the gorgug-porter conversation is interesting to me because like. yea for the overwhelming majority of the conversation porter’s being shitty & trying to fit gorgug into a box that gorgug just does not fit into by trying to make gorgug’s relationship with his rage more focused on the aggression aspect of it. but then there’s also this specific thing that brennan brought up again in the ap, which is that gorgug’s relationship with his rage is wholly “this is a tool i use to protect my friends.” which isn’t a bad thing! but that’s his Whole relationship with it, & gorgug seems to place next to no value on his rage in relationship to himself. which is problematic, because it’s first & foremost his rage.

being raised in a household with a sort of toxic positivity largely meant that, whether or not it was his parents’ intention, gorgug internalized the message that more traditionally “negative” emotions such as anger are the wrong response to something. part of the reason he prioritizes his artificing is probably because it’s “fixing” things. in comparison to being a barbarian, which gorgug associates with “breaking” things. good vs. bad behavior, in his eyes.

it’s a totally unacceptable bar to measure a 16 y/o by, but i do think part of porter’s reasoning for not letting gorgug multiclass is him recognizing that gorgug generally does not value anger as a valid emotional response to something, at the very least for himself. & that directly conflicts with what being a barbarian is, because whether you like it or not, that rage is what fuels you. but again, barring a kid from pursuing something they deeply care about in part (not entirely, porter has a lot of more bullshit reasons) because of their fundamental values & world outlook is crazy.

so yes, 98% of porter’s reasoning is pretty shitty, immature, rife with a toxic view that there’s only one proper way to access rage, & generally not a good thing to do as a teacher, but also within that reasoning is the 2% of ‘there is a fundamental part of yourself that you only value if you can use it to take care of other people & you need to accept that as something that can take care of you, too.’ but that’s something to discuss with a therapist or a guidance counselor, not something that should hugely impact gorgug’s academic future.

Oh freckles?

i think people think i’m lying when i say that i don’t want to “be” anyone or anything and that i don’t care about conventional success. but nothing would make me happier than being left alone to just breathe and exist if my basic necessities were covered for life

Im home at a sensible time ✨

Treat me ~ Tip me ~ More of me

personally. and this might just be me. but personally. i think that Jack and Race could both have saved enough to move on if they wanted. i think you see it in the things they have: how Jack always has art supplies just a little bit nicer than he'd be able to steal with worrying about being caught. how Race lets himself take pride in his appearance, his vest matching his pants and his pocket square always net and clean.

i think the real thing that stops them from going anywhere is loyalty and trust and the bond that comes with growing up like this. there are always older kids who can spare a nickel for dinner when a little kid has a bad day selling. there are always older kids around to patch up a skinned knee and the torn pants that come with it. there are always older kids around to promise that things will getter better, get easier, turn into something they can handle. Jack and Race both relied on those older kids when they were little, and they know there are little kids who are relying on them. and it's barely even a question, you know?

sure, they could save that quarter for themselves, or they could quietly pay Kloppmann with it to make sure everyone gets inside when it's supposed to snow. they could put those last few pennies away, or they could buy enough food to split with the kids who had a bad day. they could be saving to chase their dreams, or they could go to the doctor and get something for the ten-year-old who hasn't been able to stop coughing for two months and still needs to be out in the cold selling if he wants to survive.

and i think. personally. both Jack and Race talk a big game about it all, love to be blowhards and braggarts and act like one day, just you see, we'll leave all of you behind and find something better. but really. honestly. they and everyone know that there's something to these relationships that makes leaving a lot harder than saving money. so instead they show it in their little ways. Race is a smooth-talking gambler who could win a hand of poker against a politician and talk somebody into spending their last penny on yesterday's news, but he's also been one of these kids since he was young and scrawny and fighting to survive. how could he abandon them when they never abandoned him? and Jack is a charmer who knows just how to push the right buttons, just how to flirt and just how to make up a convincing headline, but he's been one of these kids since he lost everything and didn't know how to keep his head above water. how could he let them down when they're the only people who have never, ever let him down?

and that's why, personally. I think Jack and Race are still here because they care, not because they have to be.

hi guys another hot take on tgcf right out of the oven:

the story is officially Insane. Crazy. I get that some people are crazy in love, some people are crazy vengeful, etc etc, but almost all of the things that make people what they are (except for maybe xie lian and bwx) are handwaved away.

why does hua cheng have his luck?? how did sqx ascend as the god of wind (wine??)? why is fafa always in red? how did hua cheng not dissipate into butterflies the second he saw xie lian again? on that note, WHY BUTTERFLIES?? why can hua cheng eat xie lian’s cooking? why’s his cooking so bad? WHY IS XIE LIAN’S HAIR HALF OPEN LIVING ON THE DAMN STREETS??? why does he have a ******** kink??

