#steep-turn

[milquetoad]

of the many injustices put forth toward the show by fans i think the most overall damaging and telling of a complete lack of critical viewership is the idea that sam riegel builds his characters with nothing more than the bit in mind. like you are only telling on yourself if you think characters like scanlan shorthalt and veth brennato are one-dimensional and depthless

[bonefall]

where’s that little horror piece about kits never growing up in Starclan? because I remember it so vividly but I can’t find it.

The one about Bright Stream?

Weird that it's so hard to find! It's probably because it's got such heavy tags lmao.

I really mean it though like, canon's permakitten system and the idea that Bright Stream is up there, forever taking care of fetus children who were filled by sudden knowledge and yet never grow past that point absolutely horrifies me. Jesus Christ. I don't know how anyone reads that final scene in Path of Stars and isn't filled with itching, white-hot existential dread, man.

Sometimes you just gotta write horror about it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[cynthrey]

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THIS AU IS STILL ALIVE!

Sorry i havent updated since April. Had been doing my thesis from January to like 2 weeks ago and around April it killed my creativity, the whole complexity of this composition didnt really help either (if you listen closely you'll hear my sanity been slowly and painfully killed by this page, specially in the castle)

But anyway, Champions AU is back baby!

[abombihoney]

[pop-punklouis]

-

[romanceyourdemons]

discovering that my standard joke of (noir detective voice) “the mean streets of [benign suburb we’re currently in]” works a lot less well when we’re in a place that actually is known to have mean streets. “the mean streets of san francisco” just doesn’t have the same ironic ring

[iamthemaestro]

had a character development moment today where I realized maybe I simply do not have a healthy relationship to classical music anymore

[mykingdomforapen]

I've written 1 chapter of the new Link Click multichap fic and hoo boy. I foresee this fic having a long writer's commentary already... I might even do chapter notes on Tumblr each update at the rate that I'm going.

[fullyerecteggplant]

of course my lawn mower has to break down in the furthest corner of the yard

[magicalyaku]

Happy new year! After the slump of the previous months and my last artist alley of the year, I finally had a lot to read in December! I bought so many books in November, I had to get at least through a few in order to include them in my yearly awards. xD Work was still shit but reading was fun again. :D

Dark Heir (Dark Rise 2) (C.S. Pacat): This was my last book of 2023 and easily my most anticipated. And did it deliver! Left me emotionally devastated for days! xD Seriously, I don't want to know what my neighbors thought what was going on, in case they heard me going "Aaah! No! No no no nooooo! Kya! NOOOO!!" during two certain scenes. /D The nice thing about this series is that I have absolute faith in Pacat's ability to write it well und give me an outcome I am satisfied with. I mean, go look at Captive Prince. The way the relationship between Damen and Laurent develops (even after MAJOR shit going on between them!), the political threads and all that, it's just done very well. And now, here's the Dark Rise series and I sit and watch the spiral of doom the characters are caught up in it and apart from maybe Sinclair not a single one of them is fully good or bad. And it's sooo interesting (and emotionally devastating)!! Hng!! I would actually like to write much more about what I loved and suffered through, like the whole thing with the Visander situation and how Sarcean made all of his worst enemies because he just couldn't keep it in his pants. And James. James. And Cyprian! And everything. But I can't because whenever I try I still feel the excited giggles in my brain and can't have a coherent thought. It's great, but also ... Hnggg!!

The First and Last Adventure of Kit Sawyer (S.E. Harmon): This was fun! At some point early on I looked up what other books the author has written and it's more than ten and I thought "Yes! It feels like being written by someone with a lot of writing experience!" There's just something about the liveliness of the characters and the dialogues. Also so much adventure with a slightly different flavor than usual being set in the jungle and all, I loved it.

By any other Name (Erin Cotter): I wonder why all of my historical fiction books are set in England. This is another highly adventurous story. I was a bit surprised as one thing that's mentioned in the summary already only appears like after half the book. But other than that it was pretty good. It has spies and theatre and pretty nice characters. And I did not anticipate everything that happened which is good!

