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sunburstxstarlightblog · 2 months

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Because you ask for it, here are my StarBurst Headcanons!

Long post warning ahead. In no particular order:

Sunburst!

Sunburst’s hair is actually curly but he doesn’t know how to take care of it and doesn’t understand why it’s such a mess even though he brushes it every morning. (Btw, you’re not supposed to brush curly/kinky hair, especially when it’s dry, and of course that’s exactly what he does.)

He’s very proud of his goatee, his mother hates it and asks him to shave it every time he visits, which makes him like it even more, and is considering growing a full beard, just to piss her off.

He loves books for sure, but if you search through his private library, you won’t find a single novel, storybook, or anything resembling a fiction section. He doesn’t care for it. Since he knows so much about magic and history, when he reads a novel that embellishes some historical fact or magical effect, it takes him out of the story and immediately makes him lose interest.

Some of his most precious books were found while dumpster diving. That’s right, he dumpster dives once in a while, especially around libraries, second-hand stores, old houses, and construction sites. Libraries and second-hand stores usually throw away or give away books, since they get so many and they can’t sell them fast enough. Construction sites usually dig so deep that they bring up some interesting artifacts, and when the owners of old houses die, the family usually throws away the previous owners’ things, which includes books and other oddities.

Most of his furniture comes from antique stores, second-hand stores, and whatever Equestria’s version of the Good Will is.

Sunburst always leaves the house with an empty saddle bag and somehow manages to come back with it filled to the brim with books he picked up along the way.

After he dropped out of magic school, Sunburst’s income was very limited. He had to live with whatever his mother could send him and with the money he got from part-time jobs. This turned him into quite the penny pincher, he learned the hard way how to budget every bit he got.

His luck finally turned when he started working as a freelance editor since he could read through hundreds of pages in a matter of hours, red pen in hoof, and be done with hefty manuscripts in a day. Many writers appreciated his speed and accuracy when handling their manuscripts, and were quite saddened when he quit freelancing to work full-time for the Royal Family.

When the Crystal Empire returned, they were desperate to bring in more ponies to live full-time in the Empire, one of the ways to achieve this was to sell houses and land on the cheap, that’s how Sunburst got his house with his meager income. The alternative would’ve been to live with his mother, and Sunburst would’ve rather lived under a bridge than move back home.

Sunburst watches Flurry Heart from time to time. He’s very patient and gentle with her, and Flurry Heart adores him for it. He’s the only that can get her to eat her peas without making (too much) of a mess. He’s writing a book about his experiences in watching her, like a guidebook on how to raise infant alicorns, he hopes to publish it once she’s grown and already has her parents’ permission to do so. Cadance explicitly requested to send a signed copy to Twilight once he’s done, for all they know, she might be having alicorns of her own one day.

Starlight Glimmer!

Her family is actually one of the founding families of Sire’s Hollow, but unlike her father who’s very proud of this fact, she really couldn't care less.

Starlight left home as soon as she was legally an adult. She worked various mundane but safe jobs, studying magic in her free time and slowly building her philosophy, meeting ponies that were down on their luck and vulnerable to her suggestions (working in retail she met quite a few ponies like that). It was a slow process but before she knew it, she had a sizeable community.

I know everyone kills off Starlight's mother, but I like to think that she's alive and well somewhere. Her mother is an important wizard, who unfortunately loves her work more than she loves her family, and often travels to distant places to study magic. Her mother would send her letters and postcards from the places she was at until Starlight moved out and lost all communication with her. While Starlight admires her mother very much, she's resentful of her for being absent during her childhood.

Starlight is very artistic and can actually draw really well. Hanging out with Rarity made her practice her artistic skills, and now she can do a decent sketch of ponies and things if she puts her mind to it.

Ever since she became Twilight’s pupil, she learned how to be more organized. Before she used to be very forgetful since she never wrote down what she had to do or kept track of important things. If she’d been this organized back when she was commanding her village, she would have been an even more formidable opponent.

Starlight never dated. Growing up she was very distrustful of other ponies, but she was more guarded around stallions. Nothing sets her off like a stallion making an unwanted pass on her.

Starlight doesn’t care about fashion; her sense of style could be summed up in the phrase ‘function over fashion’. Her closet is very bare, even compared to Twilight’s who shares some of Starlight’s tastes when it comes to clothes. She dabbles in makeup though, but her knowledge is very limited in that area too.

Hanging out with Pinkie Pie has aggravated her already very sweet tooth problem. And since her job is very sedentary, her weight gain is starting to show, much to her horror. This prompted her to start exercising more. Now she wakes up early every day to run around Ponyville before she has to go to work.

Unlike Sunburst, all of Starlight’s books are fiction. She likes novels, especially dark fantasy, filled with action and violence. The gorier the better.

When she’s sad or upset, she twirls and levitates stuff around her. It was the first spell she could cast successfully, and it was the first one that Sunburst taught her.

Now for the good stuff, some StarBurst headcannons.

When Starlight can’t sleep, she asks Sunburst to read to her. His voice is very soothing and monotone when he reads out loud, and since the subjective he reads is very boring to her, she falls asleep quite easily this way.

When they were little Stellar Flare used to joke that their kids would get married someday, Firelight didn’t think that it would ever happen. Since then they have had this ongoing bet that whoever was right would get fifty bits from the loser and full bragging rights at the reception. Firelight just lost those fifty bits recently and was a little grumpy at his daughter’s wedding.

Starlight is more athletic than Sunburst, he can run a little faster than her because he's taller than her, but when it comes to endurance, she has him beat. This comes in handy when she’s annoyed with him; she runs around while he chases after her until he collapses from exhaustion, but he still gets up and begins to chase her again.

Things were awkward for them at the beginning, but after the events of the Parent Map episode, they learned to relax around each other again. They started to write letters with more frequency, talking about more mundane and personal things, it surprised the both of them how much they enjoyed their correspondence and their bond grew from there.

When they hang out, they’re like a pair of excited middle schoolers on a sugar high. They’re loud, a little disruptive, and just so gosh damn happy to be around the other. Sunburst just talks her ear off about magic, and Starlight is more than happy to demonstrate what she’s capable of. The look on his face when she does magic is worth it.

They rarely fight, but when they do, brace yourself! They’re both in a very rotten mood until the issue is resolved. Starlight is a raging bull and will explode at the slightest provocation, you’ll be blasted to smithereens if you catch her like this. Sunburst goes very quiet and shuts himself away, but will bite your head off if you happen to bother him, pulling out every insult in the dictionary until you leave crying. This has only happened twice, and they never let their arguments get that bad after the second time.

Their first fight was caused by Starlight’s jealousy, her insecurities got the better of her and made her accuse him of a bunch of things he didn’t do. The second time it was Sunburst’s fault, he was so tired and stressed one day that he lashed out at her and she took it pretty hard.

