#and we can be grateful for the fact
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#tang sanzang tuesday#this monk truly is an inspiration for us all#and we can be grateful for the fact#that no matter what#none of us are being chased by flesh-hungry yao
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Show: NINJAGO Legends: Monstrosity (Kai mini-series)
Song: To Ashes and Blood - WOODKID
So anyone else a changed man after watching this? Because this sure did something to my brain chemistry i MISSED 2D animation SO FREAKING MUCH
#KNOX EDIT (me)#LEGO Ninjago Monstrosity#tw bugs#tw centipede#y'all can thank kai sand for the use of this song AND for the fact it's the full four minutes ily kai sand <3#the fact that i spent three days on this just proves i am so normal about it I AM NORMAL I'M TELLING U#exported over ten times spent an hour staring at it to make sure it uploaded paused to watch a tornado dissipate somewhere in there#i do indeed have my priorities straight yes indeed#last week of school and i have an exam tomorrow and i'm making this because I still can't believe this mini-series is real i wish there was#more of it and im so incredibly grateful and obsessed with what we got THEY REALLY PUT ONE OF MY FAVES THROUGH THE HORRORS#JAY GETS AN OFFICE JOB COLE GETS A FAMILY NYA GETS BEING A TRAVELLING PROTECTOR ZANE GETS A NAP LLOYD GETS ISOLATED AND THEN STUDENTS AND#KAI?? KAI GETS THE MOST HORRORS IMAGINABLE BRO GETS FREE TRUAMA FOR YEARS I'M OBSSESSED HOW'D THEY GET AWAY WITH THISHGLKSDJF#been here waiting for this to load for THREE HOURS AAAAA#hi its the next morning we're trying this again#HI ITS THE EVENING WE'RE TRYING THIS AGAIN#I TRIED THIS AT SCHOOL TOO AND NTOHING#OH MY GODS IT WORKED FINALLY OH MY FINALLY EVERYOEN OUT OF THE WAY I'M POSTING NOW RAAA
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I'M MAKING A MOVIE
My next big creative project just got greenlit!
Last year we made The Prince, and it was a gamechanger - next year I'm making a sexy horror comedy vampire movie!
Can't wait to get started on this one lol. Also thank you?! This happened because people went so gaga for The Prince. It's phenomenal.
#Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend#The Prince#Philosophy Tube#Also can we talk about the fact that my debut film got announced IN VARIETY?#Like... WHAT?!#Variety Magazine!#You're gonna have to learn to talk that Variety speak#ba ba do ba ba ba do ba!#Thank you#I'm feeling very grateful right now#Also something very funny - my Dad misunderstood the headline and thinks the film is called Euphoria#My dad thinks I made Euphoria
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Happy Valentine's Day! (and this blog's first post anniversary!)
#poorly drawn mdzs#better drawn mdzs#mdzs#wei wuxian#lan wangji#Woah...it's been a whole *year* since I took the leap and uploaded my 'first attempt' art.#It's outdated now but it holds a special place in my heart for the fact it started all of this off.#Calling this 'poorly-drawn' was always about accepting that my art was going to be imperfect and messy - and doing it anyways!#There has been a staggering number of times I have drawn something I almost didn't upload because I didn't think it was 'good enough'#only for someone to say they liked it - or that it made them laugh. And it has helped me realize -#-The worst critic for my work has always been myself. If I listened to it all the time...well we would not be here now B'*)#And now that I have dabbled in other fandoms I can truly see how lucky was to start out with the MXTX fans.#The supportive messages and tags have truly been a guiding force toward my artistic and self improvement.#I really can't describe how grateful I am.#Thank you for seeing something worth rooting for when I was just figuring things out.#Thank you for being sweeter than the candy I have strategically hidden in the nooks and crannies of this house.#But watch out! If you forget to find them we will get ants.#I remembered to not hide chocolate in the bed this year. Yes I know it melted last time. Yes it did stain. I'm still sorry.#Thank you for loving me regardless <3 Even if it looked like I shit the bed real bad.
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Odysseus with his head in his wife's lap, happily not paying attention to anything, humming one of athenas song and carving something
Some random guy: your majesty----
Odysseus: not bothering to sit up: whatever my wife decided is fine.
