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Round 2

Judging by the first round, I think I know which way this is going to go...but there's still a chance the old man can win it

2000's

2020's

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In the kitchen straight up "chopping it". And by "it" haha well. Let justr say. My vegetble

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you! the person reading this! please tell me one good thing that happened to you today

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The Familiar Aesthetic

The Familiar it's a book by Leigh Bardugo, an historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

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Having finally read Some Desperate Glory, I highly recommend it for lovers of:

- difficult hateable women with coherent psychologies

- actually suppressed queerness

- child soldiers

- horrible little genius nerd boys who are not incels but are the worst kinds of cynic and nihilist and who could be so different (honestly I love my horrible women and enbys but reading a different sort of horrible man than usual is also deeply important to me)

- people who deserve better and a genuine uncertainty about whether they will get it

- a really solid depiction of cult and fascist organisation and ideology

- a space adventure romp that is deeply sad and hopeful

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sorry we mistook your boyfriend for a cinnamon roll and we sold him with the chametz. yeah it's just a temporary agreement, you can have him back in eight days. he'll be okay he's safe in a locked cabinet with the pasta

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Women want one thing and it's quite obvious, A large affordable interconnected North American Rail Network

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wdyt would happen if someone who works under Aleksander had already seduced Alina and had her loyalty. would he be content with her playing along with his schemes because of that? Eg someone from the Little Palace was already kinda her friend before they even knew who she was (met because she was a cartographer or whatever) and she was clearly into him etc.

ah, the old 'what if Mal was the Darkling's employee' AU ;)

It's an interesting question! In the books, the Darkling cut off Alina's only relationship with someone outside his control because he wanted her isolated and dependent on him. But he could have kept Alina much more isolated than he did – Genya did not have to be Alina's friend. It's not exactly what you're asking but if Alina had admitted to herself that she had fallen for Genya, I think he would have been happy to use Genya and manipulate Alina from a little more of a distance.

The problem with either Genya or someone else at the Little Palace as the means to get her to do what he wanted would be how long it would work for. If she started getting ideas of her own – if, for instance, Genya wasn't able to talk Alina into being down for mass murder – then he'd need to make a clean cut and step in. I do see him in the books as leaning towards .... simplicity, let's call it, in many of his decisions with Alina, often at the expense of rationality. Will it be the easiest way to accomplish what he wants? Sounds good! Does it involve killing a bunch of people, stealing Alina's power, or skinning her alive? Literally irrelevant to the question, not sure why anyone would even ask.

So any relationship he felt he could easily leverage to his advantage, I feel like he would. And whether that meant, at some point, threatening to kill or torture the friend Alina had made ... well, it was a good friendship while it lasted.

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No-context WIP tag game

tagged by @jammerific!

Post a few sentences of your latest unposted WIP without any context

It was surprisingly easy to ignore the Darkling's words, in the end. Zoya barely thought about them that night as she lay awake in the dark, alone – she hardly considered them as her maids helped her bathe and dress and prepare for the day. She did not ruminate during her morning meetings, did not let her thoughts change the taste of her midday meal. Through sheer force of will, she would forget what he said, would dismiss the idea that this was a situation that hatred could not fix, a state of affairs that could not be resolved by spite. 

tagging @hannahofathousanddays @dreamsatdusk and @critters-n-such if you want to play!

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Rami Kadi | Les Miroirs

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ok my morning smoothie recipe @hannahofathousanddays since you asked nicely. and for anyone else who needs smoothie inspiration –

1 cup frozen spinach 1 cup frozen blueberries 5-6 frozen strawberries part of a golden beet (this is a good banana replacement. still sweet and creamy but without a strong flavor) I microwave all the frozen produce to take the edge off. people hate on it but if I use them straight out of the freezer I get so cold my fingernails literally turn blue. you do what works for you enough Ripple milk to cover the blender blades 1-2 heaping tablespoons each of chia seeds, cocoa powder, and nut butter (or tahini, walnuts, whatever) enough water to get the produce off the sides of the blender and to get the desired texture

I've been having this same smoothie with minor variations for breakfast for about seven years. recently though, this hasn't been enough to see me through to lunch on its own, especially on mornings when I lift – I've started throwing in a scoop of Garden of Life protein powder and it makes a big difference

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Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”

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KABHI KHUSHI KABHIE GHAM... [कभी ख़ुशी कभी ग़म] (2001) dir. Karan Johar

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Leigh saying The Familiar was her most character driven book has me very intrigued because I love how she writes her characters but I'm seeing a few mixed reviews for and now I'm confused if I should buy it. Curious to know your opinion.

