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#but i have a lot of books to read anyways but it still bugs me that my library is getting rid of books

crow-with-a-book · 1 year

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So this may be a little of a rant, but bear with me.

So it has to do with my local library (aka, a place I used to frequent often). This happened a little while ago but it still really bugs me.

So like a year ago my library implimented a fee you have to pay once a year to be able to check out books with your library card if ur not a city resident (which kinda sucks when you live like right outside the city limits) but that's understandable ig, no big deal.

But that's not the part that annoys me. The part that bugs me is this;

They get rid of books.

I went in a few months ago to check out a manga series I really enjoyed (its older, but I really enjoyed it, and wanted to re-read it). But it was gone. I knew I wasn't going crazy, I knew the exact location on the shelf it would be, and when it wasn't there, I checked the whole section. The I was like 'maybe its checked out' and looked on the Library's online catalog. No results.

No, no, this isn't right, I only read it a year or two ago. So I ask the front...they look it after I explain the situation and..... "Oh, they got rid of them then." So because not enough people checked them out, they chunked them out. So just like that, a hidden gem I found is gone.

Looking around again, I see more series I knew missing and wonder what else has disappeared. Turns out, they also have gotten rid of DONATED books.

Because after I found out a little while later my dad went to the library to find a car manual he'd donated there; one that was really detailed and would be able to help people out if they needed it. And it was gone.

So that's my rant of the night. And before you ask about the library's Libby? Don't, it's pretty bad, to be honest. Most of the books I want to read aren't even on the app (even if they own the book) and if there is, it's normally on "a couple months" hold.

So needless to say I've been reading the books I own, or borrowing my sister's books (or borrowing her card since shes in the city limits lol) or buying the books I want. (But that gets pricey and I had to ban myself because budget.)

#crow's ramblings #sorry its long rant about this #it just annoys me since I've like ALWAYS used the library #and i love to read #and it really feels like ive been shoved into a room and told i cant read any books unless I pay #and when i do they take it away and say sorry we don't carry those books anymore #but i have a lot of books to read anyways but it still bugs me that my library is getting rid of books #I'd say any tips? on what to do but its fine just annoying #books #book #library #library books #libby #local library #reading #sorry again for the random rant from a random tiny tumblr account lol

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nkjemisin · 9 days

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Hello! I’ve been seeing a lot about your work on social media lately and would love to read your books. What series do you recommend I start with?

Thanks ☺️

That depends on your taste/interest. I don't really write the same kind of thing from series to series, because I get bored easily and often want to try new subgenres/styles/etc. So I'll just briefly list my series and you can pick the one that appeals the most.

There's the Inheritance Trilogy, (link goes to the first book) my first published novels. A secondary world that has enslaved its own gods deals with the repercussions of that, from the POVs of three mortals. There's an overarching plot arc for all three books -- and there are some side-stories for this trilogy, too -- but each has a different narrator and takes place at different times. First person past tense, if you care about that sort of thing. (I don't, but some people seem weirdly attached to/repulsed by particular persons/tenses, so I'm including that info here.)

Then there's the Dreamblood Duology, which were actually written before the Inheritance books but I couldn't get them published at first because publishing in the 2000s was hella racist, basically. (I know, it hasn't changed much... but that little bit of change was enough for me to break in.) These books are as close to traditional fantasy as I'm probably ever going to get, except that they take place in faux ancient Egypt instead of faux medieval Europe. The story follows priests of the dream goddess as they're forced to deal with a conspiracy that threatens to inflict horrors on their society. Third person past tense for both books.

Next up is the Broken Earth trilogy. That's my experimental one, with first, second, and third-person POVs, present tense, a completely non-Earth world, and some heavy themes. All three books form a single story spanning, oh, forty thousand years or so, but mostly they're centered on one incredibly angry middle-aged mother who is on a roaring rampage of revenge/revolution. Features earthbenders, anti-magic groomers, magic statue people, and the apocalypse (again). Lots of "dark" themes and horror moments (harm to children, systemic bigotry, people-eating bugs, more).

My most recent books are the Great Cities duology. Urban fantasy set in modern-day New York, third person multiple POV ensemble cast. Turns out cities come to life once they hit a certain point, and then they claim a human avatar to represent and protect them. New York turns out to have six. It's also got some very unwanted tourists in the form of Lovecraftian entities that are trying to destroy it, along with reality as we know it. I meant for these to be lighthearted and silly and I think they kind of are, but there are still some notable political elements in them. (I mean, it's set in modern-day New York, and I started them the year Trump got elected, so...) It's lighthearted for me, anyway.

So, pick your poison!

#answered asks

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1-800-deactivatednearu · 9 months

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woag character design notes

[i.d.: a drawn line up of the half life vr ai characters, from left to right, gordon, dr. coomer, tommy, bubby, gman, and benrey. /end i.d.]

yeah i skipped some guys , i dont draw some of them enough to have much unique designs and some of them are a png of a dog

trust me i am just surprised as the rest of yall that i am doing hlvrai art . design notes below (very long, mind your step)

gordon:

wow this guy dont got no head

i didnt want to give gordon a face because of how unexact the person is as the fandom engages with it. is it wayne rtvs? (well as presented to an audience, yes) is it gordon freeman? (well as seen from an in game perspective, yes) is it a whole new guy entirely? (well as

i cut the confusion and took it a whole new direction: guillotine

hlvrai being treated as a very broken game is fun to me as a design perspective, so if you (the audience) are not supposed to see his face, what happens when you see it anyways? missing texture time

there are eyes drawn over because i did not have confidence in my expressions at first and then it grew on me

i think if i were to draw (and i have drawn) an actual person under the mask i would still censor the eyes because that is where the vr headset sits!!