#the odyssey#epic the musical#Odysseus#Penelope#Odypen#Post-canon my beloved#Odysseus tried to hold court exactly one time before he 1. Realized he's very out of date with everything and#2. Remembered that these meetings sucked so much#Odysseus then quickly climbed into his wife's lap and was like penelopes been ruling for 20 years she's got this#The first time someone tried to insist that it wasn't acceptable for penelope to answer ody nearly killed the guy#Nobody tried to force the issue after that#The only time odysseus sits up to contribute is to be like 'no no we can take that route now I killed the monster that lived there years ag#This is not to say he isn't listening and paying attention! He is! He's just scoping everybody's out#Noticing who's more pushy when they're trying to deal with penelope than they are with him#He's got twenty years of politics to catch up on! And he's going to be sneaky about it#Odysseus post return gaining a reputation for being uninvolved and uncaring only to pull the rug out from underneither the other person#Penelope is a okay with this for many many reasons#First off her system is one of beauty and the fact that her husband didn't spend all her hard work to take back over the second he came bac#Is rare and penelope is grateful everyday for who she married#Second she gets to show off look at how well she did odysseus look at how clever she is ody ody watch as I scam these people isn't that hot#(It is and yes of course odysseus was watching)#Penelope enjoying how odysseus lays out over her like a lazy lion#It scratches her possessive side to show him off like this and she gets to play with his hair#Telemachus attending some of these meetings to learn (tm) and spending the whole time deeply embarrassed#Odypen being 🥰🤝 rat bastards in love
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One thing I appreciate about judaism is how it forced me to being more sociable. I am making plans to celebrate my birthday with total strangers because judaism has led me to believe that this world is filled with love and I should share kindness and goodwill with Every Single Person 😭😭🙏
#jumblr#jew by choice#jewish conversion#personal thoughts tag#i am grateful for this by the way#judaism has given me so so much#i genuinely have to stare at the ceiling to blink tears away if i think about it too hard#you cannot remove me from judaism#anyway love is real<3#and i know for a FACT i can contribute my sociability to judaism just because of how social y'all (we) are#you all come up to me just because i am a stranger and ask me every question and include me in everything#even when i just nod along and don't contribute verbally. you still include me. it has blown me away#judaism has brought me out of my shell and made me into a PERSON#before i started converting i would have NEVER made the plans i am now#since i started converting i want to CONNECT with everyone#suddenly love is real and i see g-d everywhere and i want to be here on this planet with everyone and i want to just EXIST#this is partially the (kosher) vodka talking but genuinely nobody can comprehend that judaism has brought me to the best moment (right now)
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GMMTV after giving us one GL series in part 2 but mass producing straight and BL series
#i’m so grateful for what we have#BUT COME ONE#you can do better than this#and the fact that they pretty much ignored 23.5#even though it’s one of the most popular series this year
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Some Cyril appreciation featuring his mom:
#fe3h#fe16#few3h#rhea#church of seiros#cyril#nabateans#i'll never understand why people seem to hate Cyril so much#the poor kid lost his parents at a very young age and had to learn how to survive on his own#he had to join the Almyran army only to become a slave of House Goneril#then a woman takes him away offers him food shelter and treats him like family#and would love nothing more for him to find his own path to happiness#and we know that for a fact thanks to his support with Seteth#they only want the best for him#but because of his past circumstances he still chooses to work hard to show how grateful he is to them#and because he's still scared that they might abandon him if he doesn't prove he can useful ig? even tho they won't#instead they let him take his time and find 'himself' and his desires at his own pace (meaning: without putting pressure on him)#so it's no wonder why Cyril loves Rhea and is so loyal to her#and like Cyril's personality is kinda great? he's smart hardworking and his honesty and sass gave us some of the best moments in this game
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your friendship is a beam of sunlight in a cold room.
#sighs. i'm ready for today to be over but i don't have anytihng to look forward to tomorrow. so.#i was going to try to find a church but that doesn't seem like it'll be happening but maybe i can do home-church again with art journaling#but just. i'm. really lonely#today i felt Fine i felt Good! like i genuinely felt Emotionally Normal which was so NICe; really this whole week i've been doing Well#i've felt Normal! which i never ever take for granted <3 but despite Feeling Fine today i just.. burst into tears? randomly??? throughout#the day???#and it took me half the day to realize i think it's cause i'm lonely. which. there's not much i can *do* about that right now#and i called a best friend and we did parallel play art time in silence and that was so so nice#and i talked to my brother on the phone and i played minecraft and i did an art project#and everything has been very lovely and i AM really grateful for all the gifts i've been given for this season#but that doesn't negate the fact that it's been nearly a month since i last received a hug#and that just weighs on you sometimes yknow. and it's not like i'm not trying#but i'm also just Sad. and friends are so wonderful but also they're still all behind screens. i need irl community which is why i need to#find a church which is why i need to finish learning how to drive. sighs.#journal moodboards#3.15.25#elle moodboards
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there's often people being like "actually being anti-AI is just reactionary contrarianism and fear of progress and technology" as a way to like... make people think it's shameful & you should be more nuanced and whatnot but like
if being anti-AI is old man yells at cloud behavior then i'm growing a gandalf beard and angrily waving a cane at the sky until i stop breathing i do Not care if that makes me an uncool unhip neoboomer with bad takes. fuck gen AI
#will never not be grateful for the fact that i knew a world without AI for most of my formative years#a world that was Fucking Fine and that you can not tell me was any worse than what ae have now#the emergence of AI didn't improve Shit there is nothing in this world that's better now that we have gen AI#there's a lot of technology that developed during my lifetime that has genuinely been revolutionary#some in better ways than others ofc but like. vehicles that pollute less. smartphones. So many advances in the medical field#technology is good ! progress is good ! but That is not progress !#just because it's new & something we didn't have before doesn't make it progress !#if you're driving to a place and halfway through your tire fucking explodes#well the exploded tire is new. you didn't have that when you started driving. is it progress ??
