#the more i read this book the better it gets tbh

[poorlittleyaoyao]

Tbh, MDZS' female character count is uh. Pretty ttpical for danmei. MXTX improves somewhat with TGCF. But Word of Honor massively expanded a bunch of minor characters and even iirc genderflipped a couple to be women like Tragicomic Ghost, who is a minor male character in the book. Meatbun's 2Ha has a couple more because the cast is much bigger than MDZS' and its much longer, but I don't know that the ratio is much different, and Yuwu's female representation is downright dire.

Oh man, I almost went and tracked down Faraway Wanderers because Word of Honor was fun and I wanted more lore (and a better idea of what the main plot entailed because hoo boy do things get rushed there at the end when they ran out of money)... and then I found out that all the women I'd enjoyed so much either didn't exist in the novel at all or their roles had been GREATLY expanded, and my interested vanished completely. Yuwu I'm not familiar with, but even beyond the treatment of its female characters, everything I've heard about 2Ha has led me to believe that I'd only read it if someone paid me, and maybe not even then.

I get that it's a danmei genre convention, but literally nothing is lost by the hot men having female friends or relatives with narrative importance! If they were in a single-gender setting--the military, a boys' boarding school, a men's sports team, a monastery, any number of professions that were historically closed off to women--that'd be one thing, but when the entire world seems devoid of women, it's just... weird and alienating and raises a lot of questions from a story standpoint such as "why are all of these young noblemen unmarried given that producing an heir to ensure the sect or house's continued survival is one of their primary duties?" and "do any of these guys have moms?"

[angelsaxis]

"...[W]e must continue to challenge the societal arrangements that leads to preventable pain and suffering. Marriage can be quite beautiful and sacred, for example. Marriage can also privatize dependence: it encourages people to enter relationships for resources and benefits, like health care, savings, and tax deductions. I was nineteen years old when I got married, mostly informed by my faith tradition. I was also in love, but very poor, and marriage offered me a stability that I never had as a child. I was so lucky that the person I married was kind, thoughtful, and also very much trying to figure out his relationship to Christianity and his evolving manhood.

When we divorced nine years later and became friends and co-parents, I realized how the marital benefits I once aspire dot have did not make sense. I could remove him from my health insurance to account for the divorce, but I couldn't add any of my uninsured siblings, whom I would be related to forever. And our children had two options for insurance because they had parents who went to college and worked jobs that offered it, but independent contractors in my family did not have an option that wasn't a financial sacrifice.

If we focused on meeting the healthcare, employment, educational, and housing needs of people in society, then those who want to marry could more freely enter those relationships in their terms, and people who needed to escape because of violence could more easily leave without worrying what will happen if they get sick and need to see a doctor.

We should heed to calls for investment in the programs, opportunities, and laws that make everyone free and safe. Here too, universal basic income can help, allowing people to meet their basic needs and not rely on potentially sexually exploitative intimate relationships for income. Removing benefits from marriage accomplishes this, too. With universal health care, and other programs like free and quality childhood education, people vulnerable to violence have more free range to move, live, and practice healthy lifestyles."

-- Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

[aroaceleovaldez]

One of the both interesting and annoying things with Trials of Apollo is Apollo is an unreliable narrator who will entirely straight up lie to the audience.

Like, on one hand, yes technically that is what an unreliable narrator is, but generally with unreliable narrators you are able to parse that they’re being unreliable entirely within the contexts of the narrative and also parse the truth. A good example is actually Magnus Chase - he’s also an unreliable narrator. But he doesn’t wholly outright lie ever about random details. Magnus is somewhat coy when it comes to details about himself or his feelings, but its also generally very easy to see through his pretenses. When we’re introduced to him, he talks a lot insisting that he’s some type of tough loner guy on the streets, and isn’t super into touchy-feely stuff. Then we’re immediately introduced to his found family and spend the next two books seeing his found family grow and finally him literally win a fight with the power of friendship. He claims he’s totally independent, but then also talks about how he keeps sneaking into his uncle’s house and again, has two adoptive dads. We’re presented this information almost side-by-side, so while Magnus is an unreliable narrator, we as the audience are still receiving valid information. And then comparatively Percy is just almost entirely a truthful narrator. There’s never really a question of having to dispute the information he gives us.

Meanwhile, Apollo will exposition at the audience and we genuinely have no way of confirming or denying it, and we do know that he is blatantly lying about at least some of it, which makes basically all of the information entirely useless. The most notable example of this is Apollo spending three whole books referring to Artemis as his younger twin sister. Without contextual knowledge of Greek Mythology, specifically relating to the myth of Artemis and Apollo’s births, there is no reason for the audience to dispute this or not take this as fact when Apollo is presenting it as such. Then, in Tyrant’s Tomb when Artemis actually shows up, Apollo completely 180s into being truthful and referring to Artemis as his older twin. It honestly almost reads as just narrative inconsistency or textual error if you aren’t aware that Apollo is intentionally supposed to be lying to the audience.

