inside and it would be like this one place my mom went to all the time where you could buy a book and if you wanted to you could bring it back and they’d buy it back for slightly less than you bought it for. It was a great place. And my bookshop would be amazing.

18. (which character from a book is the most like you?) Toughie. I’m gonna go with… Blaise Zabini from Harry Potter or Abby Suso from SvtHA and LotO. Because Blaise is very gay and sassy (idk if he actually is in the books but hey, fanfiction) and Abby is a bi disaster and relatable af.

19. (which character from a book is the least like you?) Idk. Hannah Abbott? Because she’s a Hufflepuff? Idk man.

20. (best summer read?) LotO.

21. (best winter read?) Been a while since I actually remember reading a book in winter. I remember when I was in 5th grade I really loved reading Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin. That was good. But I think The Hobbit would be good too.

22. (pro or anti e-readers? why?) Pro, it makes reading at random places so much easier. Plus, I can then read gay fanfic at my christian grandparents’ houses.

23. (bookdepository or amazon?) I’ve never used Book Depository, but I looked it up (omg Kass you aren’t going to believe it, I googled something on my own!) and it seems smaller and cooler because it’s just books. So I’m gonna go with that one.

24. (do you prefer to buy books online or in a bookshop?) In a bookshop without a doubt, you can browse for hours. I love bookshops

25. (if you could be a character in a book for just one day, who would you be and why? bonus: any specific day in the story?) Simon Spier. From SvtHA. On the day of the carnival fair thing. Because zqawxsedcrfvtgbyhnujmikolplomiknujybhtvgrfcedxwszqa

26. (if you could be a character in a book for their entire life, who would you be and why?) Again Simon Spier. Because infdjfcdncewhfiubdkjcnsoawehfwedscnsaoufgrwiofbv cisahcsoainh

27. (if you could change one thing about mainstream literature, what would you change?) NO. MORE. DISCRIMINATION! And I swear to god people, quit idolizing authors who are racist or sexist or transphobic or homophobic or against certain religions or anything else because I swear they don’t deserve it! No more discrimination in the media guys.

28. (how many books have you read so far this year?) A lot. Idk the actual amount but a lot. Especially if we’re counting fanfic.

29. (how do you sort your shelves?) I don’t actually own enough books to sort lol. But I assume I would sort them alphabetically by author. And if I had a ton of books, I’d sort them further into genres.

30. (who’s your favorite author?) Becky Albertalli.

31. (who’s your favorite contemporary author?) Idk. I’m not that smart, I don’t put authors into genre categories.

32. (who’s your favorite fantasy author?) See above.

33. (who’s your favorite sci-fi author?) See above.

34. (list 5 otps) Oh god, here I go. Pansmione (Pansy Parkinson x Hermione Granger from Harry Potter), Wolfstar (Remus Lupin x Sirius Black from Harry Potter), Sabriel (Sam Winchester x Gabriel from Supernatural), Johnlock (John Watson x Sherlock from Sherlock), and Merthur (Merlin x Arthur Pendragon from Merlin).

35. (name a book you consider to be terribly underrated) What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli.

36. (name a book you consider to be terribly overrated) Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck.

37. (how many books are actually in your bookshelf/shelves right now?) 19, including a book I accidentally stole from my 7th grade LA teacher (sorry), and a college workbook I stole from my dad on lifesaving first aid for heart problems. + 1 movie (Love, Simon), 5 comic books, and an adult coloring book because why not. I also have 2 full boxes downstairs full of kids books (about half of which I've never read or have any interest in reading) from when I moved.

38. (what language do you most often read in?) English because I’m a dumb bitch and don’t know other languages well enough. I might be able to stumble through a kid’s book in French, and I could read a basic novel in Spanish.

39. (name one of your favorite childhood books) Goodnight Moon was one of my favorites. I also was obsessed with Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin, and when I was about 5 my mom would read The Hobbit to my brother and I when she got home from work if she was working a half day, or she wasn’t held up too late on a normal day. Ah, some actually decent childhood memories.

40. (name one of your favorite books from your teenage years) SvtHA.

41. (do you own a library card? How often do you use it?) Yeah, and decently often.

42. (which was the best book you had to read in school?) The Outsiders. In 7th grade.

