I know no one cares about Naberius Tern but that is exactly the problem.
Every single lyctor we have seen so far is undone by killing their caviller. Mercymorn makes it very, very clear that she has been carrying the grief of killing Cristabel for ten thousand years. Palamedes doesn't say he would rather die than kill Cam to become a lyctor because he is busy dying rather than killing Cam to become a lyctor. The unspoken rule is that lyctorhood can only be obtained by killing the person most important to you.
Unless you are Ianthe.
Ianthe is the only lyctor who isn't in a constant state of mourning. She has achieved immortality and cosmic power without losing the person closest to her.
Incidentally the person Ianthe loves the most is Corona, who also doesn't care what happened to Babs. Ianthe chats with Corona while wearing Babs discarded corpse and they banter about it.
Ianthe essentially made her Faustian bargain with counterfeit money and I think eventually she is going to have to pay up
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist flew under my radar until a friend recommended it to me, and now I am fully obsessed so here's me passing the recommendation on!
Do you like visual novels? Skill management? Timeloops? Deckbuilding? Gorgeous art? A whole bunch of fantastic queer characters? Staggering numbers of events and endings that respond to a staggering number of choices you make?
Then you should play this game and come scream in my ask box about it! I have said both "uh-oh" and "yesssss" out loud multiple times while watching the consequences of my actions play out. Absolutely delightful. Enjoy a little bit of screenshot propaganda:
Living my best/worst life
Exploring in the pink
Behold my self-insert
Also, you can have up to four different pets following you around and one of them is THIS cutie
LOVE how Alice tells Sam he can't stay in the past while bringing him his favorite coffee and a pastry and high-key flirting with him. Like, sure, don't live in the past. Sure.
that mountain goats song? oh yeah, i love that song. it’s one of my favorites. i could sing the whole thing for you right now. i know what album it’s on and which part of the album and possibly even which track number it is. what is the song called? i don’t have a fucking clue.
no thoughts head empty the oppressive stagnancy of legacy in ever after high dragging me round the block yet again
it's such a shame that we get so little explanation about the actual mechanics of destiny, which is the entire premise of the show, bc it's so juicy. like what power does destiny hold when you rip away milton's lies and centuries of assumptions and traditions. esp bc despite raven signing herself as the evil queen in the real storybook of legends, when the snow white fairytale actually happens in dragon games she's playing one of the seven dwarves and her mother has reprised her role. like how much of that was because of the characters' actions and how much was destiny pulling on old, familiar threads. keeps me up at night.
a lot of this is probably just like, plot holes and writer hot potato but i like making it that deep, that's half of the fun. my personal interpretation is that fate is a wild thing that desires repetition and they developed the system of fairytale legacy bloodlines to keep those repetitions predictable and contained, instead of wreaking havoc whenever and wherever they please.
which lends itself to some really juicy exploration of how legacy is a duty as much as it is a privilege, and how to be a princess or a witch or a hero or a dragon is to be the same thing in the end: the lamb destiny slaughters on the altar to sate the ever-ravenous narrative. to keep the flock safe. keep the unknown that prowls beyond the beaten path at bay. because if a there is always a mother who will be cruel, or a maiden who will fall into a sleep like death, or a child who will become a bird, isn’t it better to know who, and how, and when? isn’t better if it’s you, who has known your whole life that you must be eaten, be poisoned, be stripped of your humanity, rather than anybody else, who wasn’t raised to see it as an honour instead of a great and terrible injustice?
Here's a little more of my Christmas Fic they don’t know (your name is already mine):
They all pile into the elevator, Bobby and Athena last, as the doors close he whips out his phone to send another text to Buck.
Bobby: Doc says Eddie’s going to be fine but he’s staying the night, please call me when you get this.
He watches and waits for the three dots to appear but they don’t and it only causes the feeling in the pit of his stomach to widen. He tucks away his phone and grabs Athena’s hand, she immediately squeezes reassuringly and it helps ground him.
“How’d you even know we were here?” Bobby hears Chim ask from somewhere behind him.
“I-Me and Ravi were having…drinks,” Albert says, Bobby shares a look with his wife, apparently her hunch about that had been right, her smile is a small ‘told you so’ one.
“Without the rest of us?” Chim asks outraged and oblivious to the blatant lie. Bobby fights back a smile.
“Chim,” Hen says and Bobby can practically see her head shake without turning around, “Maybe there was a reason why they didn’t want us there.”
“It is because we’re old? Because I’ll let you know I can still-”
-The elevator dings as they arrive on the third floor, interrupting Chimney's rant and reminding them all why they were there.
This post goes out to the trans people who think of their old names fondly but it just didn't suit them once they started their transition. This post goes out to the trans people who sometimes wish they could have kept their original name but it was gendered and couldn't join them on their transition journey. This post goes out to the trans people who mourn the loss of their old name. This post goes out to the trans people who don't feel the need to hide their old names because they have positive memories.