I have no idea how any of those came about. These are pretty big motifs for all of them, yet all you can say is that,,, they’re there and they fit. that’s it

Does anyone else feel like almost all of the conflicts that had to do with the various character dynamics in Chain of Thorns didn’t actually get resolved, they just unexplainably ceased to exist after two books of building them up because CC didn’t feel like writing them anymore and she didn’t know how to resolve it naturally after how she’d built the issues up so much?

Like how none of the characters but Cordelia and Thomas had any clue about the Alastair and Charles situation and then suddenly in CoT it was like who doesn’t know? Of course Matthew knew and didn’t say anything before and then randomly brought it up to Cordelia in Paris while assuming she knew too

Or how Alastair and Thomas went from how things were at the end of CoI with Alastair thinking it could never work because Thomas’s friends hate him to oh look everyone suddenly is friends with Alastair with no grudge with no development of that in this book at all, just an abrupt shift

Especially the Alastair and Matthew dynamic where Matthew hated Alastair and wanted him to have nothing to do with any of their friends and he spent CoI ranting about him to Cordelia. And then suddenly in CoT it’s like of course Matthew is supportive of Thomas and Alastair and oh look Matthew and Alastair are suddenly not just tolerating each other for Thomas’s sake but friends despite barely interacting and no development actually showing and never getting any mention of the other in their own POVs, just having Cordelia be like Alastair stop being dumb, you’re literally friends with him now

Or like everyone other than Christopher and Grace where it was like oh we don’t like her for how she’s treated us and her friends straight to anyway she’s one of us. Like yes Grace was useful and yes Tatiana manipulated her whole life, but none of that was why anyone changed their minds or opinions? It was just suddenly the flip of a switch when it was convenient for CC

Or Anna and Ariadne where it didn’t so much develop as Anna just acted mean to Ariadne on and off throughout the series and at the end of CoI she wanted nothing to do with a relationship and then in CoT she was just suddenly like sure I guess I do. Also, slightly different note, but I did not like that Anna barely interacted with anyone else for the entire book and she was just off in the corner being an irrelevant romantic subplot for almost all of the book except when she showed up to barely even be shown in the background being sad about her brother being dead

(Although Anna still got more of a reaction than everyone else and his death was poorly executed all around in the sense of how did you write this so predictably and poorly that no one even knows when he died and it’s so background and 99% of the characters don’t care at all and we don’t see his parents finding out or much of Thomas’s reaction or anything and it’s just as if he wasn’t a character anymore 2 seconds later which is a different genre of issue with CoT but similar problem in the sense that both issues made the book feel a lot more emotionless to read)

And how the issues of Thomas and Alastair being together as two men and Anna and Ariadne being together as two women in this time and the issues of what would happen if the fact that Charles and Alastair were gay got out to the entire Clave just disappeared and never got addressed at all. We know how the ClVe reacted to Alec Lightwood YEARS later. We know society was homophobic at the time TLH is set and that it seems like shadowhunter society was a lot less open-minded than mundanes a century later

I understand that Charles being blackmailed and making shitty decisions was annoying but it was like suddenly everyone finding out wouldn’t have consequences and all the other queer men characters were like how could you possibly be worried about this :/ as if they haven’t spent the whole series knowing they have to be careful about who they tell. And then suddenly it was just of course it’s totally fine and safe to have everyone find out and why wouldn’t you be fine with that. And it was really written in a way that had other queer characters like oh Charles is such a coward for not being ready to publicly tell a bunch of homophobic people his sexuality and it just wasn’t it??? And super weird after Thomas was terrified of telling even Anna and Matthew for years. And also, I did not care for the fact that when Charles did go risk getting outed to finally do the right thing, we didn’t even get to see it through any character’s perspective or how that important meeting went, we just got one line of dialogue from somebody else saying that it happened with no details at all. And I can’t think of other examples right now but there were quite a few moments like that where we got one line saying that something had happened that was important to the plot and to characters’ development that seemed like it would have been more interesting than some of what we did get to see where it was just totally breezed over and way too easy and totally background to less important stuff

