#but its also really funny id imagine itd be such a strange feeling

[wolfythewitch]

phils job is the internet and then people are shocked when he knows about things on the internet. Sent during the coffee shop au discussions

Philza fans when he perceives the aus they've been publicly posting online for him to see

[klayfruit]

i am really curious with the lore you're making! this is a bit of a strange question, but what happened to his teeth? you mentioned that the candymanification happened inside out and he had a fever. how "inside" is a person's mouth? even if it doesn't count as being inside a person, his mouth must of transformed at some point so

did his teeth fall out? did his tongue melt? could he still breathe like a normal person at that point? does your candyman have bones? or is it solid yellow? if only the inside was transformed, and if the candymanness is sort of melty or malleable, does that mean that if you mushed his arm it would indent? i love body horror and the question of teeth came to my mind when i looked at your art again

HI OKAY IM SO SORRY IT TOOK LIKE A MONTH FOR ME TO FINISH THIS ASK i adore thinking abt this topic so much but like halfway thru writing this response i got so excited and had to walk away to stim but ended up forgetting to finish this. anyway i did it everything written here is from months ago except the last paragraph

these are all rly good questions bc i dont know most of them!!! i was thinking earlier and i think i came to the conclusion that the mutation progressively melts fran’s bones and turns it “candy” along with his skin. as fran became more mushy and melty the barriers between organs, bones, skin, etc (eyes being the only exception) kind of all melted together and became the same thing. his teeth got all gooed up and melted/became one with his mouth. same with his tongue, it melted with his mouth. though after the mutation was complete and candyman learned how to work with and transform his body better, he just reforms his tongue sometimes like for comedic effect.

to go further on this topic of francis/candyman (actually im gonna call mid-mutation of him frandyman thats funny) learning how to transform his body, at first he struggled heavily with breathing since his throat+lungs began closing and melting in on themselves. eventually though he was able to transform his body to compensate for this and somehow find another way to get air to his brain, or he just opened his throat back up again im still not 100% sure on this part.

candyman doesnt exactly have bones, but his body does kind of have layers to it. during frandyman the mutation would spread in a red->blue->yellow gradient, and the reds+blues are still in his body despite not being visible. the red is the first layer and is EXTREMELY hard so it practically acts as bones, blue being the second layer and being not as tough, and yellow being the third and having the texture+softness of skin (though still feeling like Not Skin). i have an explanation for why candy’s mouth is red despite it being the first layer but idk how to explain it and id like draw a diagram of it but itd make me look insane So. Come to your own conclusions . also candys able to change the texture, malleability , etc of his body and its how hes able to walk through walls.

during frandyman his body was VERY melty and malleable and he hadnt learned how to control his body yet. whole limbs would just melt, fall off, get disfigured, merge with other limbs, etc without him even doing anything. though because of, Brain Instinct? not sure but it would automatically grow frandy’s limbs back without him knowing how to or that he’s even doing it. when he became candyman he could regrow his limbs much much easier, it all just kind of comes down to how well he could control his body and how it progressed during the mutation.

a plothole i noticed in Candymans Fucked Up Body is that im not entirely sure how his blood and organs would work. i considered his organs melting entirely and his entire body being The Organ That Can Perform Everything The Other Organs Could Perform but that sounded lame. how his brain would work during all of this is the biggest one to me, because i imagine it was heavily impacted and disfigured but shouldnt be entirely melted because the man needs a brain somehow to live! the main thing im going with right now is that the red layer of his body isnt like, a solid chunk of red, but like a hard HARD shell and it protects the organs who are now like massively fucked up and disfigured but somehow still pumpin. i may change this eventually, but its what im going with rn so ! blood is also interesting for me because there’s no space in between each layer for blood to be stored, and the layers themselves dont have blood in them and are completely solid. so for now came up with that his skin kind of acts as his blood, when it’s cut it kind of just. melts on the inside and seeps out of the cut. also of COURSE his blood is silly colored (red, blue, yellow again)

also since this ask was from like a month ago ive decided that candy’s mutation had symptoms similar to like, a mix of rabies and radiation poisoning. both in the sense of once the person has it they have no idea they have it until it comes into full effect, the only sign for like the first week being mild sickness. ALSO fun fact he physically cant sweat since his skin is Not Skin. his sweat builds up underneath his skin and just causes his actual skin to become all mushy and squishy. Anyway tldr they fucked this guy up