They make up first by hugging the other from behind, as a measure to keep the other still so they hear what they have to say, and apologizing for their behavior. Even when all is forgiven and the air is cleared, they still stay cuddled and close for a while. Their both very touchy-feely ponies at heart.

Out of the two of them, Sunburst is the better cook. Having been on his own for so long meant he learned how to take care of himself, however, the recipes he can do are very limited. Starlight, on the other hand, is much more willing to try new things, even if they don’t always work out, but the times that they do, they’re very good.

Sunburst likes to hear Starlight sing, especially when he’s tired and she runs a hoof through his mane. He’s in heaven when she sings soft, nonsensical songs for his ears only.

#starlight glimmer #sunburst #starburst #my little pony friendship is magic #mlp #mlp g4 #mlpfim #headcanon

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sarahlizziewrites · 7 months

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Re: Historical accuracy in fiction

Tl;dr: it is not your job as a fiction author to provide complete historical accuracy. It is your job to evoke a time period and communicate it. Don't get bogged down in research unless you really want to.

First of all, this is my disclaimer: I am talking about the kind of things I like to read and write. I am speaking as a historical fiction fan, author and lover of history. This is my personal taste.

Perfect historical accuracy in fiction is massively overrated. In the past have gotten stuck on writing historical fiction pieces because I felt I needed to research more. This killed my story. The piece of art that could have been amazing sat languishing on a hard drive forever.

I do not think historical fiction needs to be stunningly accurate. In fact, it's easy to see when an author has clearly over-researched their book: it reads like a history text that talks about topics your average person would have never even thought about.

Example:

What an author I read recently thought a 1st century Roman citizen would think about: Ah yes, I remember the British campaign like it was yesterday, even though it was ten years ago, in AD 61. Nero was emperor then....etc.

Me, when I think about something that happened 10 years ago: Shit, that was 10 years ago? Wait, was David Cameron PM then?

(And I know how to read and use Google.)

I'm not saying "don't research the time period you are writing in". I'm saying "research the time period you are writing in as much as you feel like doing, then forget most of it when you get in your character's head, except for what might be meaningful for them".

It is not necessarily the purpose of historical fiction to give readers a detailed and realistic version of the time period. All you really need to give them is the vibes that make them feel as though they're in that time.

I just saw a post that explained how Medieval Europeans had access to spices we might usually associate with Indian cuisine. But is that what people would expect to see in a story set in Medieval Europe? No, and you don't get to put in a little "um, actually" author's note explaining every little detail that feels incongruous but is "technically" accurate. It just feels incongruous.

However, am I going to give my Indian character who lives in London in the 1930s access to curry spices? Yes, because he'd look high and low for them and I bet he'd find a good grocer somewhere in London at that time. I haven't researched how realistic that is, and I don't really care. It will still feel in-touch with the setting, and that's all I care about.

Ever since I gave up on perfect historical accuracy, I have written so many more stories in historical settings, and I love the hell out of them. Would a Louisiana jazz band tour in the UK in 1923? Maybe. But I am definitely putting a Louisiana jazz band in my novel set in the UK in 1923 because people want to see jazz in the jazz-age novel! And so do I!

The key thing is, I've only done the level of research that I'm interested in, enough to get me comfortably embedded in the time.

The fiction author's job is to deliver on the promise of the premise. Don't get caught up accidentally writing non-fiction!

You don't have to "put in your research" to write a historical novel. You get to put in as much research as you want to, and you get to disregard the stuff that doesn't spark joy, because it's your story.

I'd love to talk about this more. Historical fiction fans, what's your taste? Have you ever read anything that felt over-researched, or anything that was under-researched to the point of taking you out of the immersion? Let me know.

#historical fiction #writers of tumblr #writeblr #writing advice #fiction writing #long post

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usernamesuggestionsarefunny · 1 year

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“Lost Crown” by Sarah Miller has issues (Or I am extremely nitpicky when it comes to OTMAA)

I love “Lost Crown.” I may repeat that a thousand times. It is an almost perfect book and I doubt any Romanov historical fiction book will ever compare to “Lost Crown” in quality of writing, characterization, historical accuracy, depicting the love this family had for each other, wholesomeness, and pretty much anything else. I have reread that book three times. I admire Sarah Miller a lot for what she accomplished, hers is one of the few books I have re-read and I swear I hate re-reading the same books, so this is a huge deal.

If you are looking for a review praising it though, you are in the wrong place, because I actually think the book is flawed and I am going to be talking exclusively about said flaws (Single flaw? It depends on how you see it, it is mostly one issue).

I love “Lost Crown”, but I am also ridiculously sensitive regarding Sarah Millerʼs attitude towards Alexandra and Alexei, the latter most of all, because he was a child.

“People can stomach the political necessity of executing the tsar, the empress, and maybe the 13-year-old heir to the throne, but there was no reason for those four sisters to die”- Sarah Miller.

That is from an interview. I can not find the exact source, but I am sure I read it somewhere and that it is accurate. Sure, she was talking about what OTHER people feel about Alexeiʼs death when compared to OTMAʼs, but she did NOT make her own opinion known, which makes me think she either doesn't consider that way of thinking discusting or even disagrees too much.

Wow, Miller, really? Does that mean that if Nicholas had removed the Pauline Laws you would have “stomached” the deaths of these girls you wrote a masterpiece about better?

Nothing against Sarah Miller herself, as many people outside the niche Romanov fandom bubble have this mindset, but I genuinely find these sorts of comments and opinions gross. For any who think like that:

A) Premeditatedly (And assuming you are of sound mind) killing innocents for super logic and pragmatic, even downright Einstein level of genius political reasons is just as evil as killing them for any other reason. Yes, ANY other reason. Come at me with whatever “buts” you like. The reasoning of murderers throughout history may be diverse, more or less understandable, or even nonexistent in some cases, but if the effects are the same (Innocents end up dead as a consequence of their immediate actions), then they are just as evil in my eyes.

B) They also had political reasons to kill the girls. They could have been used as a White symbol of resistance against the Bolsheviks, who also wanted to demoralize the upcoming armies by killing the entire family (Further proof that “tactical” doesn't take away from the “evil” of it all).

C) He was 13, the literal youngest, you psychos. His murder was as wrong, sickening, shocking, and unjustified as that of his sisters. I don't care if he doesn't fit your aesthetics OTMA-edit-blog-whatever “Which Romanov Sister are you most like?” quiz or feminist college dissertation on how OTMA were overlooked in favor of him (Bo freaking hoo you care more than OTMA, who loved their brother, did, get over it).

Ok, rant over, let's get to the point. This all brings me to the only aspect of “Lost Crown” I have trouble coming to terms with: It is obvious reading it that Sarah Miller feels little for Alexei, projects those feelings onto the girls, and the worst part is that people don't notice. Well, I do. At first I thought I was seeing things, because not a single Romanov enthusiast had pointed out the same stuff I have issues with, but then I read that quote in the interview and thought: “Maybe I am not so crazy after all, I may be a sensitive little bitch, true, but I am not crazy” lol.