43. (are you the kind of person who reads several books at once or the kind of person who can only read one book at a time?) Multiple at once. I kind of have to if I want to read for fun while I’m in school.

44. (do you like to listen to music when you read?) Honestly, my mind is like an iPod I can’t fully control, I was laying in my bed half asleep singing What I Got yesterday morning for no reason, so I don’t have a choice. There’s more of a choice if I’m listening to music, so yes.

45. (what is your favorite thing to eat when you read?) Nothing? I don’t really like to eat when I’m reading, unless I’m reading on my phone and then it doesn’t really matter. But when I'm reading I usually forget to eat.

46. (what is your favorite thing to drink when you read?) Tea. Without a doubt. If I’m not too lazy to make it, that is.

47. (what do you do to get out of a reading slump?) Well, I do one of two things. I either try to convince Kass (@eyeforaneye-toothforatooth) to write something for me, or I’ll write (because I know I have to read over it a bajillion times, and I write too much for anyone’s good)

48. (where is your favorite place to read?) In my mind palace. I have a little place in my mind palace that I go when I’m reading or writing, and it changes. Sometimes it’s in a cottage at night with the only light a fireplace that I’m sitting in front of, sometimes it’s leaned against a tree. Three of my favorites are leaning against a cherry blossom tree looking out at a river, on a beanbag in a cozy, quiet bookshop/library, and on a beach in Roatan, Honduras. Other than that, it’s curled up on my UFO couch in my front living room, in front of the gigantic window.

49. (when is your favorite time to read?) It actually depends on the season. In the summer, always because I don’t want to go outside because it’s too hot. In the winter it’s during the evening. Spring it’s early in the morning. Fall it’s around sunset.

50. (why do you love to read?) Because you’re taking yourself and delving into a different universe, where nothing you know exists and only what you’re reading does. It takes me away from the world and all of my struggles, and puts me somewhere where that doesn’t exist. It’s refreshing. I hate you too

[grimelords]

I’m all caught up and presenting my August playlist just in time for September to end! Disco! Italo-pop! 90s gangsta rap! 3 hours worth of music for everyone!

Good To Me - THP: The most surefire way I’ve found to track down a great song you’ve never heard before is to look up every single sample on the Duck Sauce album. It has quite literally not failed me yet. This song is great, and being so used to the sped up sample in Goody Two Shoes this song sounds like the expanded chopped and screwed version to me which is even better.

Who Do You Love - THP: The other thing about THP is they’re extremely hard to search on Spotify because it thinks you’re trying to type ‘The’ and suggests 'The Beatles’ which is helpful.

Beleriand - The Middle East: I started rereading The Lord Of The Rings this month, and even got so deep in it that I started reading the Silmarillion for the first time and I suddenly remembered the time The Middle East wrote a song about Melkor and Angband and all that. Maybe the best Lord Of The Rings song I’ve heard almost exclusively for the drum work in the intro before it really settles into its Tolkein vibe.

Dead - San Fermin: I love this song but god I wish it were louder and more out of control. The sax sounds great but every other part isn’t nearly as turned up to 11 as it should be. The problem is that everyone in this band is such a professional they don’t know how to play like the maniacs this song deserves!

Tuesday Fresh Cuts - Bree Tranter: I’ve been looking up what all the members of The Middle East have done since they broke up and the best thing I’ve found is Rohin Jones writing music for a Dulux Paint commercial after the verse in Ninth Avenue Reverie about the guy who sniffs paint every night and dreams about being dead. Anyway as far as I can tell Bree Tranter is the one that’s had the most consistent and normal output since they broke up. This song is very much an ultimate night driving type song, except the lyrics are really not great but you can ignore that for how great it sounds, especially near the end when it really gets into a meditative state.

Ted, Just Admit It - Jane’s Addiction: Continuing my Jane’s Addiction phase, I really love this song. This is such a great brooding piece of music before it finally explodes into the declaration that sex is violent. Kind of a shame that it’s a serial killer song because he’s right about everything. Sex IS violent, the tv DO got them images, etc.

Fire Back About Your New Baby’s Sex - Don Caballero: I think this is probably Don Caballero’s most popular song, and with good reason. It’s among the most straightforward of their backward-ass songs and gives you a good grounding in how to understand the total chaos that is everything else they’ve done.

