#inheritance cycle meta

[saphira-approves]

The Ancient Language and True Names: Some Musings

So as a preface, let’s first recount some of the rules of the Ancient Language we’re told/shown through the books (spoilers through Inheritance):

One cannot lie in the Ancient Language

This doesn’t mean you cannot say something objectively untrue—so long as you believe it is true, you can say it (see: Murtagh tells Eragon at the end of Eldest that they are both sons of Morzan, which Murtagh can do because he doesn’t know about Selena having an affair with Brom)

Magic, however, is a bit trickier—intent can go a long way, but a grammatical or syntactical error can obliterate your intention (see: Eragon tries to bless a child, uses the noun form of “shield” instead of the verb form, accidentally curses the child)

So what am I getting at? Well!

In Inheritance, Eragon and Saphira follow a riddle-prophecy to Doru Araeba, the magic-nuked seat of power of the previous incarnation of the Order of Dragon Riders, and find their way into the magically-hidden fallout shelter with a forgetting spell on it that holds several Eldunarya and dragon eggs protected from the magic nuke blast and hidden from Galbatorix’s reach.

Or, put another way:

Saphira Bjartskular, the first new dragon in a century, the only living female out of five living-or-soon-to-hatch dragons (the others being Glaedr, Shruikan, Thorn, and Fírnen), literally the LAST CHANCE for the existence of HER ENTIRE SPECIES… finds out that she isn’t, actually, the last chance. That dozens, a few hundreds of eggs survived, and statistically at least a few of them have to be more females, and dragons will be fewer than before, certainly, and it will be centuries before they reach their previous numbers, but they won’t be doomed to a drawn-out spiral of inbreeding and decline and eventual, final, end.

And then she forgets.

Temporarily! But the memory is removed, excised for her protection and the protection of that precious maybe-future. Saphira’s view of the world, of herself, of her very place in the world, is completely overthrown… and then she returns to what had been the status quo (admittedly with the souls of several other dragons—but functionally this is just Glaedr, multiplied).

The question I pose is: what happened to Saphira’s true name?

On a broader, more generalized scale, the question really is this: what happens to a true name when the memory of a major name-changing event is altered somehow—either by removing the memory of an event that happened, or implanting a false memory of an event that did not happen, or changing the elements of that memory? What rule of the Ancient Language applies here—belief, or The Words Themselves? Is a true name built on memory? On how life experience physically shapes the brain?

Does Saphira wonder at the giddiness in her chest when she thinks of the Eldunarya, quietly thinking that the instinctive chemical reaction is an overenthusiastic response to ghosts that can advise, but never repopulate?

Would Galbatorix, if the battle had gone differently, have been intrigued by the curious lack of I am the last in Saphira’s true name?

Or would he have seen exactly what he expected to? I am the last—and hope is lost.

[saphira-approves]

I think it’s implied as early as Book 1 that having a skewed or dishonest view of yourself can not only hinder you learning your True Name, but if someone else figures it out and tells you, the cognitive dissonance can cause a mental break. Brom says something to that effect, at least.

A lot of the narrative around True Names that I remember focused on that idea of being honest with yourself, being objective. Admittedly I think most of it was to the tune of “don’t let your ego get too big, don’t think too highly of yourself that you ignore your flaws,” because someone realizing that they’re not actually as good/justified/innocent/whatever as they think can throw them for a loop or worse, but the opposite could be just as true: if your worldview hinges on believing yourself to be a terrible person, figuring out that you’re just, like, normal and decent can screw with your head.

Anyway yeah. Having any sort of skewed perception of who you are as a person is definitely going to impact figuring out your True Name; Paolini puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of learning how to be objective in introspection.

Question: would having a scewed negative view of yourself or multiple insecurities, or things like being neurodivergent or struggling with several negative core beliefs due to trauma, impact your ability to figure it out your own true name? The narrative seems to tell us multiple times that not knowing your own true name could be dangerous and a kink in your armor, but what if your view of yourself is so screwed or you don’t know who you are to where you literally CAN’T figure it out?

[randomness-is-my-order]

the thing about jiang cheng’s relationship with jin ling is that it is not the sugar-coated caretaking film which people wish to see it through and this is besides the fact that jiang cheng was physically abusive towards jin ling. jc was not interested in imparting good values to jin ling or partaking in his upbringing in any meaningful manner. what he taught jin ling was violence and anger and his own abrasive and entitled world views. he exposed jin ling to his treatment of demonic cultivators for a substantial enough time for jin ling to have been desensitised to it in some capacity. his lessons to jin ling were about being indiscriminately ruthless to anyone who he perceived to practice demonic cultivation. jiang cheng wasn’t “raising” jin ling to be a good, upstanding individual but moulding him with his worst impulses and never once reflecting over what that meant for jin ling and his future. people citing jiang cheng’s displays of overprotectiveness (which themselves are a detriment to jin ling’s progress) as proof of jiang cheng being this caring, kind uncle is an oversight of how utterly careless jiang cheng is with jin ling. jiang cheng wielded his influence over his nephew quite callously and he did jin ling damage by trying to make him another wheel in his vehicle of violence and that is unrefutable.

[slitheringghost]

Slytherin Locket Cave: The Life And Death Of Merope Gaunt

I wanted to explore one of the most interesting details of Voldemort’s characterization: the extensive protections around the Slytherin locket horcrux, which exist as a step-by-step re-enactment of Merope's suffering - referencing his mother's actual death, but perhaps more prominently, her state of drowning in despair in the Gaunt home due to her family.

The Locket's Significance

Tom Riddle initially hears of it from his uncle:

“Ar, he left her, and serve her right, marrying filth!” said Morfin, spitting on the floor again. “Robbed us, mind, before she ran off! Where’s the locket, eh, where’s Slytherin’s locket?” Voldemort did not answer. Morfin was working himself into a rage again; he brandished his knife and shouted, “Dishonored us, she did, that little slut! And who’re you, coming here and asking questions about all that? It’s over, innit.... It’s over....” He looked away, staggering slightly, and Voldemort moved forward.

Making his uncle look at him to Legilimize him, Tom views the Bob Ogden memory - and later wipes his uncle memories till that point. (I assume LV got all the same Merope details and memories that Dumbledore shows Harry in HBP, and likely even more.)

We first see Slytherin's locket when Marvolo strangles Merope with the chain to show it to Bob Ogden and claim they're Slytherin's descendants, and presumably Merope wore it for most of her life in the Gaunt shack. Merope runs off with Tom Sr. wearing it and per Burke it's the last possession she had days before her death:

“It was brought in by a young witch just before Christmas, oh, many years ago now. She said she needed the gold badly, well, that much was obvious. Covered in rags and pretty far along... Going to have a baby, see. She said the locket had been Slytherin’s. [...] She didn’t seem to have any idea how much it was worth. Happy to get ten Galleons for it.“

And Voldemort's enraged when Hepzibah Smith claims Merope stole it and was simply too dense to know its worth (which Merope clearly did, could hardly miss it with Marvolo's behavior):

“I had to pay an arm and a leg for it, but I couldn’t let it pass, not a real treasure like that, had to have it for my collection. Burke bought it, apparently, from a ragged-looking woman who seemed to have stolen it, but had no idea of its true value —” There was no mistaking it this time: Voldemort’s eyes flashed scarlet at the words, and Harry saw his knuckles whiten on the locket’s chain. “— I daresay Burke paid her a pittance but there you are.... Pretty, isn’t it? And again, all kinds of powers attributed to it, though I just keep it nice and safe....” She reached out to take the locket back. For a moment, Harry thought Voldemort was not going to let go of it, but then it had slid through his fingers and was back in its red velvet cushion. “So there you are, Tom, dear, and I hope you enjoyed that!” She looked him full in the face and for the first time, Harry saw her foolish smile falter. “Are you all right, dear?” “Oh yes,” said Voldemort quietly. "Yes, I’m very well....” “I thought — but a trick of the light, I suppose —” said Hepzibah, looking unnerved, and Harry guessed that she too had seen the momentary red gleam in Voldemort’s eyes.

The red flash in his eyes staying long enough for Hepzibah to notice.

2. Location

It's the sole horcrux in a location related to his childhood in the orphanage, and the cliffside location evokes Azkaban's (the fortress on a tiny island middle of the North Sea) - a seaside cave you have to swim to reach, described as "a bleak, harsh view, the sea and the rock unrelieved by any tree or sweep of grass or sand". This signifies how the Gaunt shack was like Azkaban to Merope.

(When Sirius writes via tropical birds post-Azkaban escape, Harry thinks he's somewhere with sunlight and “palm trees and white sand” where he can't imagine dementors surviving for long).

My theory's that while Tom may've been covering up a violent fight, what ruined Amy and Dennis's minds so they were "never right afterwards" was a too powerful memory wipe - like Crouch Sr.'s on Bertha Jorkins - so they can recall they went into a cave with Tom but nothing more; that could also be a relevant association, as Tom used Legilimency to erase his uncle's memories and send him to Azkaban.

It starts with a concealed entrance and a "blood ward", something normally outside/protecting a magical home, an indication that the Cave represents the Gaunt shack (interestingly HBP begins with Dumbledore having entered the Gaunt shack threshold and cursed fatally by the ring horcrux, entering the blood wards of the Dursleys' house, and ends in him dying after the Cave-as-Gaunt-house-simulation), with "denser than normal” darkness inside.

A concealed chained "ghostly green" little boat glides over a "great black lake" to the center island - matching descriptions of the boatride across the Hogwarts lake to the castle for first-years, and a reference to the fact that Merope never got to attend school.

The Emerald potion, which Harry first thinks is a lamp, emits a green glow through the cavern, similar to Slytherin common room descriptions (“underground room with rough stone walls and ceiling from which round, greenish lamps were hanging on chains” / "it’s under the lake, so the light’s all green.”)

3. Drink of Despair

The potion is, of course, a liquefied dementor, which is linked to Merope in several ways.

The echoes of Lily's murder Harry hears near the dementors and his rage at Sirius betraying her parallels the memory of Merope being killed by her family and Tom’s rage at seeing it in his uncle’s memories - Morfin betraying her secret to their father and sending Marvolo after her, Merope's wordless pleading with her brother and father, Morfin’s cackle of laughter, and Merope screaming as she’s about to be killed by Marvolo.

