#its set in a fantasy world thats very vaguely a fantasy world and is pretty much just a parallel of our world. like the fantasy map at the

[many-gay-magpies]

holy FUCK

to shape a dragon's breath by moniquill blackgoose is amazing please read it

[coelacat]

I am very intrigued by adam harding and stu sullivan please share a crumb of their lore🙏

hehe hi 👋

okay okay ill finally gush abt them

also i should warn that some fucked shit!! happens to these characters. dont read my lore about them if abuse/rape/substance abuse/bigotry isnt stuff you wanna see. anything under the cut is just a brief mention, but its there

so most of my ocs (the guys with relatively normal names, anyone named like. blade or some fantasy name ignore them for now) are a set of young adults in the 80s in small town midwest USA (some town in iowa, probably) (if any of this sounds familiar to anyone keep it to urself :)). i wanna cover their struggles with highschool, struggling with transitional periods, and then growing into adulthood. im debating if i wanna add and supernatural/scifi elements of have it focus on their relationships and internal struggles mostly, but those are minor details for later on down the road

adam!! hes like. My Main Guy. the one i ended up making this whole lil universe for. bold that i created all of this for him basically and i still named him after adam from the bible, yet it gives me a complex i deeply enjoy so i do it anyway. i am a god who created the world for man, not man for the world.

most of these characters play off 80s media stereotypes and expand on them, and i think adam is like. the most blatant example of this. you know that movie from the 80s-90s you last watched that had a misogynistic metalhead who pulled chicks because he viewed them as objects to win, loved his car, and was angry and violent most of the time, while people who were scared of him vaguely assumed he was satanic in some way? thats adam harding. bleached blonde hair done in a perm mullet, a shitty stache hes convinced makes him look mature, sad brown eyes, leather jackets, and steel toed boots, with tattoos to really top it all off.

semi repressed devout christian faggot who struggles with his own sexuality and identity. hes got daddy issues AND mommy issues (though his mommy issues are much more prominent) and an abusive and neglectful home life, he has to adapt to having a sister after being an only child his whole life, and he has to adjust to a move half way across the country, from southern california to the middle of nowhere hick iowa. as a result, hes quick to anger, never lets his guard down unless around other queers, but ultimately he wants to be good. he was told to be good by his mother, its been ingrained in him from a young age to be nice and do good things. its just unfortunate that his environment allows for that as little as possible. when he has the patience and energy, hes often a lot gentler, but its rare for him to not be running on fumes and a bit of nicotine.

his hobbies include chasing milfs and cougars, working on his car, working out, surfing, blaring Dio as loud as humanly possible, chainsmoking, basketball and wrestling. keep those last two in mind.

on the other hand, stewie "stu" sullivan is the star example of what a highschool student should be. athletically, hes the top of the school, hes got pretty hair and a handsome face, a kind of preppy style, and girls go wild over him. soft brunet hair, sweet freckles occasionally dotting his skin, and lovesick hazel eyes. hes even a total sweetheart who usually treats his girlfriends really well. his only downsides are his mild stupidity, petty mean streak, his shitty guard dog entourage, and his twin brother, kurtis.

stu comes from an upper middle class home, and hes got high expectations set on him. hes consistently been great on whatever local sports team hes been a part of, and the success of his whole future rests on his shoulders to continue doing well. he'll have a free ticket to college, if only he can stay the top of his school, athletically. in terms of popularity, hes pretty slow to give up that as well.

you can probably guess that having the constant pressure to be perfect from his parents creates a lot of friction, however, hes always been seen as the "good" of the two twins. he cant really rebel in any meaningful way, as the expectations placed on him keep him locked in place of being well mannered with adults. towards other students, however, stu will happily pick some fights to blow off steam. its usually with the teens that dont fight back, of course, and its usually only a couple petty insults and a half hearted shove. one affected girl thought that she mightve seen remorse in his expression when he walked away. she was written off as being down bad for him.

oh, right. remember those hobbies of adams i asked you to keep in mind? basketball and wrestling?

yeag .... that might be because stu is the top of the team for wrestling and basketball, and is constantly regarded as the schools mvp.

you can imagine how easily theyd hate each other. theyre both hormonal teenagers who are angry all the time and feel insanely guilty about being angry so they only get angrier and now theyre both challenging each others masculinity. adam very quickly comes for the top spot in the sports stu is good at, so they end up beefing with each other fast and hard. its a constant cock measuring contest with them, and they frequently bloody each others noses.

this sorta fued carries on, and they make no real progress with each other for like 6 months, until adam meets eve, a mysterious newcomer to the town who refuses to say much about herself. shes very obviously queer, and he latches onto her almost immediately as a result of that, and verious other reasons. eventually, eve will coax out adams queerness and he'll be a little more comfortable with himself and end up realizing "fuckkkkkj dude ive got a crush on that prettyboy whos blood ive tasted!!". stu will eventually be coaxed into realizing himself and fixing some of his issues as well as they get older, though all that stuff is a lot more vague in my mind at the moment.

the post i rbed from you tagging as them, id imagine is after adam meets eve, and starts spreading his faggot agenda to stu, but before either of them are fully comfortable with the fact that theyre into men.

stu will eventually have some gender fuckery going on too, but like. thats complicated and i wanna wait and explore that once i have a more comfortable grasp on his character.

if you want a voice claim for adam, i particularly like Randy from Idle Hands (1999) for him? i still gotta nail down voice claims for most other characters though. sorry that adams my favorite

[drzone]

So…. Timetravel?

YEAH!!! this is pretty vague so ill just rattle off what comes to mind… Thank you for indulging me!

