So, uh...I've recently been reading the Emelan books by Tamora Pierce and Briar's Book hits a lot different in a post-Covid world, don't it?

Going to obsess over Husk and Alastor for a second

ok. ok. OK. so. more on why alastor and husk's dynamic makes my head spin. is because, on paper, I have. NO idea,,, how they work??? they have the absolute most clashing personalities I have ever seen, and yet alastor chose husk and continues to choose him as a confidant and a co-conspirator and workhorse, even though he has much more obviously like-minded people around him in Rosie, Mimzy, and Niffty. And Husk -- I'm a little more forgiving on Husk's end because a) he has zero choice in his involvement here and b) he's kind of a bleeding heart himself, so I can kind of understand the moments where he looks out for Alastor or shows care outside of the bounds of his contract. But still. I look at them, and I'm just... why????? I'm so intrigued by it.

Because.... listen. What I understand about Husk is this. That he's a very compassionate person at heart, and cares about other people, even though he tries desperately not to. Hell, from the way he acts he seems like more of a true believer in Charlie's ideas for redemption than even Vaggie at times. He has a high degree of empathy and can easily see through people's bullshit (probably part of what makes him a terror at cards). I think at core he's a very sincere person, and this is part of why it is absolutely not in his nature to sugarcoat things, or refrain from speaking his mind. Husk is also a person who demands two things from the people around him - one is to treat him and his boundaries with respect, and this is why he snaps so much at Angel to begin with, and also what made him so furious with Alastor in episode 5. The second thing that Husk demands is honesty and vulnerability from the people around him, and he's openly disdainful of "fake" people. He tells Angel outright that he would treat him better if he were "real" -- his respect and affection for Angel was contingent to an extent on Angel being willing to drop his mask.

So you take this person, and stick him with Alastor, the fakest of fake motherfuckers in Hell, who can't stand the concept of being vulnerable and whose basic operating philosophy is "wear a mask smile so that you can hide your true feelings and always seem in control." Alastor, a person who is so desperately hungry for respect and power that he goes ballistic over what he sees as disrespect (even if it's just plain honesty), who pathologically needs the upper hand, who is casually and constantly disrespectful, who showboats relentlessly, who spits out one liners and strikes a pose even when he's a hair's breadth from death and fleeing the scene. THIS guy.

...who hand selected as one of his closest companions a person whose philosophy and personality is diametrically opposed to his own. I think... that says something about alastor, though it's hard to say what exactly that is, yet. maybe he likes watching husk "I lost the ability to love years ago sike I'm falling in love again" care and then suffer for caring and start the cycle all over again, similarly to how he said that he wanted to watch charlie try her hardest with the hotel and fail. on the other hand, as much as Alastor tries to stay aloof from the hotel's residents (not him looking over them all from a proverbial theater box in episode 8 as they prepare to face execution day), I don't think he's lying about his affection for them. maybe there's a small part of him that's looking to be surprised, or even proven wrong. maybe he thinks he'll be happy either way, and that's part of why he doesn't act the saboteur. or maybe there's even another element to it... alastor doesn't only court respect and fear, he courts adoration, and deliberately looks for and soaks up the affection thrown his way by charlie and the rest. maybe alastor is attracted to people who can't help but genuinely care for him, even against their better judgment.

There's something so insane to me about being able to create and recreate vintage or even ancient music, clothes, fabrics, building architecture, anything, really.

I watched this video about a lady who knit a WWII-era vest, and it was really unique, because the cable work would eat up yarn, when there were shortages of fibers. This pattern would have likely been used by people to send overseas to soldiers, and now it's being created in a time where this war has been over for generations. What were the people making this pattern thinking of? What about the people making the vest? Could they fathom a world where world wars didn't happen back to back? Could they imagine what peace felt like, or did it fade like a distant memory, a faint friend? All we have now are the remnants of their efforts, a "simple" vest that would warm the bodies of countless people the knitter would never have imagined were here on earth with them.

We're reaching across time to learn about other people - we're reaching our hands out just to grasp anything tangible. And when we've take hold of something, all we can do is say I love you I love you I love you

I like how we know next to nothing about the wicked powers but Cassandra Clare has already shared multiple pieces of official art (some of which is clearly scenes from a book that she hasn't finished writing) and she's so real for that

Do people realise you can fuck other people even when you're attracted to someone and its not a moral failing nor does it taint your relationship with them?