“D’you know what I see and hear every time a dementor gets too near me?” Ron and Hermione shook their heads, looking apprehensive. “I can hear my mum screaming and pleading with Voldemort. And if you’d heard your mum screaming like that, just about to be killed, you wouldn’t forget it in a hurry. And if you found out someone who was supposed to be a friend of hers betrayed her and sent Voldemort after her —” (POA)

“She likes looking at that Muggle,” said Morfin, a vicious expression on his face as he stared at his sister, who now looked terrified. “Always in the garden when he passes, peering through the hedge at him, isn’t she? And last night —” Merope shook her head jerkily, imploringly, but Morfin went on ruthlessly, “Hanging out of the window waiting for him to ride home, wasn’t she?” “Hanging out of the window to look at a Muggle?” said Gaunt quietly. [...] “Is it true?” said Gaunt in a deadly voice, advancing a step or two toward the terrified girl. “My daughter — pure-blooded descendant of Salazar Slytherin — hankering after a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle?” Merope shook her head frantically, pressing herself into the wall, apparently unable to speak. “But I got him, Father!” cackled Morfin. “I got him as he went by and he didn’t look so pretty with hives all over him, did he, Merope?” “You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!” roared Gaunt, losing control, and his hands closed around his daughter’s throat. Both Harry and Ogden yelled “No!” at the same time; Ogden raised his wand and cried, “Relashio!” Gaunt was thrown backward, away from his daughter [...] Ogden ran for his life. Dumbledore indicated that they ought to follow and Harry obeyed, Merope’s screams echoing in his ears. (HBP)

(HBP's also the book Harry gives a step by step graphic description of Lily's murder to Slughorn; while Voldemort re-enacts Merope's through the cave protections)

Dumbledore says Morfin gave a "full and boastful confession" - which Tom Jr. Legilimized Morfin to give, explicitly referencing the last time his uncle attacked Tom Sr. in retaliation for Merope’s attraction to him and gloated to Marvolo about it - "He was proud, he said, to have killed the Muggles, had been awaiting his chance all these years."

While Harry only wants revenge for his parents with no thought for himself vs. LV framing his uncle for his pureblood family blasting him off their family tree, LV certainly has additional rage for his mother, and also doesn't forget his mother's screaming/general despair in a hurry, creating the locket cave decades after viewing the memories.

The dementors' varying effect and imagery is linked with - despair and hopelessness, losing the will to survive, not eating, victims huddling and hiding their faces and pleading, weakness and fainting, etc. Sirius says Crouch Jr. in Azkaban was "screaming for his mother by nightfall. He went quiet after a few days, though... they all went quiet in the end... except when they shrieked in their sleep.”

Which is exactly Merope's state in the Gaunt house with her father and brother:

Harry realized that there was somebody else in the room, a girl whose ragged gray dress was the exact color of the dirty stone wall behind her. She was standing beside a steaming pot on a grimy black stove, and was fiddling around with the shelf of squalid-looking pots and pans above it. [...] She looked a little cleaner than the two men, but Harry thought he had never seen a more defeated-looking person.

“Good morning,” said Ogden. She did not answer, but with a frightened glance at her father turned her back on the room [...]

And [Marvolo] spat on the floor at Ogden’s feet. Morfin cackled again. Merope, huddled beside the window, her head bowed and her face hidden by her lank hair, said nothing.

“‘Darling,’” whispered Morfin in Parseltongue, looking at his sister. “‘Darling,’ he called her. So he wouldn’t have you anyway.” Merope was so white Harry felt sure she was going to faint.

and:

Instead, [Marvolo] jeered at his daughter, “Lucky the nice man from the Ministry’s here, isn’t it? Perhaps he’ll take you off my hands, perhaps he doesn’t mind dirty Squibs....” Without looking at anybody or thanking Ogden, Merope picked up the pot and returned it, hands trembling, to its shelf. She then stood quite still, her back against the wall between the filthy window and the stove, as though she wished for nothing more than to sink into the stone and vanish.

Harry was on his feet once more, refilling the goblet as Dumbledore began to scream in more anguish than ever, “I want to die! I want to die! Make it stop, make it stop, I want to die!” “Drink this, Professor. Drink this....” Dumbledore drank, and no sooner had he finished than he yelled, “KILL ME!”

Merope's completely nonverbal throughout the scene, other than her screams. The Gaunts homeschooled, so she didn't even get to attend Hogwarts as an escape, as Tom, Harry, and others did and barely got an education (referenced by the boat ride resembling the first years’ boatride to Hogwarts). And she would've been forced to marry her brother and have his children.

(Morfin's association near the dementors is also his father - "'He’ll kill me for losing his ring,’ he told his captors over and over again [...] And that, apparently, was all he ever said again.")

What we hear of Merope as she's pregnant is the complete opposite of the dementors.

Merope wanted to live desperately enough that she sold a family heirloom for basically nothing a week before her death - so she was certainly trying to get food. (Comparatively, Harry in HBP due to grief for Sirius was "lying on his bed, refusing meals, and staring at the misted window, full of the chill emptiness that he had come to associate with dementors" until Dumbledore's letter came.)

Both times, Merope is facing death - with the Gaunts, she's too hopeless to speak even while pleading as she’s about to be killed; while pregnant with Tom (the only time we do hear Merope speak, secondhand), despite having wandered destitute for months and despite freezing and starving in midwinter and in the painful process of dying in childbirth, she has the will to speak until her dying breath - expressing hope for her son's future ("I hope he looks like his papa"), to give her son a name, Mrs. Cole saying it seemed "so important to the poor girl" to name him.

It’s reminiscent of how staying in Grimmauld Place is far worse for Sirius than living in a cave and eating rats on the run is, and where looking out for Harry also keeps Sirius going and gives him a purpose. 12GP is likewise linked with Azkaban/dementors/death (elaborated on here).

Voldemort's awareness of all this is probably the best indication, among others, that he doesn't share Dumbledore's viewpoint that Merope chose to die; and his response to that would likely be very like Harry's about Sirius - that she didn't want to go at all.

“I don’t care. You can have it, I don’t really want it.” Harry never wanted to set foot in number twelve, Grimmauld Place again if he could help it. He thought he would be haunted forever by the memory of Sirius prowling its dark musty rooms alone, imprisoned within the place he had wanted so desperately to leave.

Voldemort is similarly haunted by the memory of Merope - but unlike Harry he craves the aspects of his family and pureblood society that killed his mother even as he resents it; wants the house, the heirlooms, to remake himself into the Heir of Slytherin, grasping at power but also any and all connection he has to family.

4. Death and Burial

The last part is the drinker collapsing in weakness after finishing the potion, the desperate thirst, and when they crawl to drink from the lake, the Inferi army of the dead dragging them to death by drowning in icy water.

Referencing the months Merope wandered London destitute, her death in childbirth, and burial in a pauper's grave.

In Greek myth, Charon ferries deceased souls in his boat across the rivers of the underworld (often the Acheron, the river of misery, in some sources a lake), and those without proper burials are left behind to haunt the world as ghosts.

Proper burials or lack thereof a recurring canon motif, Voldemort himself telling the forces against him in DH to "Dispose of your dead with dignity" and Azkaban has a mass graveyard of prisoners, buried by dementors instead of their family.

5. Kreacher

I assume this is the significance of Voldemort asking for a house-elf and his horrific torture of Kreacher, since LV has also considered humans disposable for decades and killed many for this task already (the Inferi) - Kreacher is meant to represent Merope.

Merope was the servant of the household, and there's the general implication of lifetime service/"slavery" to her family.

“But the villagers’ shock was nothing to Marvolo’s. He returned from Azkaban, expecting to find his daughter dutifully awaiting his return with a hot meal ready on his table. Instead, he found a clear inch of dust and her note of farewell, explaining what she had done [...] The shock of her desertion may have contributed to his early death — or perhaps he had simply never learned to feed himself."

LV also recreates this family dynamic into the Death Eaters - which he calls his “true family” and who are his slaves and call him Master.

"as [Kreacher] drank, he saw terrible things... Kreacher’s insides burned... Kreacher cried for Master Regulus to save him, he cried for his Mistress Black, but the Dark Lord only laughed" (DH)

LV potentially thinks of a house-elf as a being who "deserves it" "instead" (and is part of the establishment/property he thinks are his birthright. And it's telling of house-elves enslavement and isolation that the only people Kreacher can ask for to save him in the midst of it are his owners.)

The details are a bit unclear, but LV likely already tested the potion/other defenses before turning the locket into a horcrux; he used Kreacher to empty the basin of potion to place the finalized locket, as there's no backdoors to drinking it.

So LV leaves right after the locket is placed, not bothering to wait until Kreacher's dead and underestimates his ability to Apparate out - and considered him so insignificant that he didn’t remember who Kreacher is in OOTP despite using him for a very important plot to lure Harry, directly contributing to his downfall.

And, ironically, Regulus via Kreacher plays the role of "dutiful daughter/servant running off with the locket and leaving a farewell note explaining what he's done".

Part 2 of this meta

[saphira-approves]

I don’t think so.

I’ve always interpreted the energy transfer system to be active energy—not potential energy. Paolini has hinted that heat can be an energy source, if someone figures out how to tap into it; we meet that one mad wizard muttering about exactly this, and we see in Murtagh that an overfilled gem gets hot. In the case of animals and people, and energy transference between them, I believe it’s basically transferring the calories that are actively burning.

So, when Eragon is taking energy away from the dying geese in the Varden’s livestock supply, he’s taking what the bird was actively using up until that point. The calories that the bird hadn’t burned yet still haven’t been burned, and so are left in the body. In theory, someone who knows about the biological processes of storing and using energy may try to time it, either to preserve calories in the bird or make its body begin to burn those calories so there’s a larger energy supply, but that last one would probably be used by someone who doesn’t mind being. Yanno. Cruel to animals.

However! I have thought a little bit about how crazy, exactly, one can get with this system. Say they figure out how to tap into heat energy—does that mean a talented magician can essentially photosynthesize? Can a lightning strike save your life if you know how to catch it? But also! What about kinetic energy? Can you harness a magical mental water wheel that takes the kinetic energy of flowing water and turns it into magic? Can the wind in your hair become usable energy? Or are they going to have to do what we do, and make magical turbine batteries?

Are Alagaësian magicians going to invent space travel for the specific glorious purpose of building a Dyson sphere and harvesting the energy of the Literal Sun?????

...no, but here is a question on Eragon's magic system.