Something I really love about time travel is its capacity for exploring world building in fantasy and scifi settings especially in non-earth environments. Something i always find myself asking when enjoying things with fantastical settings is what the world looked like in the past or what it will look like in the future. Of course doctor who is the first thing that comes to mind since it also has the ability to explore the entirety of space as well as time, so it does!!! We know earth’s history, of course… But visiting things like the dalek’s home planet at different times, and the worlds the humans populate in the future… I find it all very interesting. It certainly branches off of my interest just in worldbuilding in general. Time travel also just has this thing i call “The Cool Factor” which essentially… I’ll assume you think ninjas are cool as fuck. I certainly do its why i watched ninjago personally. Its that. “COOL” not in a like… Bad Ass way but like in the way thats like if you were 7 youd be like Holy Shit. Thats Awesome. a very po from kung fu panda viewpoint. and time travel TOTALLY has this.

It has roots in a more serious tone, commenting on social things and philosophical stuff and such, which i do love as well (such as the original The Time Machine by hg wells), but im definitely more into it for like club penguin and spy kids reasons LOL. Thats not to totally passover its effectiveness for more serious things (another good example which youve probably read in school: A Sound of Thunder by ray bradbury, in which time travel is used to show why hunting endangered animals is bad, and so is greed, essentially) (this is a super simplified summary dont get mad at me for not putting too much thought into it sorry mr bradbury and english teachers)

in my own stories that use time travel (great blue + its sequel, radio relay) i mostly go for cool factor and world building, and radio relay especially is heavier on cool factor but i also use it in a more serious way as it being kind of… i feel like “metaphor” is a strong word, because its pretty literal. it is the central thing for the three main characters, who all have different adverse effects from time travel, which directly parallel effects i see people have from their creative pursuits (ie burnout, overworking, pouring your entire heart and soul into something and hating it.. That sort of thing!) which is more serious but doesnt REALLY directly relate to the act of time traveling itself because in the great blue universe im more interested in what a society based around time travel would look like, and what sci-fi effects time travel might have on the body and mind of the travelers…

ive lost my train of thought! if you have any follow up questions please do ask!

[mbabol]

the reason why joker 2019 didnt read to me as revolutionary or even interesting was because it used the trappings of an ostensibly leftist story and then neutralized any potency of those elements with absurdity or misrepresentation. there was a sweeping populist class protest movement, but it was triggered by complete accident and its figurehead (the joker) completely disavows the movements focus (which is kind of vague to begin with - but lets say its wealth disparity) and confesses to have “””no interest””” in “””politics”””. the portrayal of protests themselves are not anything interesting or realistic - theres an emphasis on chaos and property damage, leaning heavily into riot imagery that is in line with the JOKER as a character but obviously nothing new or revolutionary in terms of how the general (conservative) public views protest movements. the running theme of mental health is unresearched (there is no interest in updating their understanding of what talk therapy looks like or what the actual modern shortcomings of talk therapy are and certainly not its strengths) - the joker is reimagined as a social outcast who is constantly harassed and denigrated for a fictional disorder that makes him laugh unexpectedly. they write the scenes adequately enough for you to feel sympathetic for him and then have his experience with oppression be the catalyst for him turning into a villain. which is again, not really interesting or new of a concept! weve been over the idea of how tying ostensibly leftist and compelling values to a mass murdering villain is actually Bad and Propaganda. also its nothing new to make your “crazy”” “”mentally ill”” character violent and unpredictable in their violence, which is a long standing tradition in stigmatizing things like schizophrenia and psychosis in general. importantly, i do NOT think he is portrayed as a hero, which makes the previous true. hes an underdog, but his climactic transformation into the joker makes him randomly violent. hes sympathetic, but pretty clearly held in the wrong for a bunch of murders, which start in self defense then spiral outward into motivationless. his moments of rare kindness that built sympathy in the beginning of the movie are just phased out until he embraces completely the notion of uninhibited whimsical murder and destruction as free of purpose as possible. they hold on to his core character trait of violence inspired by random chaos - ID SAY THAT THIS IS EMPHASIZED which then conflicts with this narrative that he is an underdog story of retributional violence against a system that doesnt serve him - because he acts without intention! his key motives for retaliation are set up, then discarded in favor of “””pure chaos””” as a causal factor in his behavior that just HAPPENS to sometimes align with greater social movements and trends. and that makes sense with the traditional character of THE JOKER - it just doesnt seem to me like thats a winning recipe for insightful commentary on revolution, oppression, systemic violence, and resistance to systemic violence. his FICTIONAL MENTAL DISORDER is revealed later in the movie to be FICTIONAL IN THE MOVIE WORLD AS WELL ! that was a major driving motivator and theme that is revealed by the movie to actually have NOT BE CONSIDERED IN UNIVERSE A MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE ! hes just “”like that””!! and he is freed from the trappings of Mental Health and be his happiest So Random self and enact his will as he pleases on anyone, sometimes in revenge and sometimes just cause he can. also it felt very white fantasy very 4chan red pilled and i just dont see how this movie was . saying anything interesting

[discet]

Hmm, how do you suppose a crossover with Adventure Time would work? I'm imagining, like, the trio somehow winding up on the Land of Ooo with Marcy being super stoked about being in a wacky cool fantasy world, but only for her to slowly realize in horror that Ooo is a post-apocalyptic Earth.

Ooo would be another really good setting for the Amphibia girls in my opinion. Granted I've only fully seen the show up through season... 5? So I'm probably missing a great deal of context.

I think the premise is largely the same, Marcy is moving away finds some artifact to try to keep her and her friends together. Dropped in Ooo. What that would be in this case I'm not sure. Maybe the Enchiridion?

What's neat about early adventure time is that, outside of the finales there is a lot less of a time pressure than say, Owl House or Amphibia. So the girls could each have a lot more solo adventures bouncing off the wide spectrum of characters in Ooo.

I think I would actually have a 'season' of the three of them all together in this world, really getting a chance to see both how their friendship grows and how it is very toxic. With tension slowly ratcheting up between Sasha and Anne. With the season ends with the reveal of Marcy having brought them to Ooo on purpose and the three of them separating for a time which coincides with the lich getting out.