It should be said that I don’t think like this because I consider Alexei’s characterization on Lost Crown bad, on the contrary.

Alexeiʼs characterization is perfect in my view, and it is clear that Sarah Miller did her research on his personality, which is not what troubles me. She might feel “little” for him (Sorry, vibes she gives) but she does feel, I have never claimed she is not compassionate. It is hard to read about him without feeling a twinge of compassion. Sarah does feel for him and his illness, it is clear she does.

The best portrayal I have read of Alexei in Romanov fiction is actually from Sarah Miller’s Lost Crown. It is clear she TRIED to write him with a lot of empathy and sensitivity. But here is the thing, Sarah flawlessly described the POV of each sister but decided not to include Alexei’s POV, which I believe she would have been perfectly capable of handling. I read a review that said that Sarah probably knew too many POVs would ruin the book, but I think that is just silly, because four POVs are already too much. If you are fine with using four I don’t think a fifth one would ruin the story. Sarah is a talented writer, if she had wanted to include Al, she would have.

I think maybe Sarah felt Alexei’s POV was unnecessary for a book marketed towards teenage girls, or that it “ruined” the almost perfect young adult theme of the four sisters. I mean, even “serious” nonfiction author, Helen Rappaport, left Alexei out of the title of her “Four sisters” book, even though the book also talked about him a lot, almost as much as it talked about each of the four sisters individually. Alternatively, Sarah didn’t WANT to include his POV because of reasons already mentioned, she didn’t feel as much for him, which is fine, I mean, it is her book. This is not necessarily the issue.

What I truly freaking dislike are all those scenes where “Olga” is literally jealous of Alexei. Once, because he was allowed a friend to play with him in Tobolsk while her own friend was sent away (Ok, fair, that made a lot of sense), and the second time, when he was comforted in the Rus because he was afraid of the gunshots (The soldiers were killing seagulls). It makes sense Olga was afraid and wanted comfort as well, especially on the infamous Rus where they were not allowed to lock their doors, but her character gave these vibes: “Why DoNt theeyy comfOrt uus? Whaat about uss? He doesnʼt even need it as much!! His fear is not ValiD in comparison to ours!!! I am so jealous and resentful of my brother and I am totally Olga you guys!!!!”

The worst part is when Tatiana is jealous that the fake rescuers wanted to take Alexei down the window first (Oh, I don't know… maybe because he was ill and taking him down would be the hardest thing to do?! Maybe because as Sarah Miller HERSELF said, his murder made most political sense, and at that time, it was logical people thought he was in the most danger??), and “Tatiana”, the most mature, virtually Alexei’s second mother, and the best friend of politically astute Olga, who was bound to know all of this, was jealous, something we are the readers are supposed to view as “fair” and sympathize with.

I would have believed this jealousy arousing from fear coming from Anastasia, the youngest girl and almost a child herself, but not 21-year-old Tatiana. Romanov fans love bitching about authors making up fake cat fights between the girls and antagonizing them, which I sympathize with, one of many reasons “The Tsarina's daughter” was trashed (As it should be) and I don't want to read it. But Sarah Miller makes Tatiana jealous of the fact her disabled brother (Who it makes more political sense to kill) is being put into consideration first in a dangerous rescue attempt and no one bats an eye only because “Lost Crown” has more prestige in the fandom, and “Tsarina's daughter” was in general inaccurate, had insulting scenes, and the author had the nerve to give it a more satisfying ending by making Tatiana survive (Oh no! That didn't actually happen! The horror!! How dare the author put fiction in that fiction book!!!!).

I don't care anymore if people come at me. It is almost perfect, but some parts still irritate me and feel as insulting as parts of “The Tsarina's daughter”, or even the “The Last Tsars” and “The Passion of Marie Romanov” scenes where Maria has sex with a guard. Yea, THOSE scenes. There, I said it. Parts of “Lost Crown” actually offended me MORE, because Maria exploring her sexuality (gasp! horror!) with a guard in FICTION is not as bad as “the Romanov sisters mocking their little brotherʼs fictional self-harm issues” in fiction (I will get to that). Oh! And an added plus is that the author of “The Passion of Marie Romanov” is, as I am, just as horrified about the murder of Alexei as she is about the murder of his innocent sisters, as everyone should be.

Not only are Olga and Tatiana irritatingly jealous and resentful of her brother... but Anastasia is irritatingly jealous and resentful of her brother. The one described as the closest to her brother is. She is suuper annoyed about the family focusing so much on him after they all arrived at Ekaterinburg. Picture this: She has been separated from her parents and favorite sister, her other half of the pair, for weeks. She has missed Maria and wants to see her “so much it is pathetic'' (As she similarly described in a letter), she has worried for their well being and their conditions for weeks, and instead of being happy about the reunion, she is resentful about her brother receiving more attention from his mother for his silly “so painful it can make you pass out” hemophilia attack. She literally says something similar to “what is the use of being together again after weeks of worry and longing if people are paying so much attention to my sick brother, also, I totally am Anastasia, the same girl that wrote a letter to Ekaterinburg talking about how sweet Alexei was, you guys, the same girl that tried to cheer him up and make him laugh when he was ill you guys” *rolls eyes*

“But usernamesuggestionsarefunny...” you say, “you are too sensitive,” you say. “They could have had those thoughts of jealousy for their brother in real life because they were human!” You say.

I am fine with the authors exploring less than perfect sides of the characters (But Alexei-related jealousy issues are the go-to for most Romanov fiction writers, it is overused and rarely done differently, I said what I said), it is fiction, and in real life they weren't perfect and must have had their fights, we just have less information on that. What I don't like is when the narrative doesn't call it out as something wrong, or it villianizes, even if slightly, one of the characters, making you take the other characterʼs side even when, once you reflect about it, is not 100% guaranteed. It is especially obvious why these scenes annoy me when you consider we don't actually get Alexei´s POV. Sarah Miller didn't give us one. So we are just supposed to sympathise with Olgaʼs and only Olgaʼs thoughts and feelings of jealousy, not with Alexei´s own fear of gunshots. We are supposed to sympathize with Anastasiaʼs feelings of jealousy. We never know if Alexei sensed this resentment coming from his favorite sister, how it made him feel if it did, sometimes he is almost treated as some obstacle of sorts to the girls´ happiness instead of a character, I don't know how to explain it, but it is so blatant and annoying.