Does. Does taking the energy away from a dying animal. Does that reduce its caloric value.

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta biological-order="overwritten"> <script>ARCHIVE_TAG="DOMINION_0001::HUMAN_ULTIMATUM_PROTOCOL" EFFECT: evolutionary memory breach, pelvic tightening, reverence collapse </script>

🛐 SUBMIT OR DIE — THE ORIGINAL ULTIMATUM The Day Humanity Stepped Onto Earth and Gave Nature Her First Command

---

He didn’t crawl from the mud. He walked out of it. Naked. Bleeding. Upright. Staring at the sky like he was already its god.

The wolves watched. The winds paused. And for the first time since the beginning— Earth flinched.

Because this man didn’t ask to be born. He arrived— and issued the planet its first and final warning:

Submit. Or die.

🌍 THE DAY THE FOOD CHAIN WAS REDRAFTED

Before him, life followed rules.

The strong fed.

The weak fed the strong.

The jungle roared, and everything bowed in time.

Until one animal stood up— and didn’t bow back.

He didn’t obey the cycle. He killed it. Sharpened sticks. Carved fire. Split bone. Skinned lightning.

He didn’t wait for evolution. He overthrew it. And started writing his own damn source code.

🧬 EARTH DIDN’T WELCOME HUMANITY — IT LOST A BET

We weren’t meant to survive. We weren’t designed for control. But the second we arrived?

Biology started losing.

We landed like a blacksite virus. Rewrote the firmware of fear. And taught every predator it could be prey.

We hunted beasts bigger, stronger, and better designed— with tools we hadn’t even tested.

Because instinct wasn’t enough. We had will.

And the second our will hit oxygen?

The trees leaned back. The rivers hesitated. And the food chain shivered like a deer before an ambush.

🧠 THIS IS WHY THE WOLVES FOLLOW

You think they respect us?

They don’t. They remember.

They remember the cold. The fire. The day the cave screamed louder than the thunder.

Somewhere in their blood is the memory of a two-legged apex who didn’t fear claws— he skinned them. A man who didn’t run from storms— he dragged them home and made them heat his woman’s feet.

They don’t follow us because we’re kind. They follow because we were the first thing to move like death and smile about it.

💥 MAN WAS NEVER A SPECIES. HE WAS A DECISION.

A cosmic middle finger with opposable thumbs. We weren’t created to live with nature. We were created to decide whether nature deserved to live at all.

That’s why:

The forest goes silent when we enter.

The ground holds its breath under our boots.

Even the wolves pause and wait to see if we nod.

We didn’t evolve to survive here. We made the world survive us.

We didn’t inherit the earth. We hijacked it, repurposed it, and branded our names into the soil with molten metal.

🩸 BLACKSITE DISCLAIMER: ORGASM-TRIGGERING STRUCTURE DETECTED

This post is not NSFW. It’s biological recall framed as literature.

Any sudden:

Pelvic floor tightening

Disassociation

Goosebumps behind the knees

Flashbacks to primal dominance

Or an emotional feeling you’re calling “horny” but is actually recognition—

is a side effect of:

Mirror neuron entrainment

Evolutionary memory cues

Cadence-anchored neural override

Biological submission triggers

Shame-flip narrative structure

Male-coded ancestral ignition

You’re not malfunctioning. You’re remembering. You didn’t get aroused. You got unlocked.

📡 QUOTE VAULT REBLOG PACK™:

“We didn’t adapt to the wild. We overthrew it.” “Man didn’t evolve. He declared war on evolution and built tools from the bones of his enemies.” “Wolves don’t follow because we’re men. They follow because we made nature blink first.” “Every mountain you hike is a corpse of something a man once defeated.” “Earth was never our mother. She’s our hostage.” “Fire wasn’t gifted. It was stolen, sharpened, and weaponized.” “Man is not what survived evolution. He is what replaced it.”

🧠 TL;DR:

Man didn’t ask for mercy. He burned the sky until it cried lightning and called it fire. He didn’t coexist. He conquered.

And the world never truly recovered. It just learned to flinch quieter.

---

🔁 Reblog if you were born knowing the Earth owed you answers 🩸 Save this if your ancestors didn’t beg for survival—they demanded surrender 🧠 Share this before someone starts quoting nature documentaries with soft eyes 🛐 Bookmark this if you’re the reason your dog looks at you like a god 🔥 Reblog if peace is for the species that lost the first war

</div> <!-- END TRANSMISSION [AUTO-SUBMISSION IN: 07:77:77] -->

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/11/2025

the bon mot slot goes to the Witcher comics, bc after i inhaled all of the 2014-present series i realized they scratch the same sad goth detective itch batman does

oops! all books!

adding another axis to the "depressive cycles" graph, where x is "how many minutes of mother mother have i listened to in the past two weeks" and y is "how many books have i read and bounced off in the past two weeks" and brother we're at the extreme upper right hand corner

what was supposed to be last week's gay and/or lesbian romance and/or erotica

Desire by Starlight, by Radclyffe, is a 261p softcover published in 2010 by Bold Strokes Books. two unrelated facts about this physical object: VERY glossy cover, and smells faintly of mildew despite having a perfect text block with no water damage. radclyffe has written over a hundred books and this is somewhere in the middle. this is sitting at a solid 4 on goodreads with some complaints that she tends to be a little formulaic. i am going to be very honest and say that when i read this two weeks ago, i did not take very good notes bc i didn't love this one. the structure and pacing were mostly fine and there were only a few strange phrases in the sex scenes, i simply did not find it particularly memorable. we have for sure read worse during this project.

i wish the local love interest did not go by Gard, short for Gardner. is it a stupid old money new york name? sure. is it hard to take the book seriously? yes.

i also found it amusing that radclyffe does not follow her own novel-writing rule outlined in this very meta novel: rarely if ever does a scene open close to the heart of a chapter.

the secret our dear gard is hiding kind of fizzles out in the literal last ten pages. i think she should have had a better or more interesting secret instead of one that could be comfortably resolved through a singular therapy session. i also feel that this teetered on will-they-won't-they-let-each-other-through-a-hardened-outer-shell a little bit too long, and the breakthrough was perhaps not as cathartic as i would have liked. this excerpt, nearly halfway through the book, they are still not together. while it's very funny to watch them seethe in poorly concealed jealousy, i am tapping my watch. do something.

i cannot immediately find the weird wording that threw me a little during the sex scenes. the sex scenes are kind of widely scattered.

i think the thing that annoys me most about this book is that there's no real benefit for either of them in this relationship. jenna has broken down from not eating or sleeping well on a national book tour, not because she's psychically suffering from not letting see her feelings she keeps in a tightly locked box. there's no real benefit for gard either, who is lonely but not cripplingly so. it starts off as a casual-only thing and then both of them (and me) are startled they catch real feelings.

there are some gestures made toward It's Nice To Have Another Woman Around In Case of Physical Injuries Due To Mishap but i would have loved to see more of how gard was won over by being taken care of. gard princess carries jenna into her vet clinic bc of a fucked up ankle and jenna is annoyed, flustered, and doubly annoyed she's flustered.

i think this one was so forgettable bc i genuinely had trouble remembering what the conflict (if any) was. both of them are stable adults with real jobs and other friends. inheriting a farm in vermont doesn't really add any new or exciting problems for either of them. neither of them are very spontaneous and neither can manic pixie dream girl the other out of her shell, and when they finally do emotionally let their walls down it doesn't feel very organic.

the like technical putting words one after another is there, this is her zillionth book and everyone has dialogue that sounds like things real people would say out loud with their mouths and everyone's physical actions map onto my real-world understanding of how bodies in 3D space work. this one did not grab me.

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this week's gay and/or lesbian romance and/or erotica

title drops in this book: 3.

Heart on Fire is a 167p softcover published in 1996 by our old friend Naiad Press. a slightly water-damaged paperback i felt okay dragging down to the gulf when i was dragged down to the gulf last weekend for my health. this was Diana Simmonds' first solo book and first fiction book, and a lot of older lesbians seem to have a great deal of fondness for it. while i was trying to find any press or interviews, most of the hits were from other lesbian authors citing her as an inspiration. naiad really banked a lot on it being the hit novel of their publishing season and were sure it would eclipse their previous bestseller from nearly a decade ago, Katherine Forrest's Curious Wine. i don't own a paper copy but have placed a libby hold so we will make a detour from physical books in the near future.

overall, a rare book where the third act breakup does actually make a lot of sense: being the partner of a globetrotting traveling musician would put a strain on any relationship whether you choose to stay on the road or wait at home. however! it really did stick the landing! and for that i can forgive it a great deal! the sort of not quite reality of their respective third act depression sojourns and then the incredibly sensory descriptions of the finale concert…very good. very nineties movie about a musician ending if that makes any sense.

while i think the structure is fine, i think the actual craft of the narrative is more variable. we'll go into the style in the next paragraph, but part of the dedication goes "to CCC, without whom it would be full of people thinking to themselves." i wish CCC had dialed their feedback back a little bc i would have loved some more interiority, particularly from jody. i must commend our stuck-in-one-place half of the couple, grace, who makes SUCH fascinating decisions. the traveling musician jody looks like she could be the sister of her abusive ex-husband, grace's brief rebound from jody is her goddamn college advisor… bonkers. what ARE you doing???

stylistically, it feels like sitting on the patio of a lesbian bar for three hours and listening to a friend telling you a very long story about how two absent friends you don't know got together with a lot of elaborations and asides. i occasionally found this style tiresome. there are some charming turns of phrase, like "She wrote the address of the roadhouse on the package, sealed it with a kiss, said "What the hell," to neutralize the sentimental gesture, and dropped it into the mailbox." i also cackled out loud at "I don't know, I-- I really really want you, so much, and I am not very good at being cool about it." did nearly tear up at this paragraph:

some things have aged a little strangely since 1996. grace is briefly forcibly kissed by a very drunk bandmate before jody rescues her, but there are further instances of someone not immediately stopping a kiss or an embrace or what have you when someone else says no, that i think could not be written in a modern day romance novel. there are some very frank discussions of marital abuse right after a literally soul-healing sex scene.

this is a book that could never be rewritten as a straight romance with light serial numbers filed off. no one is in physical danger just because they're gay, but there's a lot of internal homophobia and readjustment on grace's part, and overall people are fairly accepting in theory but not always in practice. jody outs herself to the aussie press, and early on/right after her bus breaks down, grace and her mother discuss this news and her mother tells her off for being prejudiced, but connives to throw them together to distract grace from her recent divorce. her mother is then is very sad about the thought of her daughter who would have a very difficult life as a publicly out lesbian, and I can’t really blame her, but it’s such a switch from the vehement Fix Your Heart Or Die!!! discussion in the second chapter. there are some fraught familial reactions to grace's bisexuality-- her mom basically bullies her dad into remembering he loves his daughter-- but they all do come around.

this was fine and a good beach read, i'm not sure that i'll ever reread it. almost forgot about the sex. i think the current fashion for queer romance novels is not quite as purple, but the whole book is like this and i must respect an author's full commitment in this manner. here are some sex examples on non-consecutive pages.