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you are complaining about complaining too much while complaining about the fact that maybe people dont like you because you complain too much while complaining about being alone. just stop complaining and do something about it. talk to people. reach out. dont just wait for someone to come to you first.
i have tried reaching out to different people in the past year or so but it never works. i understand its my own fault for letting relationships decay because of my own insecurities and issues but that doesn't mean i can just will myself to think or believe different things about myself. it's a self fulfilling prophecy ; i think people don't like me so i don't reach out so people don't like me etc . i am sure you do not want to hear me list all the things i want to say in response so i will put them in the tags.
#every time i try to reach out or talk to someone it goes nowhere. i dont have any social skills anymore and have no clue how to keep a#conversation going. half the time even when i do people stop replying to me. which is fine theydont owe me a reply but still feels likeshit#when i tried to make one new irl friend it just didn't work because they have better options for friends. we spoke occasionally but never#messaged online like ever and would only talk when we happened to be in the same place. i tried multiple times to organize a time to hangou#none of which came to pass. i dont understand why this one didn't work because i thought this person was interested in being my friend but#i guess i was wrong or thought they were more interested than they really were.#i have a problem with reaching out anyway which has been a problem i have had since i was like 11. reaching out to people first doesnt come#easily to me - in the beginning when i was a lot younger i didn't want to bother people with my presence & thought if i were to come to#someone first they would feel pressured into talking to me when they didn't want to. this is stupid of course. but has still not left me as#something i feel is very core to the way i act today. waiting for someone to come to me first feels like my only option because i do not#know how to reach out effectively (my evidence being i have failed every time i have tried) & i am convinced people dont like me in the#first place and do not want me to approach them.#i dont really even know who to reach out to in the first place. my world is extremely narrow. the number of people i know has shrunk#significantly and my standing in their eyes collectively has also shrunk significantly in the past few years. i feel like every person i#was once friends with wants nothing to do with me. i feel as if i have burned every bridge possible.#when it comes to the fact i complain all the time . which i know of course is annoying. its because i cant find any kind of joy in anything#i do or see or whatever. nothing makes me happy - i only see things to complain about. all stimulus seems grating and the world seems#specifically catered to make me miserable. all i can really do is complain. i treat this blog like a stream of consciousness and when most#of that consciousness is occupied with how much i hate being alive the blog will mostly be complaining. its a vicious cycle lol .#anyway . i guess the key theme is low self esteem begets low self esteem in many ways. mental illness begets mental illness.#i am not really saying this to anyone least of all to you anon. i just felt compelled to recount i guess for myself the reasons that came#to mind for why i am like this. i am talking to myself here
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Jewish (convert) culture is getting together all your jewish books and hounding the new jew-by-choice at shul
#jumblr#jew by choice#jewish conversion#personal thoughts tag#everyone pray he's at shul this shabbos PLEASE#weve had lots of people seek out our shul thinking about converting and a lot of them have seemingly backed out (temporarily or permanently)#i definitely respect that choice but i remember how much this community stepped up to help me and it makes me emotional#i am so grateful for my rabbi and community because now i *know* what to do when i see someone where i was#anyway to people in this process: learn to accept that this will eventually happen to you#don't be bashful about it. you have to learn eventually that we all are a family#and you can only learn that when you feel like part of the family#in fact one of the prayers we say at shul for yisrael (at least in english but almost certainly in some way the hebrew)-#-EXPLICITLY mentions us as a family. there's no avoiding it (i think)#one of our members is spotty about their attendance. the other members worringly mention how 'you can't be a jew alone - by yourself!'#that's what i mean by 'its inescapable'#i might have to make this tag rant a separate post because it's really important to me to emphasize this#so if you see a post with very similar wording just know i did it On Purpose#sometimes i wonder how many people are willing to read tag rants. personally i LOVE reading them. i feel it's part of our culture#i love how optional it feels though. like you're reading the personal notes on a manuscript#you aren't NOT supposed to read it but something feels so secretive and exhilarating (that's too intense of a word but i digress)
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watched i saw the tv glow. it was fine 👍
#.text#i mean this 👍 with boomer earnestness#like 3/5 okay experience. the aesthetic grated me a fair bit despite being ostensibly primed for it#spent my childhood fucking glued to the tv watching those buffy-esque tv shows and i was still like can we find another bit pwease#also fact that they hired a guy (real age: 30) to play a 15yo AND a 40+yo with sam winchester old makeup was too fucking funny