[marsixm]

edit sorry this post is both long (if the readmore fails i am truly truly sorry) & longwinded im just reflecting and thinking; (another edit: u can probably just read the tl dr and get it)

anyway allow me to spin some very personally based theory here for a mo while i put off/warm my fingers up from the cold in preparation to email my therapist

so growing up i had, i think only, het ships, but i never quite had the ones you were (narratively speaking) “supposed to” have

in most media i recall when i was a kid, there were like, 2 diff structures of character romance plot arcs in media i consumed, there was the main lead and 2 best friends model, where thered be the star of the show who had outside romantic leads and the 2 best friends (who were always a boy and a girl) would have their secondary romance, OR there were ensemble shows where there was a more clear romance set up between the main boy and main girl, then side characters whod pair off in whatever ways ended up happening. in the first, see: hannah montana, the second, see: zoey 101. obv this isnt a hard rule and there were loads of exceptions but like, lets just say i tended not to care for the romances set up for the main girls in the trio models, or quite as hard for the main boy and girl in the ensembles, and in general if there was an obvious romance between two leads i either didnt care or outright hated it

basically i never liked the ships they set up for us in straight media, as a kid (namely, a girl) i liked being that “ew pink!” “i hate valentines day” sort of contrarian, but what i remember actually disliking was the predictability of it, because i clearly still shipped characters, so it wasnt /really/ that i hated romance, per se

looking back on it i think it was probably or at least to a degree more like that i hated the hetero expectation of it- i can nit pick down to more specific examples of why i disliked the main pairings (kataang, for example, i thought was weird bc katara acted like a mother/older sister figure to aang, and i didnt feel like there was romance between them at all except where it felt shoehorned in) - maybe it was also that i thought it made more sense for a main character to be with someone they clearly already spent a lot of time with and not some random new hot boy in town (i very distinctly remember shipping miley and oliver on hannah montana, and i believe that was the first time i ever read fanfiction @ age like... 11 lol) as is often the case w like these things.

theres another level to this though, which is that i notice i tended to ship characters who were more vaguely similar to each other, like, physically (ie, similar heights, or hair colors mainly) obviously this is funny now since my main pairing is johnlock which is such a physically different ship we can construct them from basic shapes and colors and theyre still recognizable as who they are, but i have some thoughts about this- but i think there might be two interesting things about this again in retrospect

first of all, this sounds silly ik, but shipping the vaguely similar ones as a child’s way of queering heterosexuality is an interesting concept and not that difficult, like, two boys are also vaguely similar to each other in a similar way a boy and a girl with the same hair color and height might be, which is something i thought of a while ago

the other way in which this is really interesting to me now, that i think might have been more actually pertinent to myself as a trans child, is that i think i shipped the characters i did in an attempt to morph the concept of boy and girl? to find the boy counterpart to every girl??? that second one makes more sense actually. anyway, i digress

2 start off i definitely had gender feelings starting from a very young age so i think these observations ring more true than just reflections, PERHAPS

so the first thing i remember shipping, ie wanting them to be together, thinking about it an inordinate amount of time outside watching the films, even imagining them eating ice cream together in their pjs (i was NINE DHFJGghfkg) was jack sparrow & elizabeth swan from potc (basically my franchise of choice as a kid bc i never read harry potter) now this doesnt quite fit the “visually similar” thing bc actually orlando bloom looks more like kiera knightly and is prob due to them like making out in one movie, but i think this works for the “shipping as gender expression” theory, because elizabeth swan dressed up as a boy, spent most of that movie wearing boy’s clothes, etc- meanwhile jack was a wacky pirate which like hello duh i’d want to be. so i wonder if beyond the fact that they kissed and flirted, there was something to this concept of me wanting two characters to be together, meant i wanted to marry together two conceptual things happening with two characters, or absorb the cool dude and the boyish girl characters into each other to make one whole archetype for myself? i likewise shipped aang and toph (toph who, normally doesnt really have anyone to be shipped with, since she likes sokka but he has a gf) who we all know is the VERY boyish girl character, so boyish im p sure her actually being a trans dude later in life is a p decently accepted headcanon (i dont actually delve into aatla fandom though so i can only hope) 