Ballad Of Circling Vultures - Pageninetynine: The entire last half of this song, when it slows down, is one of the best things I’ve ever heard. It feels like the entire mix begins to close in around you as it gets darker and darker before a door slams and you wake up somewhere else entirely.

You’ve Never Been Alone - Andrea Balency: I was watching this live video of Mount Kimbie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6co64HYurg and they’ve got like a full band now! They’ve been slowly expanding from a duo and I suppose it makes sense because their last album really sounded like a band playing in a room rather than two guys on computers. Anyway it turns out the woman in their band is Andrea Balency and this song of hers is very beautiful and you can see exactly why they asked her to join.

The Conspiracy Of Seeds - 65daysofstatic: I was going through Circle Takes The Square’s performance credits on discogs (very cool hobby) and found out they’re credited on this 65dos song and was shocked that I didn’t know that already. It feels like they pretty much split the song down the middle and did half each, which is great!

Spanish Sahara (Deadboy remix) - Foals: This song isn’t on Australian spotify as far as I can tell, so if you’re in the UK I think you can listen to this. Otherwise it’s on youtube for everyone here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk24ujPN4Lo This is probably one of my favourite pieces of music ever, it’s such a beautiful remix even though it’s not particularly far from the original. It just does the work of focusing the vibe down to a laser point. I love how mechanical every part of it is contrasting against the dreamy vocals and organ, until it almost feels overloaded with hats and clicks in the highest points before it focuses down again and introduces the bassline alone. Then the last section! The stabbing insistence of the synth driving the whole thing to a fever pitch.

T69 Collapse - Aphex Twin: I’ve never been huge on Aphex Twin because all his songs sound like you pressed the demo button on a keyboard and then turned the tempo way up but I really like this one, almost exclusively for the bassline the comes in in the second half after the big space-out breakdown. It’s groovy! It’s the most I’ve ever liked the evil man!

Kansas City Star - Kasey Musgraves: The Kasey Musgraves album everyone was going wild for didn’t really do much for me but this cover is so fantastic, the slight melody change she’s done to the chorus is such an improvement and really makes it soar. Also google is good because right now the 25th image result for 'kacey musgraves’ is a deviantart pic where someone’s photoshopped her to be extremely obese called Kollosal Katy. Not really related to the song but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Pyramids - Frank Ocean: A big group of friends and I went to karaoke a couple of weeks ago and the version of Pyramids they had didn’t even have the second half! If I can’t subject everyone to ten full minutes of me doing it badly then what’s the DAMN point?

Aqua - Eurythmics: I heard this song on NTS and was instantly in love with the lyrics. Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, throw me in the water, watch me drown! It’s that simple!

gonk steady one - Autechre: I went and saw Autechre when they were here a few months ago and I’m still thinking about it because it was like a multiplayer dream. They insisted on total darkness and everyone just kind of stood still or sat down for the whole show in the dark while an endless wave of sound from another dimension washed over us all. Then eventually the music stopped and the lights came on and I never actually saw Autechre the whole time I was there. I’m still working my way through their fucking 8 hour long new album but this is an early highlight. I don’t know how to explain this but it sounds good. It sounds like music by and for aliens that we can listen to and understand a small part of.

Poor Kakarookee - Venetian Snares: I was listening to this song and thinking the other day there’s a certain subset of Venetian Snares songs that sound like that bit from Parks and Rec where Adam Scott is like 'could a depressed person do THIS?’ and is holding up his deformed little stop motion figure from the deformed little stop motion movie he’s making. This is absolutely one of those songs. It’s a great song but it’s one of those songs.

Future People - Alabama Shakes: For a long time the only Alabama Shakes song I’d heard was Don’t Wanna Fight because it was just so good I figured there was no need to go further, which it turns out was extremely wrong because this whole album is completely killer. I just can’t believe her voice. The album version is great but the live version really shows it off https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbR999N5MiALa 

Mia Mania - Giani Morandi: I rewatched all of Harvey Birdman a couple of weeks ago and finally looked up what the song is in this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xkhqce43mA because it gets stuck in my head all the time, and the only version I could find is this one with vocals which sounds even better!

Capriccio - Gianni Morandi: Then I dug deeper and started looking up the rest of this guy’s songs and totally loved it. There’s nothing better than digging around and finding what you think is some obscure artists before looking them up and finding out they’re incredibly famous and like the Italian Neil Diamond.