Oh wait! None of what I mentioned before is the worst part of the book, the part that angered me the most, that angered me more than “Maria having fictional sex with a guard” levels of anger. I leave that for the last part of my rant: The worst part is that Sarah Miller literally implies that after they arrived at Ekaterinburg, Alexei hurt himself on purpose. Now, I don't think this is true in real life, but I understand why Sarah Miller got the idea from: Nicholas´s diary entry, where he mentioned that Alexei bumped his knee against the bed “as if on purpose”. I personally think his expression was meant more as a “This is so freaking inconvenient” or “Why did it have to happen now?” kind of thing, like, Alexei was not in the best health before and now the bump had made the situation worse, you know what I mean? Maybe Nicholas was even annoyed at Alexeiʼs carelessness, but that is it. I donʼt think Nicholas meant he LITERALLY thought Alexei had done it on purpose. He just didn't, in my opinion. It is also possible he was simply going through a typical puberty growth spurt, which as most teenage boys and men are aware, makes you a bit clumsy because you are growing too fast and can´t calculate the size of your limbs lol.

Now, I am not bothered by Sarah Miller's interpretation of Alexei doing it on purpose. It wouldn't bother me even if it could be 100% disproven (I literally support escape plot fictional additions in Romanov fiction for the sake of the plot/story/character development/satisfying end/you name it wholeheartedly). It is fiction after all. I just want serious elements added or included in the story to be treated with the severity they guarrant.

Sarah made the girls aware of the fact their brother might have hit himself on purpose, which, considering his illness, would have caused him a lot of pain, like, A LOT, and it did. He kept his family awake with moans of pain in real life. I am sure Sarah Miller knows about this. I am sure by this point in his life Alexei knew his own body enough to realize this as well if it were true that he did it on purpose (Which I genuinely doubt). This tiny “detail” she decided to include in her book was literally self-harm.

Well, she made the four girls dismiss their brotherʼs self-harm as something selfish he did for attention, and I felt sick. I knew girls in junior high, around Alexei´s age, who did this. No laughing matter, and SUPER out of character for OTMA, even, I would venture, Anastasia, to dismiss this with a laugh as they did, but for some reason not even literal Romanov experts and scholars in the book reviews who are faaar more knowledgeable than me noticed this, maybe because they were blatantly tricked by the narrative (And so were you).The girls making light of their brother self-harming is treated by the narrative as a “cute” and “funny” sister bonding moment (It literally is treated that way, why did no one else notice? Why am I the only one upset about this?). The girls were right and their brother is an attention-seeking asshole for self harming. Also, self-harm is funny and if people do it “for attention” (Which in fact means there are deeper mental health issues that should be attended to), it should not be taken seriously. That is what we are supposed to get from that scene.

This wouldn't bother me if, again, we got Alexeiʼs point of view of this situation, so we the readers could see why he is doing what he is doing and empathize, maybe raise awareness to the serious mental health topic of self harm. Like seriously, hemorrhages into the joints, or in general some hemorrhages cause a lot of pain, and I think Romanov fans underestimate just how much. For example, in Spala, he sometimes had to pass out to be free from it. If he had bumped his knee as a form of self harm knowing it would cause that sort of physical pain, it would have probably meant that his emotional pain was becoming almost unbearable to cope with. That is one of the explanations people who self harm give (Not the only reason people self harm though, and it is much more complex than that), that the physical pain distracts them from the emotional pain. Like seriously, few people would go through that pain for attention, but we the readers are just supposed to believe Alexei was “playing with his illness”, and that he was not taking into account his motherʼs *cough cough his jealous sistersʼ cough cough* suffering.

Like for real, read the following passage from Anastasiaʼs pov and imagine if Alexei had been a 13-year-old girl and her older sisters mocked her self-harm issues behind her back, we would be calling the sisters bitches, Cinderellaʼs step sisters. If the older sisters were older BROTHERS people would go even further, some would call them abusive and uncaring pricks. Think about it for a second, how the way the narrative portrays something tricks you to see this as a “cute” sister bonding moment.

Every time the crowd in the doorway thins, I can see our brother sitting there in Maria’s cot like it’s a striped throne and he’s Tsar Aleksei II.

“I bet he hurt his knee on purpose,” I whisper to my sisters.

“If that’s true, I’d like to take him across my own knee,” Olga says.

“Olga!” Tatiana scolds. “How could you?”

“After what we went through for all those weeks because he was too sick to move? It isn’t fair to play with his illness like that.”

“The first time was not on purpose, Olga.”

“I know it. But think of how Mama suffers. It’s selfish of him.”

“Mama doesn’t seem to mind,” I say. “She looks pretty pleased to have someone to fuss over.” Tatiana’s jaw falls open so far her teeth ought to drop out. “And the only good part so far is that Mama’s hovered so much, Aleksei hasn’t had a chance to notice his own dog is missing.”

“Don’t, Nastya,” Maria begs. “Not on our first day all together again.”

I shut my mouth, but what’s the use of being all together again if everybody’s going to set up camp around Aleksei’s cot and never mind the rest of us?

Lmao I can't with “Anastasia” here. She is so selfish and annoying, sue me.

Nooo, H-O-W D-A-R-E Alexei have legitimate mental health issues as a result of his imprisonment when the book is about OTMA and THEIR thoughts and emotions during imprisonment? How dare I expect Alexei to be treated as a character and not a prop or obstacle to show how nice the poor girls are to put up with his spoilt ass, the attention he gets and his silly "selfish" cries for help?

Sarah actually does give us scenes of Alexei coping with the separation from his parents. His character is treated sensibly while he is at Tobolsk, and to that I give the author a lot of credit, but if she had already touched upon Alexei’s coping, as well as some of his feelings about the separation and of his illness, what was the need to include this fictional self-harm mini plot then? To make it about the girls and how much it annoys them? This is another thing I have noticed, a small minority of exclusively OTMA fans, most often people new to the last imperial family (so Sarah Miller has no excuse lol), talk about Alexei´s illness as if the only real victims were the girls, the people forced to”put up” with it and how much their brother's illness diverted their mother's attention from them, and Sarah Miller does write about Alexei´s illness like this in SOME parts of her book, which is infuriating. This does NOT mean the girls were not deeply affected, or the side effects of his illness, including potential favoritism, should not be mentioned or even extensively explored in fiction, but I don't like when it is made out to be the only important thing, when Alexei is right there, literally about to die in excruciating agony or something but... oh,well.

By the way, how come no author writes about how it affects the girls to see or know their brother is suffering? How come that is not made into a source of conflict for them? Pierre Gillard literally writes it affected their moods, never mentioned jealousy. Like seriously it would be super interesting, kind of accurate and still focus exclusively on the girls if that is what the author is most interested in, but I guess writers prefer to project THEIR personal “my parents loved my youngest sibling more than me” traumas onto OTMA lmao. I mean, Pierre Gillard said his sisters worshiped him, which I genuinely think is hyperbolic and immensely whitewashed. I take the “too good to be true” memoirs with a grain of salt, just like most people and *clearly* Sarah Millar. Of course the girls were human, and I think they got fed up with and bored of their brother once in a while, but if Pierre wrote that they worshiped him it was because he mainly witnessed love between them, more than fights or resentment, and he wanted that love remembered. Why is it the LAST thing remembered in Romanov fiction then? Why does Sarah Miller gloss over that at the worst possible times?

