crimes book 3 is happening everyone shut the FUCK up

Blades of Light and Shadow 2 ad with release date

Y'all know how peak this all is if you have a nb/m!MC and a m!Trystan.

Noah/MC makes me a little crazy. childhood friends, shared trauma and loss, not talking for years because of said trauma, slowly becoming friends again, mutual pining, bad decisions born of grief, more trauma, self sacrifice. If Noah becomes the shadow ghost it's an act of penance, he can't undo the hurt he's caused but he can end it, be the last person that gets hurt. If MC becomes the shadow ghost, it's forgiveness, selflessness, desire to protect others even Noah who betrayed them and all their friends.

And when the ghost of the one who sacrificed themselves shows up and they're losing who they are the life of the one who lived goes on pause to keep their dead friend, the person they loved, from fading completely out of existence. The only thing that matters is finding a way to bring them back.

the whole "grief is love with nowhere to go" of it all.

connor and jocelyn drop by pine springs to recruit the vances (but since the vances are siblings they’re also insufferable)

modern choices books are so fucking bleak bro they're never gonna make a guy like andy kang again like with their current design philosophy? they're not gonna put in the effort to include a short trans dude built like a brick shithouse again even as a nonromanceable npc because apparently every character in choices can only have like one of four preset body types now

i guess in the newer books you can customize LIs with different body types and pronouns but there's no heart to it. you have the option to make them trans and non-white but they're not designed + characterized with that option in mind. it's not the same as seeing andy's sprite for the first time and realizing that he's wearing a binder under his basketball jersey. hearing him talk explicitly about how difficult it is growing up asian and trans in a mostly-white small town and feeling like he has to work three times as hard to make up for it, to seize every fucking opportunity that gets dangled in front of his face because no one's gonna give him a chance otherwise. instead we just get mass-produced paper dolls and the writers still mess up their pronouns in the coding. It's Bleak

Trystan x Gabriel by artbyainna (IG)

This is my birthday present to myself this year and I legit cannot hang onto it until my actual birthday because, one , that is soooo far away, and, two, because it turned out even better than I imagined it would! (I tired to keep it and I think I made it four whole days with it before giving in.)

So enjoy this amazingness because I must share it with the world!

finished my blades reread

@playchoicesconfessions mods when they get another 5 paragraph essay on old vs new books

idk to me idk why ppl are saying mc and trystan seem different in this book bc ppl just. Change? sometimes they fight and grow apart and want different things and that’s ok? it’s ok that mc and trystan aren’t on the same page bc not every couple has to agree all the time? and i don’t think it makes either of them ooc. plus i think it’s been established that neither of them handles big changes very well so idk! just my two cents!

mc is wrong for assuming that trystan would go back to ny with them (unless they've had this convo before which i don't think they did?) and trystan is also kind of wrong for thinking that mc would stay but only because we should all know that mc won't ever quit being a pi in new york.

i was really excited for book 2, even tho i realized we were gonna have to do this whole drama, but now that we're actually doing it for real...

castles crumbling by taylor swift & haley williams is so trystan thorne post exile!! like look:

then THIS:

the way maggie & im sure some other people in trystan’s life tried to help them but they were completely ignored until they all eventually gave up on them. except mags she’s always there for them despite how much a nuisance they are <3

HELLOO!! the way all the siblings like bas & vasili (i don’t trust that mf) were the foes that watched trystan’s reign end….. something trystan never thought would happen.

and then THIS!!! :

going insane thanks for asking :)

and then FINALLY this cute little nail in the coffin that is my heart:

the way this could 100% be directed at the mc because as much the mc is the one who appears and acts closed off, trystan is the same way. except they just cover it up in a veneer of nonchalance & charming attitude. they’re truly scared of letting people in….. of seeing the real them. until…….

OH- 🥺

Ok but as sad as it is and as eager as I am for them to get their HEA … the angst is 🤌 Delicious.

Her ❤️

I kinda love when she calls us little detective. It reminds me of 'Kit'. I feel it's endearing since we know she respects us.

I am SCREAMING over the fact that the writers could not remember Trystan's middle name from Book 1.

Unless it's significant to the story's plot, that is full-on embarrassing.

But I wouldnt be surprised if they did forget considering their books recently have had issues with grammar, spelling, and proper sentence structuring.

And is the “Cordonian intelligence” that’s ‘better’ in the room with us now?