Age chart thingy that may or not change in the future. This is just a rough estimate

random ass lps popular thought but i literally dont understand people who treat brooke like shes innocent solely because her mom is shitty??? like to me it seems like a very clear "villain origin story that explains why they are the way they are but doesn't redeem them". her mom is neglectful and abusive, yes, but a lot of her actions through the series are like. completely divorced from that conflict. brooke may be taking ques from her mom with the whole cutthroat social attitude she has going on but her actions are still very much her own, like she only got the baseline ideology of "you need to stay at the top to have any worth" from her mom and everything else (the manipulation, cheating, blackmail, etc) is all stuff she chose to do herself to attain that goal. and even THEN she's doing it all completely to serve herself, her mom couldn't care less about her daughter's status in high school. brooke probably knows this and is doing whatever she can to derive self worth from her social status alone because she's all too aware that her mom just doesnt give a shit. so everything she does is still on her

i guess a more succinct way of putting it is like. brooke's backstory is more of a frame for her mindset than something you should feel sorry for her over, yknow? because as badly as she's treated at home she turns around and treats everyone around her the exact same way. abuse is cyclical and it's crystal clear that brooke is willingly continuing the cycle because she's obsessed with the power it gives her, power that was stolen from her that she's now stealing from others. and the kicker here is she HAD chances to make positive changes, both with her dad treating her nicer while he was still alive which establishes that she does know how to be kind as well as savy being willing to reconnect and give her genuine friendship again which could've helped her out of this toxic mindset. but she threw both of those chances away because she's so power hungry and is CHOOSING to continue acting like her mom because that's what gets her the most power/worth.

she needs help, but she doesn't deserve forgiveness or sympathy because of all the heinous shit she's done. also, you can't help someone unless they accept the help and/or are willing to change, and we've seen that brooke is NOT willing to change at all. idk man i just dont think we should be so fast to absolve her of accountability when she hasn't shown any willingness to overcome her circumstances. like not even "oh i want to change but things are so hard" no she doesn't want to change full stop. shes stuck in her mindset and that's her downfall and that's the point

anyway brooke would fucking love marina and the diamonds. unrelated to everything

sort of a random thing to post, but you guys ever realize that ivy's in-game model has earrings? they're these small pink loop earrings that are permanently attached to her model, and it isn't present in a lot of her official artwork either...

putting on the single earring from the DLC won't remove these either, they'll still be on her permanently

for example another character with earrings (pandreo) actually has them as an entirely separate model + accessory that can get removed if you give him any accessories and even his ally notebook images don't feature his earrings in his other pictures outside of the first one you get:

just like an observation ive made lol

I actually kinda like the accidental pregnancy trope until the baby is born. Then it's all south from there. But if there's an accidental pregnancy and then a miscarriage >>>>

i have many many many critiques about wylls story, most of them being about the fact it's just so lackluster in game when compared to other companions which is a shame. because wyll to me is and has the potential to be an even more emotionally compelling companion. and he was early access!! he was so gritty in ea please bring him back larian i beg of thee. the way he was rewritten has stripped him of so much nuance and depth. wyll to me is such a wonderful character to me because of what he represents, which is heroism so down to his core he never gives up on it even when he ought to

his goodwill and nobility are ceaseless. at the center of his story is betrayal trauma, his agency over himself vanished into thin air. mizora turns him into a monster and there is no turning back. he has become the thing he's despised, the things he's hunted for his entire life. and we know so little about that canonically because of the way his story is set up but its hinted time and time again that he struggles with his reality deeply and even that cannot make him turn away from the city he loves so much.

if larian would go back to clean up and fix his story (which im truly praying to god they do) i want them to touch on what wyll must be going through as he continues to try to ground himself and deal with his newfound reality. i want them to touch on the abandonment he experiences because of his father and the inevitable burden his title as blade and hero has on him. because these things obviously compel him, they're hinted at all the time but they were completely stripped of him in final release and its fucking disheartening... larian please im begging you. thats the love of my life. please.

but for now i will do it with fanfiction and gather enough wyll fans to make a fuss about it . peace and love

i finally had the time (and mental capacity) to sit down and close listen to the anthology tracks and holy shit, these songs are phenomenal. i am just blown away. this whole album is astonishing and i am so grateful.