There's a big fight Anne is more hurt than angry. Sasha is way more angry than hurt. Marcy ends up with a pretty big helping of both

Marcy would end up with PB for the time being, going on science adventures and learning candy magic. Which is a fun parallel with Andrias since while PB doesn't have any ulterior motives, she is still super immoral

Sasha would end up over with Marceline who they had met in an earlier episode and they end up jamming out for some time. Marceline being a much more chill source of character development than Grime.

Anne I guess would end up with Finn and Jake for a while? I don't know there's a lot of good interactions between them, but again I don't feel as prepared to tackle this whole AU

I think over the season, the three end up running into each other awkwardly over the course of other adventures.

Anne and Marcy both end up in the candy kingdom for some mission for the princess to help people, ending with Marcy promising Anne to find a way home for them and their relationship slightly patched up.

Sasha gets captured by the Ice King during a round of capture princesses and Anne and Finn are out to rescue everyone. Sasha is resistant to being saved since it means being in debt to Anne but changes her mind when Anne seems liable to actually leave her there if thats what Sasha chooses. It's a lot messier than Marcy and Anne's first touch point after the reveal but the bridge is mending even if its no where close to fixed.

Sasha and Marcy end up dragged into the whirlpool of their mutual immortal guardians whole... *Gestures vaguely to early season Bubbaline episodes* thing. Maybe the episode is about vampires or witches or something. The main emotional thrust is that Sasha has grown a bit and is the one that actually reaches out to Marcy who spends much of the episode assuming that Sasha is going to hate her forever. This shows both Sasha's growth as a character at this point and the possibility of reconciliation.

Finally in S3 of this vague idea of a fic the three are back together and actively seeking a way home Which I think is when we finally get some of the big wham moments of the series. When the trio come to realize that they aren't in a wacky other dimension. Whatever artifact dropped them here actually flung them into the future days before Armageddon. So we get this moment of Marcy realizing that she can never fix her mistake. And of Anne and Sasha grappling with the fact that if Marcy hadn't made that mistake they would probably all be dead by now.

I think its a moment and a scenario that really brings Adventure Time's tone and theme in really well. Where sometimes messed up junk happens and the characters have to learn how to cope with it. Where there isn't a nice little bow to wrap up an episode and things are just kind of complicated.

Following seasons would probably show the arc of the three of them dealing with the trauma of being permanently displaced in Ooo and making the best of it. Figuring out what they want to do with their lives now that this is their lives and not some wacky off year until they return to Earth.

I think the three of them pool the favors, skills, etc they have acquired from their time in Ooo and build a cool place for them to live more permanently.

[aplpaca]

can you tell me more about inda? im curious

so Inda is the main character of the Inda Quartet by Sherwood Smith. its kind of a historical fantasy series? its not set on earth and theres magic involved, but the story is more focused on politics and world events than the magic (tho the magic plays a part in that).

but yeah the series follows Inda, the second son of a prince, throughout his life starting with his childhood at the Royal Academy, where nobility learn strategy, fighting, etc.  he does pretty well there, gets mixed up in some stuff, Stuff Happens, he ends up on a trade ship, and then a pirate ship, and then stuff interconnects with a larger war that had been brewing since he was a kid (these are over the course of a bunch of years). so thats like a vague gist

some stuff i like/that i found interesting about the series

Inda is autistic (its not outright stated in the book but its easily intuited imo also i emailed the author and she said it was intentional).  and like ive never really seen that in a fantasy book series before (renarin and steris are great and i love them but theyre not main viewpoint characters Yet) so thats really nice.  but yeah as a character his thoughts and emotional processing were super relatable. and even tho his Thing is that hes like super good at strategy and problem solving, it doesnt come off as a Wow Autistic Savant Lets Marvel At It type of thing bc the book actually goes into his thought processes and shows you how he gets to his ideas. also his friends are respectful and accepting of his differences and its great.

the series is has a really interesting emotional vibe to it that gives a really cool sense of the passage of time. i dont really know how to describe it more than that other than if it was music it would have a lot of violins

the characters are super complex and their dynamics are super interesting. and like even when they do stuff thats like What The Fuck My Dude its like not in a bad way bc characterization is well done so its like “of course thats what theyre gonna do. the bastard.” coughcoughFoxcough. they just feel very real in general

the culture is super open about sex and romance (theres a lot of talk about sex, but its not shown explicitly if thats a thing youre not a fan of). polyamory is super common and not looked down on and neither are different sexualities.  There are major characters who are bi and gay, and also lots of minor characters who are also.  Theres also at least one character whos grey-ace and Tdor reads as demi imo.  Inda is polyamorous, as are most of the main characters.  (also on the authors website theres a big thing about stuff that happens after the end of the series and theres a group of characters that end up in a man-his boyfriend-boyfriends wife/girlfriend-her other husband relationship)

theres a bunch of more mundane uses for magic. like theres a spell that can prevent someone from getting pregnant unless they drink a specific tea, so thats used as a birth control thing.  theres a spell where people can make a baby, like automatically without waiting 9 months and regardless of the number of people doing the spell or their genders.  like one character has a single mom who did the spell by herself, and whos grandparents are lesbians who did the spell to get his mom.  

the societies are pretty interesting, like Inda’s country is loosely Mongolian inspired, with some weird Spartan-esque stuff thrown in.  Most of the characters arent white, with the exception being the Venn (the country that the Marlovans, Inda’s people, are at war with), who are nordic-inspired (literally nordic is prob more accurate tho.  theyre descended from vikings who somehow got into a magic space rift and ended up on the planet the series takes place on. but that was way before the series happens. i got that confirmed by the author via email also).  also theres pirate societies and thats always great

but yeah. its a bit heavy with worldbuilding to start off with (lots of names) but its really super good and i wish more people knew about it. 

can you see why it took me so long to answer this?