(i do not like putting an actual flesh to gordon though)

though i really like seeing how other people interpret gordon hlvrai it is not . my gordon ? we are talking about the same guy . but this is my gordo . i made this one . this guy my guy . maybe i should draw other gordon designs

i can draw the hev suit from memory and it is also the entire reason why i can render metal confidently

i liked how people changed the lambda to read ai :] i also have no clue if i wrote the lambda correctly

(i did, i just checked)

dr coomer:

as much as i draw/drew him i find it more fun to not stick to one set design :)

so a lot of my takes on dr coomer tend to jump from idea to idea, especially from what other people are doing, though they could be fitted to the left and right designs!

the left design is mainly based off what i saw in fandom spaces

we see rounder shapes, making for a more friendly and welcoming appearance

i think of this as straying from the more professional uniform of the actual scientist models

enter swimming shorts and bright yellow socks, for some reason

so now he kind of looks like a cool science teacher :)

it might be the lab coat

the right design is mainly based off thumbnails for hlvrai itself

these use a more angular appearance

i want to push how comically buff he is because of strength he shows at times, especially since his left design seems to completely down play it as a comically not buff man who is still very strong

the shadows on right design coomer get so much more harsh and exaggerated because i have comic books on the mind :)

he really does look like a dehydrated comic book character huh

tommy:

stick bug (he gets it from his dad) (this thought process is explained at gman section)

i pushed a lot of the saturation of colours in her design because i think tommy gets to be a little silly with it

fun art story of the day! when you color, try messing with hue! you might notice you can get away with a lot as long as your values are about right

i like pushing this with white because you can get away with a lot of things reading as “off white”

old faithful for me is cool shadows with a warm transition colour to keep things visually interesting

i keep making white objects the trans flag

happy pride

tommys design looks a little like a school boy, with the tucked in button up shirt+suspenders+shorts+jacket tied around the waist . and the primary colours . but like it is really fun to dress up so brightly

i actually was strongly inspired by medieval babies if that is a weird descriptor? i wanted him to both be a middle aged man but also a young adult

do not be like tommy, who has their finger on the trigger of the gun while not even looking at where it is pointing and good god he is squeezing the trigger . top ten firearm safety of all time

bubby:

the absurd part is that i think bubby is tall . he is just between tommy and gman who are exaggeratedly lanky .

i wanted to make bubby a pointy kinda guy, so he is the only one actually wearing the lab coat proper . and the only one actually wearing dress socks but not even wearing dress shoes

i wanted to give him a novelty tie but i was running low on ideas and running high on boreds so we dont get a tie

he does have crocs though!! in attack mode!!

i do think we all kind of saw his model and collectively decided it works for him because i have honestly not seen major divergences from his model?

gman:

stick bug

i wanted to stress the more spooky and unknowable nature of him and took it in the dark souls direction of “make bigger than player character”

maked too bigger

he cannot walk through any doorways but you will have to crane your neck to look up at him

in the opposite direction of tommy, i pulled a lot of the saturation in gmans design

it feels important to make them both not fully match the rest of the slightly less broken npcs because there was so much work to make them look cool so i have to respect that

actually a lot of gmans and tommys designs are made in opposite to one another

gman has a largely stationary face and very stiff line work

while tommy is pushed to expressive as possible

thats pretty fun, way to go me

benrey:

benrey also has two designs

and in both of these i keep getting too lazy to use a reference so the vests are super plain (forgetting the badge and black mesa logo) . i think the helmet is supposed to be darker actually .

the design ethos of benrey was “built like a brick shithouse”

a friend of mine took this cooler and interpreted it as a shield/wall/barrier as a physical (and narrative) obstacle

again the first uses fandom designs

most notably the overcast shadow (seen in video thumbnails but i never noticed it or understood why so many people did it until someone pointed it out to me)

i think hlvrai is such a great medium because it acknowledges it is a game and is able to play into that to great effect! i think the shadow is fun to imagine as solid black as a small reminder of the impossibility of the space :]

benrey is a smug cat in the body of a human . to be honest . and this is the full range of emotion i have ever drawn him with

the second was mostly because as fun as taking creative liberties are, i just really wanted to see benrey as is: the half life security guard model in all its slight wonk :]

i actually do prefer this design . it is a little more uncanny because i choose the worst translations of the model . i like it because it is a little more uncanny !

that can be said for like . every single design in this line up huh .

#hlvrai #my art #gordon feetman #dr coomer #tommy coolatta #dr bubby #gman coolatta #benrey #half life vr but the ai is self aware

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letteredlettered · 3 months

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Since people expressed interest in the comments about the music I used to write my current fic, I wanted to share some of what I explored to write it. I don't think that you need to know this canon or have read this fic to read this post, though I do spend a bit of time talking about how canon influenced the choices I made. Anyone who has been following this fic knows that it was supposed to be porn, and largely, it really still is for the most part a fic about sex. But I did do a lot of research on music with which I'm frankly not very familiar, and the process was really rewarding.

The fic is Time Signature, if you're interested. This post has a lot about music, electronic music, Chinese music, and music theory, as well as some links to music that interests me and inspired portions of the fic. I don't expect anyone to read anything this long, but it was nice to write it.

Canon. One of my favorite things about both book and drama canon is how in synch WWX/LWJ are cultivation-wise. It’s not just that they can predict the talisman the other will use or the seal the other will cast; they also have the same hunches solving mysteries, the same instincts protecting others, the same ideas about where to go. When writing an AU, it’s important to me to show that synchronization (beyond physical attraction and sex), mostly because I think it’s hot.

In canon, however, WWX revolutionizes cultivation, inventing a whole new method when no one ever thought that possible. I also think this is hot. I also think it’s hot if LWJ thinks it’s hot. Look, canonically, LWJ disapproves of demonic cultivation because it will injure WWX’s spirit and body, but imo there is a reason LWJ is so into WWX, and it’s not just because WWX bugs him. It’s not even just because WWX is really cute and happy and exuberant and everything that’s the opposite of his upbringing. I also like to think that it’s because WWX is a fucking genius, and LWJ doesn't mind the idea of upending tradition and the entire cultivation world as much as it really seems at first that he would; he just struggles with anything that could hurt WWX. So anyway, WWX being revolutionary, in basically a technological sense, is important to me.

Wangxian both play music canonically. LWJ’s playing is noted to be particularly powerful, and WWX’s chosen music is at least one part of his revolutionary cultivation method. Additionally, the song LWJ writes for them is an important plot point. It makes sense that in a modern AU, music is a point of connection, so that is what I chose for their careers.

