#tbk in character

[the-broken-knight]

have you ever wondered what the abyss was like before the vessels were even an idea? That, maybe, the abyss was a true chasm, and the sea of void we see now is but a shore for the real lake? What relics would hide down there, do you think, in our birthplace?

(-asking in character via one of my ocs, the void twister)

Ah… hm… quite the… er… number of complex questions you ask of me… unfortunately, none of which I can provide a concrete answer for. My sincere apologies…

[doodlesnoff]

Remember the five minutes in Oleander Sword where everything was fine, and then nothing devastating ever happened to these characters 🙃

[remarcely]

Something was itching me about Kipperlilly as a character for a while that I couldn't place down but I just got it.

There is so much of a connection between her storyline and the radicalization a white suburban kid can have to something like white supremacy that it's not even that deep, it's surface level.

Think about it:

She has a strong hatred for a minority kid in her school because he's got great grades and is viewed as a hero

She's envious of the hardships he's gone through and starts hating her family for being so 'normal' (a lot of white people can feel angry about their identity and what they think is a lack of a culture because they 'don't feel oppressed enough' to justify their own feelings of unfairness)

She takes all that anger and infects the people around her, hurting them and 'radicalizing' a few others

Is so insistent that this random kid had an unfair start because of his family situation that she wants to permanently change the bylaws in her school so he's put at a crazy disadvantage, just so she feels like she has an upper hand (think of racist people being mad that there's more POC going to college and crying that they're only getting in because they're a minority, ignoring the real work those students put it despite the disadvantages they might have faced)

She doesn't do any self introspection, doesn't decide to put more effort into her grades or personal relations, she takes that hatred and lets it poison her from the inside out. She rants about fairness when she doesn't put the work in and chooses to despise the people that do, just because they're not as miserable as her.

Her guidance counselor doesn't know how to combat that anger because he doesn't agree with her politics, a creepy adult in her life recognizes her hate and takes advantage of it to stir up the flames, we don't even see her parents but it's safe to say they're not exactly involved or watching her.

I don't know, I'm just annoyed because I keep seeing people say 'if you hate Kipperlilly that's just misogyny' as if she is not a genuinely hate-able character.

You can hate a woman for being evil, you're allowed.

And on the whole 'redemption' thing, sure that's entirely possible but let's face it. You cannot force someone to change, that's not how redeeming yourself works, you have to want it. Kipperlilly has no desire to change because she believes she is right. What use is it to her to abandon a worldview that suits desires her so well?

There was no way that could have been covered in an epilogue well enough to justify it and do you really think all the people that had their lives ruined and were literally murdered (Lucy, Oisin, Ivy, Ruben, Mary Ann, Buddy, etc.) would be bending over backwards to check on their killer?

[ominous-horse-noises]

not done talking ab fhjy actually so i'll just say some of you guys who go on about how you could've done better themes and narrative arcs can't even think critically about the one in front of you.

i do wish that the other bad kids had interacted with their foils more this season because it was fun seeing them trade insults, but i also dont think it would've done much for them. i mean, people forget the tbks did try to turn reuben early on (they literally saved him from grix even though it was his fault he showed up trying to kill people). adaine thought oisin was cool and tbks were onboard with thinking maybe he wasn't that bad, and then he sent his grandma to murder them and their entire school. fabian tried to get an 'in' with ivy and it nearly cost him a genuine relationship with a character who had a way better chance of helping them figure things out without the risk of being betrayed. kipperlilly had an ego-driven hateboner for riz since BEFORE the rage stars and killed her own party member in cold blood just to stick it to kristen, and you're telling me that she could've been my little ponyied into giving up her chance to squash the symbol of all her inadequacy? buddy and maryann are the only rat grinders who havent fucked them over meaningfully and guess what? they're not thrilled about having to kill them- they're actively avoiding targeting them! almost like theyre capable of distinguishing between someone not on their side and someone who's proved to be a threat!

brennan made it pretty clear that trying to befriend trgs in their rage forms was futile and actively punished it ingame. you can have your opinions of that, but it definitely had a narrative point: if you get rage starred, you cant be 'this isnt youuuu'd out of it. you think ONLY of rage, and rage can't be reasoned with. it's arguably worse than death, bc at least someone can revivify you and there's no lasting consequences. think about how hard brennan was trying to push the ihs into taking rage tokens. he knew exactly how dire he'd made the consequences and that was on purpose. the season has no stakes if you can just talk your way out of being rage starred bc tbks could save each other easily. the whole climax literally can't happen if trgs arent being evil bc porter can't be a living god of rage without followers. tbks hating trgs isnt a flaw in the story: it IS the story.

