#but this post is already long enough

[midnightfox450]

Can you even imagine the potential of a good-luck-babe-ified fiarina. Like an AU where 12 y/o Fia still stands up for Irina and helps her escape, but then submits to her father's initial punishment of repentance instead of choosing execution. Fia swears an oath to the Reaper and vows never to practice Trickster magic again.

When she's of age, her father has her married off to some random young man (the son of another clergyman, perhaps). Reverend Boginya retires and passes his position down to his son-and-law. *Not* his daughter, for she is just a woman, learned as she may be.

The old preacher's daughter becomes the new preacher's wife. Fia never leaves that desolate little town.

And she's miserable, of course. Miserable in her marriage, miserable in her duties as a woman of the church. But isn't that what she deserves? It's what the Reaper calls for her, for all of them.

But then it happens. They have a Judgement scheduled today, or at least, Fia's husband does. She doesn't do much besides stand next to him and read some hymns. She watches the beginnings of an execution carried out in perfect order before suddenly... Chaos. A woman appears wreathed in green light and fae magicks and vengeance. She burns the entire proceedings to the ground with every bystander caught in her wake.

Or, *nearly* every bystander.

The person on the scales escapes wordlessly, far too terrified of what just happened. Fia's husband, the preacher, is gone. But for some reason, she herself has been spared. She kneels in disbelief in a sea of ash and smoke.

Some part of her, deep down, recognizes that magic. It's sinful Trickster magic, of course, but there's something more, someone more. And that same part, that shameful, shameful part, feels relieved.

[hey-haven]

Oops I am ranking TWST books (minus book 7 cause I’m not going into it till it’s released in the english version)

I will be making these seperate posts cause I have too much to say, but I will link each on in order from worst to best starting with the worst

6: Book 2

Easily the worst one, Book 2 just does not do Leona any form of Justice. Despite being one of the smarter characters, Leona’s plan simply does not make sense. Like yeah sure injure some of the stronger players so the competition would be easier but then his grand plan with the Diasomnia Dorm is literally unleashing a stampede to idk crush them? Injure them? Kill them???? (Okay maybe not that far). He does this in a public setting that could have easily gotten innocent bystanders hurt. Plus it’s Malleus we’re talking about, a stampede would not have done the kind of damage Leona would have wanted it to. It just feels like for a character who is often written to be a master strategist, his big plan for the competition wasn’t well thought out like at all. It paints Leona as someone who’s all bark and no bite when it comes to his arrogant attitude about his intelligence, which is annoying because HE IS VERY INTELLIGENT AND SHOULD BRAG ABOUT IT! It’s just this ONE book that doesn’t serve him justice on this aspect of his character!

Another issue the book has is that it paints Leona in a really bad light to the point that I strongly disliked him for a while till reading some vignettes and realizing “oh no he’s an interesting character it’s just that the main book really fucked him over”. We have to remember that Leona is a grown man at 20 years old who made it his mission to literally harm teenagers just to win a sports competition, and while I understand the competition itself is a big deal it does not at all justify Leona’s actions (nor does his backstory). That was all BEFORE he overblots where the harm can be somewhat justified under uhhh temporary magical influence of insanity lol. And at the end of the book he straight up goes “I actually am not going to learn and grow from this.” And he does a little after the events of the book good for him, but when the main theme of each book being about growth and healing from past scars, why the fuck immediately backtrack on that theme right in the second book???

AND! Shdgss another thing that annoys me is that shortly after learning what an overblot is and how it works, following that logic that the audience was literally taught; Ruggie should have overblotted. He was the one constantly using his signature spell, he was the one having to hurt himself to get others hurt as well, he was the one who nearly got directly killed by Leona. That stress and overuse of his magic should have lead to an overblot but it didn’t only because Ruggie isn’t the twisted version of Scar, it’s Leona.

The book very much tried to use Ruggie as a red herring making us think he will be the main boss when it was Leona, but it was done so poorly that looking back it doesn’t even make sense with the in universe explanation on the function of overblots. Yana cared more about making a not so surprising twist than actually putting the effort in making that twist make sense. The fact that I ended the book caring significantly more about Ruggie than Leona is a sign that Leona’s character in this book was more of an afterthought.

You can just tell that Yana did not put the amount of thought and care into Book 2 as she did with Books 1, 4, 6, and even 5 despite that one also not being that good either though for completely different reasons. She heavily relied on the story beats of The Lion King to work with Book 2 leading to a messy and rather uninteresting story that actively paints the main character of the book as a less interesting person than what he actually is shown to be in later chapters and vignettes. It’s especially disheartening when you do get to Leona’s backstory and see the potential was right there the whole time, it just was not given any ounce of effort in the execution.

[messengerofmechs]

Idk what the fuck the last rb is talking about I personally knew a kid who managed to dual boot his school issued chromebook with Ubuntu in high school. By no means do I think it was easy or straightforward but there is ultimately no way to completely secure a computer against someone who has hardware access. And technically the chromebook OS is built on Linux

But all of this is irrelevant in face of the fact that if the teachers or the school IT department noticed you running Linux they'd probably just make you get a new chromebook and charge you a fee for it. The kid dual-booted instead of nuking the existing OS so he could still use it in class.

All this to say that while school-issued chromebooks happened by the time I was already a year or so into Highschool, I did experience chromebooks as my primary computer for a few years. I ended turning out to be a huge computer nerd and pursuing a degree in it, and I wasn't even the kid trying to dual boot my chromebook. The most I did was figure out how to misspell keywords to get around search filtering.

The reason "Kids don't know how computers work" is because they're kids. Kids don't know a lot of things. Don't expect middle schooler or even a high schooler to know what Linux is. It's pretty niche as an operating system.

