#f: something more

[hanzajesthanza]

one of the reasons why the witcher entrances me so is the absolute adamancy with which geralt and yennefer in the witcher not only fight tooth and nail to protect ciri from harm, but also their subtle tone shifts in their interactions with her.

like how in the sword of destiny, though geralt constantly self-loathes, bemoans his fate as a witcher, and complains seemingly endlessly, pessimistically, on and on… we never see him exhibit this behavior around ciri. he’s in a good mood around her, tells her stories, and censors himself an appropriate amount.

or like how in blood of elves, yennefer, after surviving sodden, doesn’t relate to ciri her war trauma, knowing she has enough of her own. when ciri asks her why she’s looking at that linden tree so intently, yennefer simply responds she’s happy to see it, when ciri says she doesn’t understand, yennefer replies it’s good she doesn’t understand… it’s good she doesn’t know…

when geralt fears for ciri in time of contempt, his voice falters when he’s speaking to dandelion, in his bruised and battered state he explains how he has to go to ciri, he can’t leave her alone, she can’t be left alone, because that which has already happened to him will happen to her…

it’s not just about protecting her life, it’s about respecting her childhood, protecting her innocence… they hold themselves to this standard, even as scraps and shreds of her childhood are constantly, painfully sloughed off like burned skin, day after day, month after month, until it’s gone forever…

the world is so cruel. why hasten it, why be a child’s first exposure to that? be sensitive, be respectful… for what they have is invaluable…

[ectoplasmer]

need to kiss him until we’re both silly and delirious and giggling, until we’re both grabbing at each other’s shoulders and sides and arms, until we’re both half hazardously stumbling our way backwards onto the couch in a heap of laughter just so we can be as close as possible and we’re clumsily bumping foreheads and noses. need to kiss him until he can’t stop smiling and until we’re both stupidly lovestruck and just clinging to each other

[junotter]

All the jokes about Ken and horses are good but I just wanna say it's such a good parallel to how actual young men get swept into misogyny and the patriarchy.

Like they're told to believe it means men get to be cool and manly and have this power but with that comes extremely rigid commands of what they can be as a man and a cycle of self hatred for never matching those gender roles perfectly. Patriarchy tells men that if they just do exactly what is expected of them, then they get all the "cool stuff" that comes with. That doesn't work though when there's only a small group that actually gets that power, but men will keep trying to fit into those roles in hopes that they can.

In the end there are no horses or the myth men are told, it's just endless cycles of self hatred and ingroup fighting.

[scintillyyy]

can you really talk about tim's tendency to idolize and place dick on a pedestal and his semi-entitlement to understanding dick without also talking about dick's tendency to project his own feelings and insecurities onto tim and also his semi-entitlement to his right to try and micromanage how tim should feel and react about things. i, personally, cannot.

[coolnonsenseworld]

At the end of 2022/In the beginning of 2023 I've sent postcards to Patrons and also added sketches for each of them. There were two copies - one to which I added a few details with a liner only for Patrons to keep, and the other printed on white to use as a coloring page or simply keep separately.

Here are all the sketches and I hope everyone who received the Postcard enjoyed getting it!!

You can still get the print of the Postcard (the winter one) separately in the shops - https://linktr.ee/mezzy

And here are credits which Patrons left - HEX was drawn for @caeseria-k , Cheek kiss for @not-so-sunnie, Kosmo Cuddle for sampai_writes (IG) , Cuddlers + Klance for luon-von (Twt), wintery one for @thestargazerfiles and a lap cuddle for @luchsmaedchen !

Big thanks to all the other Patrons!!! I wouldn't be here if not for them and sharing all this within a welcoming, understanding part of the fandom means SO MUCH, and it warms my heart to have the support not only for my fandom creations, but also for me as a person and artist. I mean. I don't assume. Maybe some are there just for klance, that's fine too. But I feel like I've met friends there based on a world of creation, anything I know about my Patrons, is they are so successful, creative and kind ToT. And listen... it's been seven years of Klance, and I still see people having new things to say about them.