Wren Martin Ruins it all (Amanda deWitt): The author's previous book Aces Wild: A Heist was one of my top books in 2022, this one does not quite reach those heights but it was still very good and very enjoyable. Wren is such a messy and fun character. As reader I absolutely knew what was going on and who was writing with whom but it was nice to follow the characters' path to awareness. In a way Wren's aceness is not as heavy as in other books (see the next one for instance) but at the same time it deals with a few of the social issues a_spec people are faced with which was nice.

Just Lizzie (Karen Wilfrid): This is a middle grade book about a girl coming to terms with being ace. The heroine has a really nice character arc. And the other characters are sometimes what you expect them to be and sometimes they are not. And maybe … that's ok, right? And I loved it and I cried through half of the book. I guess, it hit home a little more heavily than I expected. :'D (Like that one time where Lizzie is wondering how she will spent Christmas when her parents aren't around anymore? Haaa. It had just been Christmas when I read this and I'm in my 30ies and my Dad is above 70 now so that is a concern I actually have, you know. It's not nice to be reminded. :'D) It's a really good book, I think, thoughtful and well put together and empowering, too.

A Hundred Vicious Turns (The Broken Tower 1) (Lee Page O'brien): Now this was difficult. The cover is gorgeous. Easily my favorite one this year. I only lament that there's no real gold printed. The wasted opportunity. yAy The content is … difficult. I like the story on a whole. The premise and the magic system are really interesting. The characters … were interesting as well? They're fine, their motivations are not easily seen which, in a plot full of mysteries, is actually quite okay. I just didn't build the emotional connection. There's also a lot of anxiety, especially on Rat's part. There was one bit in the writing style that irked me a little. The overuse of pronouns. Because Rat was the only one with 'they' and in most scenes it was only one other person with them, so there often really long stretches where only the pronouns would be used instead of the names. It wa snot confusing because you could easily tell the characters apart, but it felt weird. I'm very used to reading the names a lot. Oh well. It's not a fun read, but it is intruiging and I will read the next volume to see where it goes.

A Magic Steeped in Poison (The Book of Tea 1) (Judy I. Lin): I managed to squeeze in a YA heroine inbetween all the gay boys! And I liked it better than most other female-led YA fantasies I read recently. Doesn't mean I loved it, but Ning was pretty okay as a heroine. The thing is, the circumstances under which I started this book weren't the best and that probabbly reflected on the whole experience. I picked up the German audiobook for a very long bus trip, but listened to it only later while doing some hours of very boring tedious work. The audiobook itself was okay, except that the reader could not decide how to pronounce some names. For instance, Kang was Kong first, then Kuang before she settled on Kang. And that kind of thing drives me mad. How am I to connect with a character when I am left this uncertain how their name is?! The German translation also decided to leave some of the names in English (especially the teas) which in my opinion doesn't make sense because why would the teas in Fantasy-China have English names when everything else is either translated into German or left Chinese? D: I couldn't stand it and finally switched to my printed edition (in English). /D It got better from there, but it's hard to forget the echo. As for the story, I don't really like court intrigues. Cruelty and injustice are just things I really struggle with to read about. (They make me angry and I don't want to be angry at my books.) But it never tipped over the edge into annoying area. I have the sequel at home as well, so I'll it. The covers are beautiful after all.

That was 2023! Next up is my big Best and Worst award ceremony! uAu~

[female1-f1]

I think this sums up Merc fans’ lap one

[detentiontrack]

GUESS WHO JUST DROVE 7 MILES

[nyctophobia-au]

A tiny pk in a teacup

Shh, he's steeping.