The final point about canon I want to make in connection to the music for this fic is that this is a Chinese canon with Chinese characters set in China. I don’t think it’s wrong to write AUs set in the west. I have done so, and I think there is value in examining a Chinese canon that has become very popular in the west through the lens of the Chinese diaspora. But I also think that there is a lot of value in a western person such as myself trying to learn and understand the cultural context for a canon that I really like, even if I sometimes get it wrong.

I had decided to set this fic in China because I thought the setting would not strongly feature, which would give me an easy “in” to write something set in a place I don’t know much about. Directly after choosing the setting I chose their careers, which made me realize I needed to do a lot more research—both about the careers but also about the setting--than a fic that was supposed to be mainly porn should have really required.

Music genre choice. Lots of AUs I’ve read have Wangxian’s mutual interest be that they both play western classical instruments. This baffles me, but it’s what I’ve seen, so I loosely started there—ie, I spent some time thinking about what would be revolutionary in western instrumental music, which entailed doing some research on contemporary classical music. There are obviously pioneers in any music genre, folks doing new things, but it turned out I just did not know enough about this genre to really understand what would be truly avant-garde.

I took a step back and thought about the instrumental music I have personally heard that feels really new and different, and Philip Glass was the first thing that came to mind. I first heard of Philip Glass when I saw The Hours, for which he wrote the soundtrack. I still think that soundtrack is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard, and I did use it as inspiration for music in this fic, particularly LWJ’s. More on that later.

Philip Glass is great, but for all his eastern minimalist influences, he is a strong figure in the western paradigm. I did some research on Chinese contemporary instrumental music, but most of what I found had a really western flavor. I think there are two reasons for this—one is that I am in the west searching for articles in English; for all that we like to imagine the internet is universal, search algorithms and search history is actually making it far harder than it used to be to find material with which you are completely unfamiliar. Secondly, western music did in fact have a notable impact on Chinese music, which is fine, it’s still Chinese, but I worried about everything I wrote just sounding like it was about western classical, which is a concern of mine I’ll address more later.

Since I wasn’t finding what I wanted, particularly for WWX, in the “art music” (aka, lowercase “c” classical music, which Wikipedia says is also known as “cultivated music, serious music, or canonical music”—ie, instrumental music with strings, winds, percussion) scene, I realized I needed to examine the other contemporary music, by which I mean everything else. Since I am most familiar with rock, Radiohead immediately came to mind, but Radiohead is a band, and there are lyrics. Though the lyrics are not where the meaning of Radiohead songs lie (the vocals are treated as largely instrumental), if there were lyrics, I’d need to write about them, and I didn’t want to. More importantly, Radiohead is singular in what they do, which makes them difficult to categorize, and this makes them difficult to describe textually. You can say that Radiohead revolutionized rock, or even reinvented it, but that is not really addressing how fundamentally avant-gardeRadiohead is. Describing how revolutionary Radiohead is on paper really is just saying “but they’re different!” over and over again.

What I needed for WWX was a music genre that was revolutionary, an entire school of music that felt cutting edge and frankly, unfamiliar, and for that, I realized I needed my brother.

Some stories about my family. My brother is a music artist who creates electronic music. If you want to understand why it took me this long to get to my brother in this thought process, you should understand a few things about him. First, I love him a lot, but we’re not very close. Second, my brother is probably the quietest person I know—like, idk, LWJ levels of non-talking. Last, I do not understand my brother’s music. I’ve tried! I listened to it a lot! But when I didn’t understand, I asked questions, and my brother cannot explain any of it. He’s an expressive guy! Just not verbally, and as a very verbal person, I have a tough time when people cannot use their words. Like, even asking him what type of music he plays, he’ll say something like, “It’s complicated.” (This is a lie. He’ll look at me and say, “Type?” And I’ll try to explain what I mean. And he’ll say, “I don’t know.” And if I said, “Okay, but if you had to label it?” He’d laugh and say, “Why?” And if I said, “So I can better understand your music,” he’d think for a long time, then look very frustrated, and laugh, and say, “I don’t know?” I think we’ve literally had this exact conversation).

Anyway, possibly through one of these type of exchanges, where I’m grilling him like a school marm and he’s acting like I’m making him take a standardized test he hates (I’m his little sister. Would it be easier to subject him to these horrors if he was my little brother?), I learned that one of my brother’s influences is Aphex Twin. My brother loves Aphex Twin. I . . . don’t. I’ve listened to a lot of him (in order to understand my brother better); I do not like it, and I do not understand it. My brother talks about Aphex Twin like he’s a genius (if and when my brother talks at all). Now, my brother is a very smart guy; it’s not that I didn’t believe him when he said Aphex Twin was a genius, but he also gets . . . swept up by things, and as previously discussed, he doesn’t talk a lot, so I didn’t really understand what my brother meant by this. It took hearing about Aphex Twin randomly, in a couple other places, for me to realize Aphex Twin is a Big Deal. When I looked up Aphex Twin at some point in order to better understand the music my brother makes, I found that Aphex Twin is considered by many to be a genius and also a pioneer. Apologies to all of you who already knew that about Aphex Twin.

Sidenote, my brother’s wife is also a musician, though not professionally. She could have been, considering that she was ranked as one of the top flute players in Texas, and Texas is fucking huge. But no, professionally, my sister-in-law is in cognitive science and linguistics, which you may remember was the career LWJ had in Say More (my fiancée is also a linguist. I also know a few other linguists. My life is convenient for my Wangxian AUs, I gotta say). I mention my sister-in-law because my sister-in-law has enough musical acuity to also recognize that both my brother and Aphex Twin are geniuses, which really helped me to understand that even though I’m not really into this music at all, it really is a Big Deal.

So, I researched Aphex Twin and also went to my brother’s website for his music to find out what the hell this type of music is called, and it turns out there’s not a good name. IDM, which stands for intelligent dance music, is a label Aphex Twin himself famously does not like, and my brother labeled his own music as “acid, techno, house, electro.” Wikipedia said that Aphex Twin is known for techno, ambient, and jungle.

Anyway, into this confusing morass of electronic revolutionary music is where I decided to plunk Wei Ying.