[macbookpro-hard-drive]

Hi!! idc which character but could I maybe get some like trauma comfort headcanonnons?? If not that’s totally okay, no pressure!! I hope you have a lovely day/night!

heck yea man

time to indulge y’all in my fantasies of someone comforting me when i open up to them about all the baggage i have 

mm.. i think im gonna do short headcanons for all four bmc boys because theyre just. my immediate comfort characters when it comes to writing

if someones interested ill do more hcs for the gals tho!

all of these are about opening up whoopsies

so uhhh lets start w the fact im not gonna try to specify said trauma. if i do, dont rly… put too much thought into it. but im gonna try to keep the event itself a blank slate.

jeremy heere

i think jeremy’s the kind of dude who like. doesnt know how to respond at first? like… when you open up to him, he’s more shocked than anything

not because you’re opening up to him (although he would always have a small ‘they really trust me, dont they?’ internal moment) but because of what happened to you

and to establish it: going into this relationship, he was aware of your baggage. you warned him the moment things started getting serious between you two, and you had never elaborated

but here he is, sitting next to you in his bedroom one hot, summer night in the summer between sophomore and junior year

and you finally open up to him, and he just… stares at you at first. it’s very nerve-wracking because you just kinda told him and you set out to apologize

when he just sorta. gently takes your hand and apologizes that you had to go through that

and he probs make a small comment that he’s glad you’re comfortable enough and trust him enough to tell him this since he knows from experience that opening up isnt the easiest thing in the world. 

and hes soft. theres no kisses to make things better, nothing more than him maybe holding you if you’re comfortable with it - because his stomach sorta dropped the moment you said what happened and kissing you in this instant would feel… wrong

he’s just very gentle. every move he makes with you, he asks you first for consent - whether it’s just him asking to hold you, or asking if you’d be okay with sleeping next to him again right after you told him all of this because sometimes reliving that sort of thing can mess a person up

more than anything, jeremys extremely understanding and gentle when it comes to comforting you. he might press a kiss into your hair, but that’s the most romantic he’d ever get at this time

michael mell

michael, on the other hand, is good for distractions. so you two are sitting in his car, driving aimlessly for a bit because sometimes, when neither of you can sleep, you go on quiet car rides together and maybe ramble or just listen to music

and something about that night made you want to open up. you ask him to pull over and he probably makes some small joke until he does so and sees the way you’re looking at him

and he listens. he goes dead silent as he listens to you tell him everything - which isnt like michael. usually he’s much more expressive, but here? here he’s just quiet. and he stays quiet until you’re through.

and i think he’d immediately pull you into a hug if he knew you’d be okay with it. and he apologizes over and over and tells you that as long as he’s here, he’s not going to let that happen to you again if he can help it.

and he traces circles in your back as he just holds you, and maybe you’re quiet or maybe you’ve gone silent and retreated inward - but he holds you nonetheless

and when he pulls away, he smiles at you and asks if you wanna keep talking about this or if you wanna just go back to riding and pointing out stupid signs around town or if you just want to go home

and if you want, he’s happy to distract you with dumb stories that happened in his classes last semester - and about how one of his professors seems to never be where he’s expected to be, joking about how he’s totally a cryptid 

and its sweet. he doesnt force you to open up anymore than you already want to, but theres this moment where he starts to go quiet because what you told him really starts to eat away at him

and he finally looks over at you and he just… he says he loves you. maybe he’s said it a few times before, or maybe he’s said it a million - but it feels so much more weighted in that moment that you probably start crying

and he pulls over again to comfort you and its just… really soft and sweet and good

jake dillinger

jakey d, the light of my life. i like to think that when he shows up to your apartment one afternoon, he’s sorta joking about how this is pretty early for a booty call yknow-

you just sorta laugh along with him, sorta forcing yourself to stay happy until you finally sit down with him

and he knows. he knows you’ve been through something because, like i said with jeremy, you would have told him beforehand that you have baggage.

and i think he, out of the four, is the most unsure about how to respond. because sure, jake broke both his legs and had to deal with the aftermath of losing his house and everything he had, and the squips and the shit that follows in a situation like that, but… he’s never hurt like that and he just doesnt know what to say

and i dont think he does

i think he probably literally excuses himself to the bathroom and immediately starts googling how to respond when someone opens up

and he probably texts his friends asking how should he respond when someone opens up to him about their past trauma

and when he finally comes back to you, he sees you’ve kinda broken down a bit because - fuck, how else could you really respond when your boyfriend has to leave because he just doesnt have a response and you assume that hes gonna leave you because of your baggage

and i think hes immediately in front of you, sorta kneeling in front of the couch and apologizing profusely because he left

and he admits that he didnt know how to respond because he didnt… expect that you’d open up to him like this

and then he sorta apologizes and clarifies that like… he just didnt know what to say

and you start to apologize because fuck, thats a lot to drop on a person-

he stops you. he gently holds your hands and looks you in the eye and he promises that this didnt change anything. you’re still you, and he still loves you - no matter what you’ve faced in the past. and he thanks you for trusting him. 

and he also just apologizes again because he didnt mean to scare you when he walked out - he was just… scared of saying the wrong thing, or not saying anything at all, right after you told him what happened to you

but he still loves you and he makes sure thats clear

rich goranski

out of the four, rich is probably the most equipped when it comes to trauma. hes dealt with a lot of shit and has gotten a lot of help for his shit and so he has a vague idea of how to like… respond, basically.

so when he finds you crying in the kitchen at three in the morning, he immediately knows something is off.

youve talked about things before. about having baggage, hinting at your past, but you never outright told him what happened to you to make you so distrusting of people, and so bitter about the most mundane things that feels like its destroying your friendships

so when you open up to him about what happened, hes quiet. he lets you talk and he asks you what you need right now - comfort, a distraction, ect - because everyone is different and he wants to make sure he’s doing whats best for u

and he’s more than happy to do what you need him to. he probably sits down across from you and takes your hand for a moment to tell you he’s glad you trust him enough to open up about this

because honestly, rich probably has had those talks before with him opening up about his own shit - mostly finally opening up about everything to therapists and them thanking him for being trusting enough to open up about this trauma he’s gone through

so its just… something he feels is right to do in the moment

and i dont think rich has 100% opened up about the squip to you at this point. hes been meaning to, and he wants to, but he’s talked about having some shit in his past and hes been waiting until he was ready to tell you - mainly whenever he was sure y’all are serious bc he doesnt just wanna open up to just anybody, yknow?

