Reading 'the golden enclaves' by Naomi novik and just wanting to express feelings about it

Ecstatic and internally cackling at the reveal of Liesel's motivation in coming along throughout this... so straightforward and kind of lovely... being so ruthlessly calculated 100% of the time and recognising, okay, the most useful thing I can do here that is beneficial to me is to befriend this chick, since she is so uncompromising and scary and therefore has very few friends, but I can also see that she's right to be this intense about not slipping to the dark side since HOLY FUCK, so what would really help everyone is to give her as much extra support and motivation to not go evil as possible. It's like the best defence is a good offence for like how to make friends and influence people. Really going there with preemptive power of friendship measures. I love it. I love Liesel and Alfie and their 'welp maybe we will have to open up our relationship to her??' plan lol. Everyone in this series is so calculated I would struggle so hard, I would just be like Orion no clue how to tell who's evil and who's scheming and what everyone's game is. Except maybe I would be aware enough of it being a thing that I would just stress about it and be all 'what is everyone's motivation' and get it wrong all the time. Also tbh this sounds like an inherently stressful magical world anyway and this is one of the few fantasy books I've ever read where I'm like 'actually I'm cool being mundane' and I could be just a big old hindrance to any wizards trying to do magic in front of me and I would be all 'that doesn't make any sense, I don't believe in that' and then their magic wouldn't work lol. No monsters could ever get me from under the bed or anything. Digression lol

Another digression: I enjoy that Liesel's German accent feels very strong to me; nothing written 'phonetically' or whatever, just the way she structures her sentences; but she's the only character I get an accent impression of, and that's probably mostly because I forget what most accents sound like. Actually no... I think it is that Liesel's accent really is cued more than anyone else, even if it's just through the grammar, just because it is notably unusual in a way that it isn't for any of the native English speakers. I did kind of imagine Yancy with a London accent, but it was harder to keep hold of in my brain. I know what a new York accent sounds like but written down there is nothing notable about how any of the New Yorkers speak that reminds me that they would have a different accent to me, so I don't think about it, and then that just goes doubly for all the accents I wouldn't even be able to imagine clearly anyway.

i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

public libraries in the usa offering free digital library cards to people not in their areas (as of october 2023):

brooklyn (13-21yo us residents)

seattle (13-26yo us residents)

boston (13-26yo us residents, EDIT: just commonly banned books)

los angeles (13-18yo california residents)

san diego (12-26yo us residents, not the whole collection just commonly banned books)

these books unbanned cards (unless otherwise stated) get you access to each library's complete libby/cloud library collection, no hoopla/kanopy/physical copies included.

ebook collections are expensive to maintain (many american libraries have annual fees for non-residents because of this) but because of an uptick in book banning (particularly brutal in mississippi last summer) larger libraries have opened their doors more, which is very kind of them!

i've used my seattle card for the last several months and their libby collection has about three times the books that my local library does, which is wonderful for accessing more niche titles or skipping a waiting list. would love to hear of similar ebook initiatives internationally!

i use library extension (firefox/chrome/edge compatible) to check all my collections (+ the internet archive) at once, works for several different countries highly recommend it.

spotify seems to be offering 15hrs/month of audiobook listening to premium subscribers and while that does seem useful if you're already paying and are after a new release with a long library waitlist, libraries are better for everything else.

had a vivid dream where there was a "play as Kim" mod and I was super excited

after like 2 mins gameplay Harry just turned around looking scandalised and was like "Ohgod... It's me, Kim. *I'm* Grandpa Piss!"

he refused to elaborate even after I savescummed and exhausted all dialogue options

then a notification flashed like "THOUGHT GAINED: GRANDPA PISS" and I went to the thought cabinet screen. all it said was "What the fuck does he mean by that."

