#some weird fantasy race stuff happening here

[ashintheairlikesnow]

The Heretic's Confession, Chapter One

CW: Captivity whump, some... implications... references to branding. This is just me getting a feel for the idea and character, though, really.

-

The robes he once kept pristine are caked in dried mud around the hem. Grigory frowns as he inspects them, rubbing along the seam. It flakes away, leaving imprints of itself behind. 

Maudlin, certainly, but it feels like the stain of their sins painting his soul.

Maybe suffering can give even a man of the Goddess the sentiment of a poet. His lip curls in disgust at the very thought.

Please, please speak to me, Dromada. Tell your priest what he must do to escape this nightmare.

She is, and has always been, silent to his pleas for Her assistance. 

The Goddess the people worship may be a paragon of compassion and forgiveness, her sculptures solemn and grave with hands outstretched to embrace even the lowest-born of Her children, but Grigori is beginning to suspect the holy men have got it wrong. 

She isn't gracefully wise. She does not reach Her hand out to hold Her children. No, as each day passes without Her so much as whispering a reassurance, he begins to feel She is th goddess of laughter, and he is Her current favorite joke.

A knock at the door to his room - his cell, really, but of course they all like to pride themselves on keeping him in high style in his gilded cage - has him looking up, a little startled. The moon has only made half of its trek across the night sky, through the looping swirls of galaxies far, far beyond the reach of mere mortal men. That milky spin of stars, everyone knows, is where the gods live.

He wonders how many of them are looking down on him, sipping crystalline waters, and mocking his pain.

He would spit on every last temple step, if he could.

If he could just leave the fucking room-

“Brother Grigori,” His guest singsongs, half-dancing into the room. Grigory turns away from him, laying one palm over one of the iron bars that blocks any escape through the window. His fingers close slowly around it. 

“What do you want.” His voice is curt, it cuts short and sharp. “Bastard.”

“Oh, see you got my name all wrong again.” The leader of this little gang is tall - too tall - and all knees and legs, lean muscle making him heavier than he looks. Grigori is tall enough for a man, but he seems like he’s half-grown, compared to the bandit. The man’s hair is a shock of white atop his head, shaved on the sides, while Grigori’s curly brown grows to the bottom of his ears, as is prescribed for the priests. He swaths himself in black kohl around his equally dark eyes and shining black leather worn back to brown from age and ill-use at the knees and elbows. Grigori’s hazel and his dirtied robes look like a joke, placed next to the bandit’s appearance.  “It’s Bohli, remember? Or that’s what my mother calls me, anyway. Or she would, if she were still alive. She probably uses that when she curses my name from the heavens above, granted. I mean, probably, unless she really is suffering in the Dark After, like she deserves-”

“What do you want, Bohli?” Grigory’s head is already starting to hurt. “I don’t have time for this.”

“Nonsense. You have all the time in the world. You have nothing but time.”

“Not for… you. Please leave.”

“Nope. Not going anywhere. This is my house, remember? I just let you stay here.”

“Let me.” The words are sour in Grigori’s mouth. “Right, of course. Let me. Because I asked to be branded and trapped here in this room-”

“Hush. I take you for walkies every day, little god’s dog.” Bohli winks, and Grigori - who took a vow of pacifism, once - imagines stabbing his own knife through his eyeball until it comes out the other side of his head. “If you don’t want a leash, you just have to prove you won’t run off.”

He would, of course. Run. Outside, the woods stretch far and wide. There’s a path he could take to find a village, to find freedom...

Or… more realistically… to get arrested for being in league with Bohli and his bastards, which he isn’t, but everyone knows the goddess would save Her most faithful, and he’s been here too long. He would be branded a heretic. Everyone knows he’s a heretic. His own fellow priests would turn their backs on him. The people would burn him at the stake, for being defiled, degraded, a paragon of nothing but the filth they have covered him in. Little more than a bandit himself. 

Maybe he is one.

Dromada would have saved him if he were truly Hers to save. And instead, here he is, the infamous giver of absolution to the men and women who massacre whole towns in defiance of - in direct insult to - the power and might of His Majesty, the King.

No. he would be burned as an enemy of the King's, and he would have no standing to defend himself. A captive this long isn't a captive at all, in the eyes of the world.

Just a man who no longer wants to be saved.

Tears prick at his eyes, and he struggles not to let Bohli see them and mock him even more. It’s not like he hasn’t already been marked. It was one of the first things they did. Bohli had given the order and watched while they tied him down. Grigori himself had been made to look as they put the iron in the fire, made to watch them heat it to red. Bohli had been whispering in his ear when when they pressed it to his pelvis, and Bohli had cooed over him while he screamed, stroking through his sweaty hair.

“Just leave,” He whispers, the area aching all over again. They branded him over the symbol of Dromada tattooed, a mark of his vow of chastity.

Another one broken.

Maybe that was when She stopped listening.

“Oh, but I can’t, darling Grigori. I’ve come to make a confession.” Bohli laughs, and his laughter could make you bleed even better than his blade. But somehow Grigori can’t seem to die from the loss. “Isn’t that why I keep a priest of Dromada around, anyway? For to save my poor mortal soul?”

Grigori fights the urge to wish aloud someone would poison the asshole’s food. “You would burn if you touched the Hem of her robe.”

“Maybe.” Bohli shrugs, kicking a chair over and dropping down into it, loose-limbed. His eyes spark with delight as he takes in Grigori’s misery. “But you wear Her robes, and yet I never burn when I touch you-”

“Speak your confession,” Grigory snaps, his heart twisting and going briefly silent and still in his chest. He feels blood rush to his face, and Bohli’s peal of bright, brittle laughter tells him the flush isn’t going unnoticed. 

“Say it.” Bohli watches him, and it’s like being watched by one of the terrifying big cats that roam the woods just beyond this hideous prison. Unblinking, a predator’s stare. “Say the words, priest.”

Each time he does, they feel more bitter on his tongue. 

But still.

Grigori draws the ruins of his robe closer around himself, and sits up straight. He swallows and sets his jaw. “Bohlinde hir Maksma en Ygridsen, the goddess Dromada hears and forgives all from those who love Her. You have only to ask. Speak, child, and be forgiven.”

Bohli licks his lips, leaning forwards. Somehow, Grigori can’t make himself look away. The bandit leader’s teeth are sharp - those canines can rend skin from bone. He’s part-elf, they say, somewhere in his bloodline the half-mindless shrieking hordes of the elven race lurk. You can always tell, so it’s said, from the sharpness of their teeth. From how little they care for the lives of men.

Maybe he’s half-elf.

It would explain why he’s so fucking smug.

“Forgive me, Dromada’s Chosen, for I have sinned against Her,” Bohli says, and he doesn’t even try to feign sincerity. Why he even plays this game, when Dromada isn’t a goddess for the elves of their wretched offspring to begin with, is beyond Grigori’s understanding.

Grigori fights the urge to sigh. He makes Dromada’s Sign, wondering if it even calls to Her any longer. If She even feels the spark of a follower’s call, or if he’s cut off from Her entirely. Who hears him when he prays?

Does anyone?

“How have you sinned against Our Mother, She Who Gave the Waters?” 

Bohli licks his lips. His smile is a little too wide, shows too many of those sharp, sharp teeth. He'd be blisteringly handsome, if it weren’t for the sight of fangs where none should be. “I won’t lie, Brother Grigori. I set some stuff on fire yesterday. And I’m going to do it again. Will I be forgiven?”

Grigori imagines the mud climbing higher and higher up his robes, pulling him into the earth, forcing itself down his mouth and pressing over his eyes. He imagines the gods in the sky, looking down from their stars.

The image shatters with the memory of first sitting at the table with the dozen or so of Bohli's favorites, each of them smiling at him, while he sat in his pure white robes and felt himself bared, as if naked, before them.

Until Bohli had given the order for what to do with him.

“Dromada forgives all who seek Her,” Grigori intones, thoughtless. The words memorized before he was even thirteen years old, before he was old enough to take his vows. Before he was taken, and they were all broken, one by one. Bohli loved breaking Grigori's vows. “You have only to ask.”

“Good.” Bohli’s voice drops low. He has to focus to hear it, which is probably the bastard’s entire point. “Because I really, really love asking, and I love the sound of your answers.”

The bandit stands, walking over to him, putting one finger under his chin and forcing Grigori to look up - and up, and up, and up - to see the demon smile.

Grigori is sure, as Bohli watches him with his head tipped to the side and his black eyes as bright as the stars, that he can hear the goddess laughing.

#whump #new whump #the heretic's confession #captivity #captivity whump #intimate whumper #creepy whumper #fantasy whump #some weird fantasy race stuff happening here #just go with it #religious whump #religion whump #fantasy writing #bohli is a bad bad man #grigori is just a tired blorbo

[booktomoviebrawl]

We are not judging how bad the movie is, we are judging which adapted the book the worst. There are good movies that are bad adaptions.

Propaganda below the cut (spoilers may apply)

Animorphs:

Didn't have the budget to do literally anything the books were doing, and it shows. Also the central theme of the books wasn't even touched on.

A low-budget kids' show was absolutely the worst and most embarrassing way to adapt a semi-serialized, somewhat serious (but, y'know, in a YA way) drama about war and how it changes those who participate in it. It never goes into the ethical questions or moral issues that the original book series brings up, and the violence is toned down a lot. They just didn't have the money for the special effects you'd need for a story with so many different alien races (Taxxons, one of the main types of alien employed by the enemy yeerks, are never even mentioned!), nor for the animal training/handling for so many different species that the characters are constantly morphing into. I get that they were doing the best they could for the time and medium, but it ended up being a giant embarrassment. :(

Only one season, poorly written

Tales from Earthsea:

I don't think it could have been better, but it was just so off from from the books it was mainly drawing its inspiration from (I mean, I had no interest in seeing that weird weaver guy decide to off himself in the boat, but still).