And for the record, lots of adults don't know how computers work either. I've worked IT support.

Chromebooks do suck ass though.

We need to lay more blame for "Kids don't know how computers work" at the feet of the people responsible: Google.

Google set out about a decade ago to push their (relatively unpopular) chromebooks by supplying them below-cost to schools for students, explicitly marketing them as being easy to restrict to certain activities, and in the offing, kids have now grown up in walled gardens, on glorified tablets that are designed to monetize and restrict every movement to maximize profit for one of the biggest companies in the world.

Tech literacy didn't mysteriously vanish, it was fucking murdered for profit.

[ghostoftonantzin]

Books I've read in 2025 - April - June

I read 20 books from April through June (including one volume of poetry) and listened to one audiobook, which is surprisingly about the same number I read in the first three months of the year. Posted 9 days into July because I was away from my computer for a bit.

Some really good reads! Also some just-okay ones, because I made it a goal to finish several books I'd started last year and just never finished.

I've put my opinions on each book below the cut so as not to stretch anyone's dashboard. The numbers in parenthesis next to each book are the date I finished it, but that doesn't really reflect how much time it took me to read each book, because I'm usually reading a few books at a time.

In Thrall by Jane Delynn (4/10) - A rediscovered lesbian novel from the 1980's! A high-schooler in the 1950's falls in love with and begins an affair with her English teacher. The protagonist is a very real depiction of an intelligent but moody teenager, to the point where it can be a little exhausting to be in her head for 300 pages, but I enjoy her verbal sparring with her teacher, the way her teacher is pitiless but sympathetic. I do love when a good book has an excellent last line/ending (I love a good kick in the teeth for the road), and this one I think qualifies.

Turnabout by Thorne Smith (4/12) - I like to go to used book sales and find things that I've never heard of. This was a mass-market paperback edition of a comedic novel published in the 1930's, by an author basically forgotten today. Basically, a bickering young couple have their bodies swapped and get into misadventures. There's something about the construction of this book that's fascinating, because it seems much looser and more chaotic in terms of both humor and pacing than most modern comic novels. Literally, before the bodyswap even happens, the husband catches the wife cheating on him and attempts to kill the other man with a shovel, upon which they put the body in their coalbin in the basement. Again, this is before the main plot point of the book even occurs!

The Fan by Bob Randall (4/15) - Described as an early example of an epistolary novel on the Valancourt website, though I'm not going to fact check that right now. An obsessed fan, an aging starlet bordering white dwarf status, her personal assistant, an ex-husband with unresolved feelings and a new younger wife. A quick read. I thought the ending was okay.

Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Dusapin (4/16) - The problem with Hoopla is I genuinely do think reading on my phone diminishes my experience a bit. I'm easily distracted. This is to say, I enjoyed this novella about a young employee at an inn (in Sokcho) and a visiting French cartoonist, but I cannot remember it well enough to form a strong opinion. Or maybe I just didn't have a strong opinion.

Rhine Journey by Ann Schlee (4/20) - read in one day (had a day in which I had the time to finish a whole book). In the vein of Lolly Willowes, or rather, the spinster literature tradition. I enjoy the slowly unwinding spool of the main character's repressed sense of loss at the life she could have lived, and the way she rediscovers herself.

Loved and Missed (audiobook) by Susie Boyt (4/29) - I had an unexpected long drive around Easter weekend and so decided to check out an audiobook of this novel, since I heard it was good. Oh my god. I might have to buy a hard copy and reread it in print, because it's just so good. Basically the story of an older British woman who raises her granddaughter after taking her off her estranged daughter's hands. But the writing is so sharp and each phrase so well-turned. You know how people complain about therapyspeak in modern novels? This is basically an older British woman who has no exposure to any of that and has to sort through her emotions on her own. I loved this book so much I bought a copy for my mother for her birthday and basically begged her to read it.

The Loves of Faustyna by Nina Fitzpatrick (5/4) - I spent part of this spring trying to finish books that I'd started last year and not finished, which meant in some cases dragging myself through them. This was a dragger. I don't know if this is bias because I know it was published in the early 2000s, but there's something about the writing style that was too self-awarely humorous that made it not actually funny (I dislike the word "twee" and don't think it quite fits, but I can't think of a better word).

Fifty Forgotten Books by R. B. Russell (5/6) - This is what it says in the title, fifty chapters about relatively forgotten books, by the publisher of Tartarus Press (British publisher known for republishing weird fiction), mixed with a memoir detailing his life and publishing experience. I enjoyed the insight into the author's childhood and the Weird Fiction inside baseball, but sometimes a chapter would spend most of its text on an entirely different book from the one that was ostensibly the subject of the chapter? And that's not even getting into the weird congratulatory awkwardness when he included books that his press had published or in one case, his wife had written.

The Skin by Curzio Malaparte (5/11) - maybe it's fiction? maybe it's nonfiction? Malaparte's works seem to tap-dance across the line. The main character is him, except it's a novel. Either way, Malaparte is slippery and charismatic and all surface in a way that's characteristic of 20th century Italian fascism, which makes him fascinating to read. Basically a string of unforgettable, horrifying anecdotes about Italy at the end of the second world war.

Asa, as I knew him by Susanna Kaysen (5/11) - Another from the "to finish" pile. It was fine. I was most intrigued by the whisps of barely-acknowledged bisexuality in Asa's backstory (which makes up the bulk of the novel).