I really enjoyed The Familiar! I'd give it a 4.5 star rating, I think, though it's hard because my expectations were so high going in. I will give a little more not-too-spoilery flavor to my thoughts under the cut but my answer standing on one foot is that I really recommend reading it.

I enjoyed the characters quite a bit – the main character felt a bit like what I'd hoped for for Alina. The book was character driven, and characters made choices that had consequences for the plot, and I thought it was really well done. There was one character storyline I was dissatisfied with how it played out but overall I found it quite satisfying! Leigh also said it was her most romantic book, and it was and it totally worked for me.

Without knowing what reviews you're talking about it's a little hard to say how much weight I'd give them. I skimmed Goodreads just now, though, and there are a two things I'll say to what I have seen there.

The first is that she did write a lot of the book without parentheticals. It's possible that if you didn't know what an auto de fe was before you read the book that you might not at the end – or you might have picked it up along the way. I read three books set during/about the Spanish Inquisition to prepare for The Familiar (hopeless Bardugo fan over here) so I wasn't caught off guard by most of it, but if you're completely unfamiliar with the Inquisition, Spain at the time, or with some Jewish traditions or Spanish terms, there may be things you don't understand that are not immediately followed by an explanation. That's actually a plus for me in a book, but I saw it bothered some people.

The second is some people thought the setting fell flat. That may be related to my first point – if you don't understand the references to what is happening at the time, you won't fully grasp the setting of the book. But, ultimately, I sort of agree – I did expect the setting to be more of a character than it ended up being. I think it was less of one in favor of the characters themselves being built out more, which I shan't complain about, but I do understand people expecting more than they got there.

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If I ask nicely will people reblog this and tell me what their most common breakfast is? Not your favorite necessarily, just what you have for breakfast most frequently? 🙏🏽

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How do you think things would go if Zoya was the Sun Summoner? How would things unfold and what sort of feelings would bloom between her and the dark dude?

Ooooh. This feels like a variation of 'what would happen if Alina had been gone to the Little Palace as a child?' ... Zoya and Alina were different as kids but there were also similarities: being discovered in untraditional ways, having no one in their life that matters other than one person they care about fiercely. We see Zoya as a child striving to matter, but if she'd been the Sun Summoner, she wouldn't have had to strive the same way, wouldn't have had to fight the way she did: she would have already mattered. And she probably could have visited her aunt as often as she wanted – like the Fold would keep the Sun Summoner away!

I do think we would have seen a young Sun Summoner Zoya be molded by the Darkling in a similar way to how she was in canon – we learn in RoW (rip me) that he even used the same "you and I are going to change the world" line with her. He would have played on her desire to be accepted and loved and also on her ambition; I think he would, ultimately, have been much more successful in his plans with a young Sun Summoner Zoya than an already-grown Alina.

I could certainly see them playing off each other as she got older. I'm less sold on if there would be a romantic aspect just because I don't think there would need to be – he had the chance to establish himself as an authority figure to Zoya, and she wouldn't have surprised or challenged him the way Alina did. If way down the line Zoya demanded more in a relationship with him, I could see him giving it – but with someone who he had the chance to mold and who went along with his plans, I don't see a romantic or sexual relationship being something he would have pursued independently of Zoya requiring it from him

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Bharatnātyam - Classical Dance If you opened the Shāstras and searched for the meaning of a Goddess, you would find a lady doing Bharatnātyam.

Artist: Rukmini Vijayakumar (via Instagram: Dancerukmini)