giving into the [outlander] peer pressure and deciding opal moved to the city after leaving the wilderness. probably around age 13.
her and her mom took whatever shitty jobs they could, usually physically demanding and not always legal. neither were especially good at socializing and opal was overwhelmed by all the people and noise. she still thinks of the Outlands as her home.
0 notes
2024 reads / storygraph
Our Lady Of Mysterious Ailments & The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle
books 2 & 3 in the Edinburgh Nights series
paranormal mystery set in a climate-ravaged future Scotland, plagued by ghosts and magic
follows a 15yo Black girl who’s finally gotten an in to learn scientific magic properly - but it turns out to be an unpaid internship, so she has to take more jobs delivering ghost messages and investigating mysteries to take care of her gran and little sister
in book 2 she’s investigating a strange illness centred on a magic school for boys
and in book 3 she’s attending a global magician conference held in a creepy castle - when someone’s murdered, and they’re locked in until she figures out the culprit
Zimbabwean magic, friendship, disabled characters, no romance (so far)
32 notes
·
View notes
ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".
like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!
on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.
returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body
literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence
28 notes
·
View notes
The difference between the tragedy of Edwin's and Charles' lives and deaths and what makes Charles' much more compelling to me is that Edwin never had anyone he could trust: he grew up with distant parents who i imagine he saw rarely and could not confide in, then he went to school and was immediately recognized as other in a way he had not fully realized of himself yet and was killed for it, and then comes hell and well who can u trust in hell? Certainly not the things that chase you until your legs ache, and even if your compatriots in the whole ordeal are as innocent as you, trapped in the same technicality, what is the good of trusting them, when they are just as helpless as you?
But Charles? Everyone Charles was supposed to trust betrayed him. His parents were close to him, atleast somewhat, atleast his father was around enough to get sick of hearing owner of a lonely heart, and his mother was around enough to watch his father beat him and be silently horrified and ultimately not do anything about it, maybe she stepped in once and we just never saw it, but I wouldn't bet on it, Charles' mom is 'quiet' that's her defining feature to Charles not protective or gentle just 'quiet', then Charles gets to school and he is popular he has friends! He has people who care for him (or should maybe, as long as he's good at sports like he's needed to be) and then he stands up for one person, because he has always wanted to be good and maybe he trusts himself to do it just this once and his friends kill him and his own actions signed the death warrant and he cannot even trust himself to do the right thing properly (it never got better and then you died)
And maybe, maybe Edwin does it too, with less intention to hurt, and with less knowledge but Charles and Edwin trust eachother maybe more than anything (maybe Charles would sooner slip away from earth's gravity than stop putting his trust in Edwin who he thinks is good and smart and brills and aces) and maybe Edwin still looks at Charles trying to protect him after Charles has had maybe the worst week of his existence and says "that was a bit...... extreme" and Edwin still promises Charles can tell him anything while hiding himself in a way that makes Charles feel untrustworthy
So yeah I'll never stop thinking about the tragedy of Charles Rowland actually 👍 think about him with me
21 notes
·
View notes
beauty and beast au but Claire’s the one cursed because she’s the only one I can see literally pissing a sorceress off enough to get cursed. (If we’re going off the original movie Jim would probably offer them a hot meal and a room for the night, knowing him he’d make everything super accommodating)
135 notes
·
View notes
god tywin lannister deserved worse
just remembering elias death and i wanna puke and the way tywin talks about elia and what happened is so damn gross
but rip tommen and myrcella we all know what’s about to happen in the next book :/
the cycle of violence just keeps spinning and damn you tywin for beginning it
(i got a bit crazy in the tags 💀)
23 notes
·
View notes
wanted to post the royals and co. as a set for reference, though the only new things here are the king+queen and koe's updated design :p also most of them didn't get little infoboxes so those will be a first under the cut here ^_^
Name: Andromeda (Andy)
Name origin: The Andromeda Galaxy, named for the mythical princess
Pronouns: She/her
Age: 20
Title: Heir apparent
Weapon: Flamberge (Same as her mom's)
Ethos (Power): None
Flaw power is based on: N/A
Notes: She wants to go on adventures someday, and make a lot of friends, and be normal. So please drop the "Your highness" and call her Andy!
Name: Cepheus
Name origin: The constellation Cepheus, the king
Pronouns: He/him
Age: 54
Title: King
Weapon: Scepter
Ethos (Power): Authority (The ability to control people’s actions through his words, but not their minds)
Flaw power is based on: His controlling and paranoid nature
Notes: He prefers not to use his ability unless it seems necessary, but ends will justify the means.
Name: Cassiopeia
Name origin: The constellation Cassiopeia, the queen
Pronouns: She/her
Age: -
Title: Queen
Weapon: Flamberge
Ethos (Power): Alis (The ability to generate wings)
Flaw power is based on: Her overconfidence in her own abilities, ironically like a completely different winged mythological figure...
Notes: Before being the Queen, she was the Hero.
