thatnerdywitch

[thatnerdywitch]

Y'all. 😭😭😭😭

[thatnerdywitch]

So hey guys, I did something. 😅 Follow me on TikTok or Insta to stay up to date!

@tricia.m.books on both!

[thatnerdywitch]

So this is a hard post for me to make. (super self conscious here!) I've been debating over even doing it, but I finally decided to just get on with it and spill the beans.

I am writing a novel! It will actually be a series. (Fantasy romance, ACOTAR lovers will enjoy it I think.)

I drew some inspiration from Eve for my MC. They actually share a first name. Haha

Anyway, I won't be spamming about that here, but if you're interested in following along and finding out more about it you can follow me on TikTok!

If not, that's totally okay! I still try to get more active here as time allows, as I had planned to do already. I am knee deep in edits right now so I can hopefully be published by the end of the year, so it'll be sporadic at best fit a won't though. 💜

https://tiktok.com/@tricia.m.books

[thatnerdywitch]

The Evermore Grimoire: Mythology

Ceridwen was the goddess of rebirth, transformation and inspiration in Celtic Mythology. She was also a powerful Welsh sorceress who had a great cauldron (The Awen) of poetic inspiration, which was one of her main symbols, that she used to create potions, including the ability to imbue wisdom, beauty, and prophecy. In one story a potion mixture had to be boiled for a year and a day. She set Morda, a blind man, to tend the fire beneath the cauldron, while Gwion Bach, a young boy, stirred the concoction. The first three drops of liquid from this potion gave wisdom; the rest was a fatal poison. Three hot drops spilled onto Gwion’s thumb as he stirred, burning him. He instinctively put his thumb in his mouth, and gained the wisdom and knowledge Ceridwen had intended for her son. Realising that Ceridwen would be angry, Gwion fled. She chased him. Using the powers of the potion he transformed into a hare. She became a greyhound. He became a fish and jumped into a river. She transformed into an otter. He turned into a bird; she became a hawk. Finally, he turned into a single grain of corn. Ceridwen then became a hen and being a goddess (or enchantress, depending on the version of the tale), she found and ate him without trouble. But because of the potion he was not destroyed. When Ceridwen became pregnant, she knew it was Gwion and resolved to kill the child when he was born. However, when he was born, he was so beautiful that she could not do it. So Ceridwen threw him in the ocean instead, sewing him inside a leather-skin bag. The child did not die, but was rescued on a Welsh shore (near Aberdyfi) by a prince named Elffin ap Gwyddno; the reborn infant grew to become the legendary bard Taliesin.

artwork by Irenhorrors gif by kitchen ghosts

[thatnerdywitch]

“I was trying to chart out the arc of [Jack’s] romance, which for much of the development - it was actually very late that it became a male/female-only romance,” Brian Kindregan tells me. Kindregan was the lead writer for Jack. “She was essentially pansexual for most of the development of that romance.”

“Mass Effect had been pretty heavily and really unfairly criticized in the US by Fox News, which at the time… maybe more people in the world thought that there was a connection between reality and what gets discussed on Fox News,” Kindregan continues. “The development team of Mass Effect 2 was a pretty progressive, open-minded team, but I think there was a concern at pretty high levels that if [the first] Mass Effect, which only had one gay relationship, Liara - which on paper was technically not a gay relationship because she was from a mono-gendered species - I think there was a concern that if that had drawn fire, that Mass Effect 2 had to be a little bit careful.”

Interestingly enough, Courtenay Taylor - who played Jack in Mass Effect 2 - also expressed that she was originally supposed to be a pansexual character. In a recent chat, Taylor said:

“It’s funny to me because my understanding was always that she was pansexual. So I don’t know if that’s just something I inferred from the character or something that she said that maybe got cut. I was surprised there wasn’t a female romance possible because that was my understanding. I think it was the time, you know? That was, what - 2008/2009? The industry has changed exponentially since then, and BioWare was leading the charge on that. I don’t know if it came down to a budget constraint or maybe someone being like ‘this is too obvious’ because everyone was like ‘of course she’s a lesbian.’ But my sense was always that she was [pansexual] and it just didn’t get followed through. Of course, the community modded it immediately so you can have it your way.”

As Jack’s writer, Kindregan explains that he didn’t necessarily agree with the decision to change her sexuality. He understands why it happened, and says “it wasn’t like some anti-gay person high up on the Mass Effect 2 team saying, ‘we’re not going to have that’.” Instead, it had to do with the firestorm of controversy that Mass Effect had received back in 2007, and attempting to minimize the amount of critique that would be directed towards the community by outlets like Fox News again. “The short version is, a lot of us were asked pretty late to focus the relationships on a more traditional kind of vector,” Kindregan says.

“I’ve definitely heard a lot from people who were surprised that Jack turned out to not be open to that,” he continues. “I understand why. I would say that there were a lot of seeds planted in her conversations that certainly implied that she was pansexual - she once specifically references being part of a thrupple. She says there was a guy and a woman she was running with that invited her into their robberies and into their bed. She definitely references those things. That was explicitly to start sending the message that yes, this is a character who is pansexual. In the eleventh hour revision of cleaning that up, she’d already been partially recorded with voiceover. Not all of that could be changed.

“I would say even with the things I could change, and I don’t know if this was the right decision or not, I still saw her as a character with an edge,” Kindregan says. “Not edgy, but with an edge of not following traditional norms. I think I might have, even during the revision process, kept some of that stuff in there with a sense of like yeah, this is a person who’s been around and done a lot of things, went off the farm and down to Paris.”

Ultimately, though, Jack became a romance option that was exclusively available for male Shepard, despite the fact that both her writer and actor agree that she was originally supposed to be pansexual. 2010 was only three years after the infamous Fox News Mass Effect debacle, and so BioWare was reluctant to follow through on some of the ideas that were specifically put in place early in development.

[on Samara] [She] expresses that she has feelings for you but ultimately turns you down - Kindregan compares it to someone saying, sure, I’ll be with you, but I’m in love with this other person and I’ll ditch you for them if they come calling.

“I’ve worked with lesbian developers who have come up to me and said like, ‘Why is Jack not into me?’” Kindregan says. “And I have to say ‘I’m so sorry, it’s partially my fault.’ But I still stand by the thing of keeping her with a more varied background. Maybe someday Jack will be portrayed as pan.”

[source]

[thatnerdywitch]

BRIDGERTON - Diamond of the First Water

[thatnerdywitch]

it's hard missing a friendship that probably wasn't that good to start with.

[thatnerdywitch]

Y’all want to party with Dionysus the god of wine and drunkenness and orgies but when it’s Dionysus the god of roving madwomen ripping people limb from limb, yall suddenly don’t know her?

[thatnerdywitch]

[thatnerdywitch]

© Margarita

[thatnerdywitch]

[thatnerdywitch]

“Going to the woods is going home.”

— John Muir (via w–o–o–d–l–a–n–d)

[thatnerdywitch]

DO NOT SUPPORT SALVATION ARMY 

[thatnerdywitch]

i have never seen so many pretty girls in my life! on the contrary, you were dancing with the only handsome girl in the room. she is the most beautiful creature i have ever beheld - but her sister elizabeth is very agreeable. perfectly tolerable, i daresay, but not handsome enough to tempt me. 

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE dir. joe wright

released 16 september, 2005

[thatnerdywitch]

[thatnerdywitch]

[thatnerdywitch]

Cassandra: I AM LOST FOR WORDS!

Varric, narrating: Despite being lost for words, Cassandra yelled at me for the next 10 minutes.