Studio Ghibli is the perfect studio to capture the Le Guin vibe and yet Goro torched it so hard for no reason

To give credit where it is due, the film has some good settings and animation. Unfortunately, its beauty is only on the surface, and it is the worst Studio Ghibli movie I’ve seen. (I’ve seen almost all of them but Earwig and the Witch.) The plot is a collage of random bits of context from the first four books of the series, as well as its own stuff. It really is not the same story at all. I may have enjoyed it more if I had seen it as a child before reading the books, but not covering all the events exactly isn’t the only issue, it’s just worse. It takes the moral complexity and sensibility of the original and turns it into a typical fantasy war between good and evil (the Japanese title even translates to Ged’s War Chronicles) with emphasis on physical violence, in which evil is personified as a goth queer-coded villain whose death resolves everything. It completely misses the point of the books, which gives no such simple answers and is more focused on the darkness within everyone than an external battle. Where is the nuance? It also whitewashes everyone: most of the characters in the book are dark-skinned, but in the movie…

I was also bitter that they did my favourite character, Tehanu/Therru, dirty. She’s supposed to be horribly scarred and disfigured on half her body and reviled by people as a monster but in the movie she’s just a pretty girl with a red mark on her face. In the books, she doesn’t appear until the fourth book, Tehanu, which takes place after Lebannen is grown up and ruling a kindgom, and in which she is a mostly-nonverbal child. But here she’s aged up and thrown into the earlier story to give the protagonist a love interest and the film has him stay with them so it can focus on their romance. Even though a plot-relevant part of his character as well is his lack of interest in women and not settling into a relationship despite the people’s wishes.

Basically, they whitewashed, heteronormatized, macho-ified, and de-nuanced the narrative, and also took out the feminism.

On top of this, trying to cram the whole series into one movie is just not a good idea, and it would have been better to just decide on one book to adapt and do more justice. And yet they still added in so much that didn’t happen. When you have that much material to cover, you don’t have time or budget to be putting other things in, mate. Turning four books into one results both in a mess. Abridgment is one thing; taking particular aspects of different parts of the timeline and combining them in different ways is another. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s in an unfortunate middle area where it doesn’t follow the source material but also doesn’t give enough context that people unfamiliar with the source understand. For Earthsea fans, it’s infuriating; for others, it’s confusing. Also, why did they name it after the fifth book, which is a short story collection that it doesn’t reference whatsoever?

The failure of the movie is upsetting because the books are sooo good. Yet, it was the highest-grossing Japanese movie of the year, and did win a couple awards… The Bunshun Kiichigo awards for “Worst Director” and “Worst Movie”.

#tournament poll #animorphs #anitv #tales from earthsea #earthsea #a wizard of earthsea

[mermaidsirennikita]

No but for real can we TALK about how there is some genuinely offensive shit re: the Romani in Kleypas's book that gets a pass, but the in-character stupid line stuff gets cut bc it's the 21st century or whatever. Like I generally like her books, but if there's something to update that should be it!

Yeeeeah dude it really bugs me, ESPECIALLY because I feel like there's really zero excuse. Beyond just "educate yourself Lisa" ... she's aware that her books have "race issues". Because the incident that I'm pretty sure helped kick this off was Hello Stranger getting called out for a racist passage. Her oldest books (which she's essentially let go out of print) have been critiqued re: race. While there are some complex intersections re: race and ethnicity at play with Cam and Kev, I still feel like the fact that she's aware that her books aren't perfect re: race means she has to know those aspects are problematic.

I knew Seduce Me at Sunrise had edits to the moment when Kev kidnaps Win.... and though that's honestly one of my favorite moments in the book, I though maybe the edits were meant to be downplay the kidnapping as Kev's Mystical Rom Dude Ritual moment. Which I don't remember being HUGE in the act itself, but in dialogue, etc. But no! I was just basically taking away the aspects of "ravishing". Which is fucking stupid, lmao. Because in no way could you read the line about "she was going to be ravished" and interpret it as "Kev is going to rape Win". Why? Because we are in Win's head when that happens, and she is literally like "FUCKING FINALLY".

(Personally, I think Lisa unintentionally wrote Win as having a bit of a rape fantasy/CNC fetish vibe, and like... that's fine. People don't like to talk about it, but rape fantasies are among the most common fantasies for women to have, and it is fine, and it is one reason why a lot of people like old school romances, dark romance etc.)

But all the weird shit wherein, for example, Cam will be all "YOU ENGLISH DON'T UNDERSTAND, WE ROM DO NOT VIEW A HOUSE AS HOME" when like, the a good chunk of series revolves around the Hathaways basically doing a massive home reno in which Cam and Kev are both quite invested lmao, stays. The weird asides about Kev's hot-blooded Rom nature stay. (And might I add, lol... Kev seemed a lot more disconnected from that stuff, and one thing I dislike a good bit is that him shedding his inhibitions with Win and letting loose is like, aligned with him letting this Rom aspect of his personality that he'd been denying... free. The shedding of Kev's sexual inhibitions are aligned with his heritage, because in these books Lisa basically uses Roma to suggest "wild, untamed sexuality". And after his own book, Kev is significantly more involved in Cam's "let us help these unknowing English people with our mystical ways" stuff than he was before. Because now that he's fucking Win nasty the way he always wanted, he's like... more... Rom....? I love Kev and Win, but I hate that.)

Lisa is by no means the only historical romance writer who's done this. I think there's a grand tradition in historical writers working around the aughts especially where you get the vibe that they're like "well, I want to acknowledge that poc existed back then, and I want to portray them positively" but they also don't want to invest in deep characterization or push their (let us be real, often racist) readership too far... So it'll be like "here's the hero's best friend, a former slave!" "here's the hero's half-brother, also a former slave because their dad owned a plantation!" (Read a Tessa Dare book that did this, and I can absolutely see what she was going for, but it didn't come off well.) I love Jennifer Ashley's Mackenzie books. I LOATHE The Seduction of Elliot McBride because she tried to incorporate India into the narrative by having the hero like, live there in the past as a colonizer, and be all "India is amazing, here are my friends because I like Indian people more than white people now" (which, woof, but very common at this time) but lmao his buddies were his employees? And also his illegitimate daughter whose Indian mother was DEAD? Like, come on dude.

(Still not quite as bad as the Kerrigan Byrne book wherein the hero is a literal former war criminal whose big kindness was taking the lone survivor of a village he massacred home and making him his valet. But still.)

And I mean, this does continue, which in some ways I view more harshly because there has been years for feedback and critique to accumulate so more recently working authors should know better. Like the Evie Dunmore "hero has a Plot Important Dancing Shiva tattoo except that isn't actually Shiva in any way, shape, or form and also let's throw in a predatory villainous gay man for good measure" book.

And I'm not saying that Lisa's work is as egregious as those examples. I'm not. But none of the above examples are going back and revising their work in minute detail, while missing the most problematic aspects of the work lol.

I'll also be real and add that another huge reason why these edits suck is that... Nobody is saying you can't edit your work. Authors can and should be able to do that. But... It sucks when people don't know that they're buying what is essentially an abridged version of your book, especially when the edits are heavy, as they are with certain books. Someone could've read your book 10 years ago and when they buy it on Kindle now because they finally have an e-reader, they should be able to know outright that they're buying a different version.

#romance novel blogging

[pigeonwit]

I love your ideas on animal imagery to fit with the newsies, so may I ask: what animal do you think Crutchie would fit?

so the thing with how i got rabbits from jack was that i happened to be naturally drawn to a lot of material that made me go 'oh jack-coded' and coincidentally also mentioned rabbits - with davey, it just felt like a natural thing to me, the obsession with loyalty and serving the hand that feeds you despite desperately wanting to run off the leash yet never being able to face the shame of disobedience. and then the two worked well together, the idea of jack, someone cunning and skilled, giving a very obedient davey something to chase and run towards. with race, it was a similar thing - i just kind of went 'horses? yeah.' because tbh it felt right and the more i thought about it, the idea of working til you break and running a set course until you're not good enough anymore, it made sense. i don't have anything like that for crutchie. there's nothing about a specific animal that i've read or watched that has made me go 'oh yeah crutchie-coded.' but the things that HAVE made me think of crutchie are all fairly similar! so while i do have some ideas for this question, it is mostly just spit-balling.

the stuff i've listened to that remind me of crutchie all have a connection in that they're often about beings that are considered small and unnoticeable. one specific one that reminds me of crutchie a lot is 'the tardigrade song' by cosmo sheldrake which is unironically one of my favourite songs. the idea of being small, not noticed, not needing much and being ok with that is very crutchie to me.

I live in the shrubbery, for that's all I crave I don't want these excitements to see me to my grave I can live life in vaccuums for years with no drink And put up with hardships more than you can think.

crutchie didn't need the big escape to santa fe - he wanted something beautiful when he was at his worst, sure, but it wasnt the same as jack's yearning for something to run towards. crutchie has all he needs right here in new york. yeah, it can suck, but crutchie can deal with that because he's not something that needs saving or moving to greener pastures; he can make his own greenery for himself. that said, i do absolutely believe - especially with matt duckett's more jaded crutchie - that crutchie isn't just happy-go-lucky kid who's just grateful for the little joys he has. he can be happy in new york not because he's just oh-so grateful to be there, but because he's able to find family there and make a life for himself outside of the oppressive social structures he lives within ('i don't need folks.. i got friends.'). but crutchie's definitely aware of the injustice and cruelty of new york - and everywhere, honestly. there's a reason he doesn't want to get swept up in jack's santa fe fantasy, because crutchie knows he's always going to get the same (or potentially worse) treatment wherever he goes. and in a weird schaudenfreudy way, i think he gets some kind of satisfaction when other people know that. crutchie is a realist, he's the one who tells them all that they should just suck it up, buy their papers and hit the streets while they still can. he tries throughout the musical to be a positive influence on the already shitty world around him, calling weisel 'mister weisel' instead of weasel, joking around with the newsies even if they do piss him off at times ('the limp sells about fifty papes a week all by itself!', etc), but i do think there has to be some kind of comfort in knowing he's not alone in his resentment towards the world they live in, which does make me think of all the pigeon imagery in paris paloma's 'notre dame'.

I rarely go down there, the view's just So beautiful from here and I can see everybody At their worst points At their worst points I'm not a sadist, I enjoy just being able To be witness of the loneliness and be a higher power In case there isn't one In case there isn't one

(to be clear - i'm not trying to draw on the christian imagery in this song. no shade to matt duckett for the whole rosary thing, it made for some nice moments on stage, but crutchie was based on a real jewish newsie and that should be recognized)

so i got kind of hooked on the bird imagery while i was thinking of this one, especially city birds that are viewed as pests despite being forced to evolve into a space that no longer accommodates them. and as i was thinking of other bird songs (and listen, i may just be grasping at straws here) i did land on 'nesting season' by brian david gilbert - i know most of his songs are just for fun but i genuinely unironically love that song so much and i think it does make sense for crutchie as a character, just look:

It’s nesting season which means a lesser goldfinch Comes to my bedroom window Every morning between seven and nine And then she fights with the bird inside my window Not knowing that she’s fighting herself And her territory is fine

[...]