he kinda wants to be able to envision a future there

but i think ultimately this ends w rich and u going back to bed with rich holding you and sorta aimlessly rambling about how much he loves you like the sleepy dumbass he is

and its just… very soft

thats all ive got sfkshdf but thank u for this request it was nice to write something like this since idk i have a lot of fantasies about things like this

[toxikbubblegum]

May Reading Wrap Up

I'm actually really proud of myself. I finished 13 books last month. Spent a lot of extra time away from screens and focusing on my mental health so I burned through way more than I normally would. So anyways, here's my reviews. - Also please understand that these are just my opinions and if I shit on your favorite book I'm sorry that I didn't enjoy it as much as you. Also, also Im terrible with character names.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor ⭐⭐⭐

I actually started this book at the end of April but didn't finish it til May 1st so whatever, here it is. This books is a YA urban fantasy novel about a girl with a double life. She spends half her days studying art in Europe and the other half running errands for a tooth collecting wish monger. I don't want to say a whole lot more because I dont want to spoil anything important about the plot. So, I'll try to be vague. Let me start by saying this story is amazing. I loved the writing and the world. I rated it so low solely because I can't stand the two main characters and it really dragged down what would have otherwise been an amazing novel. So yeah, great book but its a preference thing. Also took points off for the insta-love but not really insta-love shit. Idk. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this read even a month later. Gonna read the second to see if maybe my hatred of the two mains was just a fluke.

3/5 Stars

Spellbound by Rachel Hawkins

⭐⭐⭐

This is the third book in the Hex Hall trilogy. Not much to say about it. It was a meh ending to an overall pretty good series. 3/5 stars. Moving on.

The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw

⭐⭐⭐

Realizing now how many of my reads this month were pretty middle of the world. Hopefully next month will be filled with 4 and 5 stars. Anyways, this book was honestly a struggle for me to finish and Im not sure why. It's a YA mystery magical realism story about a tiny coastal town that is cursed by the spirits of 3 sisters who were suspected of witchcraft and drowned 2 centuries prior. Because of this, every year the sisters return from the sea to take the lives of teenage boys by luring them to the sea. We follow the life of kind of meh and standard YA girl #1. She meets a strange non tourist boy and hires him to work in the lighthouse her family owns. Her dad randomly disappeared years ago and her mom is a loon. So yeah... I dont know. I kind of felt like this story was hot garbage in places. I usually dont have any trouble with the suspense of disbelief in magical realism stories but this one just had too many plot holes. Like, I get morbid stuff becomes tourist attractions but why wouldn't someone have stepped in and evacuated the town if at least 3 teenage boys die there EVERY SINGLE YEAR without fail? I honestly feel like the FBI or some other government agency would have cleared the place out after the first 20 or so deaths. There was also the whole MC can see the ghosts of the girls possessing people but chooses not to tell anyone? Like, I get it. You dont want people to label you a freak or think you're crazy but come the fuck on. You live in a tourist trap where people flock to watch local teenage males wash up on shore and you really think the authorities arent going to take you up on the help? It wasn't an awful book by any means. It was well written and extremely descriptive. Just had major beef with some of the details. Anyways, I wont say much more so I don't spoil the whole book.

3/5 Stars

An Enchantment of Ravens by Maragret Rogerson

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Finally, I get to talk about one of my favorite reads of the month. I love anything to do with the Fae in my YAfiction and this was literally everything I wanted in a Fae novel. It takes place in a town called Whimsy, a humanish town in the world of Faerie. The fae cannot do any Craft, or what we would consider craftsmanship. Art and humans who can do it well are very precious in this world because the Fae can't ever do it themselves. We follow the adventures of a girl who has been commisioned to paint the portrait of the Autumn King and the chaos that ensues. Let me just start by saying this is one of those insta-love situations where I feel like it's genuinely ok. I might be making excuses because I loved the title so much but whatever. It's explained and I accept it. Also, I realize that Gadfly had a lovely description but my brain willl not let me picture him as anything but Mr.Waternoose from Monsters Inc.

5/5 Stars

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

⭐⭐⭐

This book started out so good and went downhill very quickly. It follows the story of these two magicians who were fated by their Master's to one day fight to the death. There were so many things I loved about this book only for the last 100 pages to just take a firey dump on my face. I loved the setting and the majority of the characters. The supporting characters were so deep and interesting that I almost cared more about them than I did Ceilia and Marko (Im proabably wrong and I dont feel like googling but I think that was his name) . I don't know. I don't want to complain about anymore meh books.

3/5 Stars

Matched by Allie Condie

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Went into this book expecting to hate it. I usually don't like contemporary love stories but this had major City of Ember meets The Giver vibes and it just appealed to that 14 year old girl in me again. That seems to happen with a lot of dystopian utopia stories. Anyways, story is about a girl who lives in this town where when you hit a certain age you are brought to a place and told who the government has chosen for you to marry. She is matched with her life long best friend and all is well. Except that her little Get To Know Your New Husband microship thing showed her two guys instead of just one. And lots of bullshit ensues. I honestly think I rated this so high because I enjoy the world and not so much whats actually happening to the kids. Like, I loved the idea that art is harmful so the government chose 100 acceptable pieces and thats all these people know. I loved the brutality of the government in general. I can't say much more without spoiling some of the twists but geez did it have me hooked. I'm going to be started the second one soonish, though my TBR for June has gotten intense so we will see.

4/5 stars

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I cannot say enough good things about this book. It is so fucking good! Not going to rant about it or anything because y'all just need to go read it immediately.

5/5 stars

Would give it every star in the sky if Im being completely honest.