Romanov fans know this is a book true to reality that has no escapes or twists, so this self-harm side-plot leads to NOWHERE in the narrative, a total dead end (Absolutely no pun intended). It was literally added for the “lols”, or as a mini side plot. I hated it, I truly did.

How dare I expect something as serious as self harm to be given importance by the narrative after the author herself decided to add it to the story for no reason at all when she could have easily explained the incident away as an accident? Like seriously, that diary account from Nicholas is all we have and in no way is Alexei doing it on purpose the only valid or even most obvious explanation. If you still want to write about it, good! It might be interesting! But treat it S-E-R-I-O-U-S-L-Y I guess I am super sensitive but that is just me. I literally can't believe no one else has pointed this out.

Not everyone will get the reference, but an example of characters being treated unfairly by popular characters, and the narrative wanting to make you side with the popular characters, who are being unjust, is the case of Percy and the twins from Harry Potter. I love the twins and don't care for Percy that much. The twins are my favorite characters, but the fact is that they were bullies to Percy, and the narrative never called this out. It made you side with the twins and not Percy. It made you angry at Percy for his admittedly cruel actions but not the twins for their unwarranted mocking of their brother. After Percy apologized, the twins should have also done so, but this never happened. According to the narrative, the twins did nothing wrong.

Obviously, the popular characters in this case are the Grand Duchesses, who in Lost Crown didn't actually do anything nearly as bad as the twins. It was just gossip and private thoughts, but again... Alexeiʼs POV people! We don't get it! Or at least, if Sarah didn't want to write it or it took too much space, an explanation of his self-destructive behaviour through a heartfelt talk between the siblings. The narrative convinces you that the way the sisters are talking about their self-harming brother is completely fine. It never calls it out, it never proves them wrong, in fact, most readers didn't notice nor cared, but might come to internalize the belief that people who self harm are attention seeking, or that people that are chronically ill are wrong to have mental health issues because they are not being “grateful” enough to the people who care for them, they are being “unfair” to them, and not “appreciating” all the caretakers have had to do for their sake. It is a pretty toxic message, I don´t know, don´t mind me, I am a sensitive little bitch.

Alexei behaves horribly with Anastasia in Ekaterinburg as well, by the way. I hated him in that scene. He “pranks” her in a way that could have easily killed her. But the anecdote is told from Anastasiaʼs POV, we rightfully side with her and see how scared she is. The narrative shows us Alexei crossed the line, that is the difference.

To be honest, this other book is objectively less accurate, but I preferred “Anastasia and her sisters” to “Lost Crown”. Sure it has a made up romance between Anastasia and Botkinʼs son, and you know what? That innocent fictional addition is not nearly as harmful as Sarah Millerʼs diary-entry-based self-harm side plot and the possible message it sends to the readers, something that, admittedly, she may have not realized as she wrote it was harmful.

Another thing, this is more tongue in cheek. The only sister who never thinks of Alexei with humorous over the top resentment is, as far as I can remember, Maria (At least my fave Maria escaped from that terrible detail in the girlsʼ characterization lol). I appreciate Maria never did so, not even when Alix said “Thank God it wasnʼt Alexei!” when Maria hurt her eye. The only thing Maria thought was that her motherʼs expression hurt her feelings, which I completely get. I mean, that line was so obnoxious and obviously put there to show the readers how horrible Alexeiʼs existence was for the girls lmao, and it is impressive that Sarah Miller held herself back there from making Maria have an internal monologue on how little her mother loves her even though it was clear what Alix meant (Though I still don't like the line, it was downright cruel, sure Alix could have said it in a moment of carelessness, but in context with the rest of the book, it sounds as if the author was trying to tell me: “Look how poor OTMA were neglected by Alix in favor of the brat Alexei”). Mariaʼs love for her brother is also connected by the narrative to her nurturing nature and longing to be a mother, which was so ashfkdfhgdfgi I loved it! I canʼt believe Sarah Miller seems to think the same way as I do, that Mariaʼs personality makes it unlikely she was not as close to her brother.

The fact Maria is often talked about as the “jealous” one or “least close” to her brother for literally no reason (no evidence whatsoever) makes me consider the fact she escaped this book intact from resentment a triumph honestly, at least in that aspect I applaud Sarah Miller.

Tatiana doesn't escape from the rescentful part of the characterization, and many of the times she worries about Alexei, she clearly does so solely for her mother's sake (Literally, when she is caring for Alexei she barely thinks of him as a brother but as her motherʼs “sunbeam”, when Alexei calls for his mother in a clearly upset tone because they just literally ARRESTED his sailor nanny, Tatiana is like: how ddaaare he annoy my poor sick mother!!! When he is EQUALLY SICK!!). I loved the way Miller portrayed Tatianaʼs love for Alexandra btw. Tatianaʼs love for Alexei just doesn't appear to be as genuine as that of Maria in this book.

In conclusion, Lost Crown was almost perfect, and I have waaay less problem with the book than I have with the way the fandom blindly worships it as if it were the Bible of Romanov historical fiction. Sure, love it! I have read it 3 times and plan to do so again, maybe that is why I noticed these details while other fans did not, maybe I love it more than you do guys lol. In fact, I advise you to read it again, or buy and read it if you haven´t, maybe you will do so with new eyes, maybe not. But don't just appeal to it as authority on what good Romanov fiction is. Lost Crown is far from perfect, and if you have stuff you have issues with (I hope someone will say something in the comments, maybe even something new, and prove I am not alone, lol), or you like another Romanov fiction book more, even “silly” and inaccurate “they escape” fantasy books, you should be free to speak your mind without being called ignorant.

#romanov #romanovs #otma #olga nikolaevna #tatiana nikolaevna #maria nikolaevna #anastasia nikolaevna #alexei nikolaevich #grand duchess anastasia nikolaevna #grand duchess olga nikolaevna #grand duchess tatiana nikolaevna #grand duchess Maria nikolaevna #lost crown #Sarah miller #otmaa

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mermaidsirennikita · 1 year

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Please, I beg--

If you are looking at reviews for books, but especially romance novels, do not take star ratings into account all that much. I do give a star rating for books because you kind of must, it's inevitable, but the reality is that the actual reviews will tell you what you need to know. When I read a review, I am looking for:

--why did they like it and why did they dislike it

--content warnings

Sometimes? A one star review? Tells me I would love a book. If a book is one-starred because of all that nasty, dirty, horrible sex? I will probably enjoy that novel greatly, add it to the TBR. If a historical romance is one-starred because of "historical inaccuracies"? Most likely, that reviewer is living in a fantasy world regarding history (about 70% of the time, these *inaccuracies* will include "women having opinions and enjoying premarital sex" and "people of color exist in this novel about Regency England"), but either way, I don't care. I don't read historical romance for accuracy, so why would I care about someone one-starring a book over inaccuracy (excepting a few rare occasions).