Black Sun by Geoffrey Wolfe (5/18) - Again from the "to finish" pile. I started this last summer and got distracted, probably because the beginning, detailing Harry Crosby's dry childhood in Boston and experiences in WWI, is fairly dry. The back half, about his wild, hedonistic life in Paris in the 1920's, is where most of the juice is. The biographer is also unafraid to casually pass judgement on Crosby's decision-making and poetic ability.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-Zi (5/23) - I somehow misosmosed that this was an explicitly lesbian novel. Which, it's not *not* a lesbian novel, but it's handled in an implicit manner which I generally enjoy, but I probably should have adjusted my expectations. The part I heard about this book making you hungry was incredibly true, though.

Constant Reader by Dorothy Parker (5/23) - Sloane Crosley mentions in the introduction to this selection of Parker's columns how all woman humor writers are compared to Parker, and it was startling while reading this how modern many of Parker's jokes and bits felt.

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg (5/25) - my first Ginzburg, and while I was impressed by her style, I feel like I should probably try another one of her works before I form an opinion.

The National Telepathy by Roque Larraquy (5/25) - I almost pre-ordered this book, I was so excited for it. I read Larraquy's previous novella published in English, Comemadre, a few years back, and was delightfully bewildered. He's one of those authors where you never know where the next sentence will take you. He's also an author whose work would probably be even better followed by a thorough analysis from an expert who is smarter than I am. Which I don't have, so I just tend to enjoy the ride.

Bethlehem in Broad Daylight by Mark Doty (5/31) - I read "The Death of Antinous" on the Poetry Foundation website a couple years ago and found since then that it had been taken down, so I purchased this to have a physical copy. I would still say that's the standout poem from this collection.

The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink (6/1) - I feel like I tend to avoid books that are about Educated Women and the Anxieties of Modern Life, because while they do often capture aspects of my personal human experience, sometimes they just feel like being inside my own brain a bit. If that makes sense. Which this book had some symptoms of. I also thought the ending felt a little half-baked, in a manner that would have been interesting if Zink had been better able to pull it off.

Passing Ceremony by Helen Weinzweig (6/6) - A fortuitous find on the hoopla app (why do they have so many random bits from small publishers and academic publishers). I read Basic Black with Pearls a few years back and enjoyed it, so I checked this out immediately. And then read all of it during the two hours I sat in a delayed plane on the airport runway. Which is probably actually a great place to read this socially claustrophobic novel of shifting perspectives. It's almost like a puzzle box, where the mystery is the characters' history and relationship to each other. And what great dialogue.

To Smithereens by Rosalyn Drexler (6/25) - The narrator, Rosa (or rather, one of the narrators), is a great character. Exactly the opposite of what I was complaining about with The Wallcreeper, I could not follow her train of thought or her reasoning for her actions, but she's such a well-formed, opinionated character that it all gelled together and made sense. The middle section of the book, scenes from a women wrestler's life on the road in the 1970's, made me think of a novelization of some of Jaime Hernandez's Love & Rockets pieces focused on women wrestlers. Which I say as very high praise.

By Night in Chile by Robert Bolaño (6/29) - Actually started on the same weekend trip with the delayed flight, but life got in the way. Hallucinatory stream-of-consciousness deathbed confession intertwined with the history of Chile.

Oreo by Fran Ross (6/30) - coming in under the wire, because I read 2/3 of it Monday evening. What a book. What a book. A retelling of the myth of Theseus, only Theseus is a Black-Jewish young woman from Philadelphia who ventures to New York City to find her father. Ross's talent with a turn of phrase and the set-up/pay-off of a joke within a sentence or a paragraph is incredible.

[fanaticalthings]

Bruce coming home one day to find Robin Jason clinging onto a chandelier with Dick below him cheering him on.

Bruce: Jason what are you doing?

Jason: Dick said that you missed his antics after he moved out and so he’s teaching me how to be a better son

Dick: After this we’re going to drive the Batmobile into the bay :D

Jason: We’re going to what? I mean yeah! Right into the water.

Jason trying to whisper to Dick: Dick I can’t swim though

This just further fuels the chaotic dynamic of Dick and Jason during a time where Dick was still going through his teenage angst and was absolutely not a benevolent role model LMAO

I mentioned it in this post, but it's just so funny to me to imagine a Jason who grew up with an absolutely WILD Dick Grayson as an older brother, while the younger batkids grew up with a more mellowed out and mature (arguable but when measured against the other kids, he wins by a landslide) Dick Grayson.

Robin!Jason era:

Dick: You wanna go out and get high?

Jason: I can't, I have homework.

Dick, sputtering: HOMEWORK?

----

Dick, about to do an elaborate (and totally not dangerous) acrobatic move in the manor: Watch this, littlewing

Jason: You shouldn't do that, it'll make Bruce upset.

Dick, on the brink of angry tears: Why are you like this.

----

Jason, dejected: Listen, I know you don't approve of me because you think I'm not good enough as Robin, but-

Dick: Not good enough as Robin? I don't care about that, I just think you're a little bitch

----

Dick taking Jason out on a hangout for the first time: OK, looks like I got my work cut out for me. Take out a notepad and write everything down. I will NOT have my successor embarrass me like this. So what you wanna do to piss off Bruce-

---

[Years later, Jason returning to Gotham with the fury of a thousand suns and the chaos to match it]: I'm gonna make your life a living HELL, Bruce

Dick, older and relatively more chilled out: Okayyyyy, maybe let's just– calm down a lil, haha, no need for the theatrics

Jason, betrayed, observing a Dick Grayson who is teaching his new younger siblings to behave and be mature: Dick, what the FUCK

-----

Present!Dick, mentoring Tim: Make sure not to be too impulsive, don't wanna raise Bruce's blood pressure

Red Hood!Jason spying on them from afar: Who even ARE you??

-----

Jason: So you teach me ALL of that, only to turn into the ONE thing you despised so greatly all those years ago

Dick, sweating: Well-

Jason: I'm ASHAMED. How can you be worthy of being called my PREDECESSOR?