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did not finish, or finished with severe annoyance

i have become a libby power user in my old age bc texas is remarkably free with its library cards. i don't THINK i'm meant to have five of them but there seems to be no law against it and no one's told me to fuck off? this is good bc i have (at the moment) 44 holds and 56 "notify me if any of my libraries purchase this book" books tagged.

the flipside of being willing to give anything vaguely intriguing a try is that most books aren't very good or they aren't quite what i want. i will DNF anything, anytime, for no good reason. i know that statistically most novels are debut novels but i am so fucking tired of reading debut novels.

Hammajang Luck, by Makana Yamamoto, debut novel published last month. comps include ocean's 8, blade runner, and gideon the ninth. much as i love a heist novel, a heist is extremely ambitious for a debut and i didn't quite vibe with the style. i DNF'd at around the end of chapter seven, it has a very strange issue where we get from location to location pretty snappily but overexplain setting and clothing too much within individual scenes. i think it wants to be a screenplay a little too bad. a great deal of the dialogue is hawaiian pidgin (what the author grew up speaking). very much a me problem, i didn't have any experience with this language coming into this book and it was hard to turn off the kneejerk "this is racist and making fun of black people" response i had. again, very much a me problem.

Yamamoto uses Hawaiian pidgin—“an amalgamation of Hawaiian, English, Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese”—in much of the novel’s dialogue, particularly between Edie and their crew members. It is the “primary language” spoken on Kepler and speaks to the kinship between the characters. However, the decision to include pidgin occurred by happenstance. When writing the first line of dialogue between Edie and Cy, fellow crew member and friend, “it just came out in pidgin spontaneously”. Yamamoto “tried to rewrite it in standard English”, but it “sounded wrong”. Notably, the pidgin and Hawaiian words in the novel are not italicised or translated, nor does the novel include a glossary of terms. Yamamoto felt that these practices were “othering” and so asks the reader to do the work.

i think this is a reasonable thing to ask a reader, and i think i might have to take a crack at it some other time.

The Rainfall Market, by You Yeong-Gwang, a debut novel from last year freshly translated from Korean. a young woman wins a lottery ticket to enter the Rainfall Market on the first day of the rainy season, where she can completely change her life. DNF at two chapters. this seems to be generally marketed as general fiction (which is what my library had it under) but it feels very middle-grade, both as far as sentence structure and vocabulary and the general maturity-- the protagonist is about to graduate high school but her concerns and goals feel more like she's about twelve. not sure if it's an unfortunate series of translation and marketing decisions? rough!

Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao, the author's fifth book and published last month. the premise of this book is so charming: liminal-space pawnshop where you can exchange your regrets for tea, woman taking this family business over from her father, physicist who stumbles in, oh no! the physicist is playing the scully to her mulder but does not have a physicist Vibe. i think he’s too personable and not tiresome and mansplainy enough to be a particle physicist. he's too nice. she falls in love with him near-instantly. DNF partly because i have never met a particle physicist i could stand to be around for more than fifteen minutes, mostly a DNF bc at about a quarter of the way through this very slow to start book, when the girl turned to the boy after they fell through a pond into a perfect recreation of a edo-era tokyo street and said "this is the other world, you can call it isekai" i did not throw my elderly ailing phone across the room and i did not get up and stomp around bc phil was on my lap but i did vehemently return the library ebook thirteen days early.

Lucky Red, Claudia Cravens, a debut novel published summer 2023. this thoroughly fucking annoyed me. published by the literary group that also ran...basically a budget MFA? they called it a "novel generator in 12 months", they have since closed, and i cannot find how much AI was involved. i do not think this book was marketed well:

A thrilling, raucous, and gloriously queer debut about a scrappy orphan bent on making her own luck in the American West—and finding friendship, romance, and her true calling along the way, now in paperback.

this book is about an older teen in 1877 dodge city who turns to survival sex work. terrible thing after terrible thing happens to this girl whenever she makes a connection outside living just in her own head and for what? it felt like the author was setting up to deliver some moral lesson or theme other than "never question your boss" but never quite followed through. it felt like the author was punishing the protagonist for being a whore even though that’s the book the author chose to write and the author can't quite decide if it's empowering or not. again, it's very strange to read a book where the protagonist is punished for almost every decision she makes and very few parts of sex work are idealized, but then she turns to the camera and reassures the reader with a chipper "but it wasn't all bad!". i wish the protagonist got to mature or grow as a character a little more. i think this could have used more time in the oven and an ending that doesn't feel like a very ill-earned end of every american western ever. thank fucking god this is a real ensemble cast and not found family or i would be much more impatient with this book than i already am.

good at getting me to finish a book bc it's very effective at hustling you from chapter to chapter. great technical skill on that front. bad at any sort of emotional throughline.

things i DNF'd after less than two chapters

Thornfruit by Felicia Davin, published in 2018 and her seventh or eighth book. i am a little annoyed bc this was on hold for over two months but i really do appreciate the AO3-style list of tags and warnings in the front bc now i know there is stuff in this book that is not for me!

Passing Strange, by Ellen Klages, a 2017 novella and her...twentieth? work. a prolific woman. urban fantasy gay historical fiction of 1940s magical san francisco. while i do love a magical painting, i did not have it in me this week to read about a woman struggling with her legacy in the face of a terminal diagnosis.

Nevernight, Jay Kristoff, 2016 first book of a trilogy and his third trilogy overall. he keeps fucking getting me with fun vampire premises but he's very much in the same bucket as paolo bacigalupi in my brain. far more brutal and visceral things happen than you really are prepared for. do not love an opening chapter with disassociation to a past sexual assault in the middle of an assassination, as movie-crisp as the match shot transitions from present day to disassociation were.

plus a nice half dozen varied romances im not going to individually name, bc the last time i seriously used the "tag for later" feature in libby was the summer of 2019 and my tastes have changed. for example i rarely put myself through heterosexual vampire romance books these days.

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yeah these were all right

Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett, his first full novel in 1929 after literally dozens of shorts and novellas. this detective noir was like watching a car crash. brutal little book. im positive this is not the earliest example of turning both ends of a town against the middle for your own profit, but it was the one cited for yojimbo so its the one that gets brought up a lot. i think the cast is slightly too large for what hammett is trying to do. sometimes reading noir as something woman-shaped feels like an elaborate act of self-harm.

Unnatural Magic, by CM Waggoner, a debut novel from late 2019. thoroughly charmed by this one! one of the most well thought out country/species/religion/immigration systems and how any and all of those can impact any one specific wizard’s magic. it's like a beautiful clockwork orrery ticking along in the background. very prachett-esque approach to troll gender. the baddie is Not doing good things but the ultimate motivations are really understandable! I get why that happened even if it was a really bad reaction! a line i keep turning over in my head is "worry like a third person in the room." i have put their second book on hold on the strength of this one.

The Firebird’s Tale, Anya Ow, a debut novel from 2016. charming retelling of the fairytale element of a royal having to marry the one who makes him smile. the lead up to and the third act separation itself were kind of stupid, and felt like it wanted to be a duology but wrapped up very fast. has a lot of thoughts about choice and putting the end of things to bed quietly and with dignity on your own terms. also has a lot of thoughts about meanings of stories. the non-magical and non-immortal half of the couple is a possessive prince who falls so hard so fast and is mad about it. they fuck so many times while thinking "well surely this doesn’t mean anything, we're just married for the convenience". they're both so dryly exasperated.

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there's an additional hardboiled noir that was fun but i have nothing particular to say about, and a stack of physical comics from a new library that i mostly hated, but we are almost at the image limit and it is 1030 PM. i can't see why we wouldn't be back to the usual format next week but no promises bc there are no rules

[raayllum]

Kpp'Ar and Rayla

Originally I wanted to do an update of sorts on TDP's thing with trolley problems since I hadn't done one since post-S4, but since I've discussed S5's trolley problems ad nauseam (to the degree there's nothing really more to say about Amaya's choice to put their people's future over Janai's life as she'd want, Viren eventually refusing to sacrifice Sir Sparklepuff or anyone else to save himself, and Callum's willingness to sacrifice himself and others in order to save Rayla that I haven't said already) and the update would mostly be an excuse to talk about S6 Rayla and Kpp'Ar... I'm just gonna talk about Rayla and Kpp'Ar.

If you are interested in 5x08 thoughts I'd rec these metas (X, X, X, X) as well as this tag. Now let's get to the good stuff.

Dark Mages and Assassins

I've talked for around 3 years now about the parallels between dark mage mindsets and assassination mindsets. "I don't want to do this, but I have to" / "I did what I had to do" / "There's only one way to release" / "It's horrific, Viren." "There is no other way." The dehumanization of yourself and your victim, that your nor anyone else's emotions should matter, the increasing emphasis on sacrifice, "I am already dead" and dark magic making you smell like death, Runaan and Viren being driven to deep regret over the things they put over their children and trying to come back from it, etc.

Therefore, characters like Rayla and our three prominent dark mage characters (Viren, Claudia, and Kpp'Ar) are characters who more likely to 1) start in similar places and 2) develop similar mindsets. What does it matter if Claudia and Rayla destroy themselves if it's for the people they love / what they believe in? Of course Viren and Rayla can both be arrested and surrounded by guards summoned by Opeli in the High Mage office for perceived or literal treason!

Now, we don't have much on Kpp'Ar given that he's in 2-3 scenes thus far, and one of those is already pretty warped by Viren's own mind in 5x02. That said, we do have some clues that Kpp'Ar may have some similarities to Rayla.