A former slave came, to accuse a certain noble of the Zhak. The noble had taken her maidenhood, used her for his pleasure, and gotten her with child. Her new husband wanted the noble gelded for the crime of rape, and he wanted a purse of gold as well, to pay him for raising the noble’s bastard as his own. Dany granted him the gold, but not the gelding. “When he lay with her, your wife was his property, to do with as he would. By law, there was no rape.” Her decision did not please him, she could see, but if she gelded every man who ever forced a bedslave, she would soon rule a city of eunuchs. — ADWD, Daenerys I

A feminist icon, right ?

Daenerys never treats slavery as an evil in and of itself, as an affront to human dignity. It’s a legal technicality. It’s why she acted the way she did in the Lhazareen village, it’s why she doesn’t understand how she needs to treat her “handmaidens” differently if she wants them to understand they are no slaves, it’s why she can almost pettily declare Meereenese can sell themselves back into slavery if they want so long as she gets a profit. She doesn’t understand the fundamentals of why it is bad. The same way she doesn’t understand the concept of rape. That’s why her quest is so empty and doomed to fail. She doesn’t understand it and she doesn’t care to try.

I'm not even gonna bother putting energy into answering this cause it's obvious to me that you and reading comprehension have a strained relationship. You're just not smart and there's nothing I can do to change that. All I'll say is that you could only come up with interpretations like this by removing all context from Dany's arc and cherry-picking quotes. Luckily, the rest of us aren't reading the books with our eyes closed.

It's really odd to realize that the passivity I hold toward my own self-destruction isn't, as I thought it to be, ingrained into my soul and fate itself, but it's a product of outside forces which themselves were passive toward my destruction. It's odd, because I accepted that my self-destruction was an inevitable consequence of me being alive, being myself, and I never once questioned that because it was reinforced by outside forces. I accepted this "fact," and then engaged in self-destruction even after I was freed from the abusive situations I was in, and it feels almost... sacrilegious to rebel against the "truth."

The passivity you hold toward your own self-destruction is not, in fact, ingrained, staining your very soul. It is not fated that you are to "deserve" harsh, unfair, and cruel treatment, and it is not a natural consequence of you being you. You deserve so much.

I’m presuming that anyone not interested in a more or less minute account of my internal screaming will block ‘Persuasion reread,’ so here goes. Today’s internal screaming is provoked by the fact that we enter Volume 2 with Anne glad that she and Captain Wentworth have -- at least tacitly, at least partially -- reconciled; she’s grateful for what she takes as signs of disinterested friendship from him. She’s also fully convinced that he is going to marry Louisa, and that she will just have to cope with that. (Interestingly, Lady Russell’s ‘pleased contempt’ at this news offers further evidence of the fact that she apparently hates Wentworth’s guts, despite acknowledging that he did seem to partly appreciate Anne’s worth in ‘06. Seem to partly appreciate! I tend to concur with the critical opinion that Lady R. has a wilful blind spot around Wentworth’s sexuality. Anyway.)

There is more! in this chapter, we get some of Austen’s first hints to readers that Anne’s perception of Wentworth’s feelings is... less than accurate. We’ve already had, of course, his responses to Mr. Elliot. Now we get Anne, responding to Lady Russell’s compliments on her appearance, ‘amused’ to think that she may be afforded ‘a second spring of youth and beauty.’ A second spring, you say, Miss Austen?? Moreover, we learn from the Crofts that Frederick, in bringing them news from Lyme, has asked after Anne’s welfare. He hopes she isn’t worn out; he’s noticed her exerting herself on behalf of the Musgroves, and wants to be sure she’s all right.

For one thing, he’s the only person who does appear to have noticed this, or thought to ask after her. (The Musgroves, in their anxiety over Louisa, have a good excuse for not doing so, granted.) And I think that we have here some early suggestive evidence concerning what our favorite obtuse genius is thinking and planning.

this clip has me in a chokehold.

i'm really in this total drama shit for life arent i