[just-null]

Do you ever do requests? If so, do you ever plan on drawing some Yandere with the Hantengu clones? :D hope you have a good day/night!!!

Mentioning an unfamiliar name

yes!! I love yanderes.. and these guys.. these guys are such good material...... nods nods..

I'm not sure about requests..I assume you mean drawing requests? I suppose if it REALLY catches my interest enough, I'd do it, but it'd probably just be line art/sketches.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Toadbert's Tonic for Fit Frog Form.

(Toadbert was inspired by @dickwad-666!)

[smoosie]

HEX TOKEN (Arcane x Sleep Token)

Act 1

+ Bonus page (the kiss~) on Tiktok & Insta

Previously: https://www.linkslist.app/6GFNvop

[vaguely-concerned]

rookanis really is like... first base is you walking through the haunted ruins of my mind to find me in an act of breathtaking psychological intimacy with added tam lin undertones. second base is baked goods (cautious erotic connotations). third base is deicide. THEN we kiss. also second deicide of course once you pop it's hard to stop

[kittykatninja321]

The reason why I always emphasize that utrh era Jason is 18/19 and refuse to let people forget that Jason and Tim are canonically 2 years apart is because the concept of Jason as a fairly young adult with little to no support system is a fascinating concept to me and it goes under explored in both canon and fanon. I think it adds such an interesting wrinkle to the everything and is a great contrast to all the Red Hood shit. I’m thinking about New Earth Jason specifically here, he’s both younger than post-nu52 Jason and more isolated. Most people at 19, even if they can afford to be out on their own in this economy, still have contact with their family of origin for support. Jason is not only estranged from his family with little to no support system (depending on how much you interpret Talia being involved after Lost Days), he’s also doing mob boss shit while he’s still technically young enough to be somebody’s prom date. He didn’t go to his prom because he was probably in Russia learning how to make bombs or something (and because, yknow, the whole dying thing).

Jason is someone who both had to grow up too fast and by all means should be somewhat emotionally stunted. Not only does trauma stunt you he was catatonic for long enough that he’s missing literal years from his adolescence. He’s young enough that he’s still reeling from trauma from childhood and adolescence (late teens/ early twenties are peak ‘desperately trying to recover from childhood’ era).

I think underneath the rough Red Hood exterior that Jason should be naive in ways that people wouldn’t really expect. He doesn’t have much experience with relationships (both romantic and friendships), and it’s been years since he’s socialized much with people his age (he doesn’t socialize much at all he’s pretty isolated). I think even if he doesn’t look young that at times he would slip up and show that he is

Also I just love the contrast. I like the idea that sometimes you’ll hear Red Hood cackle without the helmet on and you’ll recognize traces of that 15 year old kid and then he’ll shoot someone immediately after. Like imagine if utrh was a Boy King of the underworld sorta deal

[sunderwight]

Liushen AU where SY transmigrates into SJ's older brother, and subsequently nopes them right out of the slavery backstory by using his general knowledge of the story and actually being an adult in a kid's body to just leave (basically) with SJ and YQ.

SY carts them both up to Cang Qiong for the next sect trials. It's actually not all that hard, the trickiest part is getting enough to eat and finding safe places to sleep between leaving the slavers and taking the trials (SY manages just barely, with considerable help from his new little brothers.) Nobody bothers to go after them because it's before Qiu Jianluo and this style of human traffickers mostly operate by virtue of their merchandise having nowhere else to go. Chasing down runaways is an expense not worth indulging, given that most of them either come straight back or die of exposure.

Anyway, they take the trials, and as expected YQY gets chosen to become a personal disciple for the sect leader, and SJ gets chosen by the Qing Jing Peak Lord, but also as (kind of) expected (by SY alone) nobody wants SY. He's older the Yue Qi, so too old, and unlike YQ and SJ his cultivation potential isn't striking enough to make any exceptions for him.

SY, however, can't leave it at that. He's spent more than five minutes with the street kid codependency gang, so he's gotten attached to both of them. And he knows what will happen if they're left to their own devices and The Plot proceeds accordingly. (Also, they keep threatening to not stay at the sect if SY doesn't stay too, for some reason.) So with a heavy heart and internal candle lit for himself, SY heads to Bai Zhan Peak. Which is the only peak that accepts disciples by way of them turning up and refusing to leave.

SY's not much of a fighter. He actually really hates the atmosphere on BZP, he's not bad at physical cultivation (his health's pretty good in this life, ironic considering how much worse his situation was) but the random ambushes and survival-of-the-fittest stuff is just not his brand. But that's okay, because it turns out that BZP actually DESPERATELY needs disciples on the actual peak who are interested in things other than fighting and cultivating their own strength. Stuff like, filling out requisition requests for An Ding every time things break, apologizing to An Ding every time things break again, organizing schedules, browbeating senior disciples into actually teaching, educating disciples on virtually any artistic or social skill, hosting lectures on how to beat vicious beasts without just overpowering them, and etc.

Okay so some of this stuff isn't and has never actually been on Bai Zhan's curriculum but Shen Yuan is going to make this place tolerable. And stop these children from needlessly getting acid burns or lyme disease or scurvy or whatever. He keeps internally chewing out Airplane for designing a sect system that means there are a lot of largely unsupervised 12-year-olds running around the wilderness on a mountain picking fights all the time. (When he actually meets Shang Qinghua and figures him out he switches to doing it in person, of course, in twice-monthly bitching sessions that look a lot like budding friendship.)