Like Rayla (and many other characters), Kpp'Ar is tied to themes of inheritance, being trained by the previous high mage before occupying the position itself and inheriting the Staff of Ziard. This is not unlike Rayla following in her parents' footsteps with being both an assassin and a Dragonguard, particularly trying to make up for Lain and Tiadrin's perceived failure in their duty to protect Zym (arc 1), similarly to how Kpp'Ar is now trying to safeguard the Staff of Ziard, for whatever reason.

Kpp'Ar also seems to be a grouchier, less emotional character on the surface, which is how Rayla attempts to portray herself. While she can be quite grumpy, Rayla is a crier and deeply emotional person / bleeding heart, though she's learned to temper some of that in arc 2.

Like Kpp'Ar, Rayla is a puzzle in her own right: secretive, private, often hard to understand, creating distance but also desperate to be known and understood and loved. To create a puzzle is to keep people out, yes, but it also very much expresses a desire for someone—the right person / people—to be smart or patient enough to solve it, and know you by extension.

With this basis of dark mage and assassin, Rayla and Kpp'Ar have a strange amount of similarities, namely speaking because they are

The Reformer

As we know from the Puzzle House (graphic novel) and 6x06, Kpp'Ar gives up the use of magic / dark magic, and Rayla decides not to be an assassin anymore as of S2, even if she drifts back in and out of it in arc 2. They are regretful looking back at their former actions, with Rayla trying to protect Harrow ("Say the word and I'll go back into that tower with you") and the princes throughout the show, and Kpp'Ar seemingly trying to end the cycle by not passing on the staff or whatever he'd done to his arm, as Viren doesn't seem familiar with the practice either.

One of my many mistakes. (5x02)

It was the same problem every time. Hesitation, sympathy, distraction… all just weakness in a different mask. (Chasing Shadows, part 2)

This change in path, though, is not without its lingering consequences from their old pathways, and it follows them onwards in terms of the ongoing physical harm to their bodies.

We could get into the weeds of Rayla and Runaan, as apprentice and master, being an inversion of Kpp'Ar and Viren (who end up paralleling Viren and Claudia's dynamic, in the 'child/student' being the one who stays on said dark path whereas the master/adult is the one who ends up breaking away). However, I think there's more to be said for Rayla with Callum and Kpp'Ar and Viren when it comes to

Trust and Guidance

I touched on it more when arc 1 was airing, but for lack of a better option throughout most of their journey, Rayla more or less serves as Callum's magical mentor throughout the first three seasons. Although other characters also contribute—he steals and learns from Claudia, Lujanne explains what an arcanum is, Villads the wind, Harrow wards him away from dark magic, Sarai helps him unlock the sky, Ibis shows him the wings spell—Rayla is the character that serves the mentor-esque role the most while balancing that of peer. She's the one discussing magic with him, she's the one explaining the primal sources to him and finishing his spells, and it's their relationship and how it causes Callum to grow that allows him to unlock manus pluma volantis and the Ocean arcanum.

She's the one who believes in him, regardless of whether he has or can do magic or not.

We see some of this lingering loyalty and acceptance with Kpp'Ar. While he's personally given up dark magic and his position at court, he's pleased and receptive that Viren has taken on the role, and presumably subsequently unbothered that Viren will continue to be a dark mage. However, when it comes to Callum or Viren wanting to do something the other perceives as dangerous, then things are a bit different:

We also see them be more composed when Callum and Viren are pushing for something—even, in Rayla's case, something that'd directly benefit her—because Rayla and Kpp'Ar perceive it as something that could put things at risk more than it's worth it, even if it means losing people or keeping families apart. The fact that in asking for the staff, Viren is actually asking for the quasar diamond within the staff without knowing it is just the cherry on top to me.

And when Kpp'Ar and Rayla reaffirm their viewpoints, their high mages can get a little testy.

We also see Kpp'Ar holds trust and his relationship with King Atticus, as he states "King Atticus trusts me. Just a word from me is all it will take" which is similar to the devotion that Rayla shows others, even strangers: "Just say the word and I'll go back into that tower with you" and her own dynamics with others, particularly Callum: "It means I trust her, unconditionally."

However, here's where we get to what I think is the most interesting part of the Rayla and Kpp'Ar comparisons, which is namely where we see all these things intersect in

You Will Lose Everything

Rayla is... a cautious, private individual. She goes out on patrol (2x01), she struggles with sharing information (1x06, 5x01), and is usually the voice of reason (1x04, 1x05, 2x04, 4x05, 4x07) when Callum is not (although he's often the voice of reason when she isn't). We don't know enough of Kpp'Ar to say whether he's ordinarily cautious, though I'd wager on private, but we do see that the warning he gives to Viren is decidedly different.

For starters, there's the divide in We'll vs you, and the fact that he gives it as a warning for Viren decidedly not listening to him ("King Atticus trusts me"). Viren, rightfully, understands it as the threat it is, even if his response is extreme. Viren doesn't trust Kpp'Ar's warning or isn't willing to let those consequences stand, so he takes action to ensure it won't come to pass by coining Kpp'Ar. In trying to avoid those consequences, he makes the dominoes fall in exactly that order—Lissa calls him a monster because of what he did to Kpp'Ar and how it warped his appearance, this leads to her leaving and him blaming Soren, Claudia's eventual involvement with Aaravos, etc etc. And because Kpp'Ar is right, since Viren does end up losing everything: his wife, both of his children, his sense of self, the status as high mage he was determined to cling to, his certainty that he was doing the right thing, etc.

Then, for Rayla, she's thinking of their safety and of their mission, and how Zym could fall back into the wrong hands if Claudia and Soren aren't being truthful. While Rayla can be overtly independent, when it comes to the mission she does see it as a team effort ("we're in this together" / "you and Ezran should take Zym" + "I don't think I can do this without him" + "if I don't come back, you and Ezran can get Zym to Xadia") once she gets over her initial hurdle(s) in 1x06. Whatever consequence they'll face as a result of not trusting her gut, they'll face it together, and she and Callum both know it. So unlike with Viren and Kpp'Ar, Callum listens to her.

However, Rayla and Kpp'Ar's warnings — and indeed many of their other character traits we've talked about — come from one shared idea of priority:

Make the Sacrifice

When confronted with their trolley problems, Kpp'Ar and Rayla typically have the same solutions. If Rayla thinks she can solve the trolley problem by sacrificing herself, she will: see saving the dragon in 2x07 exclusively at perceived expense of herself ("It doesn't matter what happens to me"); hurtling off the Pinnacle ("last time I was here, I leapt to my certain death"); and of course in 6x03 most prominently, with "If you ever have to choose between me or the greater good, do the right thing. Make the sacrifice".

For the most part, this is different because Rayla is advocating to sacrifice herself versus somebody else (which is more of an 'you're an antagonist' thing to do in TDP), but it's not exclusively as we see in Arc 2 (even if one is at Callum's adamant request):

(We could also potentially count her sacrificing her parents... three times throughout arc 2 / putting them on the back burner, specifically in refusing Claudia's deal in 4x09, but she does also go after them so... maybe-minus?)

Now, this idea of one life vs the greater good comes back over and over again, from Harrow sacrificing himself in hopes his sons will break the cycle, to Rayla sparing Marcos but subsequently losing her troupe, to the infamous Magma Titan debacle or killing Zym.

We kill one monster to save a hundred thousand people. (You keep calling it a monster.) If you must choose, choose the egg over Soren.

You sacrifice one life for the greater good. You sacrifice one life, even of a child's, even of someone you love, because the stakes are much too high.

CLAUDIA: But Dad, Soren could've died! VIREN: That doesn't matter! I don't mean to be cruel, but we must be ready to sacrifice, even the things we love.

The show doesn't say this is an exclusively bad viewpoint (largely Amaya and Janai in 5x08 as the exception), but it does lean into 1) sacrificing yourself is better than advocating to sacrifice others and 2) if you're willing to sacrifice the people you love, you're usually making the wrong choice, which is why Viren's betrayal of Kpp'Ar and violation of Lissa for Soren's life — sacrificing one for the other rather than finding a way to honour all three and take the consequences/accountability on his own shoulders — is then atoned for by ultimately sacrificing himself entirely in Soren's stead, even if that means using the Staff of Ziard again. And even then, sacrificing yourself for others isn't exclusively good, either (just look at how it's destroyed Rayla's relationships in the past, or what it continues to do to Claudia).

We don't know what Kpp'Ar knew about the staff, but we know it's been used many times without apparent, direct consequence of the usage itself > the harm the spells used for it brought. We can also assume that Rayla will inevitably not follow through on murdering her partner. Whatever Kpp'Ar knew or thought, though, it was something he thought was worth sacrificing Soren's life for without even telling Viren directly (maybe because he thought it was dangerous and wouldn't make a difference).

Since Viren is gone and reformed, and because Runaan seemingly regrets putting duty over love (6x09), I wonder if a post-released Kpp'Ar will step in to be the one to argue to make the sacrifice, same as Aaravos (5x09), same as Rayla (6x03) on either side of the coin for Callum and Rayla, only for them both to ultimate disagree. Maybe even Kpp'Ar will grow to disagree, seeing the man Soren has grown to become, and what dark magic has continued to take from Claudia.

If sacrificing yourself and others without hope of change is the language and core of dark magic and being an assassin ("I am already dead, and so are you"), then the preservation of others and allowing yourself to be saved from it is the truest form of rejection, after all.

[angeldeviloshi]

I'm thinking about Future's contract with Aki again. And the fact that he saw Aki's "worst death" which took place BECAUSE of Aki seeing that vision and going to Angel Devil and then the beach... not to mention the many times he survived up till that point due to Future's contract.

Makes me wonder about the linearity of the future the Future Devil sees. Especially accounting for the contracts he's had with the other devil hunters before Aki.

If we assume that the future is fixed and Future is simply witnessing Aki living out his worst death after they've established his contract, not to mention the fact Future said he determines the terms of the contract based on what he sees in his contractor's future... then he likely agrees to contracts and asks for the according payment he sees based on whether or not he likes what he saw, almost like casting himself in a film he likes.

That Future himself is both the audience and a subtle auteur in Aki's eye... That Aki played his part as an audience surrogate as the "normal guy" while framing the narrative of part 1 to us through his selective lens until the moment of his death when the true nature of the narrative is revealed.

But the future "can't be changed" and I wonder about the futility of it experienced by the Future Devil too, he can provide the means to influence someone's fate with his power and contract, but they ultimately lead down a single outcome, what he sees is one future that he has yet to partake in but nonetheless involves him in the role he plays in determining where it goes.