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i really really really like that elora, bear, willie jack, and cheese are all still friends in the end. none of them got together romantically. theyre really close and they love each other so much and theyre friends. i was so afraid that when bear and elora had that moment in the chapel they were going to confess feelings for each other but they didnt. theyre friends and they love each other and arent afraid to say it. they hugged!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and theyre friends!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#i just finished catching up with rez dogs and the series finale#oh man#i am sososososo glad theyre all just. one big happy family#THEYRE FAMILY!!!!!! AND THEY LOVE EACH OTHER!!!!!!!!!!#sorry my brain doesnt work right now so have what i can offer#i am feeling very acearo right now#reservation dogs#willie jack#elora danan#bear smallhill#cheese reservation dogs#rip cheese he doesnt have his own tag#also good for big and bev#also also i Did Not expect uh. bear and jackie to get together but good for them too#sorry more rambling but#i am so grateful that we got a show about family and friends and community and that there was no overarching or even side plot about romanc#not only that but the main characters arent siblings and i dont even think theyre actual cousins#so the fact that EVEN THEN none of them got together is a blessing and i love you sterlin harjo thank you for this#i know theres other shows where theres an overarching theme of family but like#it ends up being a given because theyre related and it would be weird to ship them#but AGAIN#4 characters. not related. same age. sexualities never discussed. stay friends. and then become CLOSER FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!#achshdhskfjdh im just repeating stuff please just take this
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I feel so bad for everyone else rn yall will never have a boyfriend as cute as mine
#/hj im sure yall’s boyfriends are fine#but like man#can’t say i hate being me#because my boyfriend is AWESOME#he’s so good yall#this is getting posted to my shitty tumblr blog bc i have no friends that i can ramble about my cute boyfriend too#so like#yall will have to do#he’s so handsome and funny and sweet and i love him#ahhhh#he’s so good and lovely#do you ever go for a walk on a winter morning and for a brief moment the sunlight paints the snow in so many gentle and amazing colours#he reminds me that everything is beautiful#the shape of his face and the room and the fact some how we met and I’m grateful for the flow of the universe that brought us together#god#i will stop now#HE MAKES ME SO INCOMPREHENSIBLE RAHH#literally possessed by the spirit of valentines i think#sorry for being so sappy on here :3
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Treasure Seekers 2 go brrrrr
So this sequel... exists :D
Welcome to the second entry in the Treasure Seekers trilogy that I'm gonna ramble about for the next six hours (in me time, in you time it's probably gonna be like thirty minutes or less), if you wanna read it yourself before reading this ramble, here's an Archive copy. Otherwise, enjoy the ride :D
So our story begins with the Thea Sisters locked in a basement in the dark, with Russia's penchant for matches (and the basement's lack of a smoke alarm) coming in clutch. Seems like another vacation's gone awry for them :3 How could it have possibly turned out this way?
Flashback: so the girls are vibing in Moscow, visiting all the cool sights and all that, Pam is wanting to try some Russian cuisine, when they spot this girl that's wearing what appears to be a barrette that used to belong to Aurora's sister Hannah Lane. They follow her a bit, find a THUG JUMPSCARE, follow the girl, Cassidy and co into the building they're heading into, and oh dear door with passcode is in the way. They find this dood Sergei, explain to him the situation, deal with him being like "who is u, and wth are you on about mate" until they hear a scream and oh dear turns out that girl with the barrette is Sergei's sister Irina and she's in trouble.
Sergei opens the door, they go in, walk in on Cassidy, Stan and Max (who I will from now call SM for simplicity) doing their whole thug jumpscare thing and kidnapping Irina in 4K. SM somehow rolls a high enough strength roll (or the girls roll a low enough initiative) that two roughly intimidating guys successfully trap six people into a basement without breaking a sweat get yourself some self-defense classes girls oml, and that's the end of that.
Luke's up to his shenanigans again, and it seems that he's targeted Irina Lenenko for the same reason the girls double-taked at the sight of her barrette: Irina (and Sergei in conjunction) is a descendant of Hannah Lane, and Hannah Lane may or may not have known a thing or two about one of the seven treasures. It's such a shame tho that Irina doesn't wanna spill any of the tea. What's this about a "queen's jewel"?
Oh also Luke has Aurora's third diary. I would like you to pay attention to this detail in particular. Oh and he's keeping Irina ratgrabbed until she tells them what he wants to know from her. Oh naur
Meanwhile the girls infodump all of the TS 1 LANE LOORRREEEE to Sergei in one whole sitting and finally manage to get around to "what the hell does this have to do with my sister". Sergei thinks it's not really possible for Irina to know anything about great-grandma Hannah's involvement with Aurora, but Irina's still in trouble soooo time to solve this nerdy-ass science trivia keypad puzzle to get outa the basement. Irina's nowhere to be found in the lab itself, so they regroup at Sergei's place to use his phone tracker app on his computer.
Bad news, SM dumped Irina's phone somewhere in the lab so the tracker app is useless; good news, while looking for some Lane Lore™ to get some context about the situation, the girls find some Lane Lore™ :D
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Turns out Aurora was looking for one of the seven treasures again, y'know just updating her sister on that, who'd moved to Saint Petersburg with her husband Ivan.
Seems like Aurora's quest at the time involved "the queen's jewel", which Aurora said she was 1000% down to ramble about to Hannah, maybe when she's done finding all seven treasures and hiding them from Jan.
I would like to take this moment to remind you that Aurora is a British Amelia Earhart, and if you dunno what that means, look up what Earhart was famous for and then look at this with that given context :']
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With that lead, the girls plus Sergei take a ride on presumably the Krasnaya Strela night train to Saint Petersburg, read some Lane Lore on the way, Peter-Griffin upon realizing that they spent the whole night reading AO3 fanfics Aurora's diaries and it's like 2AM now, land in Saint Petersburg, stop by Nevsky Prospekt Street to have some breakfast (I think they went to Venezia?), and discussion.