[lesfleursdumal77]

some sketches w dostoyevsky's characters!

the fact that my literature teacher and I are ivan fans makes me giggle

[yvehattan]

Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov

[girlmetamorphed]

dostoevsky be like maslow’s hierarchy of needs but it’s just interrupting whatever it’s being narrated to specify that the young male character is hot as fuck

[literarylumin]

I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies - I exist. I'm tormented on the rack - but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar - I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

©️ All photos are from Pinterest

[gegengestalt]

Posting here my Katerina/Grushenka alternate universe (?) two years after in which they move in to live together (explanation below)

The idea behind it is that the escape plan made by Katerina and Ivan succeeded, but not completely; denying Mitya and Grushenka the possibility of going to America and forcing them to live inside Russia as fugitives. They get married and their first daughter is born a year after, but having to live dangerously leads to Mitya's death (I thought of him dying at the hands of bandits, a heroic death he may like to compensate him for dying for yuri, but it doesn't matter that much).

Grushenka is left widowed and impoverished, and her wandering leads her to a village where she lives badly. Eventually, Katerina, aged 22, visits the village and they run into each other and catch up. After the events of the book, Katerina let Ivan go, realizing he won't accept her hand after all she's hurt him. She decides to spend some time taking care of herself and doing philantropy, and that led her to that village. Much has changed, but there's still tension between them.

Katerina ends up offering Grushenka to come live with her. Grushenka knows Katerina and is aware that she's doing it to feel magnanimous being the saviour of her former rival, but she accepts her offer for her little daughter (who I call Lukyasha). She's a proud woman, but she can't pass the opportunity to give Lukyasha a good life.

So the two young women end up living together in Katerina's current residence, a nice dacha with a garden left to her by a dead aunt, and end up growing closer, for better or worse. Their friendship blooms into something more that they are not ready to accept at first, but they also have to face their past resentment and the internalized misogyny they project onto each other. They first realize their attraction to each other when Grushenka, after having flirted with a servant for some time to make Katerina paranoid and restless because she offended her in an argument, confesses she did that just so Katerina wouldn't stop thinking about her. And they seek comfort in each other.

I could go on thinking of ideas of future conflicts such as Katerina still thinking of getting married while she's in a secret relationship with Grushenka and how Grushenka's attachment issues clash with Katerina's narcissism, or something more wholesome such as Katerina being called "mama" by Lukyasha as well, but this is getting longer than I expected lmao. Maybe another day.

[inkfeatherz]

hrngh.... silly

silly goober...

[theinsomniacindian]

Characters who come off as cold and indifferent but are compassionate and soft inside>>>>

[the-broken-knight]

Might I inquire as to what this… Pride Month… is all about?

[doodlesnoff]

unleashing all the Jasmine Throne drawings that have sat 95% finished for months

[sad-eyed-lady-of-the-paperbacks]

Chapter 4 of my retelling that follows the plot of The Brothers Karamazov from Grushenka’s perspective is now posted!

If you have time to read and even leave a little comment, it helps me more than you’ll ever know.

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, author, and book names under the cut

Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor- Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Malini- The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

[confessionofanardentheart]

Prologue: Author's Note

I open the first page of the book and see the Bible verse in John 12:24: " Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." The context of the verse is this:

But Jesus answered them by saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. The one who loves his life loses it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life. [...] (Translation: New American Standard Bible)

Jesus foretells his own death. Resurrection, boundlessness, eternal life. The one who loves his life loses it. Or is it "soul"? It's not the last time we'll see this verse, so more on that later. Onto the author's note, then!

The anonymous narrator starts a dialogue with us from the start, inviting us to dedicate our time to this story in the youth of Alexey Fyodorovich and perhaps coming to find something special about him, this young man described as modest and undefined -something special that exists in his character as well as outside himself. He compares the reader to "Russian critics", as if expecting judgment to be passed by anyone who opens the book.

One important consideration about the narrator is that he is not the voice of a writer of novels, taken as a character himself, but the voice of a journalist, or a "biographer" of Alexey, as he calls himself. The narrator of The Brothers Karamazov delivers the facts of the Karamazov case, the episode in Alexey's youth, via gossip, testimony, great details about the characters' personal conversations and convictions and pieces of information from varied sources. The tone is inconsistent, just like Dostoevsky's collections of newspaper articles. It's easy to think of the narrator's allusion to a second novel as an artistic project spoken by the author himself. As for the second book, I've come to think over time that Dostoevsky might have changed his mind about it halfway through. There is no first- hand information about it, and even that isn't reliable enough if we consider how the artist works. All we have is an early glimpse into a peculiar event in the life of a youth of the 1860s.

I invite you to see this book as something similar to a documentary with its own narrative. This narrator is not the only one writing "novels".

-----------------------

Links: Full Bible chapter, John 12 NASB

@keepingupwiththekaramazovs