And so I’m grateful my favorite lesser goldfinch Keeps tapping at my window Because I think it is surely a sign That if I keep up with my self sabotaging It’s actually productive, and it means that everything will be fine

(brian david gilbert is a serious artist i will be taking no criticism)

like i've been saying, crutchie is (for the most part) okay with being overlooked - it's just that no one's letting him be overlooked. every day he has to be told by the delanceys and snyder and the whole world that he's 'lesser' - and he knows he isn't, but fuck if it doesn't get exhausting being told you are. and like i said earlier, that's why he doesn't want to get too into jack's santa fe fantasy, because he knows that he's not going to be treated any differently anywhere else. but at the same time, that's kind of what holds him back from a lot of his own happiness. crutchie's obviously not featured in 'king of new york' so as far as we know, crutchie doesn't really have his own 'big want' (i'm not including santa fe, because that was jack's dream that crutchie clung on to as a coping mechanism while in the refuge, and so i don't view it as his own personal goal). was this crutchie being overlooked by the writers, or was it something more? it's the first option, but i'm still going to go autism mode about it. crutchie doesn't seem to have his own goals because, as we see with jack in the santa fe prologue, he keeps shutting those goals down. it feels like (especially w/ matt duckett's crutchie) he doesn't WANT to aim higher to spare himself the disappointment if he misses. so he fights that hope off, putting all his energy into 'realism' that very quickly turns into jaded nihilism instead of creating something more for himself.

again, this is mostly just spit-balling. if you think it sucks, that's totally fine and i will happily read better posts about crutchie and the imagery he inspires - but as it stands, i have landed on urban birds, and i hope that is enough :)

#newsies #crutchie #ask #saveugoodmadam

[xmimiteh]

As I’ve been trying to make some background for my FC and my chocobo racing with Mimiteh, I realized this could be some nice things to pick up for anyone here. Also might be some hooks, if anyone wants to engage in rp with Mimi. So, here they are:

Chocobo racing news!

And don’t worry, I won’t claim this is “all” chocobo racing happening. I assume there are a lot more chocobo races than just the ones I will be posting here. These are just the ones Mimiteh participates in. The names are simply fictional NPCs I created out of a whim for it. So if anything does not work for you or collides with any of your stuff? Feel free to ignore it or simply say, this is just another race in the region – there could be several other races happen as well.

So, no territorial claims from me. Just some invitation to pick this up for inspiration. You need a topic to talk about? No need to talk about the weather, talk about the recent chocobo races! Want to bet on the races or make some money with it? Or lose it? Do it! I’ll see how much time I can put in here to give you some background. Some weeks it will just be the basics, sometimes I might throw in some interesting event.

This is basically like Fantasy Football with happy birds! As I never did Fantasy Football and I need to find my groove here, this might evolve over time. Don’t expect something too elaborated, because I usually build these things up step by step. I rarely do a lot of ooc pre-planning. I just improvise a lot.

If you have any question, idea or whatever, just send me a DM. Otherwise, have fun with it:

Chocobo race (name / catch-phrase): “High spirited racing” Location: Shroud / Tranquil Paths / Gridania Weather: Rainy (Day 1) / Rainy (Day 2) / Foggy (Day 3) / Clear (Day 4) / Clear (Day 5) Special: Tournament with 5 days of consecutive races

Racing Results:

1. Heavenly High – Warulo Rulo 2. Running Berserker – A’nura Nahar 3. Ul’dahn Gold – X’mimiteh Lhim 4. Inspired Speed – Tehwa’ran Ora 5. Clear Skyfall – Chester Roefield 6. Falling Meteor – Aaron Fyth 7. Walking Tree – Raging Boulder 8. Little Winner – Lorola Lora 9. Why so kweh? – Annabelle Greene 10. Big Chirper – Glymwynn Fjorlsn

Quick summary: This was an unusual race and not part of an on-going series or the season. The annual “High spirited racing” tournament in the Shroud. Several consecutive races with some weird point system for each race. In the end, points were added and the final results are as seen above. Also, special rules (very strict) to keep the spirits calm. Who could know racing could be this complicated?

How it went for Mimiteh: Surprisingly well! She complained a bit before about the weather. And to be fair, weather in the Shroud indeed is challenging for her and her chocobo. And the first three days were hard for them. But in the end, it cleared up and they finally managed to gain more points. Not enough to win, but still – a remarkable result especially in the Shroud! One of the best for the grumpy chocobo jockey in a long time. Commentators even commented on how she seemed in a way better form than she used to be – even more relentless in her pursuits and more aggressive.

--

Upcoming race: Seasonal Gold Saucer race Location: Thanalan / Sagolii Road

Racing Roster (only participants):

* Ul’dahn Gold – X’mimiteh Lhim * Desert Hopper – U’donna Werun * Cactuar Glory – Elisabeth Harrow * Syndicate Racer – Ulalala Lala * Stormy Cannon – U’hym Tia * Wild Beak – Soh’rae Quor * Why so kweh? – Annabelle Greene * Running Berserker – A’nura Nahar * Big Chirper – Glymwynn Fjorlsn * Falling Meteor – Aaron Fyth

#FF14 #Final Fantasy 14 #Final Fantasy XIV #Chocobo #Chocobo! #Kweh #Kweh! #Chocobo racing news #Chocobo races #X'mimiteh racing news

[hopeymchope]

True confessions from an RE:Zero convert

This might be more of a ramble than my better-organized reviews, but I have a lot to get off my chest.

Personal Backstory: The stuff you skip when reading a recipe

For a long time, I avoided isekai stories. They were so pervasive in anime/manga that I found them quite annoying.

When I first caved, it was only for comedies. I figured that, hey, they're taking the piss out of the genre; that sounds up my alley. So I felt it was safe to enjoy Konosuba. After that, I fell in love with Trapped in a Dating Sim... and to my surprise, it wasn't solely engaging for its overarching comedy. There was more characterization and interpersonal relationship stuff that grabbed me in that one.

That's probably what made me feel more receptive when I saw a couple of people call out Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion as an underappreciated anime highlight of 2023. I gave it a shot one afternoon with only mild expectations for it, and guess what? I adored it.

Yet despite ALL THAT? My expectations for RE:Zero were close to the floor. Raeliana had opened the floodgates, leading me to try some other isekai stories... yet I repeatedly found the ones I tried quite lacking. Furthermore, almost everything I'd read about RE:Zero over the years had been resoundingly negative in spite of its seeming popularity — a real "Sword Art Online" situation, basically.

But eventually, I was curious enough about why some people are invested in these characters that I started giving it a watch. These low expectations left me perfectly disarmed when it began to weave its spell over me.

Storytelling and Worldbuilding: Returning by death

You can neatly divide the show into story arcs, each representing a unique event/hurdle that the protagonist has to get past using his unique power.

The first arc of the story is mostly just setup for some of the important characters and the basic conceit. Our freshly isekai'd Japanese protagonist, Subaru, meets and bonds with a half-elf girl named Emilia, only to soon get tragically murdered. However, he just restarts his life from roughly one day earlier. He can go back in time by dying, giving him a new chance to take new approaches to situations and to accumulate knowledge via loops. Eventually, his "save point" advances to a new point in time... but what causes that to happen is left unknown for now. Making matters even worse is that if he tries to tell anyone about this superpower/curse, he feels intense chest pain as though he's about to be killed... so he has to keep this under wraps. (Though I still wish he'd try to tell people that he can't tell them. We never see if that'd work.)

With Subaru and Emilia established, the second arc introduces the most important supporting characters — Beatrice, Roswaal, Rem and Ram — and also puts one of them through a significant stretch of development. And finally, the third arc takes up the bulk of the series' first season, dealing with... frankly, a LOT. There's a lot crammed into it. You could even argue that it's got multiple smaller arcs stacked inside of it, and that would make complete sense. The third arc definitely does the bulk of the world-building/stage-setting for the future of the series, but there are details and background provided all throughout to get you up to speed on how people think here, how the government works, some of the existing races, etc.

I was initially taken aback by now blasé Subaru is about being transported to another world. This isn't a "death and reincarnation" thing like I've seen in most isekai stories; Subaru just blinks, rubs his eyes, and suddenly he's in a fantasy world just like that. And he... is completely unconcerned and unimpressed by that? It's a weird choice. Combine that with a point late in the first arc where he literally talks to the camera, and I thought maybe we were getting some kind of Deadpool-esque comedic commentary on isekai conventions.

It's the severity of the violence and related agony that makes me take it more seriously than that. I still find animated blood and gore extremely affecting — moreso than fake blood in live-action. That's probably because I was raised on Western animation that contained little to no sign of such violence, whereas Western movies and TV are full of corn syrup and other blood stand-ins. I'm just saying that when the deaths/kills come around in RE:Zero, they hit hard and often quite intensely. They're not showing entrails hanging out (even if they talk about it), but you can expect to see snapping bones and arterial spray. It's still a minority of the time, though; this is NOT a gorefest, and it's better off for that fact. When you suddenly get two minutes of ultraviolence after four episodes of relative peace, that makes it feel all the more effective.

It's not lookin' good there, chief.

I'm an easy mark for this stuff. Some of my primary entry points into anime were horror anime, so playing up this kind of horror gets me to sit up and take notice. It's not going to be anywhere near enough to keep my attention, though. I've certainly watched AWFUL horror anime that had nothing to boast about beyond their gore levels. That's where the quality of RE:Zero's character writing really saves the day.

What's really important to understand is that, through the strength of its gradual buildup of intensity helped along by showing the repeated consequences of failure Re:Zero manages to make some of the big anime shōnen  battles EXTREMELY hype! And yet, thanks to the great characterization? One of my favorite episodes in the whole show is an ep where two characters are just talking the entire time from a single location. THAT is the mark of something I love: If two characters holding a discussion for nearly half an hour has me COMPLETELY GLUED to it.

I've glossed over season two here because, although it still has some excellent moments, it's just not as good as the first. A big part of that is because it's just one giant-huge arc that covers all 26 episodes... and that's a LOT of time to spend on a single ongoing challenge/hurdle. It not only becomes exhausting and kind of boring to be confined to this problem/situation for so goddamn long, but it also makes it extremely obvious when Subaru is going to reach his final time loop and succeed. So once you piece together that the entire season is going to be stuck on this one arc, you realize you're stuck just waiting for him to get close enough to the season's end to finally achieve real progress. Once he does, though? It weirdly manages to feel like it's too soon -- like he didn't do enough to prepare all the problems at hand and somehow just won this time around because he tried super duper hard. There's also the fact that my favorite character from the first season is entirely sidelined (and apparently won't be in season 3 EITHER) — and nobody new manages to step into any similar shoes to pick up the slack.