Have an amazing week everyone <3

[andy-clutterbuck]

6x15 | East

[sansofhumor]

Sansby 6

sans couldn't finish dressing and i could barely finish drawing this

[coquelicoq]

justice of toren collecting songs and one esk/breq constantly humming/singing them is such a good detail and ann leckie does so much with it. an incomplete list:

justice of toren's eager collection of songs is part and parcel of its violent destruction of cultures: these songs are cultural artifacts that it only learns because of its presence on those worlds during their conquest, and in many cases breq is the only one to remember them because their people have died out due to that violence. JoT preserves cultural artifacts for its own use at the same time it directly contributes to the need for that preservation in the first place.

the matter-of-fact way in which this is narrated to us gives us information about JoT's stance on respect and imperialism - that is, contrasted with other characters who look down on the conquered cultures, JoT does actually seem to appreciate their value. and yet it communicates to us no sense of remorse over its role in their genocide.

singing can be a communal activity. this allows us to feel the difference between one esk's multiple bodies singing together in harmony/in a round vs. breq singing alone. this has emotional weight, is an evocative image, and illustrates quite nicely some of the logistic considerations of having one vs. multiple bodies.

the constant humming/singing is extremely notable and idiosyncratic according to other characters, which is a dangerous combination for someone who's supposed to be undercover, so it adds a lil bit of fun suspense for us.

the fact that no one ever figures out breq's identity despite this giveaway tells us something about the other characters' attitudes towards artificial intelligences (though see below about seivarden).

the fact that it's so idiosyncratic also tells us something about the ability of individual AIs to have personalities that distinguish them from other AIs, and the fact that one esk sings constantly but two esk doesn't tells us something about the ability of different ancillary decades that are all part of the same AI to have distinguishing characteristics. this is very relevant to, and illustrative of, the series' thematic throughlines around identity, personality, continuity, etc.

the fact that breq personally has a bad voice also serves multiple purposes. because breq and seivarden both believe that the medic could have chosen a body with a good voice if she had wanted to, we can infer something about how ancillary bodies work, how much the AI (and, by extension, its medics) knows about the individual capabilities of those bodies while they're in suspension, and what kinds of things the AI can and can't control once it has unfrozen and taken over a body.

we can also draw conclusions about the medic that chose that body and about intracrew relations on that ship.

breq's bad voice creates moments of humor and irony in the narrative, such as when breq's constant singing - aka the most obvious clue that she is one esk - is precisely what makes seivarden so sure that breq can't be one esk, because no esk medic would use a body with a bad voice for an ancillary.

constant singing/humming imposes itself on the shared soundscape, meaning other people can't easily avoid it and it has the potential to annoy them, especially if the voice itself has annoying qualities. the reactions of other characters to the frequency and/or quality of this verbal tic tells us something about the level of affection those characters have for one esk or breq.

because singing involves words, the meaning of the lyrics being sung can be used to advance the plot, communicate things about specific characters, create irony in juxtaposition with what's happening on the page, etc.

i especially like what's done with the lyric "it all goes around". it's woven throughout the story in such a way as to manifest its own meaning (the repetition of "it all goes around" is, itself, an example of something going around). by repeating the lyric, breq is the one making it true, and i would argue that her repetition of this particular lyric about things orbiting other things contributes to, and/or is a sign of, her growing understanding of the necessity/reality of interdependence and her place in that framework/her role in constructing it, or in other words, the extent of her own agency and the rights and obligations it confers upon her.

because the singing/humming is a constant, background, automatic action, it only ceases when breq is experiencing a strong emotion. from this we are able to infer things about the emotional state of our famously-omits-details-about-her-emotional-state narrator based on other characters' comments about whether or not she is currently doing this thing.

we also aren't even aware that breq is doing it constantly until another character says so. on a narrative level, this serves the dual purpose of making sure we know about how much she hums AND of reminding us that she's not telling us everything.

the humming is not mentioned constantly even though it is happening constantly - this helps us forget in between mentions that it's going on while also simultaneously reinforcing just how constant it must be, so constant that to mention it every time it happens would be like narrating every time she breathes in or out. whenever someone brings it up, we are reminded anew that something has been happening all along that we forgot about. this means that ann leckie is able, by leaving information out, to hammer home to us how much we are not being told.

through this one character trait, ann leckie efficiently and elegantly communicates not just aspects of character but also of setting, plot, tone, theme, and narrative. there's no extraneous exposition just to tell us about the song collection or singing; everything that tells us about it is serving other functions in the narrative as well. the ways in which she manifests this one character trait in the universe and in the narrative contribute to and exemplify both the story itself and the method of its telling.