another thing about this ship thing, is most of my ships had brown hair (like miley and oliver), just like i always have, and in certain cases the girl character would look a LOT like me (i also shipped logan and quinn on zoey 101, which to my surprise n delight actually came true later (although looking back im like... 11 yr old me is glad they made out a lot but adult me is like uhhh why were the kids on this show making out a lot? anyway thats another issue) and i def was a weirdo girl with glasses and long brown wavy hair) which sort of further fuels my feeling that this was an attempt by my brain to do 1 of 2 things, if my own involvement really was a greater motivating factor in this thing, 1. ship MYSELF with a boy (which is like def possible for my gay kinnie ass, but not quite my thesis here) or 2. morph these boy and girl counterparts by imagining them together, seeing them together, etc

for example, i realize now, when i was a kid i drew an avatar sona for myself and said sona looked an awful lot like how id imagine a katara/zuko fusion would be, and the fact that i shipped zutara (very hard lol) was what lead me down this thought path rn

i feel like even to me this concept sounds weird and far fetched but like, gem fusion made enough sense for someone to write with its clearly, usually, romantic implications and we all “get” that, so whom knows???

another thing ive noticed while writing this is for a good few of these ships you can argue the boys in them can be read gay, like jack sparrow and zuko and aang, which feels even more strongly like me trying to marry my gay boy feelings to my tomboy realities [thinking emoji]

the biggest reason i think this makes sense to me is because when i was 10 i became obsessed with the idea that this boy i was friends with and i were secretly twins separated at birth, like i was so into the concept that we looked alike, i like hoped and wished so hard for it to be true, i wished a christmas miracle would happen for fucking real and a magic door in my house would open and be his new room and itd all work out perfectly! and you might think this was a manifestation of my difficulties with my family and wishing to leave it, but in my dream world my parents were still my parents and he came to live with us- which makes me think the obsession of ME looking like this BOY was a manifestation of my gender feelings, which i think can maybe be traced to this concept of pairing a visually similar, possibly gay, brunette boy to every brunette and/or tomboyish girl

anyway. if you actually read all of this id love it if you lmk somehow (doesnt need to be a like) like this is clearly very long and strange but i hope it makes sense. i think i stop myself a lot from ever commenting on gender or theory or whatever but i am a living breathing trans person who has experienced things and i have opinions and i dont think im claiming anything destructive with this lol i think its not unusual to reflect on the way you interacted with the world as a gay/trans kid

also im obviously not saying that shipping straight things is somehow inherently queer, im not trying to retroactively claim something about straight ships, like, those two characters are still functionally straight, and i definitely also shipped probably all of them for normal shipping reasons (although, kid ones, so less “oh theres a lot of ACTUAL romantic subtext between these two” but rather “oh theyre friends and would be cute together!” (or like they kissed and i was like O: )) but im just trying to theorize about something its possible my tiny trans brain was trying to express- and who knows maybe im not the only one!

anyway i guess the TL;DR is: when i was a kid i had a lot of “unconventional” straight ships- i already observed that i eschewed the main canon pairings in kids media in what was probably my tiny baby brains rejection of hetero culture, but i also actively shipped side characters who looked like me, and also looked like each other (ie, both tall and brunette, a boy and girl counterpart of Each Other) OR characters who seemed to be a gayish boy and a tomboyish girl, and im theorizing that maybe the reason that was was my tiny trans brain wanting to gem fusion those two together because of my Gender Feelings and fuse the boy with the girl and this desire manifested in shipping therefore thinking about a lot these pairings of boy and girl counterparts

[cromulentbookreview]

Silky Cinnamon

OR: Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor!