Sounds like a good time to talk about that that character... as well as the rest.

Characters: The value of growth and change

One of the reasons I got into this so much is because the characters have flaws, go through changes, grow and develop. Rem is an early standout of this. As is apparently a common opinion, she quickly became my favorite character. Her shift from being suspicious and disdainful of Subaru to being 1000% supportive of him is EXTREMELY well-handled, and her sympathetic backstory is also one that we get before most other characters share their own. But when you get down to brass tacks, the main reason I think she's great is because she flips out and goes into violent combat mode whenever anyone she cares about is threatened. :D That's always a favorite archetype of mine. I love me a bloodstained hero or heroine who will march through hell and take any measure of punishment to save someone. Honestly, it makes it hard to understand why he'd so hooked on Emilia when Rem is so peak. And as I mentioned above, a big downside of season 2 is that Rem is completely absent past the first episode. In fact, she won't even be in the upcoming season 3!!! Alas, there is no "person who absolutely tears shit up and covers themselves in the enemy's blood to protect the ones they care about" character who steps in and picks up the slack, so I'm missing my favorite archetype after the first season. TSK.

She's not a princess (a lot of anger in it). Not your cutie girlfriend, oh no, don't you know?

I find it literally depressing that, to date, Rem is STILL not truly back in the cast of the source light novels - not in any way that matters. She makes her cameos via illusions or flashbacks or what-have-you, but she's not really there until she's physically AND mentally present once again. So until she returns to the team with all her memories (and therefore, her all-important character development) intact, I must legitimately ask: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, NAGATSUKI?!

Enough about Rem: We need to talk about the lead protagonist. Subaru is pretty brave throughout all this but really has to grow over the course of the first season and learn to be less self-serving and invest a lot harder into self-improvement. It's nice to see someone who clearly has blatant personal flaws but also is never a detestable person. I actually first saw him when I watched a few episodes of Isekai Quartet a couple years back, and frankly? I found him pretty loathesome over there. I was fully prepared for him to be a shitheel that I was inexplicably expected to like. I'm so glad that this isn't the case. In fact, I love having a character who wears his heart on his sleeve. He's not too manly to weep openly, and he's not afraid to act like a total doofus... or maybe he’s not smart enough sometimes to realize when he does. And although he may be frequently selfish and kind of stupid on multiple occasions, he never becomes one of those perverted male characters or too egotistical. Well... he gets a bit egotistical at times. Too much for someone like me, but... still not overmuch compared to many, many anime protags.

Panic! After Repeated Trauma

And yet... he does get a bit exasperating by the end of season two, imo. Partly because he doesn't grow too much in season two. At least he gets to confront his bottled-up feelings over leaving his homeworld behind, so that's nice. But otherwise, he's pretty much treated as this perfect man whose only major remaining flaw is a lack of combat skill. By the time you've got him convincing yet ANOTHER long-lived character to never give up and put all their faith into him personally just like he's done multiple times before, and it yet AGAIN works? The swelling music and the emotional reaction of the characters to him speechifying about how he'll always be there for them and needs them... that lands well maybe two times, but by this point — when he's talking to a character who has mostly treated him with disdain/avoidance and whom he's only hung out with maybe five or six times — it's pretty hard to swallow, honestly. But I'll try not to hold that against Subaru... I just want him to show some more flaws in future stories that go beyond just "He's not good at fighting." I want him to lose more arguments again. Besides, one of the best things in season two is when his mind starts to crack under the stress and pain of all the deaths he's endured. I think we should dig deeper into that.

I honestly love seeing a hero begin to crack under the pressure.

I kinda cheated by talking about Rem before Emilia. Emilia's the main female lead, after all, whereas Rem is a supporting player. The thing about Emilia, though, is that she's good and noble and pure-hearted from the start. She doesn't grow at all during season one, though at least she does show us a different side of herself when she questions Subaru's behavior during their argument. Season two sees her face her past and gain new inner strength, but she still undergoes far less change than Subaru or Rem in even just the first season. I'm glad they took the time to show her failing and then needing to learn in order to move forward, but Emilia's maybe just a little too perfect, y'know? One thing that garners her a lot of sympathy is that most everyone who meets her dislikes her just for being born a silver-haired half-elf. So many people associate that with one of the gravest threats to ever exist in this world that Emilia has to endure a lot of racism, and honestly? Confronting that racism is when the character is most engaging. So while Emilia is clearly likable and not totally uninteresting, she's not as interesting as a lot of the other players in the story. Most of the characters run deeper than her or have more mysterious goals. Compared to them, Emilia is an open book who rarely changes. The author of the books has said that Emilia is his favorite character, and maybe that's why he never sees much need to develop her. I think it does her a disservice.

On top of being beautiful and kind and intelligent, Emilia is also a powerful combatant. Because of course she is.

Her relationship with Subaru is a major focus, but it seems sort of hollow at first. Subaru admires her kindness/helpfulness and thinks she's beautiful, so he follows her around and dotes on her as much as he can. It's easy to see why he'd admire someone so good-hearted, but it starts to become a little cringe just how obsessively he dotes on her... and that cringiness peaks right around the moment when the two have a big argument and a falling out. It's an important scene that helps both characters, because it shows us Subaru's flaws on full display and also makes him confront just how cringey his devotion to Emilia can come off. Emilia, meanwhile, walks away to spend time without him for a while... though she never really rejects him, either. She really struggles with being independent. She keeps thinking about him and wishing he'd come back and make up with her. Clearly, she's gotten addicted to having a Hype Man around... and goddamn, I can't even blame her. Subaru looks at Emilia the way Stilgar looks at Paul Atreides. Who doesn't want that level of positive reinforcement available 24/7? By the end of season two, although both of them have grown, Subaru's still relentlessly hyping her up. He did criticize her (softly) in one major season two moment, but despite his claims otherwise, he still acts like she's an angel on Earth. And so, although he pool of their romance has grown deeper, it still feels like we've stepped out of the kiddie pool and into the shallow end. It means a lot more to see a character and their feelings grow and change over time, y'know? I suppose part of why we don't see that happening much is because Emilia is treated as so flawless to begin with.

Something I love in a long-running story is when a minor background character slowly starts to appear more frequently until - surprise! - they become a major cast member and full-time supporting player. Season two does this very successfully, and I love the character they expanded and brought into the cast. I feel like I shouldn't say too much about them for anyone who's a newcomer, because the gradual increase in their presence is so enjoyable. But it's a character who first appears in season one and has to wait numerous episodes of season two before they become important enough to get a front-row seat. It's very satisfying to watch them shift slowly from "fifth-tier supporting character who shows up for two scenes" into "major player."

Other characters? Ram is Rem's sister, and she's... not exactly a wealth of depth. Not yet, at least. She's mostly there to act tsundere. Her exact relationship with Roswaal remains hazy by the end of season 2, but she's clearly devoted to him and he's clearly doing... something for her? Roswaal and Beatrice both get by on acting mysterious. We learn a lot more about them in season two, and what we learn makes it hard to tear your eyes off Roswaal especially — he's a fascinating and weird bastard. Puck is a cat-like spirit with a lot of power and a very mischievious attitude. There's a surprising darkness lurking within him that keeps him from being some cute mascot-type. Season 2 also brings us some new characters whose long-term presence among the cast is still in question, but Echidna (not an Australian monotreme) is a standout. She really made me question everything I thought I understood about the moral good-and-evil situation in this reality.

Get those eyebrows under control. We ARE on television, y'know.

Serial Killin'

The series a whole is SO serialized and SO intense that it's really hard to watch it with gaps in-between episodes. Even taking one day off from the show mid-viewing proved too agonizing for me, so I was really grateful I could tear through seasons 1 and 2 in a rapid binge. I say this because... yeah, I don't see myself watching season 3 as it airs. Maybe I'll do a binge for each story arc it contains when they wrap up, or maybe I'll just wait for the whole season to conclude. But either way? This is something that demands to be binged in rapid succession.

I guess you get my point by now. I'm pretty hype about this series in spite of it holding some noteworthy flaws. I'm surprised I can still get so invested in something that dates back as far as 2016 that I haven't seen yet... and that gives me hope for what else I might discover going forward with my anime viewing.

#re:zero #re: zero #rezero #anime reviews #anime #isekai

[coppermouth]

i haven't been here long and i don't have a horse in this race, but i also don't think the content/flavor of hrpf has changed as much as some people think it has. here's my perspective as someone who did a kind of accidental chronological speed-run of the last 15 years of hockey fandom:

i started reading kane/toews fic before i knew anything about what happened in 2015—before i knew anything about either of them or any other player in real life vs their common fanon depictions—and all the most popular stuff on ao3 (that's still up) is quite fluffy. imagine my surprise to learn about pkane the actual human after reading about this weird little goofball twink for months. i was really under the impression when i first entered this fandom that the majority of fic was very edges-sanded-down escapism, not unlike the billion-and-one ofic m/m hockey novels that romance readers eat up.

if anything, my personal understanding of how hrpf fandom has shifted over the years is that authors have started to grapple more with the reality of hockey culture because of what happened with kane. his ship dominated as this fandom was coalescing, before any major drama, so there was maybe a certain willful ignorance that we could all participate in. but when the rug got pulled, the people who stayed had to think about how to balance reality with fantasy probably harder than they'd ever had before.

now that i've caught up with the times and have branched out into reading more recent fic, i see a pretty solid mixture of hockey-romance-softness and "realism," and it seems to depend on the author and the ship more than saying something about the broader culture, but it's true that a lot of fic from the 1988 era is wiped from the face of the internet and i don't have access to much of what was being hosted on lj vs ao3, so i am missing some context.

but! there's A LOT of hrpf now; the fandom is only getting bigger and producing more content. i think it's just as ikely that what we're seeing is more a result of the circles we float in coupled with the nature of fanfiction as an escape rather than a categorical shift. the stuff that gets popular generally tends to be on the fluffier side. and because there's simply more fic now than ever before, maybe it takes a little more digging than it used to to find the darker/more nuanced/morally gray content.

but it's definitely still there. because i'm reading it!

#literally no disrespect to folks who feel like there's been a shift in quality or away from the kind of content they like #but conversations about how fandom “just aint what it used to be” kind of frustrate me #the nature of fan creation means that there will only ever be MORE for us to consume #youre not losing out when there's in influx of a certain trope or narrative style #the thing we love is getting more attention! it's growing! #as someone who just came from a dying fandom i think this kind of discussion doesnt ultimately help anyone. #you cant force people to write what you want to read #but you can make newer fans feel bad for not doing fandom “the right way” #and that sucks

[computerything]

Opinions on The Adventure Zone [comic vers.]