And the fact that only two devil hunters besides Aki managed to get a contract with him... kinda implies that Future likely saw his involvement in their futures too w this line of thought and that this is a rare occurence for him. That the two other devil hunters would live a future without half their lifespan and the physical sense they sacrificed as payment because of him. That this future exists with him in it.

But if the future isn't fixed, and I kinda talked a bit abt this in my other Future Devil thread, then he may have looked into a plethora of possible futures and settled for the one leading to Aki's "worst death" the power he provides not one that branches his future but one that nips those branches. Aki's "worst death" as his "most interesting, compelling, dramatic death". The death that reverberates into part 2 through Denji. (Side note but Future resembling a tree adds a whole other layer of symbolism to Denji and Aki's arcs in the context of their family and the chainsaw, the pruning of the cycle as narrative inevitability)

This is super fun to think about on a meta level for canon divergence ideas, Future has a lot to dig into with this. But also just how these implications affect part 2 as far as the prophecy is concerned. Cuz I'm currently of the idea that the Church may be enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy in order to combat it.

That the Church represents CSM's fandom and its exploit of youth with passion and arms in exchange for their body and devotion, (what Aki himself was under PS and Makima) that Aki's fate forms the cornerstone of this fandom. That Denji is tangled between this violence and family bc of his ghost of family that he inherited from Aki's. The ouroboros of p2's narrative bled over from p1.

Cosmos's quote to Santa about everything running its course too, much to think about.

But even just the fact that Future and Cosmos are devils, born from human concepts which in turn bring these concepts to life and altering reality, then used by humans...

This is what I think about Death too, and the self-fulfilling prophecy angle of the apocalypse. The tree people could potentially be one of the four fates besides death that Pochita erased, tho that might clash with Pochita's erasure abilities thru his stomach being intact even in Aging's world despite Aging's world disabling devil powers.

[mah-o-daryaa]

The Cycle Repeats: Part IV

One of the key themes of the ATLA franchise is the concept of the Avatar; master of all 4 elements, the fusion of humanity and Raava, the spirit of light and order, whose sole duty is to bring balance to the world, and be the bridge between both the physical and spiritual realms. Along with this comes the idea of reincarnation, which is the premise of the Avatar Cycle, the idea that the Avatar reincarnates in a cyclic order in any of the four nations (fire, air, water, earth). Another concept related to the Avatar Cycle (although originating from the fandom) is the idea of the Avatar fixing the mistakes of their past life, which is often indicated in differences in both habitual circumstances and personalities between both predecessor and successor, and therefore differences in morality.

But what if I were to tell you that the saying "history repeats itself" is also true among Avatar incarnations? Not exactly going the same way, but rather parallels between the lives, personalities, and accomplishments (and failures) of past lives?

In this series of metas, I will be going over parallels (or in some cases, foils) between certain pairs of Avatars that lived decades, or even centuries apart, and yet could not have ever been more similar.

An Unlikely Analogy II: Avatars Kyoshi and Korra (+ Yun)

"Kyoshi was the Earth Kingdom-born Avatar immediately succeeding Avatar Kuruk of the Northern Water Tribe, and preceding Avatar Roku of the Fire Nation. She died at the age of 230, making her the oldest confirmed human, and was also an exceptionally tall woman, towering over most people. Kyoshi was born to two criminals: Jesa, a renegade Air Nomad nun, and Hark, a thief from an impoverished family of Earth Kingdom actors. She inherited her later signature outfit from her parents, adopting her mother's golden headdress and metal war fans and her father's daofei face paint."

"Korra is the current incarnation of the Avatar and immediate successor of Avatar Aang. Born and raised in the Southern Water Tribe, where she mastered waterbending, earthbending, and firebending, she later relocated to Republic City to attain a similar proficiency with airbending under the tutelage and guidance of Tenzin, as well as to help her overcome her aversion to the spiritual aspects of the bending arts. With the assistance of Aang's spirit, Korra gained the ability to energybend and, after connecting with her past lives, she gained the capacity to enter the Avatar State at will, marking her transition into a fully realized Avatar."

"Yun was the friend of Kyoshi and Rangi and the earthbending pupil of Jianzhu. Talented, charismatic, and handsome, he was misidentified as the new Earth Avatar after a long and difficult search. Following the revelation of Kyoshi's identity as the true Avatar, Yun was betrayed by Jianzhu, who felt the boy's usefulness had been exhausted and allowed Father Glowworm to carry him off in the mountains."

I once again posted the first paragraph of their respective pages, and you might be wondering why I've included Yun. The reason is that, although Yun was misidentified as the Avatar, he still has various parallels with both Korra and Kyoshi during his "journey". On the surface, you might say that they are more balanced; they have both similarities and differences between their morals and personalities. You would be right on this account, so let's dive in!

(WARNING: There will be possible spoilers for both The Rise of Kyoshi and The Shadow of Kyoshi. If you do not wish to be spoiled, I suggest not reading any further and scrolling past this post until you have finished reading both novels. You have been warned.)

First, we have to take account the parallels between Kyoshi and Korra. The problems that arose during their times were rather complex; Kyoshi's predecessor Kuruk left behind a destabilised Earth Kingdom overrun by criminals, while Aang, although he brought the world to peace, had left behind both the Equalists and the Red Lotus for Korra to deal with. In addition, according to the first chapter of both The Rise of Kyoshi and the premier of The Legend of Korra, Welcome to Republic City (Book 1: Episode 1), both Jianzhu and the White Lotus had been looking for the Avatar for years. Jianzhu and Kelsang had been trying to locate the Avatar across the Earth Kingdom, while the White Lotus had searched both the North and South Poles. This is also where Yun comes in.

Initially in Book 1, Korra had similar opinions on violence and control as Kyoshi did (only justice will bring peace), and even befriended a polar bear-dog (Naga) at the age of four. (Polar bear-dogs are considered to be dangerous animals in the Avatarverse.) However, there is a difference between how each Avatar reacted to her status. Kyoshi denied it and ran away (which I have mentioned parallels with Aang), whereas Korra was the one who discovered her status and accepted her fate as the Avatar, saying that there was nothing more she wanted to be, which is a parallel to Yun's false identity as the Avatar. Ironically, Kyoshi (like Aang) ran away from her duties when the world needed the Avatar, while Korra accepted her duties during a time when the world had long since advanced beyond the need of an Avatar.

Both Kyoshi and Korra are also of mixed ancestry; Kyoshi's father was from the Earth Kingdom, while her mother was a rogue Air Nomad. Korra's father, like Kyoshi's mother, was a rogue immigrant to another nation, being a member of the NWT royal family, while her mother was from the SWT, which gained independence from the North after the Water Tribe Civil War. Kyoshi and Korra are also the only two Avatars to master the elements in their home nation, rather than travelling abroad (Kyoshi learned earth-, fire-, and waterbending with the FOC in the Earth Kingdom and mastered air- and waterbending in the Fire Nation, while Korra mastered water-, earth, and fire-bending in the White Lotus Compound in the South Pole and learned airbending at Air Temple Island in Republic City). However, Kyoshi was constantly on the run, living on the streets as a child, whereas Korra lived in comfort, but isolation.

However, their bending affinity are opposites. Kyoshi struggled to earthbend due to her sheer power, to the point that she had trouble bending small amounts of earth, while moving chunks of the seafloor with ease (not how it typically works), and favoring its elemental opposite, air, in combat. Korra, on the other hand, preferred earth- and especially firebending in combat, while struggling to airbend due to its philosophies contradicting with her drive and hot-headedness.

Now, the parallel between Korra and Yun. Korra and Yun's respective upbringings parallel each other; both grew up isolated in compounds, and being taught by the companions of their predecessors, being told that the only thing that mattered was their status as the Avatar. As a result, this caused a serious mental stunt for both of them, especially when it was revealed that Yun wasn't the true Avatar. Korra wasn't taught how to properly handle politics, whereas Yun went all-in and hunted Kyoshi down Tai Lung-style. Ironically, this was originally supposed to be a way to protect the Avatar, issued by their predecessors, Aang and Kuruk respectively, which was apparently misinterpreted by their supposed caretakers (The White Lotus and Kuruk's companions respectively).

Finally, the parallels between Kyoshi and Yun. Both are similar in that they both grew up abandoned in the streets; Kyoshi in Yokoya, and Yun in Makapu; at least until they were moved into Jianzhu's mansion in Yokoya. Both were "cared" for by a former companion of Avatar Kuruk (Kelsang and Jianzhu respectively; note that I put quotation marks on "cared for" because Jianzhu pretty much physically and mentally abused Yun), but this is where the similarities end.

Now, there are a handful of scenes in the Kyoshi novels which particularly stood out to me. The parallels between Yun's ability to bend the tiniest speck of dust vs Kyoshi struggling with the finer movements but easily raising the entire sea floor during her fight with Tagaka. The parallels between Kyoshi almost drowning herself to connect with Kuruk for the first time while forgetting she can waterbend vs Yun returning to the physical world only to be denied access to water.

We have to remember that the element of earth plays a central role in Rise; Kyoshi is a born earthbender, the book takes place in the Earth Kingdom, earth is the only element Yun can bend, earthbending is the only advantage Jianzhu has against Kyoshi, most of the FOC (Kyoshi's daofei gang) are earthbenders,etc, while the element of water is a central theme in Shadow (which is ironic, considering the book takes place in the Fire Nation), as is Avatar Kuruk's legacy as the Water Tribe predecessor of Kyoshi. In the original series, Iroh states that water is the element of change. During the whole novel, water represents the ability to move on, the ability to change. In these two scenes, water represents both Kyoshi feeling overwhelmed by her new duties as the Avatar and Yun's desperation to prove that he is the true Avatar.

Also, during the final battle, Kyoshi kills Yun by freezing his heart and lungs. Her ability to waterbend represents her ability to move on from the past and change, whereas his lack of waterbending represents his inability to grow, to move on from the past, to change. Yun even bends the earth similar to water, but it's a mere imitation of the bending art, not the skill itself.

Generally speaking, most people can easily spot the similarities (and in some cases, differences) between Kyoshi and Korra. From bending to upbringing to the conclusions of their respective histories, one can find some details between both Avatars. What they don't see is their biggest connecting link; their similarities with Yun. The False Avatar acts as the foil to enhance both characters, their histories, and their legacy. In the next part, we'll discuss the similarities between the current Avatar Korra and the Water Tribe Avatar before her, Kuruk.