Reign of the Fallen by Sarah Glenn Marsh

⭐⭐

Got sucked into this book by the cover and honestly that was the best part of this book. Its about this world where necromancy is pretty highly regarded and used to resurrect the royals after they die. The only downside is that if a living person ever lays eyes on the resurrected person's skin then they turn into these horrible monsters. Maybe it's just me but like that absolutely does not seem worth the risk. Plus, in order to bring the person back, these reapers have to go into the death world and bring the spirit back. And it's HELLA DANGEROUS. So like, WHY? Anyways, there is this stupid underlying love story that I absolutely wasn't invested in. This just all around was not a good book.

2/5 stars

Monster High by Lisi Harrison

⭐⭐

Little known fact~ I'm obsessed with Monster High and Ever After High. So yeah, I realize this wasn't targeted to me as an adult but even going into it with an open mind I was disappointed. Granted I didn't read the description of the book prior. I just saw this franchise I love and grabbed it. First, if you are a fan of the mini series and the movies do not read this. It doesnt follow the cinematic canon and I think that was my biggest problem with it. Frankie's character was all wrong and I hated the whole"Normy" cast. Was really excited for these but I definitely won't be continuing the series. I don't even want to torture myself with seeing how they manage to ruin my sweet baby Draculara.

2/5 stars

Unhinged by AG Howard

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I can't say enough good things about this series. This is the second book in the trilogy and it was a fanatstic bridge book. It had me engrossed through the entire audiobook. Morpheus is still everything. If you loved Splintered I would highly reccomend continuing.

5/5 stars

Truthwitch

⭐⭐

Have had this on my TBR for a while because of how many Booktubers have hyped the series. Buy, was I disappointed. I was soooooooooo bored. Maybe it's because I don't really enjoy this type of fantasy or maybe it was just the slower paced story but I just slugged through this book. Both of the main female characters were bland to me and I didn't care about their friendship. The world was cool but not enough to keep me invested. Just wasn't my cup of tea.

2/5 stars

Paranormalcy by Kiersten White

⭐⭐⭐

Picked this up because of how much I loved The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein and it didn't meet my expectations. It follows this girl who works for a paranormal gorvenment group. She has a special ability that makes her really useful to them so they are trying to groom her basically. They capture this changeling and she befriends him and there is an overarching plot that I just didn't get invested in. The friendship between the two main characters was pretty much the only thing that I enjoyed in this title. The mother figure was insufferable and I just didn't really understand the whole org that they worked for in general. Not an awful book but not fantastic.

Solid 3/5 stars.

The Siren by Kiera Cass

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Going to preface this by saying I might be biased. I love Kiera Cass and have enjoyed almost everything she has written. That said, this wasn't nearly as good as The Selection series but it was a pretty good stand alone novel. It about a girl who becomes a siren on her deathbed and spends the next 100 years serving the sea by luring people to their deaths. After doing this for 70 years, she falls in love and pretty much ruins everything. Loved the characters, especially the male lead. The insta love was a little pet peeve of mine but the love interest was so sweet and genuine that I was willing to overlook it. Pretty good read if you dig supernatural romance.

4/5 stars

June holds the Ghibli-a-thon but also lots of holidays for my family so we will see how much I actually get read. So far my tentative TBR is 5 books but we will see where the days take me.

[wallkickswillwork]

signal jamming

incoherency is comforting because of the narrative weve been fed our whole entire lives that in order to be palatable media must in some way be complete and have beveled, well-defined edges rather than being a mess of finger paints, bright colors, strange dialogues and verbiage, build trees of moods.

thoughts on: -futuristic anime, 90s anime and the unique sense of mood in toonami shows. they are a very good series of shows for people who are coming of age and who must slowly be forced to reckon with the industrialization and mercenary nature of adult life, as it is increasingly held captive by capitalism. there is also something essentially spiritual about it, especially shows like precure and dbz, where an interior or exterior-made-interior force is responsible for the protagonists' success in the face of an oppressive world-system. under capitalism, it frequently is the case that the entire world or entirety-of-world is against us. heroes must overcome overwhelming odds to leave their mark on a gauntlet of greats. -cowboy bebop, final fantasy 7, metroid as meditations on loss, urbanization, dating back to blade runner. this is a type of meditation that is present in much of cyberpunk, but its also not exclusively cyberpunk, and can extend in nature to non-cyberpunk works.

thinking about necrobarista and how its attempting to "resuscitate" anime, while this approach doesnt really examine what contemporary anime like jojos, precure, and slightly more dated anime like hidaske and nichijou do well. if we get all this tunnel vision for gurren lagann and flcl we can never look forward. i think a lot of the visual work that needs to be done is probably in movies. i think maybe there could be work done to marry cinema proper with its animated counterpart. steven universe seems like it gets it, and there are some anime that really seemed like they got it. i dont think were beyond salvation.

-listening to the whos "tommy" and thinking about how trauma and the humanity of that trauma is experienced and lived-through by the main character in socratic fashion. these stories are discussed by people whose actual, authentic experience of trauma irl is doubtful at best. they are great successes on stage who dont struggle in the sense that an actual victim would struggle. calls to mind how a lot of freuds patients would fabricate csa in order to fulfill the expectations of the therapist. but in other cases, actual patients with csa would repress their experiences or not feel comfortable discussing. so thats how i feel about gurus like meher baba or i guess alan watts. less trustworthy and more like scam artists. i do believe in what they teach, however. i think that a guru can teach the truth even if that guru is a liar. maybe its the truth, but the guru doesnt know it to be true, or else, the way the guru teaches it is untrue.

-for a while i imagined my own autism to be the result of childhood trauma that was repressed, but later emerged that those memories were fabricated, to my knowledge, and was left wondering.

-learning to regard the world with a sense of wonder from media like cowboy bebop and ff7. these worlds are jaded and decaying realities but there is a sense of awe at the vast, uncompromising reality. truly vast, sprawling and yawning cities and vast starry skies up above. beholding these things and beholding the starry skies and huge cities of our own planet surely stirs something in me.