"I took four stars off because they were cheaters" cool, I love cheating plots quite often, let's goooo.

"I gave this five stars because it was pure fluff" awesome for you, so glad you loved it. I am an angst hound, I may not like that unless there are other contributing factors that override the fluff.

"I hated the FMC because she did X Bad Thing" sounds like she might be a Problematic Heroine, I tend to love those, chuck it in the basket.

"This book is a one star because they did *dirty* things like the B, the D, AAAAAND THE SM" okay then sounds like a book 4 me.

It like... actively breaks me a little when I think of people overlooking books because of star ratings. It's totally valid to give negative reviews--I've given negative reviews (though I most certainly never tag the authors in them, heeeeey). I give a lot fewer of them these days because I know my sensibilities a lot better as a reader, and I only really blog about books I like for the most part. But it's not bad to give a negative review. People should be able to do that. I just wish everyone else would realize that a GR or Amazon star rating is the literal beginning, not the end of the discussion around a book's quality.

#romance novel blogging

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ioannemos · 11 months

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🥰

JASON

describe your character's voice. do they have a voice claim?

no voice claim. i imagine him in the low-tenor range; superb diction, snappy response time, with the occasional tendency to slip into a sort of... after-action report cadence/narration (short sentences, event-focused, impartial)

he's much freer in spanish. not spellbinding by any means but he actually uses descriptive language

an embarrassing secret about your OC?

he has his mother's name tattooed in a heart on his right hip, maybe two inches square, acquired while drunk in the kind of tattoo parlor overseas that would tattoo obviously drunk soldiers. he's not embarrassed about the tattoo, per se, and more about how he implied to his fellow soldiers and the tattoo artist that 'alicia' was, y'know, a different kind of someone waiting for him at home

---

DAVID

what was your character's dream job as a kid? is it different than what their career ended up being?

astronaut. turns out you need to be able to read 😔 he likes being a welder, tho - metal doesn't care how you feel. don't know what you're feeling? weld about it! just don't be stupid

how does your OC feel about their parents?

he misses his mom. he feels more kinship with his dad but the very nature of that kinship is estrangement from people, so

---

CHRISTINE

what book genre is their favorite?

historical romance. not pulp, tho - she likes historical accuracy, or at least nothing egregiously unrealistic

how well did your OC do in school?

...c's get degrees 😅 she did not do well. she doesn't have a head for math, her interest in history came later in life, it took until the very end of college to figure out the best way for her to write papers... judging her by her academic record would be judging a fish by its ability to climb trees

---

MICHELLE

where would your OC like to go on a honeymoon?

a year-long trip around the mediterranean region, with special attention to rome. if she had to pick a city, she'd pick rome

a nostalgic memory from your OC’s childhood?

she spent a week decorating her new Big Girl Bike with stickers, paint pens, glitter, etc before deciding she wanted the training wheels taken off Right Now. her dad put off mowing the lawn to teach her how to ride it without the training wheels and they ended up spending the whole morning together, ending by biking together to an ice cream stand a few blocks away

---

SAM

an embarrassing secret about your OC?

he can't keep effect and affect straight. he's a grown-ass fifty-five year old man and he'll still wince as he types out an email, hoping that he got it right this time... only to sigh in disgust when the little spell check prompt comes up again, verdammt

a nostalgic memory from your OC’s childhood?

when he was nine his mom lied to her workplace and his school that they were sick and took him to the museum three days in a row bc an exhibition about space was ending and she wanted him to see it but couldn't afford weekend tickets. he'd heard about it maybe twice and the idea of getting to go hadn't even crossed his mind. he was blown away. it was so hard not to tell his friends about it

---

MUNINN

who is your OC’s best friend?

i had a bit of a crisis about this one but i think it's christine. she's scary good with emotional insight, which he is sorely lacking. this has led to more than one conversation that boiled down to

him: ugh i've been angry about [x] for like three days now her: hmm. actually you've been upset for a week. do you think it's about [x]? maybe you're sad about [h] him: ...what. sad? about [h]? that's bs. no. *six hours later* okay fine. you're right. again. now what

they have a similar sense of humor, and while christine would feel bad about expressing it this way they're both the kind of person to jump to "i have a shovel, who are we murdering with it" when someone they care about is hurt in any way

when was their first kiss?

sixth grade. it was a dare. he barely remembers her name... joan? janet? he's pretty sure it started with a j...

#thank you #morfinwen #let's talk #ask #asked and answered #muninn #au: allwinter #not up for tagging everyone else yet. sorry everyone else #personal #abbie needs a twitter

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travelplannerbg · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘We do not ask you to enjoy,’ said the Bede, in his dry way, ‘ we only ask you to know — or, to be quite accurate, to satisfy the examiners. The brilliant apologist of Henry vm. seems to give you delightful lectures; but I can assure you that the Schools know no other standard but that of accurate research, in the manner so solidly established by the late Regius Professor whom we have lost.’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

‘My young friend,’ said the Reverend Ethelbald, ‘you will find that dates, authorities, texts, facts, and plenty of diphthongs pay much better. You are in danger of mortal heresy, if you think that anything will show you a royal ‘

road to these. If there is one thing which, more than another private sofia tours, is the mark of Oxford to-day, it is belief in contemporary documents, exact testing of authorities, scrupulous verification of citations, minute attention to chronology, geography, palaeography, and inscriptions. When all these are right, you cannot go wrong. For all this we owe our gratitude to the great historian we have lost.’

‘ Oh, yes,’ said Phil airily, for he was quite aware that he was thought to be shaky in his pre-Ecgberht chronicles; ‘ I am not saying a word against accuracy. But all facts are not equally important, nor are all old documents of the same use. I have been grinding all this term at the History of the Norman Conquest, verifying all the citations as I go along, and making maps of every place that is named. I have only got to the third volume, you know, and I don’t know now what it all comes to. Freeman’s West-Saxon scuffles on the downs seem to me duller than Thucydidesfifty hoplites and three hundred sling-men, and I have not yet come to anything to compare with the Syracusan expedition.’

‘ This is a bad beginning for a history man,’ said Baeda. Is this how they talked at Eton of the greatest period of the greatest race in the annals of the world? All history centres round the early records of the English in the three or four centuries before the first coming of the Jutes, and the three or four after it. Let me advise you to take as your period, say, the battle of Ellandun, and get up all about it, and how “ its stream was choked with slain,” and what led up to it and what came after it. Do you know anything more interesting, as you call it, than that? ’

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘Yes,’ said Phil readily, with all the recklessness of a smart freshman; ‘why, Ellandun was merely the slogging of savages, of whom we know nothing but a few names. What I call fine history is Macaulay’s famous account of the state of England under the Stuarts, or Froude’s splendid picture of the trial and execution of Mary of Scots. That is a piece of writing that no one can ever forget.’