(For the rest of this review, please assume when I say "the girls", I'm including Sergei because Sergei tags along with them and helps them out in their entire journey. It's okay, Sergei may be biologically male but he is an honorary female in our hearts /j)
Aurora mentioned the queen's jewel in her diary, and when you're in Russia, the first queen that comes to mind is Catherine II, so maybe something relating to her? Some Lane Lore of Aurora taking interest in Catherine II's Amber Room in her palace specifically confirms their theories, sooooooooo it's time to go to the Amber Room to see if Aurora left any clu--
The girls are about to walk out of the Catherine Palace to Peter Griffin in private when SM JUMPSCARE--
So SM is stalkin' around the Catherine Palace looking for something, so the girls stalk them back and follow them out of the palace, into a car (the girls called a separate taxi to follow them), and to a little gray building in the outskirts of the city. They don't follow SM into the building because it might be dangerous, but Irina's scarf lying around near the premises confirms that Irina was in fact there and possibly being held hostage in the building.
The girls do a little tactic I like to call "the Ding Dong Ditch": Pam and Nicky knock on the door, SM answers it, do a little Metal Gear exclamation point "HOW DID YOU GET HERE", Nicky and Pam book it so SM chases them, and that's literally how the other girls plus Sergei sneak into the building to get Irina out. (You dunno how badly I wanted to make a videogame reference for this but I couldn't find anything so here we are--)
With that, the girls plus the Lenenko siblings book it outa there without SM being none the wiser (seriously it doesn't even cross their mind that there are more than two Thea Sisters, that's how dum they are). Irina books a hotel room at a friend's place and gives them some extra Lane Lore that she never told Klawitz despite the interrogations:
Hannah Lane was once visited by Aurora unexpectedly, a little after Hannah and her husband moved to a house near the Ob River, in Siberia. Possible lead :3c? The girls think maybe, so they decide to head on over to the exact address in Novosibirsk, Siberia.
In Siberia, the girls cross the frozen Ob River in Novosibirsk to this abandoned little house, where they find this little note with a riddle that talks about Cleopatra and an emerald she had at one point, and CASSIDY JUMPSCARE--
Cassidy busts in, snatches the note and books it away on her snowmobile before the girls can even react. You may be wondering, how the hell did Cassidy get there and know where they were? The answer is the same as the reason behind the SM jumpscares in Russia and in book 1, and that is Luke.
Luke Von Klawitz is doing a little segment that I like to call: Luke Touch Grass, where it becomes increasingly clear that Luke's spent way too much time on 4Chan (/j but you'll see what I mean). Luke hears about SM's failure and facepalms. Then he calls his friend Petrovski, who has access to the database of all of Russia's airports, for help tracking down "six mice leaving Saint Petersburg". Petrovski gives him results in minutes: the girls and Sergei are leaving Saint Petersburg and heading for Novosibirsk, Siberia (most likely Tolmachevo Airport). With that intel, Klawitz looks into his own database of Aurora Beatrix Lane, finds a picture of Hannah and Aurora together, and uses his own version of Google Lens to figure out the exact coordinates where the picture was taken, which happens to be in Novosibirsk, Siberia.
No this man does not in fact canonically touch grass on the regular, who's asking
Anyway so he sent Cassidy the coords, instructions and Aurora's diary to go, and that's how Cassidy walked in on the girls in that little abandoned hut next to Ob River. Only thing is uh, she dropped her purse on the way out. A purse that just so happened to contain Aurora's diary that Luke gave her.
So the girls scoop that puppy up and assume that the treasure is Cleopatra's emerald, thus they think it's in Egypt.
So the girls go to Egypt :D (29 and a half hour flight there good god no wonder they conked out in the plane--)
The girls read some Lane Lore, something about Aurora finding the treasure and hiding it somewhere in a desert, in an "expanse pure and white" that a star compass will lead to. First thing the girls think of at the desert bit is the White Desert (Sahara el Beyda), specifically a spot near Cleopatra's pool, so they leave the airport (not realizing Cassidy is following them now) and head over to a market to buy some supplies because might I remind you, they initially went to Moscow, Russia for vacation.
While in the market, Pam meets a guy named Omar. Pam tells him a little bit about them going to Cleopatra's pool in Sahara el Beyda, and she finds out that Omar just so happens to be an Archaeology major in Oxford University who's here on his summer vacation and works as a guide for Sahara el Beyda, and is more than down to give the girls a tour. Talk about lucky :D
The next day the girls take the scenic route and after a while make it to Siwa, where Omar books a room in a hotel for them, and the girls find this interesting myth there about Cleopatra that I will summarize here:
Cleopatra was once given a jewel that maxes out the owner's rizz and the effect is supposedly indefinite. Cleopatra liked the jewel so much that she wore it on her crown at all times... until she grew a bit self-conscious about the gem's maxxed rizz effect and how everyone kept eyeing the emerald a second too long for comfort, so she decided to hide away said rizz in a spot where none of her rivals could get to it. Oh and uh Cleopatra wrote up a dedication to Ra that's hella cryptic too.