Of course one of the worst offenders is the Liu kid, who SY would suspect was actually raised by wolves if he didn't know for a fact that Liu Qingge has a younger sister, and also the kinds of nice clothing and letters from home that strongly imply not only does he have a family, but that the family is pretty well-off. Liu Qingge is at first deeply offended by SY being a BZP disciple. He rarely fights anyone, and uses tricks and evasion tactics whenever a fight can't be avoided. And he does other annoying stuff, like pestering him about meals and baths and lecturing him on identifying dangerous plants and the early signs of qi deviation. This is not what their peak is about! He should get with the program already! Just fight stuff until you're too tired to keep fighting stuff!

Also SY's younger brother, SJ, is pure evil (at least according to baby Liu Qingge) even though his other younger brother (?) is cool and nice.

Anyway, Liu Qingge stops complaining about SY after their first mission together, where Liu Qingge doesn't lose a fight but does get into a kind of pyrrhic victory situation where he's really badly hurt, and it's SY who helps him win (correctly identifying the monster and then pointing out its weakness) and takes care of him afterwards and gets him safely back to Cang Qiong. SY expresses surprise at LQG actually being polite to him, and LQG realizes that he's been a colossal ass if people think he wouldn't be grateful to someone who saved his life, so the usual Liushen dynamic proceeds from there. Liu Qingge starts bringing SY fans he leaves behind and hunts down animals that are supposed to be useful for bolstering weak cultivation, SY invites LQG to tea and keeps the critters as pets, etc etc.

SY doesn't get the Head Disciple position, because that's only acquired via beating the current peak lord in combat and lol no. Also he's not interested in stealing it from Liu Qingge, to whom it rightfully belongs (in his mind). But that's fine, because Liu Qingge takes the position when the next generation ascends and then he lets SY exclusively handle all the peak duties SY actually likes (mainly teaching). It's perfect -- Liu Qingge gets to focus on his War God antics and occasional administration/meetings without having to deal with students his has no patience for, but the disciples of BZP don't get neglected because SY is actually teaching and organizing classes and student care. BZP hasn't enjoyed a golden age like this since it was founded!

Things are pretty good overall, but Shen Yuan knows that it's only a matter of time before The Plot shows up, and so he can't rest completely easily.

Meanwhile, the will-they-or-won't-they bets on Liushen have been going strong for a while now. The thing is, most of their martial siblings are convinced that these two are already "together", and just being circumspect about it. Those who know SY well (like SJ, YQY, and SQH) know better but think that SY's romantic obtuseness is to blame, whereas those who know LQG well (LMY, WQW, and MQF) are pretty sure that it's actually LQG's obtuseness that's the problem. Of course it's actually both of them, so efforts to "fix" matters by getting through one of their thick skulls inevitably run afoul of the other's.

An additional complication is of course: SJ doesn't like LQG (mutual), and now that he's the leader of his own peak, he wants to poach SY to come and live there. Not only so he can have one of the 2 people he trusts actually close at hand, but also because SJ also hates actually teaching the atrocious little brats on his peak, and would like to have SY come and do it for him. YQY is still a total pushover for him too, and is also now the sect leader, so YQY agrees that SY can change peaks if SY and LQG both agree to it.

Liu Qingge, of course, is a no, but he's a variable "no". He's not going to hold Shen Yuan against his will or anything.

As for Shen Yuan, it's... complicated. He doesn't really like BZP, but it's gotten a lot better than it was at the start. These days he's actually pretty proud of his accomplishments, and it's more comfortable, but it's still a rough and rowdy place with fewer creature comforts, libraries, or other appealing points than QJP. Also, if he goes to Qing Jing to teach, he can personally ensure that SJ doesn't go around persecuting any of his students!

But... SJ never lived with the Qiu family in this AU, and even though SY's not totally clear on what the PIDW backstory for SJ was, he knows he's a better guy now than the scum villain in the book was. He has a reputation for making cutting remarks, not for being an abusive snake or a lecher. SY's honestly less worried about him doing anything bad at all, and there are other people on QJP who can teach. It might even be good for SJ to promote more people to fill out a social circle he can rely on! That guy needs more friends, seriously.

And QJP really doesn't need more layabout literary intellectual types who get into pointless arguments, which is all SY would be if he went there. Just yet another nerdy scholar for the rich kids with middling cultivation that the peak favors to ignore. At least on BZP he's filling a gap.

SY is clearly torn, and the fact that SY's considering it has LQG upset, and LQG doesn't handle being upset very well, so of course they have an argument about it. SY storms off to cool his head and LQG is like, this is it, he's gone to Qing Jing Peak, I've drive him off by being too aggressive and he's probably remembering all those times I told him he didn't belong here and oh no what have I done maybe if I build him a heated bath and get him books he will come back???

Turns out that SY just went to An Ding to vent at SQH while SQH was like "I think you would have fewer problems if you and Liu Qingge just got married and my disciples could call you Shigu to your face instead of behind your back" and SY threw melon seeds at him and sulked on his fainting couch (which is always cold for some reason...)

Thus begins the Liushen Divorce Arc where SY tries to be anywhere but BZP or QJP, Liu Qingge tries to figure out what thing he can punch to fix this not-punchable problem, SJ is like "I don't see what the big deal is they should break up Liu Qingge is awful and I want my brother to teach my classes for me" like the spoiled youngest sibling he's finally allowed to be, YQY is trying to moderate this Hades vs Demeter situation and is all "well maybe SY could spend half the year on QJP and half on BZP?", and Liu Mingyan is going "I know my brother if this doesn't work out he is going to die single and pining like an idiot" and so keeps conscripting other disciples to y'know, lock SY and LQG into storage closets together (ineffective: LQG can punch through walls) or at least get them in the same room (underestimating SY's willingness to yeet himself out of windows to avoid awkward social interactions.)