I'm not a winner. In fact I'm what is commonly referred to as a loser. I do not win things, even when it’s an award that I actually earned. Yeah I haven’t  forgotten how I never got that German Student of the Month award even though I had the highest grades in the class and they wouldn’t give it to me because I didn’t have “the right attitude” - it’s called autism, you ableist fucks...

Uhm.

Ahem. 

Not that I’m still angry or bitter or anything.  

Anyway.

An ARC of Strange the Dreamer was the first Goodreads giveaway I ever won. For the first time I was a winner and not a loser, so eat it, high school. It was also one of the first books I reviewed here on this blog that nobody reads. It keeps me entertained, though. I absolutely loved Strange the Dreamer. It was unlike any YA fantasy that I’d ever read, and the hero? The hero is a badass librarian. Because we librarians are total badasses. It's kind of fitting that I got to read Muse of Nightmares just after getting my MLIS (Master’s in Library and Information Science for those of you much cooler than I am). Lazlo Strange is some serious librarian career goals.

Muse, like its predecessor, is beautifully written, with the occasional annoyances that comes with pretty writing: some unnecessary sentences, overwrought metaphors, directly addressing the reader - that last one is more of a personal pet peeve than legitimate criticism, I can’t stand it when writers, while writing in third person, address the reader because I’d much rather pretend like I’m not there. I don’t mind it when this is done in first person narration because, well, the narrator is telling you the story. But in third person? Don’t acknowledge me like you know I’m here. Don’t break that fourth wall! Don’t look at me, don’t look at meee!!!

Ahem. Yes, again, that’s just a personal peeve that annoys me a bit at first but if I like the story I’m reading well enough I get over it pretty quick (as in it annoys me slightly the first time, but then I forget about until I have to mine for things to complain about to fill space in a review). Plus, I must emphasize that the copy of Muse I was allowed to read is a digital galley copy, not a finished one - the text might get some more revision before its October release, so some of the nitpicky complaints I have about sentence structure might not even matter. But complaining is fun, so I’ll do it anyway. After all, my official motto for all things, including this blog, is:

A funny thing I noticed throughout Muse as well as Strange is that nothing is ever soft - it’s silk. 100% pure silk. Nobody has smooth skin, it’s skin like silk. I don’t actually own anything made of real silk (what do I look like, royalty? I’ve got a library science degree), so I can’t really testify to the softness of the material, but my cat has really soft fur so I’m just going to imagine that all the silky soft things Taylor describes feel like my cat’s fur. Lots of slips and sheets made of cat fur, here. Another thing is that Sarai’s hair is never just brown, it’s cinnamon colored. She is always described as having cinnamon hair, which makes me worry that her hair will attract ants. Or somehow be rendered into snickerdoodle cookies. Now, I may not know what real silk feels like, but I do have a year-old tin of cinnamon sticks that I bought to make hot toddies back when I had pharyngitis so bad I couldn’t swallow (not a pleasant experience. Lots of drool involved. The hot toddies did not help). So Sarai has hair that is exactly this color: 

Speaking of cinnamon, anyone know if cinnamon sticks have an expiration date? Asking for a friend who has a year-old tin of cinnamon sticks that may or may not have pharyngitis germs all over them and now kind of wants a hot toddy...

Anyway, lots of silk, lots of cinnamon. Delicious, silky cinnamon. I really want a cinnamon latte right now. I could go and get one but it’d cost like, 5 bucks... 

Where was I?

Yes. This review. Unfortunately I am not really able to be all that eloquent about things I really, really like in a non-spoilery manner. I could gush about Muse of Nightmares all the livelong day, but in the process I’d give everything away and I don’t want to do that. Personally, I love spoilers, the more the better, but I don’t want to spoil this for anyone who, like me, has been waiting very patiently since early 2017 to learn the rest of Lazlo and Sarai’s story. I will say, though: the wait is worth it, it’s amazing, most all your questions are answered, and storylines are resolved. Taylor has stated that Strange the Dreamer and Muse of Nightmares would be a duology, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for a spinoff series. Apparently, Strange and Muse are a kind-of spinoff to Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, which I haven’t read yet, but now that I know that it’s related to Strange and Muse, I absolutely must read it now. 