I decided to, a while back, read up to book 3 of the comic version of TAZ along with skimming book 4 enough to get a good idea of it. And I've certainly got a few thoughts here in this noodle of mine.

Disclaimer: I have not listened to the original podcast the comic is based on. I've only read the books. So keep that in mind.

Also, spoiler warning.

Individual reviews:

Book 1: I rather enjoyed it! It was some silly guys going on silly adventures with a nice helping of drama and mystique, mainly from the flame glove thing and all the weird static talk. The characters were likeable in a doofus-y way, and I liked the implication that there was advanced tech in this universe in addition to magic. That's something I wished was in more fantasy.

I really liked Magic Bryan's over-the-top theatrics. I do find it odd that a supposedly high-level wizard lost to a bunch of random adventures, but okay, it's DnD. That stuff happens for the plot.

The magic fire glove was badass, and I like the concept of the guy using it being consumed by his own rage and going ham. Rather fitting.

Art wise, the style was very nice. I like the semi-sketchiness of it, it fits the narrative!

Book 2: I didn't like this one quite as much as book 1. We meet the Bureau of Balance, who immediately act suspicious. For heaven's sake, they have a damn otherworldly abomination that sucks the knowledge out of people's brains on a universal scale! Yet it's played off as "perfectly fine" and "nothing to worry about." Huh? Wha? It's... it's a giant brainwashing jellyfish thing... and that's not spooky? WHAT? And don't worry, I have more to say about these bureaucratic buffoons.

Garfield was great though. Very cool guy.

Anyway, the idea of a murder mystery on a train is absolutely awesome. Murder on the Oriental Express, anyone? But everyone clowning on the murderer [Jeeves, this butler-looking guy] made him feel like less than an actual threat, and his rather anticlimactic disposal felt contrived and forced.

I rather liked the concept of the Oculus, the idea of making an army out of illusions is kind of neat. A shame that not only was it never really used, the damn bureau destroys it.

This was when I began to realize that I hated the BoB. Rather than research the artifacts and try to find a way to safely use them, they just destroy them. Sure, they're dangerous, but perhaps there's a way to filter their power so that it is no longer corruptive? But no. Artifact bad, must destroy. Knowledge bad, must feed to big fish. Urgh.

Book 3: Kind of not super memorable to me. Uh... The car designs were pretty neat. I like the idea of underground racing, it's an old trope but it's a good one. The artifact was cool, though I wish it was more racing-based. Or the race was more plant-based, like in a giant tree or something. That would have rocked.

Overall, I really liked Hurley and Sloane's dynamic. They had nice chemistry and I actually felt for them! In fact, Sloane was definitely the star of this one. I always love a badass thief with a cool outfit, lol.

The one thing I didn't like was that it felt like Sloane being turned evil was just shoved in by the DM to go, "See? See? The BoB is good because the artifacts made this lady go all evil and kill her girlfriend! And she felt so much guilt she sacrificed herself too! The artifacts are totally evil guys! More evil than the BoB!"

And the random council guy turning all evil was kind of pointless. I felt nothing when he died.

Book 4: Oh boy do I have some words about this one.

Positive first... positive first...

Uh, the setting was nice. I like science facilities. The imminent demise of the world was a pretty good motivator, too.

The main guy trying to bring people back from the dead [cough cough his mom] in robot bodies was a little cliché but still a neat concept.

The art was pretty much at its peak here, I think. I love the robot designs!! I love guys with screens for faces so much. Especially Hodgepodge, he was such a silly smug bastard.

Hodgepodge...

Dear, sweet hodgepodge... he didn't deserve to perish. Him dying because of the jellyfish's meddling took my hatred for the BoB from mild annoyance to PURE UNBRIDLED LOATHING. Actually, this whole book kind of did, really.

As I implied before, TAZ has this weird underlying plot thread of "knowledge is evil" that has always bothered me, and it's on full display here, and even extends a bit into "scientists are evil" territory.

For starters, apparently none of the science guys' ideas are theirs, they're just stolen from other dimensions. Which is stupid as hell. If this is supposed to be "no idea is original" again, it does a poor job.

For another, the science guy's mom goes crazy from, you guessed it, knowledge, and would rather die than have said knowledge. Which really pissed me off because I'm the kind of freak who would read all the forbidden texts which drive people mad.

And for yet another, the BoB is portrayed as heroic all over again. The comic literally ends with them all agreeing to trust the director of the BoB and called stupid for having any doubts about the organization. So remember: don't think, don't seek to learn things, just blindly follow your superiors!

Overall:

TAZ has wonderful art and pretty neat characters, settings, and scenarios, but is deeply undermined by it's uncanny promotion of blind trust, discouragement of thinking, and hatred of knowledge. It's weird and creepy.

Also, I will not forgive them for killing hodgepodge. Look at this smug little feller:

Poor guy. Rest in pieces.

#taz #taz balance #taz comic #review #ramblings #sorry for how poorly structured this is I'm not a great reviwer

[magic-is-something-we-create]

Writer Education Tag

THANK YOU @ashen-crest FOR THE TAG NOW I HAVE REASON TO SHARE A BUNCH OF THE WEIRD THINGS IVE HAD TO RESEARCH <3<3<3

Rules: Writers often have to research some pretty out-there stuff for our wips. What are some weird, unusual, or oddly specific things you’ve had to learn about or look into?

-- Turkish Reflex bows (construction materials, draw weights, differences from recurves, use in combat, how they're drawn (using the thumb instead of the forefingers) and also dips into variants from other cultures like iirc Mongolian archery) (Related fun fact: I've tried out archery a few times just to get an idea for how it feels!!) -- A Lot of weird animals for creature/fantasy race designs (Gharials, cowtail stingrays, phantom jellyfish, oarfish, orchid mantises, bronze parotia birds of paradise, gyr cattle, etc. etc. etc.) -- Legal terms for things like "this dude is standing in for someone who isn't here" and "knowing about a first degree murder before the fact and not stopping it" (pro tempore and accessory to [crime], respectively) which prompted deep dives into niche lawyer things of which only like 2% stuck in my brain -- Sign language!! And Language-Assisted Signs, because those are different a lot of the time and I wanted to know How and Why to portray Ash and Ice respectfully (Another related fun fact: half of my ASL research has been for use outside of writing, too, because I have Deaf family members. Also, I learned the ASL alphabet when I was 9 and that's come in clutch.) -- Speed of travel for different types of age-of-sail ships, and how to calculate that for a fantasy world where the routes are up to you and not currents of wind and water alike -- Altitude sickness/the Bends -- Ocular autohemmorrhaging (aka squirting blood out your eyes as a defense mechanism. lizards do this a lot) (this was for dragons) -- Differences in symptom presentation between Multiple Sclerosis and Transverse Myelitis (I determined that Lorelei has Multiple Sclerosis) -- Necrosis (Don't look this one up if you have a weak stomach) -- How bog bodies happen and work -- Rabies -- Different forms of paddle boats historically used for swampy navigation -- Traditional Chinese junk rigging, and how it was used in Sampan ships -- Gyroscopes and how they work/what they do/specifically the one in the plane that flew a telescope and had to keep it steady but the name of which ive forgotten -- Many Illegal Kinds Of Knives (did you know certain kinds of switchblades are illegal almost everywhere?? i didn't until semi recently. theyre some of the sexy ones too </3) -- How wing shape affects flight ability in birds -- How owl wings, specifically, are so Quiet (its the feather construction. i still dont quite get it but im tryin) -- Afrofuturistic architecture/the Afrofuturism movement as a whole -- Dancing swords/sabers with a specific focus on their grips and lack of hand guards, and the forms people used when fighting with them -- An Unreasonable amount of sewing techniques which I am now trying to make excuses for annie to reference. -- Fresco painting techniques (ended up not relevant) -- Marble sculpting techniques -- And of course a ton of research into PTSD, traumatic memory loss, OCD, the Autism + ADHD spectra (so i dont just copy-paste myself on everyone), Schizophrenia, etc. etc. for better/kinder portrayals

That is. By Far not an exhaustive list but yeah <3 i enjoy research and talking about the weird shit i learn solely through the hodgepodge of information axes i follow on the regular

I'll tag: @vacantgodling, @space-cadead, @sleepyowlwrites, @athena-anna-rose, and @comicgoblinart!! As always, absolutely 0 pressure to play if you dont want to, and this doubles as an open tag if you do!!

#tag game #aboutthewarlord #idk how else to tag this............. #anyway. feel free to ask me about literally any of this stuff #and/or how sail ships work #and the differences between them #and why different sails/sail construction is used in different cultures/contexts #i know a lot about boats. only some of it comes up in the books

[itsbenedict]

Two-Faced Jewel: Types of Magic

Obviously a fantasy setting's gotta have wizards, or else what's the point? The Jewel has several different types of magic, designed by the gods for mortal use- mostly. There's four main kinds of arcane magic wizards can learn (plus a secret fifth):

Epistomancy- the magic of language and communication, and the foundation of all other arcane magic via the rune language used to write spells.

Thermomancy- the magic of creating and destroying heat, producing fireballs and electricity and air pressure fronts and all that good classic elemental magic crap.

Motumancy- forcefields, telekinesis, animating things and making 'em move around how you want. The math is fiendishly complicated and being any good at it is rare.

Pneumancy- the manipulation of an intangible vapor that can assume different shapes and states of matter, used for anything that requires "summoning" physical objects.

Necromancy- manipulation of 'black mana', a viscous and typically-intangible liquid-like substance that sticks to dead things, including souls.

All arcane magic uses "mana", an energy produced in varying quantities by living things. The type of mana you produce changes on a day-to-day basis, so wizardry requires editing all your spells every day to work with your new mana configuration. Imagine maintaining a codebase where the underlying language implementation changes every day... yeesh. Probably take a few years off your lifespan, which, hey, regular practice of arcane magic also does, whoops.

In addition to arcane magic, there's a grab bag of other stuff:

Theomancy- cleric magic, wherein someone whose brain is sufficiently similar to a particular gods' brain can share their processing power to let a god manifest inside them and perform miracles directly. Very few limits on what can be done, apart from 'what the god is willing to do'. Occasionally contained in specialized ancient relics from the days the gods walked the Jewel.

Spatiomancy- teleportation, shrinking, and space-folding- a branch of magic that suddenly broke and winked out of existence 273 years ago, killing almost all its practitioners (who were in the habit of storing objects in pocket dimensions inside their bodies, which rapidly expanded on catastrophic failure.) The gods don't know what the hell happened there.