And then there was the whole no one reacting to Ariadne and Anna dancing together publicly thing was like yeah that’s nice I guess but not realistic and it doesn’t go with the way things have been presented up to that point, it also just feels like a situation where CC was like well this would be easier for me so there just won’t be consequences and then they can easily end up happily together

And then there was the whole Thomas and Alastair thinking they couldn’t realistically be together thing and knowing they couldn’t get married or be known to be together by anyone they’re not close to and then at the end it’s still not really addressed how they’re going to be together? Like there was the laziest write off of the family tree being wrong and then we still are just left to assume that eventually they move in together and suddenly it’s not a problem and everyone’s fine with it? And then I also feel like we don’t actually know if everyone found out about Alastair and Charles’ sexualities after the blackmail or if people are going to assume about Thomas and Alastair or if that’ll cause issues or if no one knows outside of who they’ve told and they have to be careful or what. Which like wouldn’t necessarily need to be addressed if it wasn’t for the logistics of being together as two men in that time being part of the obstacle that they were struggling with being in their way and then it felt like it was totally forgotten to even be one at the end by CC

Idk like I’d love to think they just lived in a world where homophobia didn’t exist but it felt like homophobia was a plot point when CC wanted it to be an inconvenience and then suddenly disappeared just to make her writing easier the moment she didn’t want it there anymore instead of actually addressing the plots she raised with it if that makes sense?

And sorry, I really did not mean to go on a rant this long. And maybe everyone else had a very different reading experience than I did and other people don’t agree with some or all of this. I personally am just very confused about how the book was almost 800 pages long and it felt like so much of the development in it was us abruptly being told that development had happened rather than actually getting to see it and how so many of the issues were abruptly solved in an I don’t want to write this issue anymore kind of way rather than anything actually needing to be worked at outside of the Belial situation

Edit: You know what, I mentioned it in my tags but I feel like it’s annoying enough to put in the body of the post and make it even longer. What the fuck was with everyone outing or potentially outing everyone else just so that characters could openly talk about the queer characters and tell them to do what they want them to? Why did Matthew out his brother multiple times? Like yes, the people he said it to coincidentally already knew, but he didn’t know that. And why was Thomas outing Alastair? The straights got to keep their secrets as long as they wanted and fix their problems more naturally. Why did I have to sit through queer characters constantly having their sexualities and romantic histories to everyone else when they clearly had not okayed it? Why were the queer characters doing so much of the outing? Why were people who cared about them and knew what it felt like to be afraid of the wrong person finding out just broadcasting their sexualities to make it easier for CC to breeze past development to have their things get resolved fast? Why did no character have an issue with it at all?

so. thing.

while on the one hand i absolutely respect and get behind the reasoning for wanting to like encourage people to feel free to explore and experiment with their gender presentation, and it’s great if and when younger generations feel freer to think about that more and make decisions on it instead of being restricted by a category assigned at birth, etc…

on the other hand, ‘thinking about your gender presentation’ is literally a subcategory of ‘thinking about how you are perceived by other people’ and most teenagers & many other people do an unhealthy amount of that already.

not sure how to reconcile these.

Just 2 AM thoughts: Theory crafting is just another form of writing fanfiction, you cannot change my mind.

Hi this is a vent post! Continue scrolling if you'd rather not see that

i keep habitually opening my email on the off chance i have new ao3 commints even tho it's been several weeks since i uploaded anything & then. remembering.

the 6th age storyline really was just "one small favour: the story arc"

oh dear.

from what I've seen (on my dash) I feel like I'm the only one who was okay with that ending?

BBC ghosts spoilers in the tags

i think some people (especially ppl on stan twitter/tiktok) forget that a celebrity or public figure does not necessarily have to be “”problematic”” for you to dislike them. some celebrities are just assholes or annoying and not liking them for those things isn’t like…jumping on some grand cancel culture bandwagon or w/e sometimes the vibes are just rancid

X

my website is fucking gone. brb killing myself