#ok I'm done I have to do work

[muntadhir]

Jacked up the brightness obscenely on the menu screen after Romeo's fight. Looks like the papers are articles "about the plague" (pretty sure these are on some walls or the floor somewhere too; just wanted to note it's not unique here but omg what if there WERE unique papers from/to Romeo).

I'm just nosy af and wanted a peek

[a2zillustration]

What am I gonna do when croissant finishes the game their journey... TT_TT I don't wanna say goodbye to them!!

I don't know buddy I've been wondering the same thing :') Let's not think about it-

[azaracyy]

today, cupimon prays for your happiness too.

[navree]

also would bet real and physical money eugene’s “quit being shitty and misogynistic” statement was about the people i’ve already seen giving ariel hell for the hypothetical scenario of potentially trying to work on her marriage, i personally would like to point eugene in the direction of the person who said that this meant that “ariel isn’t a victim” and let him wreak havoc

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[pacific-coast-hockey]

Cooch, Pickles, Addy, my mom, and Baby Shak! [kavin_mastry here & here]

[laundrybiscuits]

sometimes it's just fun to half-render a portrait with a bunch of random lighting sources. this is nominally a cover for my fic come alive in the neon light (steddie, rated E, 16k) because the lighting's kind of neon and I've been looking at some neat 80s cover design lately so I thought...why not.

[ratcandy]

got to hold big scorpion again today everything is right in the world

[taleweaver-ramblings]

GLORY HALLELUJAH PRAISE BE TO GOD

MY STUPID GRANT WRITING CLASS IS DONE AT LAST!

[sleepinglionhearts]

Did dishes 2 days in a row

AND cleaned the counters

AND cleaned the sink

I feel unstoppable. Tired. But unstoppable.

[quirkle2]

Teruki blinks at him, and then he’s chuckling again and bowing his head down so he only sees the beginnings of brown roots coming in. When he lifts his head again his eyes are wet, but the pinks in his aura are soaking into his soul so much that he finds it really hard to be alarmed in the trance of it. “Please don’t apologize,” Teruki whispers, blinking away the shine that reflects the slit of sun from the window. His voice wobbles and hitches at the end, and Shigeo shifts, widens his eyes a little, but then his partner is moving. He leans over Shigeo’s chest, arches over the cracks that seep with energy carefully. Both of his hands are suddenly around his face and Teruki’s clamping his eyes shut and pressing their foreheads together, nose to nose, soul to soul. His hair tickles Shigeo’s jaw and his knee digs into his thigh, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t mind. The coral hues sing; the golds roar. “Please don’t. Please don’t do that to me,” his partner teeters, and the watermelon seeping into his skin is now tainted with harsher reds, deeper magentas. He can tell Teruki is trying so hard to keep it light, to keep it gentle and comforting for him—controlling an aura when emotions are high is one of the hardest things in the world. And yet he’s holding his partner, who is crackling apart at the seems in every sense of the word, and all that seeps from him is a little fear that get snuffed out instantly upon exit.

[five-of-cr]

here's the thing about matthias: he isn't the honorable, reformed hero some of the fandom seems to see him as.

yes, he was raised by a tight-knit family of comrade soldiers and decides to betray them in the end. of course that took incredible strength. i don't deny that. but we also need to recognize that the drüskelle are not just some rogue cult. they are a core part of the fjerdan government, who is trying to wipe out the grisha because they are seen as dangerous. that's literally just genocide. however indoctrinated someone is, this is something that is evil from every angle, even if the character can't or won't see it.

and look, i love a good redemption arc, but matthias is such a passive actor in his. he falls in love with nina against his will. she changes his attitudes toward grisha because she's beautiful and kind so all grisha can't be bad, right? this a classic example of the trope of separating the "good ones" from the rest, where you cherry-pick specific individuals to point to as exceptions to a group's nature, which is still implied to be evil. you have to do a lot more than fall in love to truly unearth and address the roots of bigotry.

tbh, this is my biggest critique of the books as a whole. i loathe the "love conquers all" trope that pairs together a character from the oppressed group and one from the oppressors, letting the one show the other through the power of love that being bigoted is not nice. it puts all the responsibility on the former to prove their humanity, and gives all the credit to the latter's ability to be persuaded to recognize it. and then it inevitably leads to forgiveness, because the character has "earned" it by changing their views, once again making the victim seem like the villain if they don't absolve the oppressor of their past "mistakes". also, it's incredibly unrealistic for someone to fall in love with a person who actively hates them and considers them sub-human. in real life, people have to work on their bigotry before that happens, not use the relationship as a plot device for character development.

i think the idea of writing a character like matthias is neat. i think portraying someone's struggle to throw off the suffocating, hateful dogma they've been fed all their life is a story we need more of. i think personal growth of this variety should be celebrated, because otherwise people would never change. but i don't think the people, fictional or real, get to do this without facing profound consequences. it is not enough to feel sorry. it is not enough to apologize. it is definitely not enough to fall in love. and i think writing that lets people off the hook like this grossly oversimplifies power and oppression, and ends up being a feel-good way to romanticize people who cause a lot of harm.

a last note: my opinion is 100% influenced by my being bipoc. matthias is a classic aryan supremacist, even if being aryan isn't the thing he's being supremacist about. my gut reaction to that type of character is always going to be mistrust, both because people in real life have given me reason to be mistrustful and because characters like these are often written in a way that makes you sympathize with oppressors. i don't think matthias earns that trust, and i don't see why i owe him my affection as a reader.

[brown-little-robin]

hmmmm what if I. skipped class 'cause I'm not feeling good

[yangjeongin]

17 hyunjin bday countdown gifsets complete and more than halfway done with the hardest one 👍

[gaminegay]

it is so insanely frustrating for me to be the only person working who has an ounce of Disaster Thinking because it means I'm the only person who says "hey, this has a possibility of not going well, we should be ready for that" and get dismissed out of hand because I'm thinking too hard about things. And then that eventuality HAPPENS and everyone's like oh no how unfortunate. Yeah if only someone saw that coming and proposed a solution beforehand.

[capn-twitchery]

ok i dropped it for a while but we are now 3/4 poses done on the month late feast of the rose art🎉

i just gotta render the last one and do all the text + finishing bits and i can finally call it done >:3