Electronic music. Note for this section that I know nothing about electronic music. I’m writing this post partly to document the journey of discovery I went on to write this porn. I’m not really trying to educate anyone so much as I’m trying to provide insight as to what I researched for this fic and what the references are, in case the fic interested you.

When you really get down to it, music made with electronics has as many genres and styes as music made with more traditional instruments, and the labels are just as confusing (see this Wikipedia list of electronic music genres). For instance, “electronica” just means music made with electronics to some people, but to others it’s more specific. You’ve also got a bunch of other terms: ambient, EDM, techno, house, IDM.

This is all based on what I learned from Wikipedia, but here are some loose definitions as I understand them: There’s ambient, which is really made for background listening, and then there’s EDM (electronic dance music), which is made for active listening—ie, dancing. Within EDM you have lots of genres, such as techno; techno is usually characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, and house, which . . . is also characterized by a specific tempo and repeating structure, but the tempo is different. From what I can gather, house is also a bigger tent than techno; ie, many different genres and styles can be house, but techno is more often just techno. (Note that part of the reason all of this terminology has so much overlap is that it originated in different places; techno was invented in Berlin, house in Chicago.) Meanwhile, the list of genres of house is so big that it also has its own Wikipedia page, which is almost as large as the list of electronic music genres.

Note that there is such a thing as “house ambient”, which explodes the entire concept of ambient vs EDM. To aid in that explosion, IDM is described on Wikipedia as including styles such as ambient techo, and “is regarded as better suited to home listening rather than dancing.” What stands out about IDM, and the reason it is featured in the fic, is that it’s known for being experimental. (I’ll add that it emerged in the 90s, which isn’t great for my fic. Whatever WWX is doing, he is on the edge, and 90s music already old to him, even if he’s Aphex Twin’s biggest fan! But alas, my research could not tell me what is happening right now, because you really have to be involved in The Scene to understand what’s new. By the time it’s documented, it’s already really a little old.)

If you are researching electronic music and how it is revolutionary, you’re probably going to get into its evolution and history, since this is a new style of music. And if you are looking into the origins of this kind of music, you’re going to find Brian Eno. And if you’re looking into Brian Eno, you’re going to find minimalism.

Minimalism. Brian Eno is an extremely famous dude. I’d probably heard of him before, but I am very good with big concepts and pretty bad with details, so because I didn’t know anything about the bigger concepts behind ambient/electronic music/minimalism, I never paid attention. Now I’m hearing about him literally everywhere, which is funny, since it’s not like he’s new news. Ezra Klein was literally waxing poetic about Music for Airports just a month ago.

Eno is famous for his pioneering work in ambient music and electronic music, and, as one might expect, electronic ambient. Eno was always doing experimental, avant-garde stuff, and early on he embraced a minimal style. He later coined the term “ambient music.”

What’s interesting about this is that around the same time as Eno was doing this in later 1960s/early 1970s, a new kind of art music was being born in classical circles. This is the capital “M” Minimal music, for which—you guessed it—Philip Glass is really famous. And when you look at Philip Glass’s influences, he was deeply influenced by the minimalism of eastern music, especially Indian and Tibetan music. I couldn’t really find anything saying that Brian Eno was directly influenced by traditional eastern music, but Eno is definitely a fan of Glass and vice versa; they really build on each other.

This ended up just being a very cool intersection for the fic that I didn’t plan. I didn’t end up using it very much, but I must say I was stupidly pleased that the kind of music I was looking into for both of these characters has such deep roots in eastern music traditions. So now let’s talk a little bit about eastern music, specifically Chinese music, since that’s where this fic is based.

Chinese music. I did read a bit about Chinese music for this fic, and I have to say that I still don’t know a lot about it. As stated above, I’m in the west, using my western search techniques, looking for primarily articles in English (though I get Google to translate some things). I also just have a western understanding of music and music history, and it turns out, surprise, different cultures are different, and my entire paradigm for understanding music does not really apply to music from other cultures.

I, and many of us, want music to be a universal language, something that can move through all barriers and touch us in our souls. And it is! I have listened to and loved music not from my culture! But thinking of music as something intrinsically universal and therefore immediately moving to everyone really collapses the rich history of musical tradition all cultures have. Music really is like a language, in that it is built on the culture that creates it; it has its own internal logic; it has style and meaning that depend on the history of that tradition and the understanding of its audience. The brief reading I’m going to do to write some porn will not give me to understand the deep and rich tradition of Chinese music, but also, frankly, even if I turned all my efforts and career to learning and understanding this right now, I still would not have the best comprehension. I don’t even comprehend western music, and I grew up with it. So, forgive me for the paucity of my understanding and knowledge, and please correct me if I make mistakes.

When I think about Chinese music that I know about, I think of two things: modern and traditional. The modern stuff I’m thinking of is stuff like C-pop, but also the things you might hear on the soundtrack for a drama or movie. To me, none of this music sounds that different than western pop or western soundtracks. There are a few reasons for this: one, there are tons of Chinese music that is not reaching me. Two, maybe I just think it doesn’t sound that different because I can only really process what I recognize. Three, in a similar vein, maybe I’m thinking “that sounds like what I know” when really what I know sounds like what I’m hearing. Globalization is definitely doing things to music; if you’re telling me that Asian pop is not influencing western pop right now, I’m going to think you’re crazy, considering the influence and popularity Asian pop has in the US and Europe right now. And four, western music did have an impact on Chinese music, so there’s that.

Obviously, the music genre I chose for Wei Ying falls into the modern sphere, and I certainly looked into the techno/EDM/IDM/electronic/ambient/house scene in China. Articles I found stated it took a little longer for EDM to pick up steam in China, but now it’s definitely going strong. There are some great electronic music festivals, EDM clubs, underground EDM scenes, and EDM music artists (composers and DJs!) in China. Researching these artists was pretty difficult, especially because I wanted Wangxian’s musical discussions to be highly technical, and for highly technical discussions about EDM you are wandering into some very niche spaces. I’m sure such spaces about EDM in China exist, but they’re most likely to be in Chinese.