Parli Sempre Tu - Gianni Morandi: This is my favourite of his just for the insane pitch shifted vocal at the start, what an insane piece of sound for 1964! I’m desperate to know how they made it.

Forgotten Children - Mouse On The Keys: I suddenly remembered Mouse On The Keys the other day and thank god. They’re an instrumental band that’s two pianists and a drummer that looks like its jazz because of the instrumentation but is really more like post-hardcore in execution.

Can’t Get Right - Ghost-Note: I normally don’t go in much for this sort of drum clinic type music for musicians only but the central groove in this is just so good. It feels like two completely different songs playing at the same time, except if that sounded good. I found it because the bass genius Mono Neon played on it, watch the video and see if you can tell which one is named Mono Neon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVw1b4gVYrU Also one of the guys seems to be playing a vibraphone that is a midi controller which I have never seen before in my life.

Shoot Myself - Venetian Snares: Venetian Snares has such a great melodic sense and it feels kind of underappreciated just because of how much his percussion is at the forefront of every critical appraisal. In songs like this where the drums are more restrained you can really feel the melody and harmony shine through, the layers of cascading synth lines piling up louder and louder before returning to the jazzy organ near the end is just such a beautiful moment.

Bad Boy - Den Harrow: This song sounds like an 11 year old wrote the lyrics and I absolutely love it. The best and most sexy lyrics: “Some dress Valentino, others wear t-shirts to show what a shapely bust they’ve got.”

Summertime - Barney Kessel: Barney Kessel the jazz guitarist that I only found out about this month did a bossa nova album when bossa nova was the biggest thing in the world and it’s so so good. He also does some very interesting playing on it that’s a lot closer to surf rock and rock n roll than anything else I’ve heard of his. This is also a good example of that thing when Stereo sound was brand new where every single instrument is panned hard left or right which is a treat in headphones.

Slice Of Heaven - Dave Dobbyn: It’s kind of a shame that this song never really gets better than the intro but when the intro is this good it’s fine. I remember this song from when I was a kid because it’s on the soundtrack to New Zealand’s first ever feature length animated film, Footrot Flats which I watched a lot.

Sailin Da South - ESG + DJ Screw: The hardest part about putting any one song from 3 N Tha Morning Part Two on a playlist is they’re not designed for that and it sounds awful and cruel to cut them off like that. So really instead of listening to this song listen to the whole album and turn purple.

Right Action - Franz Ferdinand: I think Franz Ferdinand deserve better than the sort of one hit wonder status they’ve got, because they’ve got a lot of great songs and this is one of them, and probably the danciest summary of the Noble Eightfold Path I’ve ever heard.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Metallica: I have done zero research but to me the 80s feels like the decade when HP Lovecraft and the Cthulu mythos really hit the mainstream. Dungeons and Dragons and all that. Anyway apparently Cliff Burton was a huge Lovecraft fan and they would all read his stories in the tour van which is a funny thing to imagine. Metallica have five or six Lovecraftian songs and the bulk of them were written after Cliff Burton died which is sort of touching in a way. Paying tribute to your friend by invoking the nameless horror that sleeps in R'lyeh.

Waters Of Nazareth x We Are Your Friends x Phantom - Justice: Justice’s new album is so good because it’s sort of halfway between a remix album, a live album and a Best Of. It’s essentially a studio live album, or maybe just a live recording straight from the soundboard with no crowd noise. Either way it’s great and leads to incredible three way mashups of their best songs like this one.

Mr Ice Cream Man (feat. Silkk The Shocker) - Master P: I was thinking about how you don’t really hear about Master P these days, but according to the first result when you google 'richest rappers’ he’s doing fine with a net worth of $227 million, which is more than Eminem. So good for him. Even if his music hasn’t really lasted I’m sure his many, many business dealings will leave him in good stead for the rest of his life. I’m just going to copy and paste some phrases from his wiki article here because it’s truly ridiculous: “He has since parlayed his $10,000 initial seed capital investment into a $250 million business empire spanning a wide variety of industries” “As a businessman, Miller was known for his frugality and keeping business expenses down and profit margins high” “He has since invested the millions of dollars he made from his No Limit record company into a travel agency, a Foot Locker retail outlet, real estate, stocks, film, music, and television production, toy making, a phone sex company, clothing, telecommunications, a jewellery line, auto accessories, book and magazine publishing, car rims, fast food franchises, and gas stations.” “Miller also has his own line of beverages, called "Make ‘Em Say Ughh!” energy drinks" “first rapper to establish a cable television network.”