And it’s annoying! Because we can’t take anything he says as fact most of the time! Like, we can presume it’s true, because we have nothing saying it’s not true until we do. But also, sometimes we do! Like with Artemis! So there’s a ton of little instances of having to go “Is this a retcon, new information, consistency error, or is Apollo just straight up lying and it will never get addressed?” We don’t know.

[zukkaoru]

the disparity in kudos between a skk fic and a fic for literally any other bsd characters/ship :/

[amethyst-halo]

my excerpt thoughts

[beneaththegildedmoon]

Look, maybe if I had read it by itself and not interleaved with the other books im reading atm it would have fared better, but y'all had me convinced The Secret History was some modern classic and I will not forgive you for it

[freaky-flawless]

If you're still doing the redesign suggestions maybe Robecca. She's was my absolute favorite as a kid and still is (with like 3 others but I Can't decide RIP)

Here she is! Finally!

This is my second drawing of her. The first one I did before I even started taking requests and I wasn't totally satisfied with it, and kept debating just posting it anyway. Ultimately I decided to just start over and I'm much happier with this one!

I adore Robecca, and it always kinda bothered me that the series never really acknowledged what a tragic character she is. This ghoul went through a lot, and we never got to see her get a happy ending. The fact that we never even see her get reunited with her father is a travesty.

More into her story under the cut.

As I previously hinted, after coming back to life, Robecca goes on to stay with the Stein's. For one thing, they were colleagues with her father, and she was already familiar with them from way back in the day. She was also the inspiration behind Frankie's creation, so they are more than happy to take her in. She shares Frankie's basement bedroom with them, and they, along with Hoodude become incredibly close, quick to regard one another as siblings.

Attending the school that she disappeared in again is a weird experience for her, and it's not made any easier given how much time has past and things have changed. Though she does take comfort in the fact that Bloodgood is still the Headmistress, as she was close to her father before he disappeared. For whatever reason though she looked as though she'd seen a ghost upon Robecca entering her office to re-enroll at the school, and ever since seemed to go out of her way to avoid her.

Robecca is seen as a sort of superhero by her peers, with her rocket boots and want to help others. It takes a while for her to be comfortable with SKRM again, considering what happened to her, but after some gentle coaxing from her ghoulfriends Rochelle and Venus, as well as Clawd Wolf, she does eventually give in, and her love for the sport is reignited. She becomes Clawd's co-captain, up until he graduates, in which Rochelle becomes her new co-captain.

Her father is always at the forefront of her thoughts, and she'll often spend time with Ghoulia slowly plotting out a search mission through the catacombs to find him. Although Robecca is plenty capable of fixing herself up, she will enlist the Ghoulia's help for the repairs she can't do herself. She's eternally grateful to her for bringing her back to life, as well as helping her adapt to modern technology.

Robecca has a lot of catching up to do, and a lot of issues to work through, but she came back to life with a very supportive friend group and family.

[illputdownmyrootswhenimdead]

someone: jkr is horrible-

me: yeah, i completely agree with you there

someone: -which is why you should stan uncle rick rick riordan instead :)

me:

[girl-bateman]

Feeling a debilitating sense of dread and despair 🤨 Which probably means nothing😍👍

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

I keep listening to different pieces of music that I love and then my brain comes in all helpful with 'this sounds like great music to die with doesn't it'

[lovvelorrn]

i've read 3 ya romance-ish books in the past 7 days or something and now i feel so weird lmao

[17yearcicada]

oh there's a new retelling of romeo and juliet where romeo is a pedophile. that's lovely. begins to tear flesh

[themyscirah]

Does anyone know if there was simonjess crumbs in the justice league book at the time or is it like just in their solo (meaning I need to reread that book again which I was already planning on doing but like still)

[ananas-pineapple-thing]

u know i’m not sure if it’s because i read the series pretty young but i never got into percabeth even though i like their characters and enjoyed the narrative of them growing up and getting together !🫣 i think it works for the story but i don’t have any strong feelings abt it

[sennik]

so, turns out the best cure for being depressed, overworked and uninspired really is working less, spending time with friends, and consuming media you actually like.

[caruliaa]

gonna ask my parents abt this tmrw bc a lot of the time theyll give us money for eid and also get my+my siblings one or two gifts each but idk if theyre gonna do that this year bc i dont even remeber if they did that last year but im gonna ask abt it bc i rly want the pibtlw art book so badly but i might be like heyy if ur going to also b getting us gifts as well as giving us money can i have that but if its the choice between the two im def asking for money but if i might spend some of it on the pibtlw art book even though i shld prob save.... the dilemma...