[popdrop]

I STILL CAN'T GET OVER HOW IN THE BEGINNING, CALE PUSHED EVERYONE AWAY. You may say it's because of how "dangerous" and "trouble packed" their journey will be in the story later on— BUT. I JUST CANT HELP BUT FEEL LIKE MAYBE , JUST MAYBE. He didn't want them to be affected by his "curse" (side effect of WS) whether he knew about it or not. Just consider the fact that he KNOWS what will happen to them and how they'll be fighting for a better world and it'd be MUCH better if he's not there. Just in case he worsens whatever will happen.

He's such an unreliable narrator <3 the Worst Kind Ever.

[leosmasktails]

So I personally don’t think that Present and Future Leo would hate each other (at least not extremely, they tolerate each other lol), but this came into my mind and would not leave so I lied about not posting hope y’all don’t mind 🤩

✨Bonus panel✨

[hanzajesthanza]

crossbow bolts & goodbyes

i love it when ciri steps into geralt's role in the endings to the story :')

from the lesser evil, one of the original short stories and before ciri had even been concieved of as a character:

to the very end on the stairs in lady of the lake:

asides from "geralt quickly covered ciri with his body" and "very good, but if you ever do that again, i'll tan your hide"—that ciri successfully pulls off the same move, deflects the crossbow bolt with her sword, like geralt has :') oh, witcher and witcher girl...

and in this same vein, it should also be mentioned, geralt and nenneke's parting at the end of the voice of reason:

to ciri and geralt's parting in something ends, something begins:

[foursaints]

anyways highschool au where they dissect frogs in class evan wordlessly scalpels out its heart first despite instructions and nudges it over to barty on a little glass plate IF YOU EVEN CARE

!! I CARE SM!!! this is the cutest hc and i’ve been brainrotting about this ask ever since you sent it like i genuinely am possessed..i feel sick

you’ve got me imagining this whole high school au with every cliché. pure twee teenage suburban melancholia where the rosier twins have a treehouse in their backyard and double-knot the laces of their converse and get the cuffs of their jeans soggy sitting in the wet grass on the football field and lily makes homecoming court and barty&regulus skip every school dance to eat mcdonald’s in formal wear and they sit under the bleachers w scraped knees and drop a lit cigarette between their forearms just to see who’ll pull away first

evan who was homeschooled and lives with his grandparents and only wears old baggy clothes from goodwill. he doesn’t talk much. people call him weird but he never eats lunch alone because he has a sister. pandora doesn’t mind being ostracized and puts unlit incense sticks in her buns and throws shoebox funerals for roadkill and squeezes her brothers hand under their homeroom desk

evan who doesn’t mind either but sometimes he imagines what having friends would be like. he writes down things he would say to them in his spiral bound notebooks instead of paying attention in calculus

barty who is self-explanatory. barty who is exactly what you’d expect. barty who sits next to evan in chemistry class with their knees knocking together under the desk. barty who draws tic-tac-toe on evan’s notebooks and always lets him win. who picks out the gory titles for him in blockbuster video and laughs at his jokes and who isn’t his friend, not exactly, but something close. barty his lab partner. barty who lets him borrow his jacket and who throws rocks at his window and who meets him in his treehouse in the middle of the night. LIKE!!!!!!!!

[maligned-kitty]

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY !!! I didn’t have anything prepared so here’s the quickest doodles ever x3

[fujii-draws]

OKAY! Chatot rant in tags below! Read at your own discretion.

[ruedesfillesducalvaire]

[me entering the les misérables fandom]

victor hugo really said gay rights like...literally every gay ship goes so hard.

valvert? redemption....remaking oneself....the shifting hierarchy....punish me monsieur le maire....bondage chicken at the barricade....the decades-long pursuit....enemies to lovers...

rating: SLAPS.

enjoltaire? canon comparisons to achilles/patroclus....not to me not if it's you....be serious i am wild....anything for you....

rating: SLAPS.

éposette? we grew up together but never really knew each other....i was cruel to you but we were children...do you even recognise me now...you are kind to me even though....

rating: SLAPS.

courfius? well obviously when marius doesn't get with cosette, he absolutely hooks up with courfeyrac after he's done sulking. marius is the epitome of a useless bisexual.

rating: SLAPS.

[inbarfink]

Okay, so...

My assumption has always been that Simon is just kinda intrinsically Fatherly and that aspect of himself simply persisted in spite of the Crown’s influence

All the way to his Ice King persona and the way he doted on Gunter

But maybe putting on the Ice Crown just kinda…turns you into a Dad??

I mean... not necessarily a GOOD sort of Dad... but definitly some sort of Dad???