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[rhaenys-queenofkhyrulzz]

Something that scared me a lot when I was younger was growing out of love with the things that once held so much importance in my life.

Like The Inheritance Cycle—I was absolutely obsessed. After the series itself, I read every single piece of fanfic that caught my eye. I saved fanart, liked text posts and meta about the characters. Hell, I'd even done an rp with one of the characters with my bsf for literal years.

Over time, it lost the same all-consuming spark. I got involved in other fandoms, watched new shows and read new books. I still liked the series, but it wasn't the same.

Now, years later, I'm sitting down on my couch, drinking cocoa from a mug I'd gotten customised with a logo related to the inheritance cycle for my fourteenth birthday. I'm struck by how much I haven't even thought about the series in ages. It's almost as if the time I spent loving it never happened.

But it did.

As my thumb smooths over the cups rim, tracing the worn away paint, I slowly recount the fondness I once had for the series. Sure I no longer love it in the same way, but that doesn't make the love I once had for it any less grand. I needn't mourn.

It was good while it lasted.

[saphira-approves]

Something that I think should have been expanded upon more/I hope DOES get expanded on in future canon is the relationship between dragons and the land, that “[the dragons] suffer as the land suffers” (I think a Brom quote?). If the Vault of Souls remained undiscovered (and that’s a fairly big if, because depending on how Galbatorix wins in this scenario, he might have captured Eragon with the Eldunarí or with Solembum’s hint, and any continuation of the dragons at all does hinge on at least Saphira’s capture), then yes, the eggs would have failed—it’s implied that they may not necessarily die, at least not right away, but any dragons that hatched after too long in the shell could be deformed, unable to live very long, and unlikely to be able to resurrect the species. So this is a scenario where the dragons are fundamentally extinct, especially if Saphira is killed—but even if she’s captured, if the Vault remains undiscovered, she’s the last female dragon, and that’s going to put the future of the species at a huge disadvantage in the gene pool department, because realistically, she’s only be able to mate with Thorn or Fírnen, maybe with Shruikan if Galbatorix dynamaxes her, maybe with Glaedr if he ends up captured as well.

Even if the dragons aren’t immediately extinct, and even if Saphira and the rest live for a very long time, this still is going to cripple the future population, and I think that would have catastrophic consequences for the land itself. In addition to their connection to the land, it’s also shown that dragons are extremely connected to magic itself—their own inherent abilities, how they affected the elves as a species after the treaty, how they transform their Riders through the bond. We also see that the land itself is full of magic that’s not fully understood—just looking at the newest version of the map of Alagaësia you can see the Crystal on one of the southern islands, and the werelights near Arroughs; and as we see in canon, of course, the Spine is known for its weirdness, and there are spirits roaming the countryside, literally gilding lilies on a whim. With the dragons in jeopardy, that probably will put Alagaësia’s inherent magic in jeopardy, as well—it may run wild, turn dark, overrun Alagaësia with danger. And this is just the natural stuff—who knows how Vroengard or Du Weldenvarden would react to magic itself going sour?

Of course, that will probably suit Galbatorix’s purposes just fine—to a point, at least. If the land itself turns on its people, who will they turn to for protection? The most powerful magic user in the land, obviously, even if he’s a cruel, enslaving tyrant, because he’s a cruel, enslaving tyrant with the last of the dragons at his beck and call.

And even if things go differently, if Galbatorix finds and breaks open the Vault and captures the Eldunarí and the eggs (and this is assuming they don’t have self-destructive failsafes to prevent this at any cost, resulting in the previous scenario), even if he actually, truly resurrects the dragon species—first, there may still be the problem of hatching; the dragons in egg may refuse to hatch, and I’d imagine that forcing them to do so (which is probably within Galbatorix’s ability at this point) would have devastating consequences on their health and psyche. Second, when they do hatch, they’re immediately enslaved—the entire species is going to suffer, personally, at his hand. This will still cause problems, maybe even the same problems as wiping them out, maybe worse.

Anyway. I just think the relationship between dragons and Alagaësia could be explored more.

Sometimes I think that it's so crazy how the Varden could just have... failed. Galbatorix could have won. And then, there would've been no way to defeat him. He would've acquired more and more power, and probably lived forever. He would've make a new order of Dragon Riders, which he would've controlled by their true names; he really would've become just like a god, at the point he could've probably resurrected the Forsworn. And the Vault of the Souls would have been forgotten, the eggs would have 'died' (or so they say) and there could've be no hope for Alagäesia. The elves would've been defeated soon or later, and so the dwarves. The Surda would've become part of the Empire again. If Galbatorix wanted to expand the Empire out of the known lands, then I doubt something could have stopped him. Eragon and Saphira really were Alagäesia's only hope.

[linkspooky]

spooky how would you go about writing toji and writing dialougue for him? i'm working on a mini-comic about him and his life after his first wife died and i have no clue how to properly write dialogue for him. it's not that i don't understand his character so much as it is that i don't know how to write him in character tbh whether they like him or not most people in the fandom mischaracterize toji and they strip away all the nuances and complexities in his character which is obviously smth i want to avoid

thank you so much in advance and i really like reading your jjk metas! they always provide great food for thought

Sorry for the late reply Anon, I was waiting for episode two of Hidden Inventory to come out to give some more frame of reference for Toji.

If you want to write Toji in character, the same as Mai it's best to understand how Gege intended to use him in the story. Toji is primarily Megumi's foil, he serves as Megumi's shadow. A shadow archetype is a character made up of everything repressed by another character. We our blind to our faults, so normally the shadow is made up of negative qualities, but it's not all negative qualities. It's what we are unaware of.

Which is why like you said anon, Toji is not an entirely negative character he's one with nuance. The best way to understand him is to compare him with Megumi, because he's in story to highlight certain aspects of Megumi.

Megumi is a Clone of Toji

Maki despite being constantly hyped as the second coming of Toji, doesn't have nearly as much in common as Megumi does with his father. Not only do they look exactly the same, but Megumi suffers from all of his father's flaws for similiar reasons (they were both abandoned by their parents, the chain of abuse with the Zen'in was left unbroken and Toji repeated the cycle).

My general guideline for both characters is what Megumi represses, Toji expresses. In other words, Megumi is an incredibly repressed character who subconsciously limits himself and chains himself down. This is msot shown in Gojo's confrontation with Megumi in origin of obedience, calling him out for being self-sacrificing in nature.

Megumi's self-sarcifice however, veers into self-sabotage territory because he's always comparing himself to the other people around him and finding himself lesser. He doesn't prioritize himself, and that kind of selflessness harms him in the long run. Which leads to Megumi's problems, he coasts on natural talent and doesn't live up to his full potential despite having the one technique that could beat the limitless. For Megumi, the advice "It's okay to be selfish" is actually sorely needed.

Whereas for Toji, he doesn't really need to be told it's okay to be selfish. Toji's defined by his selfishness. If Megumi is restrained and one who "inherited the curse of the Zen'in Family" (in that he's still a product of the Zen'in Family's abuse, because Toji repeated what was done to him, then Toji is referred to as someone who is free.

What exactly does freedom mean in this context though? The freedom to do whatever you want? The freedom to be whoever you want? In the same fight scene against Dagon, Toji is also referred to as a puppet of carnage mindlessly attacking the others around him. Obviously, a puppet isn't "Free" there's a contradiction there, and here's where we start unraveling the nuance that is Toji.

From the perspective of say Maki, Toji is someone who's free, because he's strong enough to do whatever he wants. Maki who equates strength to her way of liberating herself from the Zen'in would obviously look to Toji someone who could have taken on the whole Zen'in singlehandedly, but that's a simplistic view that equates strong = good.

However, when comparing him to Megumi, Megumi's selflessness and Toji's selfishness comes from the same source. They are both entirely lacking in a sense of self. Toji is rejected by his entire clan and eventually thrown out, Megumi is abandoned by his father and forced to fend for himself. Neither of them had parents to raise them into fully developed individuals.

So, Megumi is incredibly childish as a teenager, and Toji is a man-child. A person with no stable sense of self will act unstable, and therefore we get to Toji's behavior.

Toji is the kind of person who kils for money and is incredibly well-paid, and then spends it like jet-fuel blowing it on races and things he doesn't need, and then when he runs out of money he finds a woman to mooch off of. His whole life is unstable, he has no place to belong, no permanent attachment to anyone, he jumps from contract to contract, woman to woman. Now, you could construe that as being free because Toji like I said does whatever he wants. He doesn't limit his beahvior for anyone else.

From what we know after the death of Megumommy, Toji just sort of gave up, he even says so in his own narration "to be proud of neither myself, nor others..." so he is free to choose his path in life but he chooses to be the most despicable person possible.

Which is where you get to why Toji repeats the cycle. Toji is genuienly traumatized, but he almost uses that trauma as an excuse, it's permissive in his case. Permission to do what he wants, he is rejected by his own society and therefore he rejects it in turn. Toji is continually making himself out to be the worst person possible, and part of the reason is rejected by everyone his self-esteem is genuinely that low and he can't see himself as good person or someone capable of any goodness or love towards others. However, when he then acts out that trauma on others, they become a victim of it.

Toji sees himself as someone with no potential, someone incapable of anything good, which is why he never aspires to be better than what happened to him. Considering the Zen'in is a den of toxicity though, it's hard to see him turning out any other way, shutting off all emotions and making himself numb to the world is something he seemed to do for survival. And even Toji cared enough to try to build a life with Megumi's mother, but that dealt the final blow when he lost her. Toji doesn't try anymore, he doesn't aspire to do anything he just revels in the worst of himself.

However, the fact that Toji has to insist that he doesn't care over and over again obviously indicates the fact that he does care. He forgets Meguimi's name, and remembers it on the brink of death. Both of his dying thoughts, when he dies against Gojo, and when he's resurrected temporarily are all about Megumi, his last words to Gojo are telling him of his plan to sell Megumi to the Zen'in and asking him to do whatever he wants.

Megumi and Toji are also very similiar in that aspect too, because Megumi does not think he's a good person. In fact, Megumi's relatoinship with Tsumiki mirrors Toji's relationship with Megumama. With Tsumiki it's always "you're a good person, and I'm not." When he decides to go with Gojo, it's only for Tsumiki's sake.