By the time Luo Binghe joins the sect (as a Qiong Ding disciple), the drama is in full swing and is the main topic of gossip across most of the peaks.

[remxedmoon]

(you worked yourself to death.)

yeah i wasn’t kidding when i said these would be coming soon. <- haha funny joke marshall. so!! remember when i said that this post would be coming out last weekend? guess whose tablet broke a few days after saying that! so sorry for the delay!! this is long overdue. here’s a link to the drive, as always! everything in this part of the update should be in the miscellaneous folder (outside of the menu icons, which are in the menu folder. wauaua).

unedited versions below the cut, plus some notes. fair warning 90% of this is just ui stuff lol

so! all of this was already done by the time i posted the enemies. the delay isn’t *entirely* because of the tablet issues, i just managed to get distracted by making: even more redraws! i’d say new update soon but after what happened last time i shouldn’t jinx myself. but! almost All of the art for the initial mod release is done!!!! exciting!!!!!!

please be nice to me (silly) this is my first time doing frame by frame animation in… give or take 5 years? i followed the original animations pretty closely, so they don’t look Awful but i am Aware of the jank. i’m not an animator!!! they’re Good Enough for my purposes.

hey did you know that the original teleport map is slightly off center. did you know that. that’s not the case for the redraw for the record but it did make things a little harder. despite that, i think you can tell i was having fun with the dormont part of the map. i would’ve put more detail into the house, but we never really get a more detailed look at it??? and i didn’t want to make assumptions. so that part’s just traced from the original 👍. anyways shoutout to the clocktower being Curved for whatever reason

outside of those, all of the added art is actually just spritework. i didn’t know this at first, but there’s a TON of copies of sprites from the icon set. Basically Everywhere. so those are added now! and should work properly! also added a few sprites that were Missing from my original batch. not going to put them all here, but a few Important ones (which i actually had to make new art for) are the rock paper scissors cheatsheet, the Larger versions of the craft signs (used in the calamité fight and. probably somewhere else idk), and the craft signs for the tutorial kid fight!

aaaand i think that’s it! for stuff from this update. yeah no there’s more coming buddy. my tablet already broke one time this week there’s no way it’s happening twice. i’m not working on portraits Just Yet (though the temptation has been There), but i’ve got the title screens, a few backgrounds, and the ending cgs done! along with a few other assorted cgs sketched out. because im out of my fucking mind. so, uh, see you soon!! enjoy!!

[zondearts]

More More doves

[phoenixkaptain]

One thing I like is that the only people who really truly see Shinichi in Conan, the only people he drops his guard around enough to act like himself, are like: 1. Hattori, best friend, one of the first people to discover his secret, the human equivalent of a puppy dog. And 2. the Detective Boys, the literal young children he spends time with mostly against his own will.

And it's so funny because he TRIES to keep his guard up, he TRIES to act like a regular, boring child, but Shinichi/Conan has one fatal flaw that prevents him from pulling it off: he's too much of a perfectionist, he's too much of a completionist. Once a mystery has his attention he has to solve it, he has to get to the bottom of it, he has to solve riddles, he'll spend the entire day and night thinking about it because he NEEDS to know.

Hattori knows that because Hattori Gets It, he's right there with him, and he understands that the obsessiveness is what makes Shinichi a good detective.

But the Detective Boys do Not get it, they just know that sometimes their weird buddy gets strangely intense and normally it's because murder is involved but sometimes it's about a stupid map to treasure that he finds stupid until he finds out he doesn't get it and begins to obsess over it until he does get it. And sometimes their weird buddy starts laughing maniacally and they're all a bit concerned, but hey, maybe that's just how weird friend expresses himself? Sometimes weird buddy seems to pretend to be stupid, like he just spent fifteen minutes explaining something only to turn around and act like he's three. And this bothers them because, like, what? What's the purpose? And how is anyone convinced???

I love the Detective Boys plots, they are all Conan thinking that it's stupid only to then get way too into it. And just imagine how Inspecter Megure feels! This child yesterday explained the hows and whys of a gruesome murder, only to then be like "how does a clock work?" Like, bro must be SO confused. He and the Detective Boys are over there like, "I know Conan isn't stupid. You know Conan isn't stupid. Conan knows Conan isn't stupid. And yet, somehow, Conan just said the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. And now he's back to not being stupid, what was the poINT-"

All this to say, I like that Conan's friends know about Conan's interests and obsessions and accept those interests and obsessions as part of him, and even try to give him things to interest him and get him to spend time with them. Which is just something we never really see with Shinichi because Shinichi's only real friend seemed in the beginning to be Ran, and Ran in the first episode seemed caught off guard by the fact that Shinichi spent nearly an entire trip to an amusement park talking about Sherlock Holmes.

[the-lazy-cat-bakes-souffles]

Who is the Antler Queen? A Theory Deep Dive

The identity of the Antler Queen has been a mystery at the heart of Yellowjackets since the pilot, and in the time since fans have speculated about many possible candidates. But there’s one in particular that’s been rapidly gaining traction in the fandom: that the Antler Queen is none other than everyone’s favourite lesbian ghost, Jackie Taylor. With the launch of Season 3 I wanted to delve deeper into the idea and why I think it would make perfect sense for the series, especially after the latest two episodes. Cork boards and post-its at the ready folks, this is gonna be a long one. And of course, spoilers. 

I’ll start off by referring to this Vanity Fair article from 2023, which gives a succinct rundown of this theory. To summarise, it posits that the Antler Queen as an individual doesn’t exist, per se, and is instead a manifestation of the girls’ collective perception of ‘the Wilderness’. This would track with what’s been established in the show and how the Antler Queen has been framed thus far; as an esoteric, supernatural figure that haunts the narrative in a similar way to The Man with No Eyes in Tai’s storyline - or indeed, the figment of Jackie in Shauna’s. The Wilderness is already personified extensively by the girls owing to Lottie’s visions and the religion that sprouted around it, referred to as a sentient entity with a will of ‘its’ own.