But, to avoid spoilers, what can you really say more than “oh yeah, I liked that book a lot!” After that? Crickets. 

Hence, the nitpicking.

Also, Taylor gets bonus points for being a fellow Oregonian. Oregon writers for the win! I may not be a real writer, but I am definitely from Oregon! I loves me my local writers, and Oregon has a ton, especially Portland. We seem to have a lot of amazing YA and genre writers, too. (The world misses you, Ursula K. Le Guin).

A word of advice, though: you're going to want to reread Strange before Muse comes out - mostly because Muse picks up right where strange left off. Like literally right there. Taylor includes a lot of sly “as you may already know" tidbits in case you forgot anything but it will definitely be worth doing a reread as a refresher. Plus, Strange The Dreamer is great, why wouldn’t you want to reread it? I mean, people have unlimited time to just sit around and read, right? And audiobooks, those are a thing, too, right?

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone fond of YA, YA Fantasy, or both. Or just anyone who likes fantasy, seriously, I’d recommend Strange and Muse to all my genre fans out there.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone allergic to cinnamon, silk, or both.

RATING: 5/5

TOTALLY UNBIASED FANGIRL RATING: 5,000,000,000,000,001/5

RELEASE DATE: October 2, 2018

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR SPINOFF/FURTHER BOOKS: Chhogori

[irregodless]

okay readmore time

feel free to contact me to discuss theories or general plot

so this is gonna be hella segmented but just deal okay

my thoughts are never very organized so im just gonna talk about some disappointments and other stuff

why does homeworld have a court session for rose quartz i mean i get theyre bureaucrats suddenly but like. um? kinda feels silly. why would they give her a chance to defend herself? also have they advanced like humans? bc blue diamond sure af didnt give garnet a chance to plead a case when she fused ON ACCIDENT

that being said what happened to all the stuff about like moon goddesses and stuff. i wasnt really counting on the diamonds being like. actual goddess figures but i was kinda hoping for more than ceo bosses in pantsuits

where he hell is white diamond and why wasnt she present. was she out conquering new planets? the symbol represents her so she appears to still be around. so where is she? i honestly think its suspicious that shes not present. i figure given her color and gem placement she is a cold calculating unfeeling machine who is only concerned with purity, structure and justice. so like the anithesis of what steven fights for: feeling for each other, empathizing etc

kinda disappointed there were so few off-colors but maybe well find some more later

also kinda disappointed steven and lars didnt fuse but i mean maybe later. also there wasnt really a need to so far nor was it implied they would

why did everyone run away from rutile when they emerged? the fact they were not INSTANTLY captured and shattered for breaking the mold suggests that all the kindergartners ran too. now they might have been around MUCH LONGER AGO but to me that would mean imperfect gems were MORE COMMON to find. the gems dont seem to be too put off by strange appearances. im just saying its weird that they would all run from a defect gem. im not crying plot hole, im actually saying i think something ELSE happened to make them run away. not a mutated rutile.

i was kind of hoping to find a secret society of garnets of other rubies and sapphires who followed our garnets example lol. they couldve helped steven feel more at home or something

im kind of sad it wasnt set up more like a movie, but again it wasnt SUPPOSED to be. understand i can identify things i was expecting incorrectly and things im genuinely upset by. this was just my expectations being in the wrong place.

im also sad there isnt more of a prospect of there being like. a season of being stranded on homeworld. but now it feels like in the two years itll take for season 6 to show up till just be a bunch of “””filler””” where lars is just stranded on homeworld and not spoken about until a stevenbomb halfway through. id much rather learn about homeworld!!