The Party Don’t Stop - Mia X: Anyway via Master P I found Mia X, who sings the hook on Mr Ice Cream Man, and her album is actually good as fuck for an 80 minute No Limit album, mostly because it’s so packed with guests (it feels like everyone else on No Limit is on here, including guys with great names like Mo B. Dick and Kane & Abel, but also Mystikal and Salt N Pepa are here!) that you never get tired of the flow, and the production is nicely varied too.

Shut Up - Stormzy: This is like Stormzy’s biggest song and I’m dumb as fuck because I haven’t heard it until now when I was listening to Functions On The Low and found out he used it as the beat for this song. What an absolute thrill to see this perfect beat back in the limelight thanks to the man bringing grime back to the limelight!

All N’s - Mia X: I wanna talk about the beat on this Mia X song because it’s incredible front to back. (Lyrically this song is fucking great, especially the chorus) but the vocal synth bass sound is just amazing, and the hook melody is the damn 'there’s a place in France where the naked ladies dance’ melody. Every part of it’s insane.

Milk - Kings Of Leon: I got into a real groove this month and learned how to play this whole Kings Of Leon album on guitar for some reason. So now I’ve got that knowledge. But I forgot just how incredible this song is. It’s a testament to how if the music is good enough and the performance is good enough the lyrics can be absolutely anything. By the time he says “she’ll loan you her toothbrush, she’ll bartend your party” I’m already crying.​

listen here

[eleanorblue]

My brother and I got some bad news about our dad today, so now I’m processing via Fun Home.

Well. It wasn’t, like…bad news, per se. It was expected news. It was “we knew this would someday happen since the day since he was diagnosed.” It was “on the causal pathway” news. Just news. But it sent both of us into a tailspin anyway. My brother was more upset about the News, but I’ve been more upset about Everything In General. Like, this isn’t fair, fuck my aunt, I miss my dad from fifteen years ago, FUCK MY AUNT.

So. Fun Home.

I assume that most people who are Really Into Fun Home love it because it’s about a young lesbian discovering and becoming comfortable with her sexuality. I love it for that too—Ring of Keys is an amazing song. But I’ve always loved it more for the relationship between Alison and her dad—how she’s trying to figure him out and what he meant to her and what she meant to him after his death.

And their relationship before he died was extremely complicated! He cheated on her mom and possibly (probably?) slept with underage boys. He was physically abusive and emotionally neglectful towards Alison and her brothers. But he did love his family, in his messed-up dysfunctional way, and she loved him, too.

And then he just…died, in the middle of Alison’s story, and she never got the chance to confront him about any of the shit he did or connect with him and know him as an adult. He never had the chance to explain himself or apologize or see the amazing person his daughter would grow up to be.

I relate to that pretty hard.

Even though my dad is not in fact dead, he doesn't really know who I am anymore. When he was first diagnosed…he was a man in his fifties, I was an angsty sixteen year old, and we didn’t really get along. I remember (before he was diagnosed) my mother telling me that this stage of disconnect and fraying tempers would pass, and when I was a little older I’d be able to have a better relationship with my dad. That comforted me at the time.

And then he was diagnosed and he was already sick, we could tell, we’d known something was wrong, and any chance I’d had to rebuild my relationship with him was ripped away from me.

Then of course the disease progressed and it was a truly unspeakable hell of things we’d never expected, while all the while my aunt inflamed my dad’s paranoia and whipped him into an agitated frenzy and just made everything that was bad already so much worse.

My dad didn’t see me graduate from college. Fuck, he didn’t see my brother graduate from high school. He won’t be there on either of our wedding days or meet his grandchildren. I never told him I was bi. I will never get to share with him the person I have become.

There’s a section of my bookshelf devoted entirely to books about World War II. Now, I love history, but I’ve never been particularly interested in the intricacies of combat and the minute details of battles. But I’ve read them all, because they were his books, and he read them all.

I read books about politics and wish I could talk to him about them. I wasn’t in a place where I could talk about politics like an adult when he was diagnosed.