One long rest later, the girls go to Cleopatra's pool on a donkey cart. Yes, a donkey cart. It was Omar's idea. Speaking of Omar, prepare yourself buddy because the girls have dubiously decided to give you some Lane Lore to chew on. O-oh you like it a lot. A lot a lot. Well okay cool, maybe you can help out, cool.
The girls manage to figure out the riddle in Cleopatra's dedication, find a little stone coffer that has the queen's treasure and-- SM JUMPSCARE
With a donkey as the girls' only escape method and Omar having suddenly disappeared, a scuffle ensues where the girls play hot potato with the box until SM gets their hands on it and opens it, and here we get a very accurate depiction of what SM and the girls found in the box once it was actually opened.
Description: a hand made of salt shaped in an upside-down "ok" symbol, circa 1920s-30s.
The sheer whiplash of this leaves both sides of the conflict losing enough HP that they're all on red-- SM is blaming the girls for this (how dare >:[) and dip. Omar is gone, and all the girls get as compensation is the empty box and a letter from Aurora telling them that they'll know to read the hidden clues. The girls head back feeling very hollow and dead inside, and this is the one time one of the girls questions how the hell did SM know they were at Siwa. I mean they never get any answer to this (kinda), but it is a milestone! They're aware of it now!
Once they get back to Cairo, they ask around and find that Omar's completely up and vanished, and they decide they'll just head back to Moscow since their investigation has come to a dead end. On the way, Pam comments about the falafel she bought being hella salty, which leads Violet to an epiphany that hey, the Sahara isn't the only desert that exists, let alone the only desert known for how white it is (like how Boracay Beach is known for how white and fine its sand is, but it's not the only white sand beach that exists). A quick Google search (and a long flight (35 HOURS CAIRO TO SUCRE???)) leads them to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia.
Nicky reserves a room for them at Hotel Luna Salada (a real place you can book a stay at actually :D), and they make a friend by the name of Adriana, a local waitress in the hotel restaurant. Adriana helps them pick out a dessert, fills them in on some stuff about the Salar since the girls came here 100% out of impulse, and talks about possible itinerary locations to go to, like the Isla de Pescado, Tiwanaku (the "Gate of the Sun"), Lake Titiaca, and Laguna Colorada. Y'know, typical tourist stuff, and Adriana was so kind to show them pictures she took when she visited said places herself! :D
Anyway so while the girls long rest, Luke is mulling about in his base waiting for updates. Someone calls him about the whole Egypt thing, and Luke calls the girls incompetent? Rude, oh and something about the caller being Luke's "secret weapon". Cassidy calls him on a theory she has about the gemstone being in Cleopatra's palace, and since the girls are currently long-resting (which means they aren't doing anything), Luke figures that a little diving trip in Alexandria to search for the gem with Cassidy won't hurt. Besides, he still has his secret weapon.
Oh yeah and he knows the girls are long resting because he has a drone in Bolivia spying on them and showing him their every move. Touch grass, Luke. No, going on a diving trip in Alexandria doesn't count, there's barely any grass there /j
Morning comes in Bolivia, and the girls head out early to search the Salar as much as they can. They look around the flat white desert, eat some late breakfast, toy around with forced perspective camera shenanigans for a bit, and read up on some LANE LOOORREEEEE
So Aurora's been to Pumapunku and Tiwanaku which is cool, she paid a visit to the archaeological site probably and that's really cool. She says something about hiding the queen's treasure in a fish's stomach covered in very fine thorns. Sergei ends up having an epiphany, and that leads the girls to Isla de Pescado, which just so happens to be "Fish Island" in Spanish, and has cacti on it, it's all coming together :D
Oh and the fish drawing Aurora made is coords to the treasure seemingly so that's cool-- OMAR JUMPSCARE
The girls are very surprised to find Omar joining them, and Omar explains that he booked it when SM came over and lost his cellphone as a result. However, he managed to figure out that Aurora's riddle was about salt and not sand, and decided to head on over to Bolivia since he assumed that's where the girls are going. How did he find them? It was just out of pure coincidence, and also the fact that the girls are extremely recognizable. Hm.
Anyway, Paulina plugs the coordinates into her GPS and leads the girls plus Omar to a little cave at the bottom of a little embankment. The girls find that, lo and behold, there's an old tin box containing a bright green emerald!
Meanwhile Luke is not finding anything in Alexandria haha L, LVK L get dunked on Luke, Cassidy girlie that's not a man to simp for find someone else gurl-- oh dear Luke is alerted that the treasure has been found and now he's planning on heading over to Bolivia? Now how could he possibly know that?
In the meantime, I dunno what's up in the air or if it's the Archaeology major speaking in him but Omar's really invested in this treasure, even more so than the girls to the degree that the girls are a little freaked out by it-- RHEA JUMPSCARE-- Paulina calms the big bord down and gets it to not trample Omar please, he's still a friend of theirs. Colette picks up this blue notebook Omar seems to have dropped.