Sylvomancy- druidic nature magic, which requires a weird hippie mindset and can be used to predict the weather and transform into animals. Poorly-understood and of limited utility since you can't do it unless you don't want to use it for anything too fancy.

Monstromancy- the monsters that claw their way up out of the ocean trenches and caverns deep below the mountains can do all kinds of bullshit, including computationally-complicated biological and mind-affecting magic that nothing but the gods can match. Highly varied and hard to make use of due to being stapled to omnihostile abominations even the gods don't know the origin of.

Whatever the heck Looseleaf's "Spirit Magic" is- all physical objects have souls, which are intangible copies of the object that slowly update to match their hosts. Looseleaf can mess with them and then push the correspondence to go the other way, making complex changes with an intuitive interface that's way easier and more powerful than nearly any other type of magic. What's going on here...?

There might be a few other sorts of magic hanging around- like whatever powers dragon prophecy, or the natural magic that maintains various magic races- but what magic is generally not capable of:

Time travel, ever. Just say no.

Teleportation, now that Spatiomancy is broken, unless you're Saelhen for some reason

Complex biological or mind-manipulating effects, unless you're a god or a monster or Looseleaf for some reason

Sending signals much faster than the speed of sound, without translating them into EM waves first

Creating persistent magical enchantments that don't require mana sources

Converting other resources into extra mana

Maybe some of those will soon change? The world's overdue for a technological revolution, really...

#twofaced jewel #worldbuilding

[engl333blog]

final reading roundup

knight: this is just one of those pieces where. you suddenly remember how arbitrary ostensibly non-arbitrary things are? i’ve spoken about this in the discussion boards but it’s like... wait, we made the alphabet up. it’s not some immutable fact of the universe. which is fascinating, because in turn, when we get to collections--it’s easier to remember that the way we collect speaks more about the values of the collector than of the collection’s intrinsic worth.

trettien: THIS IS SO GOOD ON THE HEELS OF THE KNIGHT PAPER. 

“... we might read this move as a deliberate, even protofeminist, media innovation: that is, by applying their domestic skills to “hacking” (cutting, chopping) printed books, the women of Little Gidding carve out a space in which to publish their work in a culture that was otherwise hostile to their participation.”

i spent a bit of time on levi-strauss and derrida’s bricolage last term and thought about it as a means of adaptation: the protagonist of chris abani’s graceland spends his time building western culture into his life in nigeria not just as a livelihood but as a means of self-expression? not only do the little gidding texts apply in the DIY sense of bricolage, and in the collage sense of putting stuff together--but also the almost intertextual nature of what they put together. theophilus as the addressee of luke, but also luke’s preface, and all that--there’s a very pointed reference to be had there, and a certain amount of knowledge needed to parse it

(i actually also think a little bit of the web-weaving trend going around on here. users pick a theme and pop specific texts together. or of blackout poetry/found media)

brylowe: OH hello miranda burgess! (literally cited, very fun.) there’s this... argument to be made, i guess, about prioritizing the constructedness of everything. we think about ideas, or about the actual work of labour, but the paper underneath it seems... always there. it just Is. but in reality, as brylowe calls out, the paper needs to be made: and where that paper comes from is--was--frequently very smart and very cool, but not always savoury. something something spectrality, the secret weird stuff going on in history that makes the surface level social dynamics--like in austen!--possible. there’s a kind of... fantasy of labourlessness that’s at play when we forget about the materials we work with. 

senchyne: there’s a PAPERWORK STUDIES??? also speaking of bricolage...

“A single sheet of paper really was composed of thousands of shreds of cloth collected from all over, and possibly from within one’s own community. Thus it is not unimaginable, if a bit fantastical, to entertain the unlikely possibility of one’s own shirt being comingled with the neighbor’s in the paper one read.”

the paper and what is printed on it being presented as both metaphor for society and integral to the continuance thereof... it’s very much “only YOU can stop forest fires” type rhetoric, the way that contributing to the stock of rags is like, a more serious form of patriotism. which of course in turn sparks the more ideological form of patriotism (which is the talking). where brylowe was calling out the way the labour of paper-making is elided, it’s interesting that here it’s highlighted and turned into something Bigger. 

garibaldi: this is so--it’s a lot to have going on. i’ve spoken somewhat on the boards about like, the role of representation and the slow ascent into the era of sensitivity readers. the discourse is Fraught for sure, and not in a new way either: watching Black authors themselves figure out how to talk about race and racism to children feels a lot like something that might happen now. and it’s like--we see a lot about reading and papermaking as integral to shaping and putting forward ideas like patriotism, and it kind of hammers home how... if something isn’t Out There then it’s so much more of a pain to get it out there? it’s so much harder to think something when you haven’t got anything to build off of (which is how the little things about plantations apparently passed muster like ???????) 

hayles: i’ve made my thoughts known already on the discussion board about embodied reading (!!!) and the work of sorting through text. but all things told, i thought that the “aesthetic of bookishness” was going to be something else. i mean i owned up to this in the judging a book assignment, but i’m not a stranger to the image of being “literary”, leather tomes and all. there’s a weird, hyperspecific clout that i think being “a reader” who “reads for fun” carries (in my circles anyway) especially now that everything’s so digital. it’s something to Choose to Do instead of something that’s just done--too many formats, too many other choices of leisure??? i think to some extent the book might also come to represent--the establishment, i guess. a sanctioned kind of knowledge--an archive of credibility, no matter how inane or ridiculous the actual content it. (i read the hayles before i read the senchyne but this is great with derrida’s paper machine.) i think of julietta singh’s “no archive will restore you” where she kind of talks about the competitiveness of grad school being built on what “archives” you’ve built for yourself--what, exactly, is it that you know? which might be a different kind of bookishness in and of itself. 

#reading thoughts

[solacefruit]

would you ever talk about your original writing here? sorry if this is a weird question, it's okay to just ignore this if you don't want to answer!

Hello there! Thank you for writing in. For future reference, there’s no harm in asking, so don’t worry about that! I can always decline if I don’t want to talk about any particular topic. :) 

It’s a pretty interesting question, and one I ask myself a lot. I’m not sure I have an answer yet, to be honest. 

In theory, I really like the idea of sharing my real world (not fanfiction, not anonymised) work on the platforms I have. In part, because I like sharing what I create and I’m proud of it and it’s disappointing to think that there’s people who follow here who like what I do and might miss out if I don’t directly link it. For example, I have a couple of small publications already out and some projects in the future that I’m very excited for, but since all that’s attached to my real life actual full name, I’m tentative to share that info and basically doxx myself to every passing stranger who drifts through this blog. So that’s tricky.

Another part is just good business sense, you know? If you’ve got people who already like what you do and want more of it, it only makes sense to give those people an opportunity to access more of what you make. Those people are often your biggest champions in the early days of a work -- the hipsters, if you will. They knew your work before you were cool (n.b., you may never be cool) and they’re the people most likely to pick up future work, because they trust you as a creator, and also most likely to recommend your work to other people, which is huge. So much publishing (professionally, independently, self-published, zines, any project without a megacorporation marketing budget) gets a massive leg-up from word-of-mouth. Can’t flourish if you can’t be found, and all that.

Ultimately, I think what’s going to happen is if I hit a point where publicity and reaching my audience for my work is more valuable overall than anonymity (+ not being associated in my professional life with cat fanfiction, ha) then I’ll probably start sharing links to my real world stuff here when/if that time comes. I’ve thought an option might be a newsletter or something, especially if I ever feel I’m done with this blog? We’ll see.

As far as talking about what I’m working on/will be working on in the near future, I always have a lot of projects bubbling away in my mind (unbidden). Ideally, my next five years will be dedicated to making:

Novels

adult fantasy court intrigue-style novel duology, feat. a massively underrepresented (underappreciated!) fantasy race & the non-normative relationship + community models I’ve created for them

new adult (? not sure what the boundaries for these genres are anymore) fantasy novel that poses and perhaps answers a question that has always haunted and intrigued me for many, many years -- “what if Jesus Christ Superstar’s messy m/m/f throuple of revolutionaries was happening in a biopunk-solarpunk world and had some really fucked-up dragons?” 

Games (TTRPG + other)

collaborative work with a talented industry friend on a science fantasy fusion ttrpg 

short ttrpg very much still in early development about grief, history, nightmares, loyalty, faith, skeletons, art, immortality, regret, reparations, legacy, and dogs  :)

in my dreams: a functional CMS (construction + management simulation) game about haunted houses; in practice, as I have very few of the skills required for that dream: an illustrated guidebook for the game that does not exist (but feels like it could)

ditto above but this time for a CMS game about mythical + fantastical +folkloric creatures. Imagine Zoo Tycoon. But for animals that don’t really exist. 

Poetry

get to the Australian national level for the slam

In among all this, I still want to be getting smaller poetry and short fiction publications out there as much as I can. I believe in that whole “aim for the moon -- if you miss, you still land among the stars” thing, so that’s what I’m doing. 

Not sure if this is really of interest, but I hope it answers your question! 

#reply #a brief reveal behind the curtain

[leatherlaceandrope]

Hi, call me Legion. This is my really kinky sideblog where I cum come to be horny. I'm a good and sometimes feisty kitty. Don't worry, I try not scratch and bite too hard. I prefer cuddles and pets most of the time. 😻😻😻

I'm a 31 year old trans creature man and go by he/him and it/its pronouns. It's complicated and kinda fluid, like it's 5d spacetime instead of just 4d. Also still feminine because I love cute and pretty things. And as my blog description says, bisexual because I specifically like to go by vibe more than anything else. So, really just plain queer.

I'm also a polyfrag DID system, so different parts have slightly different preferences. We're not likely to talk about it outside this post but it is important. It basically means our gatekeeper team has full control of what can and can't be done to our mind. Some of us refer to one of our oldest alters as Sir, because right now we need him to fill a dominant role for us. System relationships have been our main way of exploring what we like. If you do want to see that mess of recovery, it's @eldritch-queern-magicat.

As a whole, I'm not looking for any serious relationships. I don't care if I just happen to fall into one, but I'm not actively looking. There's a lot of other stuff I need to sort out first before I get to that point. This is simply about having fun with others.