This is where Jackie comes in. Jackie as a character, from the very beginning, is defined not by who she actually is or was, but by how she is perceived - by both herself and those around her. Jackie is the first character we’re formally introduced to in Yellowjackets, and the scene is centred on her performative pleasure for her boyfriend Jeff while looking utterly miserable. We immediately cut to her aggressively brushing her teeth before clutching her iconic heart necklace with a forlorn expression. Her reflection is split across several mirrors, symbolising her fractured self and the many roles she plays, none of which are a truly accurate representation of Jackie the person.

The smitten high school girlfriend (who can’t stand her boyfriend), the queen bee who has it all (who is unfulfilled and lost when nobody's looking), the charismatic soccer captain (who is constantly undermined by her team), the self-centred, stifling best friend (who loves Shauna more than anything). Later she’s the pariah (who was one of the few remaining voices of reason), the first sacrifice (who never believed), the dearly departed teenage girl who so loved rabbits (she was indifferent to them at best). In death, as in life, Jackie is forever condemned to be what others make of her. That’s the inherent tragedy of the character, to never be truly known, to be an idea more than an individual. 

Secondly, Jackie is often described as the embodiment of civilisation’s values in Yellowjackets, but she is also the unwitting architect of the Wilderness’ new status quo. Out of everyone, it was Jackie who committed the first act of brutality after they crashed: leaving Van to burn alive to save Shauna. This was long before anyone had descended into savagery, and set a precedent for the Yellowjackets as a whole. Although her intention was to grasp onto some semblance of normality and bolster team morale, Jackie also sowed the seeds of the spiritual practices they would go on to adopt. It was Jackie who organised the séance, in doing so triggering everyone’s first exposure to forces beyond their understanding as Lottie is seemingly possessed by the spirit of Dead Cabin Guy. It was Jackie who came up with the idea of Doomcoming where, with the help of some hallucinogenic shrooms, the girls surrendered to their most primal selves and attempted to ritually sacrifice Travis. And of course, Jackie’s death is a paradigm shift where the old order crumbles to make way for a new one - and so passes the glory of the world.

After her death, Jackie continues to be a catalyst for the Wilderness’ machinations. She is the first person to be cannibalised, marking a point of no return for the Yellowjackets. Unlike the bleak horror of eating Javi, Jackie’s consumption is a heightened, ritualistic affair, presented as a bacchanal feast - a religious festival. In one of the rare cases of the camera assuming the perspective of the Wilderness, the wind rushes through the pines, blowing the snow perfectly onto Jackie’s funeral pyre and cooking her corpse. As the starving Yellowjackets congregate around her charred body later that night, Shauna says, “She wants us to.”

Jackie is portrayed posthumously in much the same way as the Wilderness itself: even though she has no voice, a will is ascribed to her. It’s important that Shauna is the one leading this. Although she doesn’t buy into the mysticism like Lottie and many of the other Yellowjackets, Shauna instead envisions Jackie as her personal saint (“They were all so tragic”) and tormentor. There is every possibility that this season, either spearheaded by Shauna or in spite of her, ‘Jackie’ will become the figure the Yellowjackets worship, too.

Lastly, there’s a heavy amount of foreshadowing and symbolism lending to Jackie as the Antler Queen. The obvious being that she was the Yellowjackets’ team captain. As the Vanity Fair article points out, Coach Martinez’ words to her in the pilot could well be more than dramatic irony: “You possess something no one else on this team has: influence. When things get tough out there, those girls are going to need someone to guide them.” We even see this called back to in ‘It Girl’ when Lottie says, “We call to Jackie, now with the Wilderness. Guide us.”

Then there’s the vision Jackie experiences before she dies, surrounded by doting teammates expressing their admiration, cloaked in a blanket beneath the antlers suspended above the cabin’s hearth. It’s all she ever truly wanted, to be loved and seen for who she was. How tragically poetic, then, would it be for her to finally receive the adoration she craved in death as a bastardised and diefied version of herself.

And of course, there’s the necklace. To Jackie it was a symbol of protection and her love for Shauna, but we know that it ultimately comes to be worn by those ‘chosen’ to be hunted by the Wilderness. Shauna initiated this with Nat, who continues to wear it after being crowned the first leader of the survivors. This practice of being marked for leadership or death by the necklace is an extension of Jackie becoming mythologised by Shauna and the rest of the Yellowjackets. Again, the line between ‘the Wilderness’ and ‘Jackie’ is blurred.

Let’s look at the show’s promotional material, a lot of which heavily features Jackie throughout the series. The main poster for the first season features a dirty and dishevelled Jackie sporting a bloody nose while a single yellowjacket wasp perches on her cheek. What’s often missed, however, is the reflection of the Antler Queen in her left eye. This symbolises Jackie as a victim h(a)unted by the Wilderness, but it could mean something even deeper than that: the living, real Jackie could be staring at a dark mirror of herself. 

A poster for the second season again features Jackie’s face, only this time that of her frozen corpse. Here there are two yellowjackets perched on her lips, and she’s wearing her heart necklace.

Another poster for Season 2 depicts the Antler Queen standing ominously in the snow. She’s wearing a Yellowjackets varsity jacket, cuffed jeans, a sweater, and a pair of sneakers. While some details are different (the sweater being black instead of striped and the sneakers being pink instead of white), the basic outfit bears a striking resemblance to the clothes Jackie was wearing when she died.