The girls plus Omar head back to the SUVs, and Omar is really trying to persuade the girls that he should bring it back to Cairo. The girls are not jazzed at the idea because Omar bringing it back alone will be too unsafe, y'know with Luke and Cassidy and SM and all. They gotta think about this rationally-- WHOA OKAY OMAR calm your man tits buddy why are you demanding they trust you like you automatically deserve your trust-- ohh that's how Klawitz has known about the girls' whereabouts, Omar was working as a double agent.
So yeah Omar snatches the box from Colette and drives off in his SUV, leaving the girls in the dust. The girls freak out and are feeling that EMOTIONAL DAMAGE, but Colette for some reason is very calm about Omar booking it with the emerald. And that's because SHE HAS IT :D she did a lil' switcheroo so now the emerald's with her while the box is with Omar.
For context about how Colette knew about this, remember the blue notebook Omar dropped? Yeah that notebook was a company LVK notebook, straight from Luke himself. Then after Colette saw it, everything about Omar became incredibly sus, so she performed this precautionary measure.
So now the girls talk to the local authorities about how the whole thing with the emerald is gonna go down, and soon the girls are waiting for a plane back to Moscow.
As for Omar, well, he goes over to Luke's super-fancy hotel in La Paz, Bolivia, and he hands the box to Luke, explicitly stating that he decided he'd let Luke open it before he himself can appreciate it.
Luke opens the box, and here we see an accurate depiction of what Luke sees.
Description: an upside-down "ok" symbol drawn in strawberry pink lip balm, signed Colette [insert last name], circa 2018.
Luke punts the box (prolly with the lip balm still inside it) into the swimming pool, tells Omar to get out, and that's the end of that. Haha Omar L Luke L
The girls head back to Moscow to drop Sergei off when SURPRISE PARTY BY IRINA'S SQUAD :DDD
Then the girls are about to return to Whale Island to presumably Peter Griffin in their dorms, when Colette suggests they make a journal a la Aurora Beatrix Lane, and they do. In a pink notebook because it was Colette's idea so we might as well give her that
And they take a black-and-white group picture of them wearing adventurer clothes like Aurora would've done. The brainrot is real, these girls are mentally ill /j
And that's the book :D
... Honestly it's the most meh out of the trilogy besides the big-brain bits in the middle and the end imo
The writing was so much more stilted in this one, even for Scholastic standards, and everything feels pretty..... kid's book. Even more so than the usual in the book's English translations. I do readings for the books in some of my Discords, and this book did not read well at aaallll. And I haven't even mentioned the typos in the book (they're not a lot, but they exist, and they're kinda egregious :D) and some grammar errors if I'm remembering things correctly. It might just be a translation thing-- I worry a bit for the translator who had to put this together.
Luke's character here is also kinda wonk? For one we see him directly contradict his anti-friendship spiel in TS 1 since he literally greets Petrovski like a friend (maybe it's a "friendship doesn't exist except in 4Chan" thing, I dunno). Then in the middle of the book, he gets... very Disney villain-y. The most egregious example here is the chapter "Lurking in the Shadows", where as you can see
I am confusion?? Luke has been described as a to-the-point brat who hardly cares for the means to his end (unless it will impact his ability to achieve the end) and is so fixated on his goal that he doesn't touch grass. Is this not-touching-grass behavior? Yeah, definitely, but this??? This is too Disney villain???? Why does the man break into an evil cackle in front of Cassidy???? I understood it in book 1 because man thinks he's doing a "You may think you have outsmarted me but I have OUTSMARTED YOUR OUTSMARTING", but this one?? Maybe it's my personal taste, but it's too cartoonish and too... deviated from what we know of him up to this point.
ALSO TWIRLING HIS MUSTACHE? WHAT MUSTACHE IS HE TWIRLING THAT THING IS NOT TWIRL-ABLE
Also time to address the one big plot hole in this book: Aurora's diary.
So in this book there's only one diary, which is infinitely simpler than the two we got in the first book. This diary supposedly contains Aurora's records of her mission in hiding Cleopatra's Rizzmerald, and the details are supposedly vague enough that Luke felt the need to kidnap and interrogate Irina, a Hannah Lane descendant, to fill in the blanks. However, when you look at the contents of the diary itself (which lord knows how many times Luke himself has looked through it), there's hardly any blanks that need to be filled, at least if you're Luke.
The diary itself is mostly in the background-- like I said, not as much Lane Lore here as the previous book, the girls mostly rely on Aurora's letters to Hannah here-- but there's one specific entry the girls read in the latter half of the book that explicitly mentions Pumapunku and Tiwanaku, and how Aurora is there for her mission to hide the emerald. Complete with coordinates hidden in a little drawing! My one question I have for Luke is, why didn't he go straight to Bolivia and started searching there? Why did he go through all the effort of kidnapping Irina, tailing the girls around Sahara el Beyda, letting SM fall for the salt replica gambit, left his base to touch grass and go on a dive with Cassidy in Egypt; all if he could've just gone straight to Bolivia to look for the treasure there? Sure, Aurora did a good job hiding the coordinates in the fish doodle, but someone as observant and as obsessed about the outcome instead of the journey like Luke would rather have sidestepped all the Aurora shenanigans and beelined straight to the goal if he was able to.