Anyway here's the stuff I'm definitely into:

Hypnosis/mindlessness/brainwashing

Dronification/robotification/dollification

Objectification (with praise/aftercare)

Tentacles/monster fucking

Bondage

Pet play

Spanking/biting (not super hard though)

Edging/orgasm denial

Bimbofication/dumbification (because feminine yay plus I think way too much sometimes)

Mommy domme little boy

There are other things, but you'll have to message me privately for those because they're really not for everybody and are entirely restricted to fantasy roleplay (because puberty did some weird things I'm still figuring out)

Other notes about what I like:

I'm always a kitty-cat first but I'm not against exploring playing as other animals (this can be creative because I love animals in general)

Please call me a cute little thing or something like it, or pretty

Femboy, girlboy, or girly boy are cool, too

My top is my chest, and those are the only words I want used

Though you may call my bottom some variation of man/boy pussy/cunt

It/its pronouns aren't totally for kinky reasons but they do amplify some of the effects by nature of their common use

I'm often eager to please and make sure other participants are having a good time so I expect needs to be communicated clearly

I've got a history of being really shy with others so even a bit of praise can go so far because I want to be appreciated

You're gonna have to build up to some of the spicy stuff I'm not listing here to make sure you actually respect boundaries

And then my absolute HARD NOs:

Tickling, bodily waste (scat, piss, vomit, etc), weight loss/gain, age play, race play, incest, any physical endangerment (I'm putting breath-play (that isn't just holding your breath longer than normal) under this, as an asthmatic)

If something you're into isn't on the list of stuff I'm definitely into, but it's not listed as a hard no, message me and we can talk about it. I'm not just going to close myself off to new ideas or kinks even if I don't understand them. May even lead to expanding my yay list. I'm an incredibly curious person.

My DNI is the basics for a kink blog, really. I don't want bigots and assholes here, and ABSOLUTELY NO ONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18. No minors. This is an adult-only space. That said, if you don't have your age listed and easy to find, that's on you. I will not be held responsible for the ‘what if’ you happen to be under age 18 but just aren't saying so/are actually lying. But I will use my own discretion if I have reason to suspect you're under 18. If confirmed, you will be reported and blocked. I'm operating on good faith of only adults interacting with this sideblog. Any form of age indication, even if you just say 18+ only or something, still makes me feel more comfortable with interacting here than none.

If you want something for some non-sexual, still weird fun, allow me to direct you to my general audiences drone roleplay blog, @drone-unit8454. Just remember to keep the horny shit here.

No unsolicited real life pictures by the way! And pictures of genitals will be responded to appropriately by you ending up blocked. I'm also absolutely not be giving out any pictures of myself. I'm really shy about showing myself to people online. Especially since it's Tumblr. What I do accept are things like spirals and other such gifs. If you're not sure about something, just ask.

I have the most real world experience as a sub, but if you're exclusively a sub, I wouldn't mind acting as a soft, service-oriented dom. Like I said, I'm eager to please (but let's also take it easy starting out). Either way, I'll always try to be flexible within reason. My ask box and messages are open.

Will probably edit this thing as time goes on.

#k!nk blog #k1nk blog #my kinks

[hatterfae]

Fantasy Incarnation, chapter 3

For real, though, despite this going to be where I talk about my pixie stuff, I'm still going to post story stuff since I'm also a writer and proud of that shit.

So enjoy!

Ch 3

Alex lay on the couch on her side, wings spread out behind her.  With one hand holding up her head and the other reached over to the channel buttons on the remote control that was as large as she was, the only conclusion she thought she could reach at this time was simply: Daytime television sucked.

She’d started watching the news channels, but nothing had come up regarding anything related to her and her sister’s case of waking up as a fantasy body double.  After the third “feel-good” segment of animals, she started channel hopping to find anything more interesting.  

She still had not succeeded in that when the sound of both her sister’s and mother’s voices got her attention from outside.  Both were yelling at each other, though she couldn’t make out the words they were saying.  With a tired sigh, knowing full well what was very likely going to happen, Alex stood up, stretched her limbs and wings, and flitted up to lay on the back of the couch to at least get a good view.  

The door opened and their mother stepped in, eyes scanning the room to see what was going on.  “ALEX, DON’T LEAVE THE TV ON IF YOU’RE NOT WATCHING IT,” she shouted up the stairs, missing the small pixie with her head propped up on her hands. “Honestly, why don’t the two of you actually pay attention to what you’re doing? I don’t have the ability to call off of work just because my kids are acting up!” 

Claire walked in, closing the door behind her.  “Look, okay?  It’s not like I wanted you to come home early!” she yelled back, then doing a small take as she noticed the pixie.  “Alex, look, tell her that this isn’t just something we’re doing to screw with her.” 

Their mother stalked towards the kitchen, searching for her son.  “Alex isn’t down here, Claire.  He’s probably up on his computer doing whatever.” 

Claire pointed at Alex.  “No, he’s right here,” she told her mother.  

Alex met her mother’s gaze as it finally resolved on her.  “Something really weird is going on,” she said, fluttering her wings a little to fully illustrate the problem.  

Their mother didn’t say anything in response.  Her eyes traveled from Alex to Claire and back again, then she sighed and brought a hand up to her face to rub her eyes.  “Everyone.  Kitchen.  Now,” she said, turning around to head to the kitchen table.  

Claire gestured for her sister to take the lead.  “You first.” 

Alex made a sour face and got up, flitting into the kitchen slowly enough enough that it didn’t seem like she was racing, with Claire following behind.  As the two of them got into the kitchen, their mother was at the fridge, staring at a bottle of liquor in her hand before putting it back on the shelf and shutting the door.  

Claire took a seat at the table, with Alex kneeling on the table to make herself comfortable.  Their mother sat across the table from them, propping her head up in her hands and staring at the small pixie.  “You’re Alex, right?” she started, then shook her head a little.  “No, don’t answer that.  I know you’re Alex.  You’re too much like him not to be.”  Alex held her hands up in a gesture of surrender.  “So the next question, why are you a girl?” 

Claire’s gaze snapped to Alex at that question, looking down at her sister.  Alex, for her part, gave a pained smile and rubbed at the back of her neck.  “It’s not like I meant to do this,” she admittedly, blushing hard at the question.  “I just woke up like this and it’s like… I don’t think it’s wrong, y’know?” 

Their mother blew out a breath and closed her eyes, then leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.  “The elf ears, I could write off as a prank.  Super glue, maybe, and some really good prosthetics or costume pieces.  This?”  She shook her head, looking back down at the table.  “Okay, so the two of you aren’t screwing with me.  Explain what you do know.” 

“It’s like I told you in the car, we woke up like this.  Except, um… I’m guessing our old bodies are laying in bed still?”  Claire offered, trying to make it seem like it was no big deal.  

Their mother’s gaze went to Alex, who simply nodded in agreement.  She stood up with another pained sigh.  “Come on then, you two, let’s go look at what this is,” she said as she started walking back down the hall to the stairs.  

Alex was up first; in the air and flitting near to her mother’s head.  “So you’re not mad?” she asked, suspicious.  

“I’m livid. Because this is the sort of crap you should have called me home over,” she answered as she went up the stairs.  “Instead, you pile up on the couch and she goes to school like nothing’s happened.”

“To be fair,” Claire offered, “It’s not like I couldn’t go to school, and we figured that it’d keep until you got off of work.”

Their mother stepped through the open door into Alex’s room, looking to see her other body laying in bed, still visibly asleep.  She moved over to check his breathing, then pulled an arm out to check for a pulse, then pulled an eye open. “Alive, no obvious drugs, but nobody’s home,” she muttered.  

“How do you know?” Alex asked, kneeling down on her own old forehead.  

“Stuff from before you were born,” she answered, letting go off the eyelid and standing up.  “I’ll need to check Claire’s room too, but…” she started to say, then pulled her phone out of her pocket, dialing a number on it and holding it to her ear.  “Hey Mark,” she finally said when someone else answered.  “It’s Elise.  Yeah, I know, I haven’t been in touch, been busy with kids and work, you know how it is.  Listen, I’ve got some extremely weird shit going on over here, and I’ve got a couple of unconscious kids here that I don’t think we can handle on our own.  No, listen, they’re my kids, but it’s… look, okay, it’ll be easier to explain when you get here, because it’s too weird to try and explain it over the phone.  I’m going to need to get them to the hospital, but I don’t think I can get this on my own and I’m sure as  shit not calling an ambulance.  Yeah, okay, see you in fifteen, bro.”  

“So Uncle Mark’s coming over?” Claire asked from the doorway.  

Their mother nodded.  “We’re going to get you two… or… ah, shit, we’re all going to the hospital now to figure out what the hell’s going on, okay?  And to make sure that you two aren’t like, going to explode or something, and the other two of you aren’t just going to die without warning, okay?”  

#my writing #fantasy #writeblr

[foxounderscorecube]

A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara

2¼ ⭐

CW: discussion of sa, abusive relationships, and sh. This book really has it all. Unfortunately.

My uncle's really into films; he especially likes horror. When I was a teenager, he was going through a phase of watching all the "video nasties" and, somewhere around the same time, he got into giallo films - artsy Italian slasher stuff. I don't recall exactly, but it was probably one of these sorts of films where, walking through the living room, I watched a scene in which a woman was running from something, terrified. Don't know what order the things happened in, but I'm pretty sure she ran towards a caravan and was hitting at the door while some rats were trying to chase her or something, and then the guy in the caravan opened the door with an axe in hand, and she screamed and ran away from him, only to be attacked by dogs, something like that. I stood and watched and said, "Huh. She's having a bit of a bad day."

This book was a lot like that scene of that anonymous film I saw a few minutes of, but for 800 pages. Well, slight exaggeration. Only most of the book was like that.

The story follows Jude, primarily, and I really like Jude. I found him pretty relatable, which isn't great, really, but he is likeable. He has friends of varying importance: the blurb implies that the friends are of equal importance, but poor Malcolm gets the short end of the stick (which is a shame, because his relationship with his race and privilege had a lot of promise to be interesting until he got sidelined). JB kind of wanders in and out, being a bit obnoxious despite a good heart, and mostly serves to piss Jude (and Willem, by extension) off terribly or to make a beautiful art series that makes Jude have a bit of an existential crisis. Willem is his best friend and mostly a sweetie. I say "mostly" for reasons I will expand upon shortly.

Jude is very depressed and very traumatised. This is made clear very early on, where we meet the primary characters and get to know their personalities, dynamic, and idiosyncracies. This part of the book had a lot of promise for me. I liked the darkness in it, but the friendship dynamics are wonderfully written and each character had something about them I wanted to know a bit more about, which is a good start. The writing itself is beautiful, too.