‘Ah, just so !’ said the Venerable, in that awful mono-syllabic way which he had caught from the Master; ‘ splen-did picture ! — piece of writing ! — fine history ! — here we generally take “fine history” to be — ah! false history.’

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

‘We usually find it so,’ replied his tutor, ‘and it is ten times worse than false quantities in a copy of longs and shorts. There is no worse offence outside the statute book (and many offences in it are less immoral) than the crime of making up a picture of actual events for the sake of literary effect, with no real care for exact truthfulness of detail. A historical romance, as they call novels of past ages, is often a source of troublesome errors; but, at any rate, in a novel we know what to expect. It is a pity that Scott should talk nonsense about Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, and that Bulwer introduced Caxton into the Last of the Barons. But no one expects to find truth in such books, and every one reads them at his own peril. In a history of England it is monstrous to be careless about references, and to trust to a late authority.’

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

bulgariant · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

bulgariablo · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

everybg · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

sunyandbulgaria · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

mybulgaria · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

bulgariatraveladvisory · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

bulgaristya · 2 years

Photo

Codex Diplomatics

‘ Arid are we expected to enjoy our Codex Diplomatics as much as our Macaulay and our Froude? ’

‘ Do you think that a thoughtful essay on the typical movements in one’s period would not pay? ’ asked the Admirable one, in a rather anxious tone.

Recklessness of a smart freshman

‘ But fine history need not be false,’ said Phil.

#Codex Diplomatics

0 notes

mirror-vicit-omnia · 3 years

Text

If Ignis were a YouTuber, I could see him doing cooking episodes where, of course, he teaches you how to make a five-star meal. Gives tips and tricks on everything from oil to temperature to handling the knife to what shape to cut a strawberry for a presentation.

And sometimes he tries to replicate food wars recipes or other dishes from pop culture.

But what's important is that he makes it as close to the original concept as possible, and then afterwards does his own take on it. Shows how he would make it.

The background music would be classy soft violin. Less Vivaldi's four seasons, more Brandenburg Concerto No 3.

Other videos are inspired by conversations with Prompto in particular. Ignis has an entire series dedicated to things that Prompto has been confused by, complained about, and showed a lack of proficiency in. This includes table setting (nine different utensils and three different glasses, at least), how to tie a necktie (30 styles + tips on formal wear co-ordination), and the basic steps of five different ballroom dances.

It would be very cute to have a Choco Bros YouTuber AU where the four of them all know each other and have separate channels with wildly different topics. And then they do crossover episodes. You get all the shenanigans.

Iggy invites Noct over for a cooking episode. Noctis seems very resistant. He takes the bed of lettuce off his plate when he thinks Ignis isn't looking. Ignis' motherly look of disappointment becomes a meme.

Gladio might do fitness and bodybuilding videos, or!

Basic training techniques with medieval weapons.

We know he's a literary fanatic, so maybe it shows in how he names things, his steel blades and practice swords.

Now the image I have is that the four of them mostly have their own channels and don't cross over too often. However, I could see a filmed sparring match between gladio and ignis.

Noct is dragged into the self-defense videos. He is used as an example of how not to do things. Gladio corrects his form for the camera. Noct looks pissy.

Prompto could have all kinds of things on his channel. A vlog maybe, some lovely nature hikes where he was going to take some beautiful expert shots anyway, might as well videotape himself dying as he hikes up hill.

Definitely a vlog. One of his most popular videos is of him going to a chocobo farm and getting very excited.

And Noct. In one version he might have a YouTube channel, but it would be very funny if he didn't. He doesn't have a YouTube channel. He's just dragged into everything by his friends.

He's that cryptid in the background. He'll conk out in the background, asleep in a chair, slightly off camera as gladio and Nyx discuss armor and hold up different pieces for the camera.

In one of igneous cooking videos, his elbow and me can be spotted through the entryway of the kitchen into an immaculate dining room. When igneous sets his perfectly plated creation on the dining room table, staged with the proper table settings, Noct's hair and folded arms poke in from the top of the frame. Ignis just set up around him.

There's only one video where anyone has seen this mysterious emo cryptid happy, and that is in the Prompto videos.

It was really know who this guy is, and if you only know their channels in passing, and don't know about the crossover episodes, you would have no idea that these three people even know each other, much less are childhood friends.

And people are like, so what is the guy in the background do? What's his deal? Who is he?

And I don't know where to go with this from here, but in my head it's really cute.

Update 8-5-21:

Why did I say that Gladio would only tie in literary analysis to the names of weapons? I was a fool. A complete and utter fool.

Gladio compares book styles of the same Legends told by different authors. He talks about translators, and through the process of reading all these different translations of ancient poetry, he discovered that there is an incredible bias amongst translators that misrepresents the original source material. You know, like in real life.

He does videos on historical accuracy of costumes, fighting styles, the works. But he also points out when the TV show or movie got little details right, little cultural things that no one would know about unless they knew. Something like... Having the seidr sort next to the jarl at the head of the table, because she is feared and disgraced and respected highly all at the same time. Or something, history nerds, throw us examples.

He cares about when cross lacing became a thing with corsets. He's pleased when he sees spiral corseting, it shows that they did at least some research.

If Cindy is a part of this, I want her to be a guest on the shows. But especially gladio, because I want them to collaborate on metalsmithing. Together, they forge Noctis' engine blade. It's a birthday gift. He loves it. The last 30 seconds of the video is a fast short clip compilation of everyone taking swings at different things in the backyard with the sword.

The engine piece doesn't do anything, it just makes the vroom vroom sound, which makes everyone's day.

Prompto definitely has some sort of travel vlog, something he saves up for and takes time off of his side gig to do.

The viewers don't know this, not explicitly, but Noct shamelessly pushes to foot the bill so that prompto can come with him to boring places he doesn't want to go. Like venice, italy.

See, Noct either doesn't want to be too much on screen or recognizable, or his father has a huge problem with it. Because his son is going to inherit a multi-million dollar company, and should anything scandalous happen on those videos, the whole world is going to know and he's just going to be a hard time for everyone. His life could be over before it's even started. How is Regis supposed to pass this down if everyone believes his son is incompetent?

Noct doesn't care, of course. He doesn't even want to be a part of the company. It's so stressful, just like being a prince in canon.

This means, of course, that he gets dragged all over the world to important events and meetings with his dad. Not often, but it's becoming more often the older he gets. And Noct hates it. So having Prompto along to goof off with is an ulterior motive.

He is edited out of every scene to the best of everyone's power. However, sometimes his voice does catch on screen. And if he's not easily recognizable, a blurry thing that's not even halfway into the frame, Noct will just shrug and call it good enough.

Also, those crossovers? Those seem almost for business. They do it for hype it seems. Oh it's so exciting, ignis is going to show prompto how to cook! And the two different videos on each channel show a different side of the experience. There's the crossing over points, like when they're in the kitchen and igneous hands prompto and onion and a knife and shows him the correct way to hold it, but then there's a whole bunch of other stuff that you get from prompto's vlog.