As I’ve said, globalization is a factor when it comes to cultural difference in music, and I’d add here that because this genre of music is so new, globalization has even more influence, from what I can tell. That said, I do not want to diminish how much influence very specific locations have to do with this type of music. EDM is very tied to clubs (because of the dancing) and performance (because of deejaying, and also because of things like live coding/algorave), which is probably why we get so many granular genres of house—Chicago house is different from Detroit, just for example. Regardless, I stuck with researching a lot of western artists for both the music and musical discussions in the fic, mostly because the music is supposed to be so new and avant-garde that is should not be something overly familiar to the reader, even if they’re steeped in electronic music genres.

Then there’s traditional music.

Traditional music. Traditional music obviously had a huge influence on Chinese modern music. The influence of traditional eastern music on modern eastern music, as well as traditional eastern music itself, is what really influenced a lot of western minimalism of the 1960s and 70s (and onward). To be clear, not all “eastern” traditional music is the same. It’s just as richly diverse regionally as traditional western music, if not more so, given “the east” is fucking huge—though I will say that a lot of people think of western music as pretty monolithic, because folk is characterized as a separate tradition than classical. When you consider ancient western folk, there’s a shit ton of it, and it’s quite diverse. There is also folk music in eastern music traditions, and this is different than music that would have been played in courts and palaces, so there’s really a ton going on.

Traditional music is what people think of when they think of eastern music being “weird,” which is something I really hate. Look, I love being weird; I think weird is cool; it’s great. But weird means unusual, and traditional music is very usual; people who say that just mean it’s unusual for them, and they should think about their words. What they’re trying to say is that traditional eastern music will sound very different for many western listeners, even though, again, we like to think of music as so universal, actually!, because it’s based on math, actually!, and math is so universal!!! The truth is that math is patterns, and patterns are things that your brain recognizes when there are familiar elements, and when there are unfamiliar elements your brain has trouble recognizing the pattern. So, again, music is a way to communicate across all kinds of boundaries, but it is not a universal translator. (But it does make you wonder . . . if Lan Zhan played Inquiry, could Aeneas answer???)

Regarding the unfamiliar math, what we’re talking about is scales. I think most people know this part. Eastern scales are based on math, just like western scales, but the frequencies are divided up differently. Among other things, traditional Chinese music did not use equal temperament, which means depending on what note you start with, the intervals for all the notes on the scale were be different. A way of thinking about this, at least as I understand it, is that a piano is even tempered. All the notes are always the same whether you’re playing in C major or B flat, because you have no control over the frequency produced when you press the key. But if you’re using just intonation—say you’re using an instrument with just a few strings—you’re adjusting the frequency of the note to match your scale. It requires extremely precise hearing and playing ability.

Notation for traditional Chinese music was really different than how I as a westerner understand it. For one thing, it didn’t include rhythm, and for another, it represented more a framework for improvisation than every single precise note. (See Gongche notation, Wikipedia.)

Authorship was also thought of pretty differently. When I googled “great Chinese composers,” the only results I was getting were twentieth century. There are some great ancient Chinese composers, but I had to do a lot of digging to find them, and trying to find someone like the Chinese equivalent of Beethoven is just the wrong approach. When you get right down to it, this really seems to be about the fundamental difference between western individualism vs eastern collectivism and community-based thinking. The individual artist is not the hero of the story. That said, the tradition of the music is very heroic. For instance, the notation allows such variation that the same piece can really build and grow through different artists, much like a story through oral tradition. Additionally, for an artist in an ensemble piece to stand out would really be quite rude; the point is not the individual talent of the musicians but the fundamental beauty of the piece. (This was a particularly hard thing to research, and I mostly found out what I laid out above from various folks answering questions in forums. The best one I found is here.)

Another thing is that harmony, as we think of it, was just not really a thing in traditional Chinese music. The focus was on a melody, which is where minimalism comes in. I’d add here that the “as we think of it” is pretty important, because the western paradigm, including western music language, is not super great at really capturing the nuance of Chinese music. I am terrible at tracking my sources when I research stuff for fic, so I was trying to find some of them now, and I came across this article, which examines the harmony that did exist, but how different it is from what we think of when we think of western harmony.

Despite the reading I did on this subject, very little about Chinese traditional music made it into the fic. I do have Lan Zhan reading a book on traditional music that he hates. This isn’t based on a book I found, but rather to show that Lan Zhan isn’t really into the idea of musical “purity,” that is, ideas of what you should and shouldn’t do with music. That said, I’m not really aware of what strictures around traditional Chinese music are like, or what the Chinese thought is on that. I am aware of how deeply restrictive western thought is regarding music theory, and that’s really where that part of the fic was coming from.

I’d originally had Lan Zhan reading a book on western music theory and very deeply hating it, but I also felt like having him read a book on western theory could reinforce the idea that he’s working within a western paradigm, when really the whole point is that this Lan Zhan very intentionally uses traditional music values. Due to his inspiration from Wei Ying, he’s breaking the norms of how that music works, but he's not necessarily making it western; he’s making it avant-garde. Basically, my inspiration was a Chinese Philip Glass, but I didn’t want to say that because as mentioned above, Glass is still western, no matter his influences. That said, Wei Ying does compare Lan Zhan to Philip Glass and also Tan Dun, who you might recognize as the guy who did the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, among many other very famous projects.

Tan Dun has in fact been called the Chinese Philip Glass, which is probably not very respectful to Tan Dun, who is himself an incredible (and experimental!) composer. I should note, however, that Tan Dun is Chinese American—he was born in China, but got a degree at Columbia and has lived in New York since. Also, he is particularly famous for marrying Eastern traditionalism with western style, and that really wasn’t what I wanted for Lan Zhan. I didn’t want Lan Zhan to be incredible because he was using western traditions, though he is familiar with them and can make very talented use of them. A lot of very famous Chinese modern composer are famous for that, and that music is still very Chinese. That said, I felt that if I made that Lan Zhan’s style, it would feel like I was saying Lan Zhan’s music is special because it’s western, and that was something I really wasn’t keen on.

In the end, I possibly did the fic and traditional Chinese music a disservice by having Lan Zhan read his book and hate on it. One of the whole reasons western music theory sucks is it can be pretty racist, and that’s what I was trying to avoid, but by conflating my rage at western music theory with eastern, I didn’t really help things much. But anyway, since I’ve now mentioned it, let’s just take a slight detour to talk about what I mean by racist music theory.