It did contain a trope about self-harm I always wonder about. Here's the thing: I've been self-harming by cutting for over ten years, on and off. I'm currently in a period where I haven't cut for over a year (everyone say "good job!!") but it's one of those things where I'd never say I recovered. I have to put a lot of effort into not doing it because I've never found anything to vent feelings that's healthier and as effective. Not great, I know. In media, so often, characters who self-harm always wear long sleeves to cover their cuts. This first comes up when Jude's friends speculate why he never shows his arms, and someone offers up that his sister's friend was the same because she cut herself. In my experience, if you're cutting your arms, you either don't care or you kind of want them to be seen. When I was a teenager, my self-harm was to prove a point to the people who bullied me as much as it was anything else; as an adult, I only cut my arms during lockdown when nobody was really going to notice them. If I wanted my cuts to be hidden in daily life, I would simply do them somewhere else.

This could be me being weird. A lot of the aspects of Jude's self-harm felt very realistic to me. His horrid fantasies about causing absurd bodily harm to himself and taking the cuts a step further is something I'd never seen in a piece of media before. I thought that was just me. The attitude he has towards it, that it isn't that serious and people make too much of a fuss, is something I've navigated before, too. But the long sleeves thing and the fact he seems to have no very minor self-harm habits - as in, stuff he does when he can't go and cut (I used to pull at my nails and claw at my neck when I was a teenager, for example) are off to me in what is otherwise such a detailed portrayal.

This leads in pretty nicely to something I found pretty unpleasant about the book. Now, I love horrible, graphic, gratuitous shit. Always have. I'm a morbid kind of person, what can I say. However, for a good part of the mid-section of the book, I was bored of how horrible it was. It was a chore to read.

Most of it was Jude's backstory, which is hinted at from the start and revealed more fully over the course of the story. Apparently, every adult man ever was desperate to fuck a juvenile Jude, no matter what. If something could be made even more traumatic, it was. I mean, seriously! When Brother Luke, the monk that groomed Jude and took him away from the monastery (where he was, of course, being raped by the other monks) is about to be arrested for sex trafficking him, he runs to the bathroom and hangs himself, and as Jude is being led away from the motel room, he sees the body hanging. And I rolled my eyes, and I thought, "Of course he saw the body." That's not the response I should have had, is it! But after god knows how long of the bullshit I'd read through, I was fed up. It wasn't sad any more. And I know some people really do have lives that feel like cruel jokes - I've met people with lives like that! - but seriously, it was just ridiculous.

I think what made it all so insulting is that it felt like the characters we'd been getting to know and which had been so carefully described were put on the back burner, and instead, Yanagihara was trying to make us like Jude out of pity. "Look! This bad thing happened to him! Do you feel bad for him? Do you care about him? What if I do this? Do you care about him now? What if he's forced into this?" It felt cheap and lazy and exploitative.

Maybe, too, it was the fact that a lot of Jude's struggle is that he wants to be loved as him. He doesn't want to be a burden and he doesn't want to be pitied. He feels repulsive and irredeemable but he wants to be accepted as a whole human being even if he can't believe he deserves that. Having our eyes pulled open to watch Jude's traumas in excruciating detail felt dehumanising and disrespectful. Is that the point? Is the voyeurism meant to make us feel like an abuser by association?

A little later in the book, this evolved into something almost worse: it felt kind of like a weird fetish thing. Low-hanging fruit, I know, but I legit can't think of any other good reason for the shit-tier storyline of Jude being raped by basically every adult he ever encounters. He's discovered by the monks as a baby, who rape him. He's groomed and pimped out to clients by a man who rapes him. He goes to a children's home where the counsellors rape him. He escapes the children's home (after being raped, would you believe it) where he tries to hitchhike to Boston, offering truck drivers sex in exchange for a lift, and not a single truck driver turned down the advances of this child. Not one was like "What the fuck? What happened to this poor kid?". He passes out from an STI-induced fever and is locked in the basement of, you won't believe this, a guy who nurses him back to health (ish - he deliberately keeps Jude weak) and then keeps him prisoner so that he can rape him.

A little earlier in the book I had that same uncomfortable feeling - Jude's relationship with Caleb. The course of the relationship, though short, is intended to have that frog-in-heated-water thing of a guy who seems cool and then some red flags come up and then he ends up being an abusive arsehole. But it really felt like, after we meet Caleb, all the stuff in between is sped through so that we can get to see Caleb beat and rape Jude in, as ever, excruciating detail. When you're reading that sort of scene, the last thing you want is the nagging feeling in the back of your head that the writer is salivating to get to the "good" bit.

The relationship in Jude's middle age with Willem is nearly lovely. I say nearly because, as we all know, nothing wholly good could ever happen to our boy Jude. Willem conveniently ignores the fact that Jude absolutely despises sex and is dissociating to get through it. As in, he's not just dense - he realises it and is just like "But I really like sex. And when I asked Jude, he was quiet for ages and then eventually said yes which is totally an enthusiastic affirmation so it's probably fine :) I like sex so this is very convenient!" It takes Jude telling him about how he got raped by a zillion people for Willem to be like "Whoa… he really doesn't like sex… that's so sad…"

And, again, I feel like this is insulting because Willem, throughout the entire book, is always the most attuned to Jude. He is Jude's strongest defender and, while he isn't infallible, he knows him like nobody else. It's true that a lot of people don't notice when you go on autopilot during sex to get through it, but anyone who gives half a shit can pick up on it, no matter how practised you are (ask me how I know). You're telling me that it's in character for Willem to even try to kid himself if he risks furthering Jude's trauma and self-hatred? I'm sorry, but again, it feels cheap!

Other things that made me go "???" include a scene in which some autistic characters are introduced, patronised by the author for about two pages, and then are never mentioned ever again. They were maths students taught by Jude's old professor, as well as said professor's son, and it says something about how he was trying to teach them how to act normally and it was written so weirdly and with such failed delicacy and made me feel kind of itchy. It's great fun being autistic and seeing people try to write autistic people when they have no fucking clue. Jude was nice to them, at least. He read to me as autistic-coded, funnily enough - but that could well be me projecting because he is, after all, just like me fr. The other notable wild bit was when Jude was cutting more to deal with having sex with Willem, and he tries so hard to stop at Willem's request, but after however much time he can't deal with it and none of his other coping mechanisms are working and he cuts, and Willem finds him and takes the razor from him and cuts his chest like "Yeah! How do you feel now! It's not nice, is it!!!" and once they resolve that argument it's like it never happened. And it's still not enough for Willem to acknowledge the Obvious Connection between sex and Jude's cutting somehow. I don't really know if it's realistic or not, but it certainly made me dislike Willem a bit, which is a shame.

Positive things that don't fit anywhere else are Harold, the dad of all time, and Andy, who is a type of person I am very fond of. In general, the side characters are mostly nuanced and interesting - it's just that the nasty ones are just ridiculously, obscenely nasty.

The end of the book, though, after Willem's death, is lovely. It's devastating to see Jude try so fucking hard to keep living, all the while craving nothing more than to be released from his obligation to stay alive, but it's beautiful. There's a gorgeous, heart-wrenching story in this book - there really is. And Yanagihara has the talent to pull it off. But she spends so much time poking and prodding at her victim that it gets lost in the depravity and ends up feeling hollow.

A friend recommended me this book (she loved it), and she said that, in a way, it may have worked better if we'd never known the full extent of Jude's story. I feel inclined to agree. Knowing the gist, the constituent elements, that have turned Jude into such a cowering, self-hating individual despite having so much to offer, would leave it up to our imagination without a cartoonish reveal that only detracts from the seriousness of it all.

#books #read 2023 #reviewed 2023 #fiction #queer lit #much to think about with this book #not sorry it's over tbh

[meandmyechoes]

since there's no serial star wars until august and it's a series i'm not sure i can sit through i'm gonna turn this into sentai brainrot.

i like kingoh this much i've watched every episode at least three times and trying to piece together all the information. i love rita so much i'm planning kingoh FLT and dissecting their costume and sewn a plush and possibly will buy a toy during its run

now i'm just racing to finish kingoh brainrot before May 4 so I can concentrate on Visions vol 2. After Sixth debut I probably had to put things on hold for real to do school work. I hope.

it's plot-heavy and serial unlike your typical sentai but almost typically anime/shonen with a heavy fantasy setting and character designs. but do you need more reason than 'rita kanisuka' to watch it. and the tokusatsu action/direction is so good.

practically:

i started a toku sideblog @mofffun anyway so i will be free-r over there. kinda wanna post opinions here and gifs over there lol. maybe polished gifsets here and random gifs over there. my queue is low in the tens but i certainly have many SW stock. i won't remove that completely just, not actively going for it? i'd still do regular tag searches on top of what came on my dashboard, but i might not write/talk about SW for a while? i still have a couple books to read

it feels weird because i became an SW centric blog since I came back 3 years ago. Not to say I didn't have other stuff chimed in but it's been 95% SW running non stop for 3 years. It's weird to have a sudden shift that stays. It's even weirder when you think when i first started this blog in 2012, it's as multifandom as you can get with 5 regular ones. so fuck it. i care about followers and feel a duty to provide? like an editor to a magazine? but probably just overthinking it. i won't force anyone to continue following if they are not into what i'm putting out. it feels weird but i'm just gonna talk about kingohger as much as i want to now. maybe change the blog description in a bit so that i don't feel disconnected. it's MY blog.

Talking about fixating on kingoh. I love the thrill of collecting clues and unraveling its plot. I love thinking again. I love that it gave me a reachable goal to work towards. Though half the time i'm just shouting RITA KAWAII/KAKKOUI i don't really pay attention to what's being said. It's been saccahrine the past 48 hours and i'm exhausted and elated. they got me crawling my ass up sunday at 8 to watch nitiasa live again.

compared with star wars it's just, ₻₻₻ (<- scribble). Mando s3 was a letdown and nobody cares about tbb. i can't stand how hype ppl are for the ahserka series and it feels like a minefield getting to know others with that hanging. sometimes i had to listen to ill-informed forum bros dissing, and when i look at official stuff, i begin to question who's actually keeping the lore.

it's not all negative. i still haven't done a totj!togruta analysis (even though i don't really want to think about totj itself because all it is to me is episode 5). i'm still super excited about SWC2025. i still love ahsoka (yes holding that throne against rita). I know I will be blown away by Visions as well. But I've been letting that define and govern me for too long it's time to let somebody else have a chance.

I'm crazy scared i won't be able to finish work this time. i'd hate that. i'm working the courage to tell my fam i need some space but, every time i actually said that, it's no use anyway. because i'm special. i'm responsible. what i do will never be enough.

i also try not to think to much about the society or where i will be in five years. it's like, some of the things i ultimately want can't happen unless you give it a few years of effort but i don't dare to dream that far. eh

well good thing ko let me think all that. i like thinking. i like writing.

#myechoes #echoesdiary