Luke hardly has an excuse here because he owned the diary at the start of the book, and most definitely read through it many times (and we know he's the type to do this, see TS 1). The plot hole is plot hole-ing, it seems :/
Maybe it was just an excuse for the girls to get a giant glowing arrow pointing in the direction of the treasure? It certainly feels like it.
Anyway, the things that carry this book and made it memorable when I first read it (and allowed me to ignore the iffy bits) are the gottems and Omar as a character. Aurora setting up a salt replica of the Rizzmerald as a gottem in a time capsule, only to be opened almost a hundred years later to still be as potent as intended when it was made so long ago? That is amazing, like c'mon, pure comedy material.
Even funnier is Colette doing the exact same thing, only with her lip balm. Luke is quaking in his bougie-ass leather boots.
Now for Omar. This may be a hot take of mine here, but Omar's sus-ness is actually at a decent level compared to the girls and what they usually deal with. On one hand, Omar is incredibly suspicious with how incredibly lucky the girls are to find an Archaeology Oxford major working as a Sahara el Beyda tour guide; but on the other hand, the girls had almost the exact same situation with Diego in Mexico (I didn't mention him in the first review, but he came in clutch in TS 1).
The girls met Diego in Merida, Mexico, and he helped them with their research into "the invisible place", which happened to be Uxmal, along the Puuc Route. Diego also just so happened to be a tour-guide-in-training for the Puuc Route, which was the place the girls just so happened to need to go to find Aurora's second journal.
In comparison, the girls meet Omar in Khan El-Khalili while they were looking for supplies for their trip to the Siwa Oasis. It comes up in conversation that the girls are headed to Siwa, and Omar just so happened to be a tour guide for Sahara el Beyda, which was where the Siwa Oasis is, and it just so happened to be where the girls needed to go. When you stack them up together, it made perfect sense that the girls thought they could trust him-- Diego didn't know much about their trip and helped them the best he could (which was a lot), so why wouldn't Omar do the same? He's an Oxford Archaeology major, too, for crying out loud, the girls struck gold in the end!
Gold that was too shiny and too good to be true. Gold that was, in the end, nothing more than pyrite, fool's gold.
Omar is a good case for why you should be careful with who you trust, and when you should start thinking a little bit when you're getting a little too lucky with the people you meet. When the girls got to know him a little more and decided to trust him and tell him the deal with their trip, he got way invested in the gem-- too invested to not be a little bit suspicious. Maybe the girls mistook it for his passion for his archaeology major, maybe they mistook it for something else-- but whatever the case, Omar pulled the cheesecloth over the girls' eyes and really only fell apart near the end, when his alibis and behavior started becoming more and more suspicious; and by then, Omar didn't need to be as inconspicuous, and the girls had gotten to know him too much to readily say to him "okay buddy can you kindly f%ck off, your vibes are not vibing here".
The girls probably should've been suspicious when Omar reappeared in Bolivia out of nowhere, but I guess his alibi was just good enough (and the girls at this point were probably running on adrenaline, caffeine and a brain on 70% capacity at most) to pass the Deception check.
Fr tho there were some bits where the girls should've found him sus but they didn't (him accidentally saying "I did it" when they uncovered the emerald, and also him handling the emerald the way he did), so shrugs. It could be a translation thing, but it could also be something else.
Anyway, kinda meh for a sequel, but it does have its standouts that allow it to somewhat stand on the same level as the first and third books. Kinda.
Hey, at least it's not as bad as Crystal Fairies-- that's the bar of bad-ness I'm setting. It's not as bad as Crystal Fairies and that's what matters--
Also special thanks to @ishmeowwow (it won't let me ping you for some reason bestie <:[) for making the lil' artworks haha
#geronimo stilton#thea sisters#thea stilton#book review#book rambles#book rant#thank you ishmeow for making the gottems for me :D#you came in clutch while my ipad is still dieded thank you bestie <3#in the book it's just the lip balm but ishmeow decided to go all-out with the gottem gag and i can't be more grateful lmao#same goes with the gemstone in aurora's gottem (it's just the fake tiara plus fake gem) but hey the more salt the merrier :D#book 2 luke is so jarringly different from his other depictions but at the same time#he does not in fact touch grass and he does crack an evil cackle at least once a book so#i dunno how i feel about it . .#on one hand it adds to him not touching grass#but on the other hand it doesn't connect with his “this villain is supposed to make you shnit your pants at how intimidating he is”#he's intimidating because of his connections his ability to basically spy on the entire world and control everything from his base#and y'know he can tell his goons to do whatever and they'll literally wreak havoc to fulfill said requests#he was so intimidating in concept that they had to nerf him with incompetent goons lmao#after doing last minute research i am deeply concerned for the girls' wallets and their mental and physical health :D#like good god i thought a ten hour flight was unbearable and made your body stiff but holy damn#i'm not complaining too much about the timeline tho because this is hilarious and makes the girls look so neurodivergent#“what do you mean we flew a total of 64 hours by plane feels like it's only been a day to m--”#*dies*
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