Western music theory racism. There’s a scene in the movie Tár that really solidified my feelings on the subject. In it, a student who identifies as BIPOC and pangender, says they don’t really have much use for Bach because of Bach’s misogynist history. The extremely famous director, Tár, played by Cate Blanchett, lambasts the student for “cancelling” Bach because of Bach’s personal life. The student goes on to say that they really just don’t have much interest in cis male white composers, and Tár continues to lambast the student for considering things like gender and race in conjunction with the art.

My understanding of this scene was that it was demonstrating that Tár is a jerk, so full of herself that she can’t listen to other voices, and so steeped in her 18th century western ideas of genius that she’s literally silencing the music voices she’s supposed to support. That was not most people’s reading of the scene, and in retrospect, possibly not the intention of the film. It seems rather telling that not a lot is known about Bach’s misogyny or lack thereof; there are plenty of other “great” western composers that are known to be worse in terms of misogyny and abuse, and yet the film did not make this scene about them. In retrospect, maybe that scene wanted to paint this student as kind of ignorant for cancelling Bach, and Tár really puts them in their place when she describes how art is more important than the artist.

Fuck that. I certainly believe that art is more important than the artist. JK Rowling sucks; that doesn’t mean I will stop loving HP fic and the part it’s played in my life. But the ugliness of the scene is that it hinges on importance of Bach, and look here, shocker, Bach is not essential, just as JKR is not essential if you decide you don’t ever want to familiarize yourself with the literature of TERFs. Even if you want to be a musician and create or conduct music, Bach is just not essential.

He’s pretty important if you want to be a western music historian, true, but when we talk about music there are many, many music traditions that are incredibly worthwhile and important that not only weren’t created by cis white men, but also weren’t ever derived or influenced by cis white men. If you think that you need Bach to know and love and create and perform and conduct music, it’s because you’re operating in a single paradigm that has become yes, universally known, but also for that reason oppressive and imperialist. I am not saying western classical music is bad because it’s imperialist, just to be clear. Bach’s great! Hate ‘im, but I do love me some Beethoven and he was also very cis and male and white and also a complete douche! What I’m saying is that forcing this music tradition on others is deeply imperialist, and it happens all the time.

Anyway, this is really a tangent, because despite my very good intentions to write about Chinese music, as I have stated, almost everything I used for reference was western, even a lot of the stuff I listened to. Maybe I just wanted to acknowledge that that’s a little racist, even though I tried not to be. Maybe I also wanted to hate on Tár and leave you with this interesting video about white supremacy in music theory.

References. Finally, we’ve reached the part I had originally intended to post, which is why I started writing this. Below are the essays and articles I used to write this fic. They were used in three ways: 1) to describe the music (though I also listened to things, see next section), 2) to inform Lan Zhan’s critiques and Wei Ying’s ideas—though I read a lot of essays to do that, just a crazy amount considering how little of the fic is actually about that, and 3) to describe the reading material Wei Ying and Lan Zhan exchange.

Music Beyond Airports – Appraising Ambient Music

This is a series of essays largely focused around Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, though there’s a lot of other stuff as well. I didn’t read everything in here, but the collection is absolutely fascinating. “Ambient House: “Little Fluffy Clouds” And The Sampler As Time Machine” is one of the “articles” Wei Ying sends Lan Zhan; meanwhile, the collection as whole is what Lan Zhan sends Wei Ying when he says he’s been reading about ambient house. Additionally, “Adaptive Game Scoring With Ambient Music” really influenced Lan Zhan’s commentary about arpeggiation, the first time he comments on Wei Ying’s music.

Counterpoint - Tracking in the Music of Aphex Twin

I have some embarrassment about this, given that the article is about counterpoint, and as I have discussed above, eastern traditional music doesn’t really employ that in the way westerners think about it. However, it’s also pretty backwards to restrict Wei Ying to traditional eastern music, as modern Chinese music includes plenty of counterpoint, and part of the point of the fic is that Wei Ying is doing entirely new things that haven’t been done before. Well. They’ve been done by Aphex Twin, as described in this piece, which also describes the first piece that Wei Ying plays for Lan Zhan in the fic, in the car. I did lift the phrase “pedagogy of counterpoint,” and could not decide whether it was long enough or significant enough to credit in the fic.

Unequal Temperament: A Review of Aphex Twin’s SYRO

I can’t remember what I used this article for. It’s an interesting read.

Reverb Machine (the entire website)

This is the site I kept returning to over and over and over again. Most of the articles about electronic really focus on either the equipment used or chords. In the fic, Lan Zhan isn’t supposed to know much about equipment or how any of it is used, because he does not do electronic music. Also, I didn’t really want to talk much about chord progressions, because those discussions are steeped in western music theory, and I wanted it to be possible for Wei Ying to be using the kind of scales traditional Chinese music used, even if a lot of modern Chinese music does use an even-tempered 12-tone scale. However, this site has a lot, and I ended up returning to it again and again so Wei Ying could say an offhand thing about reverb, and to describe certain things.

Notably, Wei Ying’s track, sex.mp3 is loosely based around Trent Reznor’s and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack to The Social Network. I haven’t even talked about Trent Reznor, but he was also someone I considered deeply when I started thinking about making Wei Ying do electronic music. In case you don’t know, Reznor was the artist behind Nine Inch Nails, but in later years he moved on to more experimental things, including movie soundtracks. Side note, movie soundtracks and video games is where a lot of these experimental artists doing either minimalism, ambient, or electronica, or a combination of all three end up, and I ended up reading a lot about video game music.

But anyway, when I saw the Social Network, I came out of it 1) admiring Aaron Sorkin and wishing I didn’t admire Aaron Sorkin because he’s kind of a douche, 2) shipping Mark and Eduardo way too much for my comfort, 3) going HOLY SHIT THAT SOUNDTRACK. Turns out I was not alone in finding that soundtrack totally different and new compared to anything I have ever heard, because as it turns out, it really was—wait for it—revolutionary. I understand that I have now said that about Glass, Eno, Radiohead, and Aphex Twin, but hey, people are doing things in music. Like I get that pop and hiphop artists are revolutionizing their genres all the time, but also it is possible for music as we know it to be redefined, and it’s not just the weird shit you hear that sounds like noise (there is a place for the weird shit that sounds like noise, and Brian Eno is closer to it than any of the above mentioned; I am not dissing weird shit that sounds like noise, because it is part of how we get where we are going).