-fantasy anime tends to go the joke route like slayers or else the route of "we are all kids, bro, stuck in an mmo" and i think this is mostly due to the admittedly antiquated setting of high fantasy in european trochets and history which to japanese people probably feel like white person set dressing and as they should, i mean. there are more high fantasy themes in something like inuyasha and japans history can be feudal, edo, the meiji restoration, primordial like princess mononoke, etc, so theres more wiggle room for historical works there. slayers et al is usually reduced to "characters moving around the forest" which is almost like this grand slice of the collective anime consciousness as it stands overlapping with, say, pokemon, to the extent where its one of the cliche anime things everyone thinks about, alongside high school, robots, nurses, etc.

-another thing to which we could probably ascribe the success of something like slayers to is wizardry and by proxy dragon quest. small graph paper monster garden games. the appeal is entirely mathematical so there are only a few directions that anime directors tend to run with it (goofy gag comedy if youre making a show or cut and dried authentic dungeon crawlers with moe characters instead of the usual dbz ones). going off what you definitely learn in japanese history class if youre a japanese student, for starters, there are thousands of years of chinese history, so you have romance of 3 kingdoms type stuff. or you have high school romances accounting for the various fire emblems where the appeal becomes game of thronesy "which of my characters in dragon quest land can i make kiss each other and myself", very good ground to cover as we start asking the important questions. theres samurai stuff as we already know, drawing on years of samurai media, kurosawas films and zen spirituality, art of the blade type stuff, jeet kune do in some instances and reaching so far afield as to probably raise some interesting and important questions about pan-asiatic cultural identity which this author (white) is ill-advised to answer. but reeling it back in, the question mostly being of history, and how a lot of fantasy media draws more from History proper as a codified cultural body than histories being individuated familial experiences. its true that when a work does something unique with history (earthbounds hippy dippy approach to the 1960s, undertales handling of furry culture, yume nikkis south american murals) its tended to be seen as that works "thing" as if because hulk hogan was an all american wrestler that precluded john cena from being same, or at least, embodying a similar if slightly modified niche. nobody can make a hippy dippy rpg now or something because itd just be called an earthbound ripoff rather than a loving homage. and i think thats wrong headed and how genres become stillborn rather than invented and developed upon. we have this vast morass of stuff from the 20th century and we could be developing various 60s, 70s, 80s fantasies. hindsight is 20/20 i guess. who knows, we could see bluff city become something in 50 years time.

i feel this is because of extreme stringent expectations of intellectual property laws and their dissemination into everyday discourse online. i dont really like or agree with monolithic cultural expectations like intellectual property or *shudder* advertising, but only to the extent where i can acknowledge that whether or not i agree with them is irrelevant to their all-consuming scope and the need for marxists to actively combat them. its one thing to say "x is bad" and another to clamor for urgency of fighting x, which is, if you believe what we read every day about global warming, too late, so its not important. nevertheless there are a multiplicity of settings that could be developed into genres and identities and ideologues that rarely are if only because it would be seen as "oh yeah like that other thing". people are fickle and develop dwarflike strange moods when it comes to defining what constitutes original versus hackneyed and derivative. i think its mostly dictated by star signs and the weather.

so lately if you follow me on twitter youve probably noticed im doing sort of a tweet concrete kind of thing where i post plaintext quotes from various media taken out of context. i decided to do this for a while, maybe a few weeks, because aesthetic blogs and the aesthetic style of blogging allow me to pool and channel my energies towards larger and more ambitious styles of writing. i usually get loaded on caffeine during this process and frequently watch large amounts of anime and meditate some. its definitely a process and its geared toward something hazily, vaguely spiritual but with pretentions toward being authentically publishable as theory. the idea also being i would like to make some money to support my livelihood, and i like to write, and am somewhat skilled at it, or at least experienced in kind of a ramshackle homespun sort of way. so if my social media presence is pretty boring and kind of weirdly nostalgic or else contrariwise if you feel it has improved lately thats the reason why that happened.

ive been getting very hazy and foggy mentally lately. i feel like it has to do with caffeination and lack of sleep. its important to get everything flowing properly, and sometimes depression and anxiety make that difficult to do. theres anxiety over unemployment, something im trying to remedy, and theres anxiety over theory and where to proceed next via theory. for years i was a devout buddhist in some ways, and meditated a lot, almost every day. i prayed to the bodhisattvas and copped to buddhist metaphysics, something which, based around personal life experience, i had every reason to believe was true. lately and in my own, strange way, ive begun to question this ideology and interpret it as part of a patchwork of ideologies, each one which attempts to describe a totality, a totality which is rarely if ever described properly by any ideology. grasping at straws in a structural sense, and feeling nonplussed but with no ground to run to, and im back on the boss level in super mario 64 where bowser smashes the ground to make it fall away. attempts at restructuring as this dissolution transpires only serve to create new protocols equal in scope to pre-existing paradigms. and there are plenty of people who dont struggle this much with religion and probably still go to heaven, or think theyre going to heaven, or something. hows marge and the kids. did jerry get that new promotion. mom just got back from vacation in cancun. smalltalk style concerns arising in every day transitionary speech feel distinct and very distant from these kind of hazy, pie in the sky questions. plato never wrote about the kind of stuff you see in a cheers episode. there are philosophy books that try to merge the two, but they usually get shelved in the comedy section.

so its mostly a matter of trying to absorb and contain new information, which abides in abundance, and trying to corral it into sort of a pointing arrow to direct me where to go, in my hewing, a feat not easily done. probably the endgame is in the crafting and solution of art, but what kind of art, and whether i have the tools at my disposal to even create it, is less easily answered. so for now, i guess, im absorbing, waiting, asking questions, and who knows, and who can say.

earliest memories of religion are of the greco roman religion and not knowing about the mystery religious rites but knowing about an abstract concept of wisdom and the ocean and extrapolating the existence of athena and poseidon in that way. later i have memories of exposure to christianity and buddhism and bahai but none of these things feel particularly useful to me at this time in my life. i can more readily receive a picture, a kind of enlarged image, of a broad religious landscape and some of the questions it attempts to provide answers for, or at least, a way of thinking about. the greco roman religion, for instance, is a presentation of a deleuzian multiplicity, and the monotheistic religions are a monad, but i also dont think either of these things can say the other is inherently undesireable. tolerance seems to be the best method, but also, and likewise, not dwelling specifically in any of them. acknowledging they all exist, but not being any of them. enjoying in surfeit the tension between multiplicity and monad. that there can be many things and one thing. like the album cover of dark side of the moon.