I read the Lord of the Rings and wish I could tell him I finally got into Tolkein. He knew everything about LOTR. He’d read all of his books (I have his copy of the Silmarillion) and nearly had them memorized. You could give him any three lines, and he’d be able to give you the next line. His nickname in high school was Longshanks, because his legs were so long, like Aragorn’s. He called his mother Shelob and his father the Balrog (affectionately).

(His sister is more like Wormtongue (unaffectionately) but that is beside the point.)

He hurt us so badly. I never want to be anything like him. He was my hero. I want to be just like him. I wasn’t kind enough to him or patient enough with him when he got sick. I deserved everything that happened. Nothing about any of this is fair or okay at all.

There are two sections of Telephone Wire from Fun Home that I love:

Alison: But I was like you, Dad, me too—

And:

Alison: Telephone wire, stop! too fast, telephone wire, make this not the past, this car ride! This is where it has to happen, there must be some other chances, there’s a moment I’m forgetting, where you tell me you see me!

I wish my father could have seen me.

[tumblunni]

Random list of still WIP npc charries I need to make for this game, yo

* Mayor Grandma The Ultimate

Not actually anyone’s grandma but like... Everyone’s Grandma. That whole ‘village elder as a goddamn force of nature’ kind of character. She’s the Big Good. She’s this tiny unassuming gran who had a history as a legendary hero and is now the super amazing mayor who can solve goddamn anything and defeat any threat against the village and just... HOLDS US ALL WITH HER GRUMPY LOVE I’m imagining her like the protagonist’s gran in The Wee Free Men, or Granny Weatherwax from other discworld books, or the grandma from Summer Wars, or the grandma from Jade Cocoon 1 who even turned out to be literally the deity of badass grandmas who came down into mortal form to slap the shit out of some fools. (The “grim midwife of life and death” is a really fucking badass title)

Anyway she isn’t actually technically the ‘mayor’, she’s just like.. village elder under old country rules, but Regis is the duke that was sent down to Officially be ruler of this province. Officially. It’s just that absolutely everyone knows that the duke is just a figurehead and Ancient Powerful Gran Of The Old Ways is the real power behind this well-oiled machine of a town. Even Regis knows, lol! The previous duke was a total asshole that got served a slice of humble pie by gran and they were fighting at every turn, but now Regis and Mortimer are the Comparatively Less Stuck Up Noblefolks and the town is better off for it. Still, even if Regis isn’t evil like his brother, he’s still a bit foppish and occasionally stupid about what it actually takes to run a town. So they do come into conflict sometimes, but mostly its like BFFs quarrelling instead of the old Shephard Grandma Brings The Wrath of The Heavens Upon Rich Man No Matter How Many Rich Man Guards He Has, Seriously We Found One Of Them Upside Down On Top Of The Roof How Did That Even Happen

And then also i think that she might have a larger role in Blair’s plot cos Blair is kinda like the new Village Hero In Training. But she’s INTENSELY reluctant about it! Not cos she doesn’t like being buff as fuck and punching through walls, but because she doesn’t think she could ever be better than supergran. Cos like.. “yeah I’ve got the muscles but I don’t have the brains, how could I ever cope without you?” She gets really fucking sad at the very idea that supergran might be retiring, and like.. might die someday. So it’s someone who’s clearly qualified for the role repeatedly rejecting it and bringing up more and more perfectionist excuses why she isn’t ready yet, just because she cares so much for her mentor figure and wishes she could fight the tide of time. And that’s how Blair became the Miss Perfect rival type character, and why she’s so humble and oblivious of her own strengths. Also I think this same plot would have links to mortimer and sorrel too, because there was An Event that happened 15 years ago that was what caused mayorgran to start feeling as if she’d hit her limits and the town needs a new Hero. Apparantly ~something~ happened that was like.. the one time mayorgran ever found a problem she couldn’t solve. And also at that time mortimer and sorrel used to be childhood friends, since they’re cousins, but suddenly sorrel’s mum fell in status amoung the noble family and there was a huge upheaval of the town’s status quo. What exactly is this mystery...?

ALSO! she must have a big hat i just want her to have a really big hat (mayorgran, not sorrel, she’s fine with her medium hat)

* Sorrel’s mum

(and Regis’s sister and Morty’s aunt. It IS cousins when someone’s the son of your mum’s sibling, right? I can’t remember all the rules for first removed and stuff...)