He records his entire experience. It's just as enthusiastic and fun as his videos always are, the same flavor and delivery, but it's in Ignis' apartment, and it's exciting. Prompto is very personal in his videos, so every single time he doesn't understand something, he puts in those narrative one-on-one moments, like in the office or in a reality TV show.

The video from ignis' perspective has an entire section of him explaining how the dish is made, a little bit of History on the meat and spices, the ingredients, and a breakdown of the steps of how to make it before anything happens with prompto.

And then you get the delight of Ignus trying to teach pronto how to cook. And it's a very wholesome video. Prompto probably messes up several times, but Ignis is infinitely patient. There are definitely puns. All sorts of puns.

All the crossovers have puns.

So, it's a big shock to learn that these three seemingly unrelated YouTubers are actually childhood friends. And it's the second biggest shock.

The biggest shock is that that weird sleepy emo cryptid, whom you only get blurry out of focus shots and barely there snippets of cut out conversation, is this high profile Rich boy who's going to inherit the titan company, an equivalent of Stark industries.

#final fantasy xv #ffxv #ignis scientia #noctis lucis caelum #gladiolus amiticia #prompto argentum

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everyonewasabird · 2 years

Text

I posted 1,297 times in 2021

237 posts created (18%)

1060 posts reblogged (82%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 4.5 posts.

I added 558 tags in 2021

#brickclub - 202 posts

#other people's art - 118 posts

#other people's work - 42 posts

#<3 - 34 posts

#enjolras - 30 posts

#signal boost - 28 posts

#!!! - 27 posts

#!! - 26 posts

#yes - 26 posts

#writing things - 25 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#'if you got this result you either have trouble expressing/explaining yourself or you use highly specific/technical words that most people d

My Top Posts in 2021

One full moon night, Cosette ventures into the streets of Paris and meets a friend.

For @enjolrac, who requested Cosette and Bahorel for the 2021 @drinkwithme-exchange.

Werewolf Child is a short Twine game hosted on itch.io. Unlike many Twine games, it’s a single linear story with no branches--think of it as somewhere between a picture book and an animation you click to reach the next frame.

I had a fantastic time doing this project! @enjolrac, thank you so much for the prompt!

117 notes • Posted 2021-07-25 11:23:59 GMT

the way the fandom writes les amis is inaccurate at best and fetishistic at worst

Man, I am not here at all for the anti-Les-Mis-fandom side of the Les Mis fandom.

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I do really like going for brick accuracy in my own fic. And while I’ve never been a person with much of a bent for history, I love how being in this fandom and writing for it has expanded my historical knowledge hugely, along with my confidence in looking at historical sources. And when I read fic, it’s most often canon era with a brick-accurate bent. There are so many people whose takes on Amis characterization are incredible--the level of writing in this fandom is amazing, and I’ve learned so much from it.

But also, like. That’s me? I focus on brick accuracy because it’s a thing I enjoy.

The fact that there’s a much larger side of the fandom with very different headcanons from mine that aren’t primarily motivated by accuracy to the text just... isn’t a thing that impacts me very much? Or if it does, it's only in the sense that I get to be part of a fandom that’s far more lively and vibrant than it would be otherwise.

And I think that’s great.

Do I get salty when I disagree with people’s takes on things? Yeah! I’m a fan of a thing, that comes with the territory. I have a few people I generally see eye to eye with on headcanons whom I can gripe to privately. That feels really different from being angry that opinions I disagree with exist, which is the tone I get from this ask.

(Forgive me, Anon, if I’m misreading that.)

Why would I moralize about the fact that there are other fans with other takes? Who on earth is being harmed by people being enthusiastic about fandom?

As to “fetishistic”... Anon, I fear I honestly don’t actually understand what you’re talking about. Sure, sometimes a story handles a real-world issue clumsily or something, but--it’s very, very easy to close the browser window on an offensively bad fanfic. Barring situations where a fic is actively doxxing or harassing a real person, I don’t think fic does that much harm to the world. It just doesn’t have that much power.

And really, what's wrong with having fetishes? Or writing about them? Honestly, staring into the mindboggling abyss of someone else’s fetish expressing itself around characters you care about is one of the great pleasures of the internet.

Fandom used to make fun of all the fics back in the day that were prefaced with “Don’t like, don’t read”--but honestly, I think it’s pretty good advice.

132 notes • Posted 2021-06-03 19:39:51 GMT

Bless Joly, so much. After everything we’ve seen about student-grisette relationships and power imbalances and exploitation and misogyny, he shows with nothing but “I really like my girlfriend, but we’re fighting, and I’m sad.”

144 notes • Posted 2021-09-23 15:15:24 GMT

Waitwaitwait, is THAT the lesson Enjolras needed to learn from Grantaire? Is that what OFPD is about?

The two men were warming themselves with their elbows resting on a table upon which Fauchelevent had placed a bit of cheese, black bread, a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and the old man was saying to Jean Valjean, as he laid his hand on the latter’s knee: “Ah! Father Madeleine! You did not recognize me immediately; you save people’s lives, and then you forget them! That is bad! But they remember you! You are an ingrate!”

and

“Are you good for anything?”

“I have a vague ambition in that direction,” said Grantaire.

“You do not believe in everything.”

“I believe in you.”

“Grantaire will you do me a service?”

“Anything. I’ll black your boots.”

“Well, don’t meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe.”

“You are an ingrate, Enjolras.”

It’s the same homoerotic subtext notion of ingratitude from a person whose life has been transformed to the person who transformed it. Saving a person, the text seems to be saying, is a personal act, and there’s something wrong with taking it on as an abstract and impersonal notion of sacrifice.

It’s the lesson Valjean struggles with all along, and the way he falls short as Madeleine--he tries to save people at a distance, with jobs, with rules, with breaking into their houses and leaving money but never engaging directly. He learns too late for Fantine but does far better with Cosette. Fauchelevent takes him to task for it, but Valjean falls back on his old ways with Marius, attempting to hide his good deeds at the barricade to the detriment of everybody.

Myriel wasn’t perfect, but he never had this problem; at some level his imperfection was that he *only* engaged with the personal. The Conventionist, though capable of a wider scope than Myriel, seems to comprehend his role in the lives of individuals, like the peasant boy who serves him or Myriel himself.

Enjolras isn’t as solitary as Valjean, but his friends aren’t people he saved--it's more the other way around: they’re people who have made him more complete. He’s uncomfortable with Grantaire, whom he really is saving, the same way Valjean is uncomfortable with everybody he helps. And in OFPD, he finally fixes it.

182 notes • Posted 2021-04-27 14:03:16 GMT

“On your knees!” he repeated.

And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years bent the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought him to his knees in the mire.

For Barricade Day, 2021

383 notes • Posted 2021-06-05 12:41:13 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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