Name: Koeia/Koe
Name origin: The star Koeia, whose name literally means "Star"
Pronouns: She/her
Age: 20
Title: Maid/Andromeda's lady in waiting
Weapon: Twin Sickles
Ethos (Power): Blessing (She can make others more powerful through cheering them on)
Flaw power is based on: Her Obsequiousness
Notes: She assures you her devotion to the princess is strictly for non-homosexual reasons
Name: Perseus/Percy
Name origin: The constellation Perseus, the hero
Pronouns: He/him
Age: 21
Title: 1st Knight/Andromeda's personal guard
Weapon: Harpē sword
Ethos (Power): Divine swordstrike (An all-powerful swing of the sword with no limit)
Flaw power is based on: His incredible arrogance and show-offishness
Notes: He assures you that his showy devotion to the princess is as heterosexual as it seems. Also he's the cousin Io from Nova Stella
Name: Ursa
Name origin: Ursa major, the big dipper.
Pronouns: She/her
Age: 38
Title: Major
Weapon: None
Ethos (Power): Bear-handed (Her claws are unbreakable and can slice through any material)
Flaw power is based on: Her hyper-diligence. Her ruthless devotion and adherence. Literally nothing could ever stand in her way.
Notes: She’s the mama bear of Kochab (Ursa minor) from the timber scouts
27 notes
·
View notes
Re-reading vol 10 of Kamisama kiss is amazing… it’s so fucking fruity
Tomoe turning into Nanami to try seducing Jiro is amazing, truely taking advantage of the genderfluidity of kitsune, I love it
(Sorry about the image quality, it’s dark and I’m tired)
And then my favourite past ship in this fandom…
You can’t be a demon lord in Japan without being at least a tad fruity, the ridiculously strong bond with one person and one person only is very bisexual and autism…
(Sesshōmaru does this too)
7 notes
·
View notes
I started a comfort movie watch party the other day and I finally got round to finishing The LEGO Ninjago Movie again and GOSH <3 I love her so much I forgot how much it means to me she's actually so special <333
6 notes
·
View notes
its really interesting to me how the resident vampires in general of gg and bb have such completely different ideologies. mostly in reference to slayer and rachel but i think this somewhat extends to clavis also bc iirc he wasnt an observer but still kinda played by the same rules. theres at least a plot reason for rachel not to stick her nose into anything plotwise but she still kinda does anyway and i think even if she didnt have the bystander restrictions she wouldnt deign to interact with anyone all that often. i like the dichotomy of the alucards' general attitudes towards humans being at least moderately scornful and superior to some extent even if not actively despite still ultimately wanting to help out (mostly rachel tbh but theres still elements of the typical fiction vampire superiority complex type shit just in general vibes wise for all three of them, esp in relation to like. fuzzy) and slayer's attitude that humanity is a beautiful thing and wanting to help the people he comes across despite having no particular incentive to do so aside from personal fascination and goodwill. rachel already built in having some level of scorn for humans as lesser and also having ample incentive to never interfere with the main storyline as it carries out but doing it anyway because despite these things she still cares despite the active threat to her Literal Existence vs slayer having no skin in the game either way if he does or doesnt help anyone out but still deciding to try to help others find their way regardless just because if nothing else its the most interesting thing to do from his perspective. he has no external motivation TO or NOT TO interfere with anything, its just essentially long term people watching and hed rather do good than do nothing
8 notes
·
View notes
2024 reads / storygraph
Song of the Huntress
historical fantasy set in 8th century Britain
follows three characters:
a woman who has spent centuries leading the wild hunt & reaping souls after being tricked into it, who disguises herself as a human to enter the kingdom
the queen of Wessex who never lives up to the demands of the court, despite leading their people in battle - and after a battlefield defeat they turn against her
and her husband, the king, deals with magic and political upheaval as his brother tries to usurp him and conflict arises between new and old religions
bi woman MC, lesbian MC, ace man MC
11 notes
·
View notes
having kara zor-el thoughts today about her getting out of her ship, and she does not yet know what she is doing so years after she was supposed to. she is trying to focus not on what she's lost, but what she still has, and her first thought is "kal can't sleep without a lullaby, i need to find him and sing him to sleep, he must be so scared and alone" because she is scared, she is alone, she wants nothing more than for someone to sing her to sleep, but it will never happen again, and if she amounts to anything now that the future she was supposed to have is gone, she will do it for her little cousin, who will never even know krypton if not for her
but her cousin is not the little baby she used to babysit, he is a grown adult, older than kara is, and she wonders how the people who took care of him got him to sleep without knowing the kryptonian lullabies he was used to (how will she sleep now?), how quickly kal adapted to the lullabies of earth instead (did he forget the sound of his home entirely?), or who she would have to sing to sleep now that kal-el doesn't need her (who can she ever share with? will she forget, too?)
3 notes
·
View notes
whenever i see people like "ITS STILL GOING?!?!?!?!?" about a series they liked in middle school that i currently like i giggle but that is exactly how i feel about hermitcraft. i watched that shit in season 4 and now theyre on season TEN? WHAT?
5 notes
·
View notes
I don’t often think I’m upset at not having a good relationship with my parents but sometimes it really fucking hits me that I don’t have a good mom I don’t have a dad I’ll never experience having a good parent and someone I can lean on like that and I get… really upset
2 notes
·
View notes
Yet another beautiful day to have the Maxwel tag blocked (can't see half of the posts in the Wendy tags)
2 notes
·
View notes