Generic Mom. She’s just so NICE! Isn’t she nice? Don’t you agree? For some reason she had a falling out with Duke Regis in the past, and now she lives in comparative poverty and like.. no press statement has ever been released on WHY this happened, and everyone’s become rather distrustful of Regis because of it. What exactly is going on?

I kinda wanted to leave it vague at just this, cos you can’t exactly talk about her at all without spoiers. So yeah the next paragraph is gonna not reveal exactly what happened in that backstory, but it’ll talk about this character’s personality and what it.. actually is, I guess..??

SO...

...

...

A kind of over the top cloyingly “nice” person who really isn’t. A bit of Umbridge and a bit of an overbearing soccer mom. Like.. at first you’ll be wondering ‘why is Sorrel so self hatey when her mom is so nice to her’ but then it becomes clear that’s not what’s really happening. Mom only supports when you act how she wants you to, its a classic ‘living through your children’ situation where she pushes her kid way too far to achieve some goals they never wanted in the first place. And she’s a bit of a moral crusader, like she’s just.. SO convinced that she is ‘nice’, and that if she just acts ‘polite’ and ‘mumsy’ and cute and harmless and follows all the feminine stereotypes it balances out any horribly not nice things she does. Because she’s ‘not that kind of person’. Anything she does is good because she’s good, yknow? And anything Sorrel does is bad if it shows any sort of personality outside of what her mum has so kindly picked out for her, I mean why would you be so selfish, seriously! She kinda always lives like that, seething with resentment and selfish desire and looking for excuses she can use to paint someone as Bad so she is Justified in feeling superior to them and/or ruining their life. And her Nice facade covers up a lot of rather bigoted attitudes she holds, in addition to all the abusiveness. Ones that can be far more insidious cos she delivers them in such a Nice way and appeals to Logic and Compromise and oh but You Know, Everyone Knows, Isn’t It Just Natural And Biological, look at them getting Emotional. She’s very much the archetypical horrid nobleman that we were all so grateful that Regis wasn’t. Except she’s also way more devious and able to hide it beneath a relateable facade, so she can get these stupid naive townsfolk to do stuff that only makes life harder for themselves for the sake of like.. mythical trickle-down benefits that don’t actually exist. And oh, Sorrel, you know you could pass so well for a good Narcian lady if you dyed your hair, you know? Not like Regis’s filthy child. (She says, even though she also married a foreigner, just one from a majority white country...)

Basically she’s just gonna be a detestable monster, and the only pure evil person in the plot. And even more evil because she does such a good job hiding it, and has been able to spread her toxic influence to so many victims undetected for so long. Cos seriously, the story starts off with her being treated as a martyr and people clamouring to replace Regis with her, and it’s just gonna be So Damn Uncomfortable in retrospect when you do a second playthrough and see even Sorrel’s friends completely oblivious to her mum’s evilness. (″Friends? Honey, you don’t HAVE friends. Well, who do you need except little old me?”)

Also I was thinking randomly as a subplot there could be a thing that her mum was in charge of the town library once, and her planned renovations fell through and now the town doesn’t have a library at all, just this big abandoned building and The Enduring Shame. It’d be a good example of how she handles things, cos this is an Enduring Shame for Sorrel and not her. from Sorrel’s perspective she thinks that her mother trusted her with a big responsibility and she fucked it up and thus deserves the scorn. But really her mum just threw a sinking ship at her so she could take the blame, and then was all like “OH THE POOR GIRL IT WAS JUST TOO MUCH RESPONSIBILITY, PLEASE DON’T BLAME HER”. Spreading all these negative rumours to encourage Sorrel to never try and be independant ever again, but in a sneaky reverse psychology way so she could still look like a loving mother. But anyway this is how Sorrel ended up running a Secret Underground Library, her one form of rebellion against her mother’s control. She rescued as many books as she could when the library went under, and now she keeps them all crammed in her room and tries to spread them around without leaving any threads back to her. Cos she knows that her mum is super trusted, and that even good people can’t be trusted to keep secrets from her, and nobody would believe her if she tried to explain why it needs to be secret. So instead she just plays it off as if she’s just another person receiving books from the ghost library, and she’s totally searching for an answer to this mystery too, honest! It’d be a sign that you reached high friendship level with her when she’s like.. able to believe that you’d believe her if she told you her mum abuses her. And the first step of that is ‘hey remember that library we were questing for? its literally under my bed.’ Welcomes you to the secret trapdoor book heaven and you have a strangely romantic evening going OOOOMG FIRST EDITION TOLKEINS (or whatever the equivelant is in this universe XD) But it probably still takes her a while after that to open up about exactly why the library has to be secret, and to come to terms with the fact that she really doesn’t deserve how her mother treats her. So I’d definately give you an opportunity here to Fuck Up Massively by telling the mum about the library, yup. Gotta torment the player every now and again! XD ...but I mean if you’re reading this you know all the spoilrs so you’ll be fine, lol