[jays-oc-dump]

This ask is more about your worldbuilding, but I can send another for your OCs themselves. Whats the government like? Whats the local government like? Whats the currency there? whats its equivalent in a currency here? Are there laws? What are a few of those laws? What are some weird laws? How do they regulate those laws? what are the rap sheets of a few of your OCs? What's the mood of your world? Where are your OCs from? Where do your OCs live now? Whatre the units of measurement? Im so curious

OKAY! This is a huge ask and its so good whoever sent it i love you alot. So. Alot of the details are things i’ve thoufht aboit but never written down so some things may be a bit vague.

This post is gonna be HUGE so ima put it under a cut if that works for asks

So first off things like measurements and currency i really havent put any thought into because. I dont get numbers. So most of it wi just be real world values or generic Gold Pieces. Althlugh now i do want to think abkut currency some more and come up with a unit scale for magical energy. One note about currency is that the tribal orcs don’t use curency and use a barter system instead; within a tribe any essentials are shared equally and luxery goods are exhanged for other goods or skills. A few of them trade with the coastal towns using the same system.

GOVERNMENTS. Right. So first off you have the Merchant Council. This started of as and remains primarily a human organisation. It serves as the only sort of overarching government the city states outside the elven empire have. Each individual city has a lord which is usually the highest ranking member of the most powerful guild in the city. Guilds range from small local businesses to something more akin to corporations that have a hand in every major city. Each city state will have a smaller council comprised of the elected officials of each local guild, who handle administrative dutiea for that city. The lord then serves on THE Council formed of each city’s representitive. This system allows each city to maintain autonomy while still enforcing some general law (not everybody always agrees and disagreements and even wars between cties arent that uncommon, but it hilds out for the most part.) I dont have enough historical knowledge to make exact conparisons, but think of something similar to ancient Greek city states with a heavy emphasis on trade and mercantile power.

Next you have the elven empire itself. The elves here are most like blood elves from World of Warcraft; very arrogant and confident in their own power. They have an intensely matriarchal society led by an empress aided by a senate of elected officials. The other most powerful group is the Order of Magi. Almost every elf is born with some magical sensitivity but not all are particularly skilled or powerful. So the order is your typical academic magic group, wherin the most powerful and highly ranked spellcasters have actual political power. For a comparison think the Tevinter Imperium from Dragon Age. The empire as a whole is very insular, not many outsiders get any deeper than their trade cities and not many elves move elsewhere. General opinion is fear and distrust, because they have a heavy standing army and the last time they went to war, they fucking destroyed the orcs. Did i mention theyre racist pricks.

Speaking of race. I didn’t really want to just have generic fantasy races who hate each other. So! You also have anotger subset of elvea who hate fucking everyone! Especially city elves! These are elves who live on nomadic desert clans who when the empire was being founded were basically like…uhm nope?? And just fuckin left. Each individual clan has its own way of doing things and theres alot of animosity but a few of them will trade with other races and there’s even a few permenant towns set up on the edges of the desert they live in.

Next, orcs! The vast majority of the orcish population was assimilated into the Merchant Cities after the war with the elves. Some live with the human population but a lot are stuck in these sprawling towns scattered along the coasts that are borderline reservations honestly. Theres a lot of racism and the dumb orc sterotype is very common. The coastal towns are owly recovering some sembelance of cultural identity but they’re very different from how they used to be.

And then you have the orcish tribes living deep inside the mainland forests that managed to escape destruction. There’s very few left and more and more are just giving up and moving into the merchant cities. They have a culture deeply rooted in tradition and spiritualism and refuse to work with elves because of their complete disrespect for spirits as a culture. They have small councils of elders within each village that work things out and occasionally come together for important occasions.

FINALLY you have drakes. Actual fucking dragon people. They basically dont have any sort of cohesive societal structure, they just live in various tight knit clans and do not give a SHIT about other peoples laws. The interesting thing about them is that as a race they have a huge regard for family, but thats never limited by blood relation. They adopt outsiders into their clans all the time, even other races. Basically, if you’re clan, doesnt matter who or what you are. You’re family and every other blood will kill for you. This has also led to them having zero tolerance for anything they percieve as child abuse and like. Kids being kidnapped by drakes or talking about “running away to live with the dragins” is actually pretty common. And most of the time, they will make damn sure that kid has a good life. Obviously though this causes a lot of tension but most authoroties try to tollerate them because A. They trade in dragon scales/teeth/claws/bones etc which are extremely valuable and are so the best metalworkers and B. Theyre fucking terrifying. Listen. An 8-9 foot tall mass of scale and muscle and fire tells you its doing a thing? Its doing the thing. Entire platoons have been decimated by a handful of individual drakes befire and people are legitimately terrified what would happen if they as a race decided they wanted to fuck someone else over (which is actually a legit risk with the nomad clans, they have a long history of animosity with drakes and most clans have at least one trained drake slayer)

HOO BOY. OKAY. I THINK. Im gonna end this post here. But i’ll make another one soon talking ablut each OCs backgrounds a little? And posaibke one talking in more detail about major forces kn the world like the largest guilds. But in the meantime yeah thankyou so much for the ask and feel free to send more if you’re curious about something i didnt cover!