Anyway, I used this website’s essay about The Social Network’s piece, “In Motion” to describe some of the music and inform some commentary on it.

“East Meets West: A Musical Analysis of Chinese Sights and Sounds, by Yuankai BaoSounds, by Yuankai Bao” by Jiazi Shi

This was the only essay I found that really had the extremely niche technical jargon that I really wanted for the fic that was also about Chinese music. You’ll note that it’s about a Chinese composer who is, again, famous for marrying eastern and western tradition, but this was what I could find in English, and I searched a lot. You’ll note that Lan Zhan’s very specific comment about the key change is something very directly inspired by this grad school dissertation. You’ll also note that this is where I found “Flowing Stream,” including a description of the song and the lyrics.

Music. A lot of fics like this one will link you to a specific piece that the character is playing. I could not do that, because the music in my fic is very intentionally made up. As I have been saying, the whole point is that Wei Ying is pushing the boundaries, inventing music that does not exist. So is Lan Zhan, by the end. I listened to music to inspire the descriptions, but it is not what they are playing, and almost none of it is Chinese. I’d be very interested in finding some Chinese music that is working on some of the principles of minimalism and electronic that these pieces employ.

Aphex Twin – Stone In Focus

Now you’ve come to the climax—this is really the story of how I learned to love Aphex Twin. This piece makes me cry. It’s what I used to describe the piece that has the remix of Lan Zhan’s guqin piece from 12 years ago. Obviously, the guqin piece mentioned in the fic is the canonical piece, Wangxian, but I find Wangian in the drama cheesier than I want it to be, and this Aphex Twin piece doesn’t have the Wangxian part. It’s just the sad longing part before Wangxian enters, but you’ll also notice that there are no flutes! Again, this is not the piece Wei Ying wrote; it’s just what I used for the description.

I didn’t link to the YouTube video I was watching, because the video was a collection and this didn’t come on until after minute thirteen. But that video just has this very sad tunnel that looks like maybe it’s for a train, and the rain is falling, and that makes me cry as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHl4NVytGpo&t=1074s

Book featuring Ndidi O - Hold On, I'm Coming

Wait, you’re saying, this is not electronic/house/ambient at all; this is just a trick to get me to watch one of your favorite wangxian vids! You’re right! But frankly, I was not focused on the genre when describing the music; I was focused on getting the feel of it that I wanted. The opening sequence to this was what I used to describe the track they make love to. (Lan Zhan starts making out with him and kind of slowly humping him to the track with the wangxian remix, but then Lan Zhan demands he plays something else, and this is what I listened to to get the feel for it.)

This pieces is a cover, and frankly, I can’t find out much about it. But just thinking about it turns me on and makes me cry and makes me feel so much, I can’t do it too often.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “In Motion,” from soundtrack to The Social Network

As noted above, this piece inspired sex.mp3, but I will say that the article I linked above about this piece, as well as the memory of the soundtrack itself, inspired descriptions more than listening to the piece itself. In the fic, sex.mp3 is initially described as “violent.” This was because I didn’t know if the track would play a big part in the fic, and then when it did, I really had to change to both to fit the meaning and the flavor I wanted; it became “anxiety inducing,” and that’s when it became “In Motion.” “In Motion,” however, is kind of too bright and peppy to really be sex.mp3, though I will say I was trying to listen to it just to write this section of the post, and I had to turn it off. It makes me SO anxious.

Philip Glass – soundtrack to The Hours

I’m linking the whole soundtrack, because in the fic Lan Zhan writes several related pieces, which is what this soundtrack is. I can’t even recommend one piece on this soundtrack, because it’s the thing as a whole that really makes you cry, and I can’t say I listened to a specific part of it to describe Lan Zhan’s music, because I know it so well that I only have to listen to a small piece to get all of it.

Flowing Water, played by Chen Leiji

The part this played in the fic is obvious. I listened to at least five versions of Flowing Stream/Flowing Water, and this is the one that I like the best. However, like all the renditions I listened to, the piece eventually becomes pretty complex and different than I wanted for Lan Zhan. In fact, what the narration describes as “showing off technique” is what I found in all recordings of this piece. I guess if you’re going to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on YouTube you’re going to do something impressive with it, but I will say this piece is still very close to what I wanted.

I will also say that when I searched for this piece, as well as several other traditional songs, the search results had a lost of stuff that said you can listen to these pieces for tranquility and calm and meditation. I suggest listening to this one as extremely passionate and longing, and you’re going to get a lot more from it. If you resign it to the background, yeah, it’s kind of nice. If you let each note really speak to you, you’re going to really ache in a beautiful way.

Brian Eno – Ambient 1, Music for Airports

After hearing so much about Eno and Music for Airports, I was a little afraid I wouldn’t like it. After all, this isn’t really my genre, and witness how long it took me to find something I liked by Aphex Twin. However, I really needed some inspiration for the piece Wei Ying composes after Lan Zhan breaks them up, so I started listening to it.

The opening to this album is not the heartbreaking thing that the fic describes. It in fact does break my heart, but that is because there is something so sweet about it, lonely and sweet, but also perfectly fine being by itself. This piece is like a child alone in a room, figuring out blocks. This piece is like a cat on a piano, content with its nonsense noise. This piece is what it’s like to be alone and to be fine with that, to love from afar and be fine with that. It still brings me to tears, listening to it.

Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place

Apparently I did not succeed in writing all the music without Radiohead. I will say it happened because I happened to be watching a TV show that just happened to use this song right when I needed something powerful. I was already thinking about them, because my BFF was listening to a podcast about In Rainbows, which explains the children shouting “Yay!” in 15 Step. I really wanted something other than rain to get sampled in Wei Ying’s music, and my brother has specifically used his children talking or his babies crying as samples. Once Lan Zhan knows about A-Yuan, I wanted to use that idea, so I listened to 15 Step again, which is far too peppy for what I needed. But then Everything In Its Right Place came on, and it’s actually way too melancholy for what I needed, but that doesn’t really matter; I just needed to get a few notes described, so this is what I used for inspiration for what Wei Ying plays Lan Zhan after he admits to being in love with him. I will just say that re-listening to this song really does remind me of just how much Kid A means to me, but also how much it means to, like, music. There was really nothing like it at the time.