[steves-strapcollection]

so i was watching some of my dashcam footage that i deliberately saved bc of Calgary Driver Shenanigans taking place in proximity to me and i straight up hate people who brake-check so much

pulling that shit is so dangerous, even at "low" speeds. and even if someone is riding your asshole hard, you don't brake-check them. as soon as you do a brake-check, you have now made yourself the more reckless driver in that equation.

you should never, ever do something to deliberately cause a collision when operating heavy machinery.

like, i cannot even fathom the kind of self-absorbed loser you have to be to play chicken like that in a way that could get someone fucking killed.

just... like... i keep thinking back to this accident that happened here one or two years ago, where a pick-up truck brake-checked a minivan on the highway in less than ideal driving conditions and the van spun out, and then rolled multiple times into the ditch, and one of the children in the van was ejected. the pick-up truck didn't even stop and as far as i'm aware was never even found. like that driver fucking killed a kid.... and for what? the driver of the van maybe pissed them off? was driving a bit too close? like please, if you are someone who brake-checks because you assume you'll be just fine if you get hit bc "lol i'm insured" you should always assume that the worse possible outcome could happen. when operating heavy machinery going more than 20mph around other people also operating heavy machinery going the same or higher speeds, you should always be thinking about the worst case scenario of pulling a dumbass move that affects multiple ppl.

like when you brake-check someone, you think this is a tussle that's just between you and that person, yeah? and you feel justified because maybe this person is driving too close, or they seem distracted, or maybe they pissed you off earlier, right? Oh, but I bet you looked all around, considered all of the variables, and determined that should an accident occur, it's only the two of you that's gonna have your day ruined, right? I'm sure you're cocky enough to think that. Like I'm positive (sarcastic) you've thought about all of these things before brake-checking:

the other vehicles in the road other than you and the person behind you

is there a big truck behind the person behind you that is going to have a fucking heart attack trying to stop?

the road conditions in general

what if the driver behind you doesn't have new tires? what if one of their tires blows out trying to brake and they spin out?

are their pedestrians you might be endangering if your stupid move causes an accident?

what if the other driver has kids in the car? passengers in general? your beef is with the driver, but causing an accident would be punishing their innocent passengers too

what if the accident you cause totals your car? are you able to be without a car?

what if the accident totals the other person's car? what if their livelihood depends on them having a car?

what if the other person doesn't have insurance? yeah, that's illegal, but it does you no good. if you think your insurance is going to pick up the tab in that case with no fight at all, you're naive as fuck. like unless you have complete car insurance and not just liability insurance, your insurance company will fucking fight any claim you make. even with complete car insurance, they fight claims. remember, car insurance companies are in the business of hoarding the money you pay them. they do not actually want to pay out.

what if the other driver has a dashcam and can definitively prove that you braked for no reason other than to endanger literally everyone else on the road?

like that's just some of the things to fucking consider re: brake-checking. and when the list of risks is that long while incomplete, what do you even gain by brake-checking?

brake-checking is petty, stupid, and fucking reckless. it can seriously injure people that aren't even involved in your beef, and it can even kill people. brake-checking is some of the most self-absorbed behaviour to have behind the wheel, and people who do it are fucking losers.

period.

even if the other driver is following too close, or driving aggressively. you don't make an already dangerous situation even more dangerous oh my fucking god like why isn't that common fucking sense.

[musicaldeductions]

We had to cut down the lilac tree at my nana’s grave today which is a bummer but! I’ve been wanting to try making stuff out of lilac flowers so I’m attempting two different attempts at simple syrup and an infused honey. I’m not sure making seven cups of syrup on my first go was exactly uh. The most wise decision however I had a lot of flower and not a lot of time to experiment

I’ve also got several sprigs in water, several drying on some strung up string, and a bunch sitting in the bag that I brought them home in because I couldn’t get around to doing anything with them. Rip. At least they smell good

[lady-lycany]

There's a thing I've learned over the years and I thought, I might share it. You know what's one of the best things you can do? Talk openly about your insecurities to others. The more you openly talk about yourself or make a little fun about your insecurities instead of trying to hide them, makes every interaction with others much more comfortable... at least in my opinion!