Oh copy/paste and desktop Tumblr, how I've missed you so XDD

I'm still unable to sit at my desk for as long as I'd like to.. but I can sit long enough to draw some comics here and there at least! One of which being a (somewhat) angsty comic with Grim and V! Did you really think they escaped my angst curse?? It was only a matter of time before I cursed them as well! XDD

But for real, I've wanted to draw something angsty with Grim and V for a while now. And I'm glad I was finally able to! Even if its kind'aaa more of a goofy comic with angsty undertones rather than full on angst. XDD

The more I draw these two, the more lore I start to build in the background... I wonder if I should explore Grim's more serious angst sometime.. 😈😈

for context: I read the hobbit first over the course of two years when I was like 13, but I'm only now starting to read lotr. having a blast tho!

anyways, reblog if you feel like it 🙌🏻

mfw i stayed up past 12am into my birthday just to colour this

so how about that update, huh

SO IVE BEEN GOIN INSANE SINCE THIS TRAILER DROPPED. JUST. SIMON. SIMON. SIMON.

actually that ao3 post about calculating kudos-to-hits ratios to decide if a fic is worth reading has me so pissed off. someone put real time and energy into something they are SHARING WITH YOU FOR FREE on a site where you can quite literally filter and search by anything you want and you're STILL trying to find a foolproof method to find stuff that's "good enough to read"???

YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR EVERYTHING

you don't have to like or read everything in a given fandom or tag, but you also don't have to be a cunt about it and imply that it's not worth reading. this is the kind of shit that moves people to stop creating altogether, and to see people agreeing in the tags is so disheartening. absolutely unserious behavior.

(click for higher quality!) draconified link concept ive been chipping away at this past week ..... here's my funny little compendium concept for him:

"A heroic spirit has taken the form of this bestial dragon. Unlike it's kin, this creature exhibits an extremely aggressive disposition. It appears highly territorial, and will relentlessly chase down those who disturb its skywide patrols - of which it seems to be endlessly searching for either a long-time vassal or foe. Unfortunately, it seems the spirit within has long since forgotten exactly who it was looking for…"

this has drained me of my will to live

I don't remember how i found it but there's this website that lets you make your own safety signs and I showed it to my friends and we made a ton of them. here are some of my favourites

(2 of those friends are @ant-bunny and @dawnpstrat)

I am BARELY resisting going full red-strings-corkboard on this season. And by barely resisting I mean not resisting at all here is an extremely long list of the events those pins would be marking out.

BigB getting a Task that was a different color than everyone else's. It's not just a randomly assigned Hard Task, bc Scar rerolled for a Hard Task and his was also just a white envelope. It's fundamentally different.

That task taking BigB away from socialization, and seemingly being an incredibly time-consuming and dull request. Of profound disinterest to any watchers.

The phrasing of his Task!!

Dig a big hole. All the way down. At least 3x3. Make it your base if you want.

Everyone else's are direct and formal - the only one with more than one sentence was Skizz's, with the rule clarification of "One attempt only." Bigb's Task is four short abrupt sentences. It is also the only Task to contain extraneous information, 'Make it your base if you want.' The requirements (at least 3x3) feel like an afterthought to mimic the numerical/specific demands of the other tasks.

Evo symbol on the face of the Secret Keeper statue.

The fact that there's a statue at all; the fact that there is a physical representation of what is assigning tasks that everyone must complete, when previously everything was always handled via commands and unseen RNG.

Grian talking to the statue, and (bc of his Actual Role as game organizer) acting as a mediator for the impartial decisions handed down, speaking for it.

Grian making one last bad joke and saying he doesn't know if it counted or not- depends on whether we the audience laughed.

Grian asking for task recommendations from the audience. The watchers are making the tasks. The Watchers are making the tasks.

Again I could be off-base, and I'm not usually even that smitten with bringing in Evo lore. I don't want a Big Bad really...but. It feels like something very unusual and intentional and cool is happening in this series. And I'd guess we'll know if theres something going on once we have more than one data point.

My largely unfounded suspicion is that there is another being (maybe Listeners, maybe something else) trying to reach out to the Players via decoy Tasks, and BigB was the first recipient. Get them alone, make them of disinterest to the watchers, and tell them something we don't get to know.

Because that's the really, really fucking cool part (if my wacky theory is remotely right): We're the bad guys. We're the ones giving out tasks - hell, we're the ones actively brainstorming harder and crueller tasks in Grian's comments!

If they actually made a story where the Players have to keep secrets from us I will be delighted. Bc that is the same genius bullshit that made Evo Watcher lore so fun

The musical episode.

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