* Quincy’s grandma (or possibly grand aunt?)

A stern and super professional businesswoman who has a bit of a quarrel with him over how exactly to balance profit vs like.. morality. She’s not a BAD person, her business isn’t so profit-heavy that its like all the actual atrocities you see in mega corporations nowadays. But she’s very distant from her customer base and also from what it’s even like to be poor. And she doesn’t believe that such minor things to improve the shopping experience would like.. actually change anything. What is ‘brand loyalty’?! What is this principle that if people are able to live more comfortably they’ll be able to spend more money on luxuries?? She used to be less greedygrump once, but she gets more jaded every year and keeps bumping money higher and higher up her priority list, abandoning things that used to seem important. And similarly she’s become super ‘I don’t need anyone, I’m better off being alone’, and developed this strained relationship with her grand-nephew. I think maybe I could add another layer of sad to this, woo! I think she raised Quincy alone after his parents were Giant Assholes and ran off. Probably stole a bunch of the family money, probably left her with a failing business that they’d ruined with all their selfish decisions over the years, and an angry mob out for blood against the brand name. And Quincy was very sickly as a kid, so she had to work a lot, leading to the distant relationship and obsession with profit. But she’s become so obsessed and paranoid of losing her money even after it became less of a death sentence, and she just keeps working super hard even though now she has time to spend with her family. And she gets scared seeing Quincy grow up cos she remembers how his parents turned into absolute monsters when she used to trust them so much. Being distant is better than getting hurt again... and god damn why does he have his mother’s eyes...

So yeah, they’re a bit estranged, and you can potentially help with that, woo! But mostly during the main game you’ll just hear about her cos everyone is like ‘oh, are you from [grauntie’s brand name]? why don’t you have this thing, she always has it’ and Quincy is like ‘no, this is my own store.. we’re a small business.. but umm, we’re cheaper..’ He’s trying to step out from under her shadow and prove that her philosophy is wrong, so maybe he can bring back the loving grauntie that he remembers from his childhood. i think maybe the ending could be that she turns up to inspect his new shop and they have some sort of merchant showdown and like... even if Quincy loses he still ends up proving her wrong because she sees just how much everyone in this town cares about him and how he’s improved various parts of their life by bringing access to these imported goods and just generally being a supportive community member. Maybe there are some things more important than profit...

Oh and also I think she was the one responsible for helping out Blair and Dionne when they were running from their abusive parents, and that’s why the two of them are the most friendly with Quincy at the start of the game. They hadn’t seen each other since they were kids, and Blair is kinda like I Owe You A Blood Debt, Is There Anyone You Need Me To Stab Grauntie looks back on this as a moment of weakness tho, and that’s why she stopped keeping in touch with them, she’s embarassed she used to be so sentimental. Cos like.. she spent so much money helping set up these girls with their own house and she lost out on a business opportunity (it was a property she originally purchased to turn into a franchise store) She can’t stop thinking about how tight the funds were around that time and how if she messed up she could have lost her own kid for the sake of helping some other kids... But then she turns up in town and its like Oh No I Walked Down The Street By Accident *gets buried in blair hugs* And she can’t stop crying seeing how much they grew up, and then they’re all like “we’ve been trying to send you a cut of the cafe profits for the last seven years!” and she’s like “NOOOOO, KEEP IT” *even more embarassed at doing even more irrational sympathetic actions*

Also possibly she could get a crush on mayor grandma cos they are both grumpy badasses of opposite? Strength gran vs wisdom gran!

+++

so yeh i made a bunch of grans/demigrans of various kinds, and now I am thankfully satisfied with this story’s gremp quotient