another set of fantrolls! Themis, Leonol, and Chaoyi. DETAILED LORE below readmore!!!
Themis is the head of the jade caste at the school and she takes her roll very seriously, pressuring younger trolls in her caste not to use their recently-acquired rights to NOT work in the caverns, but instead live a life of their choosing. AKA, there is a lot of social pressure on jades to conform to their expected duties and Themis is a traditionalist who wants the jades at school to appear unified and strong. Thusly, Melosa's misbehavior and outright hatred for the jade caste drives her crazy, especially considering Melosa's rare and special morph. She doesn't want
She's named 'themis' for artemis, because it was artemis killed the shit out of babies. Themis believes strongly in culling/letting trolls experience harshness to grow up strongly. her godtier is Judge of Void.
Leonol is a male oliveblood with a lot of RAW CONFIDENCE for being like 4 sweeps old. i wanted to make a catboy bc i already had two oliveblooded catgirls. hes based on that chill and confident big tomcat with the big cheeks type vibe. based on sphinx moth+sabertooth tiger. prince of doom because he destroys doom itself. dont worry. leonol's got it handled. even though hes like, 8.
Chaoyi is Melosa's sister, younger by only a couple sweeps. Melosa was left with a virgin spotted mothergrub lusus that didn't bond with her, and as a result spent her first few sweeps barely surviving as the VSM grew more and more incensed at the 'pest' in it's living space.
their relationship frew more and more antagonistic and they badly injured each other, melosa fleeing and being presumed dead while the jades, finally visiting the hive after a few sweeps, were horrified to find a mothergrub so badly injured. the VSM was returned to the jade caverns to recover physically and mentally. during this time, it bonded with a second child still a grub, and the jades let the VSM keep it's new charge.
upon discovering the VSM had a different kid in the hive, melosa initially feared the VSM to be hunting the wriggler as she'd grown up, only to be more distraught to learn chaoyi was healthy, happy, and cared for. melosa almost started another fight with the VSM, which was defending chaoyi from her, and cut off half her own hair in an act of defiance. initially, chaoyi couldn't possibly believe melosa to be her sister, because she had such a good relationship with her lusus, but after she wasn't believed by the jade adults checking up on the VSM's health that melosa had survived, she realized melosa had to be right.
melosa kept stopping by home and visiting chaoyi because if the VSM started hurting another wriggler, melosa wasn't going to let them handle it alone like she had. she didnt care about chaoyi's opinion and was shocked when chaoyi apologized and believed melosa. the two have an extremely awkward relationship but they are also both very dear to each other, and consider the other important family.
(while the mothergrub did abuse and neglect melosa, it's not really either's fault. most lusus are ultimately animals, including the mothergrubs, and she never recognized melosa as her own child. its based on animals rejecting their own bbs, which i witnessed a couple years ago. lots is left out of this desc of chaoyi and melosa but this is the summary.)
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Literary criticism of Ryuunosuke Akutagawa wants so badly for him to have been spiritually fragile. He was wrought with doubt and skepticism, and he felt crushed beneath the pressures stacked on his thin frame by others' demands of him. He was certain there was prophecy written in his mother's insanity and her ghost was a fixture haunting the edges of his vision.
But, he was also overprescribed barbituates. Like, really, really overprescribed. High doses of barbituates are now known to cause irritability, paranoia, depression, and, sometimes, suicidal ideation. His spirit was fine; it was his pharmacologist who should have been scrutinized.
This is especially agitating to me when Ryuunosuke Akutagawa's malaise is contrasted against Nakajima's mettle. Nakajima was administered ephedrine for his chronic, debilitating asthma. Ephedrine weakened his heart, but has a dopamine transporter inhibitory effect simar to amphetamine and other stimulants. (Then, stimulants were gaining popularity as antidepressants and were supplied by the US, British, Japanese, and German militaries to servicemen during World War II.) In other words, there were confounding variables which might have attributed to one's sensitive nerves and the other's spirited focus.
Both men were brilliant writers who stylized their pediatric onset anxiety; profound insight; excessive cleverness; stubborn resistance to literary trends; and existential terror. Both men suffered from chronic mental and physical illnesses and overrelied on treatments widely prescribed but poorly suited for their conditions. Both men were killed in no small part by excessive administration of medication: the former by depressants meant to settle his disordered mind enough to sleep, and the latter by the stimulant meant to settle his disordered body enough to write. But, way too much ink has been spilled on insisting fragile nerves and spiritual weakness killed Akutagawa, while the cruelty of fate struck down Nakajima.
That is the problem with treating authors as if they're literary devices or signs of the times, rather than people who lived to save themselves.
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one of the things that makes mdzs SUCH a great story is the fact that it's a tragedy with queer protagonists, but their queerness isn't the cause or the center of the tragedy. it's not even related, really. it's a story about love and loss and wrong and right, about what we owe each other and what we owe ourselves, about how you can find joy even amidst chaos and grief; its complexity and tragedy is what makes it so profound and touching. sure, there's 'casual' queerphobia in the story, but with everything else going on, it's not really relevant- wwx's mostly like, 'oh, i like guys? i like lwj? i love lwj? fuck, what if he doesn't love me back? am i being presumptuous to think he returns my feelings? what do I do now?' followed by 'wait, he loves me back??? we're getting married IMMEDIATELY', and that whole attitude is very refreshing because sometimes you just want to read a queer story that isn't about queer suffering but that's still incredibly miserable, and i think we as a queer community deserve it
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Okay, sure, all of the knights of the round table after Arthur and Merlin get their shit together and finally court being like “yeah, we knew” is funny because none of them thought to tell them what they all saw, BUT
I present to you, all of them being literally so thrown off by this new development that really isn’t so new. Because they see Arthur and Merlin together all the time, sure, but only while they’re with them. They don’t see the private moments we do, or the carefully intimate conversations in the night when they’re alone in Arthur’s chambers. They don’t see Merlin smoothing out Arthur’s collar after dressing him when he doesn’t need to. They don’t see the domesticity when Merlin is polishing armour by the fire in Arthur’s chambers and Arthur is reading updates from the lower town nearby in total silence. Etc etc
Because let’s be real, all of the knights would die for Arthur or each other, that’s what being a knight is all about, so they figured that Merlin wasn’t any exception. They don’t truly realise the lengths he truly has gone for Arthur.
Leon has been around since the day these two literally MET. Merlin nearly commit regicide his second day and then saved Arthur from the sorceress by the third. Gwaine loves how Merlin doesn’t fall into line with hierarchy roles but can begrudgingly see why he’s so loyal to Arthur, cause he has his moments. Lance respects and admires Arthur a lot, especially after knighting him, which has always been his dream, and knows of the prophecy from Merlin as his one (1!!) in-the-know friend, so he suspects it’s just that. Elyan knows his sister is in love with Arthur, half of Camelot’s court ladies are for Gods sake, but she and Merlin act extremely different around Arthur, Merlin being so much more comfortable around him than Gwen, so he thinks it’s more of a brotherhood like the knights bond. Percy is a bit more perceptive of this, especially considering both Merlin and Arthur never really fall in love with anyone else around them the entire time, they’ve never seen Merlin in love period since they never met Freya, and Arthur had courted before but most of it was arranged or a product of his duty to the throne.
So when they’re like “lol guess who’s finally together” all of the Knights are collectively losing their minds, and replaying everything they’ve ever known about them in their minds since they met.
THAT is comedy
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