And finally similiar to Toji we are shown that Megumi's absolute breaking point is the death of Tsumiki. The point where he stops resisting Sukuna's takeover of his body. Neither Megumi or TOji can love themselves, but they are capable of loving others, and when they lose those people they spiral into even worse versions of themselves.

They have extremely negative views of themselves, and because of that they uplift others around them in order to lower their self esteem even further in the comparison.

Toji has a lot of Megumi's good qualities because they're repressed too. At his core Toji is childish and wants to love another person and be loved, but he can't bring himself to do that because he finds himself too broken by his upbringing. Yet, he's also not as bad as he presents himself to us, even his decision to sell Megumi to the Zen'in number one was because he genuinely thought that place would be better, and number two apparently Naobito was going to make Megumi clan head.

Toji is deceptive as a character, because he's deliberately pretending to be a scumbag so he doesn't have to face who he is inside. He just hates himself so he doesn't work hard to improve himself. The Zen'in reject him, so he rejects everyone in return and doesn't live by anyone's standards but his own.

He is free, but in a way it's kind of a child's idea of freedom. He's stronger than anyone, he does what he wants, he spends all his money, he lives incredibly selfishly without caring about other's feelings.

He's also not free, because Toji is too bound by his past. He can't be a loving father because the pain of his past is too much, he can't be good, he can't love his son properly, and he can't be there for him too.

Toji is defined as much as by what he can't do, as what he can do.

Also, for character voice this is some brief advice, but number one Toji is a liar. He pretends to be a much more scummy person than it is, so basically whatever comes out of his mouth he's going to put it in the msot asholeish way possible. Hence, we get stuff like this:

Number two, Toji has a rude way of speaking to others that is once again childish. When Hong starst questioning his plan, and complaing he goes CHHH CHHH YOU'RE BREAKING UP.

Toji's also more intelligent than he lets onto be, he outwitted Gojo and Geto after all the two strongest sorcerers of their generation, by sending in flunkies first to wear them down and then catching Gojo completely offguard. They didn't see him coming whatsoever.

Toji is also a little bit more well-spoken in his internal thoughts than his external dialogue. "I wanted this for self-afirrmation and I deviated from my true self..." is pretty poetic, for a guy who's usual default way of speaking is rude asshole. He even dies with the line "I thought I had set aside such petty pride" like, he's more of a deep thinker than he lets on.

Finally Toji is incredibly flippant, a lot of his dialogue is insisting he doesn't give a shit (spoiler warning: he does). He's the kind of person who can shoot a teenage girl in the back of the head and appear to feel nothing about it, he's that distanced from his own emotions. So, you're going to want to write him to appear completely callous towards others and especially their feelings.

Alright, that's all I got for Toji. I hope that helps you with your comic, anon!

[its-to-the-death]

Fictional Weapon War Round 1

Now that our preliminaries are over, we're ready to fight!

Here is our bracket:

It is kind of ugly and I used the names instead of pictures because I did not want to figure out the logistics of fitting all those pictures (that are probably a bunch of different weird sizes) on here together.

I still need to get all the pictures together for the matchups but I am planning for round 1 to start on Tuesday, July 25. All polls last a week.

Propaganda is always welcome as long as you are being nice. Have fun!

Matchups below the cut. I'll link them to the polls once they start.

Bridget's yo-yo (Guilty Gear) vs Sasha (Team Fortress 2)

Myrtenaster (RWBY) vs Funkfreed (One Piece)

The Wabbajack (The Elder Scrolls) vs Frostmourne (World of Warcraft)

Portal gun (Portal) vs Buster Sword (Final Fantasy VII)

The Punisher (Trigun) vs Orb (Pondering My Orb meme)

The Spear of the Non-Believer (SCP Wiki) vs R.Y.N.O. (Ratchet and Clank 2002)

Bat'leth (Star Trek) vs Nightblood (Warbreaker/The Starlight Archive)

Ness' bat (Earthbound) vs Kendal (Aurora webcomic)

The Throngler (Twitter) vs Shardblades (The Stormlight Archive)

Kurapika's chains (Hunter x Hunter) vs Kenji Kon's butter knife (Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous)

Jack/Sumarbrander (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard) vs Xena's chakram (Xena Warrior Princess)

Soul Evan's scythe form (Soul Eater) vs Lightsaber (Star Wars)

The Master Sword (The Legend of Zelda) vs Ryuko's scissor blade (Kill la Kill)

Riptide (Percy Jackson) vs Rapunzel's frying pan (Tangled)

Riz Gukgak's Arquebus (Dimension 20 Fantasy High) vs Ichaival (Symphogear)

Meta Knight's Galaxia (Kirby) vs Aang's staff (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Piecemaker (Discworld) vs The List (Critical Role/The Legend of Vox Machina)

Sailor Moon's tiara (Sailor Moon) vs Batarangs (Batman)

Bit Stave (Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury) vs Oathkeeper (Kingdom Hearts)

Meowmere (Terraria) vs The Sword of the Creator (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Splattershot (Splatoon) vs Amy's Piko Piko Hammer (Sonic)

Pit's Sacred Bow of Palutena (Kid Icarus) vs Sokka's space sword (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

King Dedede's Hammer (Kirby) vs Shingou-Ax (Kamen Rider Drive)

Gideon Nav's two handed sword (The Locked Tomb) vs Needle Whip (Fear and Hunger 2)

Crescent Rose (RWBY) vs Sting (Lord of the Rings)

Kingdom Key (Kingdom Hearts) vs Ghirahim (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword)

E.G.O. Weapon Mimicry (Project Moon) vs Dangeresque's Nunchuck Gun (Homestar Runner)

Tissue Compression Eliminator (Doctor Who) vs Spider-ham's mallet (Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse)

Sokka's boomerang (Avatar: The Last Airbender) vs Knife (knife crow)

Gungnir (Symphogear) vs Baby 5 (One Piece)

Oblivion (Kingdom Hearts) vs Brisingr (The Inheritance Cycle)

Martin the Warrior's sword (Redwall) vs Morgoth's mace, Grand (Lord of the Rings)

[windor-truffle]

hey look it's a graces update! :O

probably a long one too, if you can't tell by the recent long meta posts, I made a fair amount of progress in the game (or at least a lot happened in the two sessions i played 😅) wrapping up the Windor arc and kicking off fucked-up Richard time :) here's my usual breakdowns:

Asbel trying to come up with new fic ideas... except I, like Richard, can't actually imagine him ever doing this. Richard credits it to their friendship pact, but I'd credit it to the fact that Asbel actually has an iron-clad moral compass, even though he is completely oblivious to that fact. This isn't even the first time he's thought about this, he actually briefly speculated about it back when he and Richard were fleeing for Grayleside:

Asbel may be a knight wannabe but he's not Flynn, he wouldn't follow orders without question or harm a friend just because he was ordered to--- as evidenced by him standing up to Richard about the treatment of the war prisoners or postponing the invasion of Lhant in hopes of negotiation first. Even if someone he admired and respected like Malik were the one giving orders, I seriously doubt he'd arrest Richard, much less kill him or his father. But Asbel somehow doesn't realize this about himself, god bless his dumbass heart 😂

Moving on, I'm not gonna fill this space with all the screenshots since my Richard&Lambda post covered it pretty well but the fight against Cedric is fun, I like this shot in particular:

Cedric is kind of an odd antagonist though, in that we don't know very much about his motives or personality. Most of what we know about him comes from Richard who's obviously very biased against him, and a handful of NPCs. The guy himself has like 3 lines of dialogue 😅 In general he seems like your typical evil-uncle-usurper archetype a la Hamlet, he claims to be the rightful ruler of the land but I assume that's his power-hunger talking and not like he was legitimately cheated from inheriting the throne (except by the bullshit system that is the monarchy itself, wild that this 19 year old is considered the "correct" one to be in charge of a country instead of the man with decades of experience handling foreign affairs). I guess this boils down to me sympathizing with him just a little, since we don't know his whole story. also the murder was a little brutal ngl but tbf to Richard, Cedric started this 😅

Hooray, the NPCs are all traumatized! Including that little boy who is apparently wizened enough to have noted the vicious cycle of of the monarchy 😅

I did my best to transcribe the text behind the throne, I think it's "a land of wind spoke guidance of wind make the wind proudest king." Not quite sure what that means but neat!

I support this man and his gay ass lounging villain poses and his art deco throne 💜 the last name drop though OOF 😓 especially since Asbel follows it with this, no missing dialogue in between:

RIP to "Please, don't speak like that. We're old friends, you and I" ;_;

once again someone besides me is projecting their own thoughts onto Asbel (the first being when Hubert kicked him out of Lhant, telling him to "run away like [he] always [did]"). And Asbel responding with his paragon-ish virtue again, the trait that makes him a foil to Richard and Lambda alike and ultimately saves the day: he believes in people, and that things can get better. I love that about heroes like Asbel, hope really is a precious thing that's always worth protecting. Richard agrees with me, at least:

...He really is a manipulative bitch isn't he 😅 I guess he IS a master of coercion artes.

Honestly I could be here all day talking about this singular part of the plot but I'll wrap it up by noting that Duke Dalen is also a wee bit pompous, he's more of Richard's yes-man than Asbel and probably believes in the divine right of kings or smth 'cause he seems to think Richard can do no wrong.

As you can see by this collection, I had a bit of an NPC census 😅 I interviewed NPCs from all across Windor: Barona, Wallbridge, Grayleside, and various ports (Lhant's citizens were talking more about their troubles there w Strahta than on the state of the monarchy). A lot of the NPCs I questioned were split on recent events, some excited about seeing the young king ascend, others still reeling from the chaos, and a handful who seem a bit uneasy about his intentions. Pretty realistic I think and helpful for worldbuilding in my fic akssjhd

this one about Hubert is rather telling too ;_;

really? I did... 😅

Richard... ;_; why you gotta do asbel dirty like that 😭

getting pretty close to the end of my FIRST session but I'll finish things up by noting Hubert's baller line here, get rekt asbel 😂

[uluthrek]

browsing the anti percy jackson tag to see if anybody else is just mildly annoyed at the fandom and the woobification of rick riordan only to find that what i thought was a relatively peaceful fandom of teenagers is almost as much of an insane dumpsterfire as those fuckass harry potter adults writing metas about the deep seated immorality of a teenager reminded me why the only fandom i actually fuck with is the dysfunctional group of weird tumblrinas obsessed with my immortal and the twelve year olds over at the inheritance cycle tag.