we also got no new information about the war or homeworld, really!!!! :( not even a flashback

yellow diamond is guilty af. she didnt want to hold the trial and she was ESPECIALLY outraged by the “crazy theory” that she did it. also, im just sayin, eyeball ruby (the only known witness we know of atm) also couldnt tell that the jasper she had ALSO SEEN WITH HER ONE EYE AND LVOED SO MUCH was really amethyst. like she didnt even notice her chest gem OR her coloration. so i mean. the rose quartz that shattered pink COULD HAVE BEEN yellow or COULD HAVE BEEN a shapeshifted gem. esp since her sword isnt supposed to shatter. so someones murder mystery unravels by getting a core detail wrong. i still kind of like the theory of like. pink transferring her consciousness a la lars and steven to a rose and shattering herself so she wouldnt have to conquer and destroy. so our rose is actually pink diamond but in the body of a rose quartz (making steven still a rose quartz but not a pink diamond like his mom... ‘s personality. which is what matters over physical form. esp with gems. itd also make the rose is pink diamond theories hilarious true but also false lmao)

kind of disappointed in lions new origin story too! i think the pink pearl theories were interesting if not always positively RIDDLED with holes. (some people thought he was a gem monster but um we would have seen pearls gem on his tummy. and steven has pet his tummy MANY A TIME)

I KIND OF DONT LIKE THAT THE HAPPY ENDING WAS JUST STEVEN REUNITING WITH HIS FAMILY BUT LARS GETTIN FUCKED OFF LEFT ON HOMEWORLD LOL. i mean i know he told him to go and tell everone and stuff but its like. look everythings back to normal and theyre back together!! oh except lars who isnt alive and will live forever as an organic lich servant to steven but dont worry l m a o o o. i jsut didnt like that whole lars thing a lot in general... nor do i feel like turning pink instantly redeems him. not that i hated him. but i dont think turnign pink was the character development we needed.

WHERES TOPAZ IS SHE OKAY DID AQUAMARINE RAT HER OUT

DO ZIRCONS GET SHATTERED IF THEY LOSE A CASE

WOULD BLUE ZIRCON HAVE BEEN A PARIAH FOR DEFENDING ROSE QUARTZ DESPITE *HAVING TO*

YO BLUE DIAMOND EY WHAT UP LIKE LITERALLY WHATS GOING ON BLUE PLZ TELL ME IN THE DARK A LIL

plz tell me well get more homeworld adventures and lars will smuggle gems in his hair

are they going to send pumpkin to homeworld as rose or something and sacriice him lol (i actually just wanted to ask why he was relevant at all but then i imagined just like. replacing him with lars)

are the crystal gems gonna go to homeworld and start shit princess marco style teach those gems about rock and roll pearl!! liberate them form the oppressive THE MAN, AMETHYST

can i mention that while it was funny but also irrelevant to this special, i kinda didnt like the like. garnet just drawing herself “i like me” bit. like it was funny but also like. almost too off-focus and too self-absorbed for her character. i could imagine sardonyx doing that but not garnet. idk it was just a single silly gag but i didnt like it

are the zircons okay tho

but like seriously whats homeworld even like like whats going on. especially since they dont seem to have an actual culture (if gems dont know what jokes are i really cant imagine them having a purpsoe outside of militial. how does a civilization survive on being NOTHING but war machines?)

i kinda feel like were coming to the tip of excitement here i feel like theres very little more that can be done in the show. idk. like what happens next anyways

do i have any MORE questions or musings to ask/muse????? yes. but i cant think of any rn. so later. 

EDIT: so i was thinking and i wanted to ammend the lars things. he DEF had character development and it was DEF even before he turned pink. i think i felt that the only thing being addressed or taken away was that he was pink now? and i kinda dont like character development thats done like completely suddenly as a heelturn and is heretofore ooc. lars however was written WELL. he developed REALLY WELL AND I LOVE IT. there was just something at the time that made it seem like it was all about him turning pink that almost made me forget he literally saved everyone? and i realize him being left out of the happy ending was of his own accord and sacrifice it just kinda rubbed me the wrong way. just a personal thing i guess.