A teaser video for the third season shows a dirty skull carved with the Wilderness symbol. Three yellowjackets buzz around it, and Jackie’s necklace hangs from its right eye socket. In this context, it’s safe to assume that this is Jackie’s skull, especially as we know that the girls retrieved and buried her bones offscreen between seasons. We’ve already seen Shauna tamper with and project onto Jackie’s remains, and it isn’t that far-fetched to see them repurposed in that way once again. 

Finally, let’s look at the recently released poster depicting the Yellowjackets dancing around a fire. Note how all of the main girls are here, including Nat, Lottie, and Shauna (the main living candidates). The implication here is that the Queen’s identity can’t be attributed to any single one of them. Maybe it’s a rotating role, but it also lends credence to this idea of the Queen being a construct. There are three skulls burning in the fire, representing those of the fallen - Javi, Jackie and Shauna’s child (Laura Lee and Crystal’s remains aren’t exactly accessible, after all). From the flames rises the figure of the Antler Queen: symbolically, she is born from the remains of the dead, and she’s burning just as Jackie burned on the pyre. 

With all of this in mind, I think there’s plenty of solid evidence to suggest that Jackie’s bones could end up being repurposed into some sort of effigy, mounted on a stick, adorned with locks of hair and a veil fashioned from a soccer net, and crowned with a pair of antlers. Jackie would finally lead the Yellowjackets in a way she never could while alive.

In conclusion, despite her death relatively early in the series, Jackie’s presence looms large over Yellowjackets. She remains an integral part of its iconography, its themes, and Shauna’s character (the closest the show has to a de facto protagonist). After her agency, body, and legacy have been repeatedly consumed, appropriated, and warped throughout the series, it would be a natural evolution for the Yellowjackets to fully transform everything Jackie was in making her their idol for the Wilderness. It’s human nature to anthropomorphise what we don’t fully understand, to give it a face and a name. It’s also human nature to deflect the responsibility for monstrous acts to avoid looking at the monster within ourselves. For most of the characters, this is the Antler Queen. But Shauna will only ever be able to see the girl she loved, the embodiment of her guilt. Perhaps, somehow, the true Jackie will finally find a way to reclaim her agency and personhood through that. There is no ‘it’ there’s only ‘us’. But is there really a difference?

[teaboot]

if ur a murderbot nerd now do u have any fun opinions abt it yet?

Oh my goddd you have no idea

I really, really, really like Murderbot because it comes at life with this perspective we don't often see that is very real among people who have already been through traumatic experiences, who developed skills and abilities to suvive that were once useful but no longer have context- that search that traumatized people go through to recalibrate and reorient ourselves in a world where we no longer really need those things to survive.

A bit personal here, but my own issues personally involved a lot of psychological abuse that made it difficult to trust my own perceptions of reality, and as a result I found I was very easy to lie to and manipulate.

To handle this, I became obsessive over writing things down, cataloging details and making notes of things as they happened- I'd carry recording devices and make audio recordings and stay up late at night to transcribe what they'd picked up, read those over and over again to reassure myself of things I wasn't certain about.

While doing this, there were others close to me that I felt responsible for, who I had to protect from others and protect myself from at the same time. Life was about two things: Evidence, and defusing threats

Over time, I learned to trust myself as my memories matched what had been recorded where their narrative didn't, but I never really kicked the habit. Like Murderbot, I had added something to my own programming that reassured me I was safe, that I was in control of myself, that I couldn't be mistaken or crazy or broken or used.

I'm only on book two, but already I see myself in Murderbot again. No spoilers here, but when I left home- left that dangerous context- I didn't need to repeat these patterns to survive anymore, but I still did, because I didn't know anything else anymore. It felt safe, comfortable, knowing knowing that the past couldn't repeat itself, because I'd written that flaw- blind trust in myself-  out of my programming and replaced it with something else.

Still, though, I'd become something specially suited to thrive in a very specific environment. Nothing else felt right like followinghigh-risk situations, like witnessing and watching and recording and knowing I had proof of the truth where others might not.

People took notice. I wound up in security by accident, but's an environment that I thrive in due to the same patterns and behaviours I originally developed when I had no other choice. I climbed the ladder pretty quickly, once supervisors caught on that my reports were the most accurate, most objective, most factual, detail-oriented and timely. I keep others and myself safe and prioritize public safety above all else, and I perform well under pressure

Now I'm in a position where I often wonder, do I enjoy this job, or is it just what I'm good at? I have a set of skills now, but do I have the option of choosing not to use them? What would I be, if not this? Could I be anything else? Can Murderbot be anything else?

It has a set of skills that set it apart, make it different, special. It does what it knows best. But is it free? Does it want to be? What does it want? Does it have to do what it was built to do? What if it didn't?

I know what I'm good for. The idea of deliberately leaving what I'm good for for something uncertain, that I might hate, that I might be useless at- the choice to give up what was so important to me for so long and become deliberately obsolete?

Let go of my entire purpose? The only thing I know, that I fit so well into but don't actually know if I enjoy? Now that I can choose? Now that enjoyment is a luxury I can afford to consider?

Yeah, that resonates.

I like the Murderbot series so far because it feels the way I feel: Like the most significant and formative part of my story, the part where I became what I am, has already happened

And now I have to just. Keep going

Into... what?

It feels absurd. Like a microwave giving up on reheating food and deciding to start a life around abstract dance.

So, uh. Yeah. It's really very wild to see this same philosophical-ish dilemma I've been digging over in the back of my mind and in therapy for the last forever laid out so plainly in a genuinely exciting and enjoyable story like this. I feel much less alone, and I... kind of really need to see how it resolves, I think.

So, uh. Yeah. Read Murderbot, I guess