I will end this post by saying that I am not, in fact, a "music" person. So many people need and rely on music to get them through tough times. I mostly don't care about it. I don't have a Spotify account, and I can't imagine taking the time to really curate playlists.

But one thing I can say about me and my tastes is that I'm interested in learning. I want to try new things and hear things that I haven't heard before. To be a little self-aggrandizing, I think that that's a good thing. I think it makes me a better person to work on listening to things that I'm a little unfamiliar with and learn what's great about them. I think I got to do that quite a bit writing this, even though in the end I used a lot of pieces I was familiar with to do the actual writing. I hope that maybe someone reads this and decides to listen to something new, just like I did.

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kilalulu-elsie · 18 days

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My UNprofessional opinion on The Last Ronin: Lost Years' new turtle team's species

because no one else is doing it WHERE ARE THE EXPERTS???

Warning: I didn't read the comics, all I know about the little 1's comes from au's, fanon contents, the snippets of comic pages I collected across the internet, and analysis videos (I can't read The Last Ronin comics, my heart can't take it), so don't take me too seriously, these are just guesses. Also, I don't know much about turtles, I just read a book one afternoon to find out more about the Rise turtles' species and take a look around the other turtles out of curiosity. And I read somewhere that they might not be just one species but a special combination of turtles to make the perfect soldiers? But I don't know, I still wanna do this so here we go (forgive my bad english):

So for starters, the first time I saw Uno I was automatically like "oh they used a Diamondback Terrapin hell yeah" and I'm pretty confident about my first guess because look at this:

just look at it:

I don't think I need to explain myself here. Sure he doesn't have the diamond shape in his shell and his shellshape doesn't exactly match but I believe those are more of artistic choices rather than eliminating factors. Also I've never seen any other turtle species that has this color scheme (and again, I didn't see many) and I've seen so many Diamondback Terrapin designs for Venus and it's awesome, so

My first guess is Uno is a Diamondback Terrapin.

For my second guess, Moja, I have a lot of leads because her colors are more of brown tones rather than green and well, most turtles are green. So I looked up brown, light spotted turtles and I found a species called Eastern Box Turtle. Maybe not exactly spot on but I think its pretty close:

Ornate Box Turtles have various spots on their bodies so that would kinda match with her spotty skin and face markings.

But the shell is bugging me. Because Box Turtles have a very bumpy and round shaped carapace but Moja's shell is flatter and has an interesting shape that I think should be considered.

But I don't know so I'll leave it at that.

My second guess is Moja is an Ornate Box Turtle.

Now,

for Odyn,

I have no clue.

I don't wanna say Snapping Turtle because Rise Raph is already a Snapping Turtle and Odyn's shell is not spikey anyway. But I couldn't find any turtles that has spiky skin and smooth carapace so I went with vibes. And I found the Loggerhead Musk Turtle. Just look at how silly it looks:

I think their sillines match and that's all I need.

My third guess is Odyn is a Loggerhead Musk Turtle.

Lastly, for lovely little Yi, I have a pretty good guess. Now if we look at her the most obvious clue that we have is her yellow markings across all of her body. They're not like Moja's spotty and round shaped markings tho, they're more stilty and linelike. Also her plastron is yellow enough to get my attention. And she's small. My guess doesn't really support that but at least they're smaller than my other guess, Florida Redbelly's. So, I propose: Yellowbelly Slider Turtle.

I'd say that's pretty close.

My fourth guess is Yi is a Yellowbelly Slider Turtle.

Maybe I should've considered their name's origins like Uno is Italian for one, Odyn is Ukranian or Russian for one, Moja is Swahili for one and Yi is Chinese for one, but I'm lazy.

Now please science side of Tumblr, turtle nerds, certain autistic fellas, TMNT fans, and all who's interested, correct me and my mistakes so that I can know their species I need to know I tell you I need to know.

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harrowharks-iliac-crest · 12 days

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Harrowhark Nonagesimus

Characters

<< Previous: Cytherea | Masterpost

The legend herself. I still love her so much.

I also have some questions, and some answers. This is gonna be a long one.

How did she open the tomb?

I puzzled over this for most of the book. Always assumed that John was lying when he said it was impossible - but then again, Gideon was around, so did she get Gideon's blood somehow? Or was it something else?

The proof was right here - right after John was revealed to be Gideon's dad:

It was worse when I was a kid. I remember the time you caught me telling her, I love you, and I can’t even remember what you said, but I remember that I had you on your back—I put you straight on the fucking ground. I was always so much bigger and so much stronger. I got on top of you and choked you till your eyes bugged out. I told you that my mother had probably loved me a lot more than yours loved you. You clawed my face so bad that my blood ran down your hands; my face was under your fucking fingernails. When I let you go you couldn’t even stand, you just crawled away and threw up. Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven? Was that the day you decided you wanted to die?

Harrow was ten; she had Gideon's face under her fingernails. Harrow opened the blood ward when she tried to kill herself. This makes a lot of sense. Mystery solved.

Is Harrow actually insane? Is the Body more than a hallucination?

Simply put: No, and yes. The Body is the manifestation of Alecto herself. She hitched a ride with Harrow's body when Harrow opened the tomb. She's been "haunted" by Alecto, the same way she was haunted by Wake for most of HtN.

I realised that this must be the case when I read this, after Harrow tries to kiss Alecto's ghost on the mouth.

As though you had crossed no boundary, and above the soundless rough shouting in your ears, the Body said: “I have to go away for a while,” and you regretted everything. “I have done wrong,” you said. There was the tiniest suggestion of a furrow in that cool unbreathing brow, and she said, “How?”

Alecto isn't upset that Harrow kissed her. She simply has to go away for a while. I thought about this. I read it as upset in my first read, but now it doesn't feel that way at all. "As though you had crossed no boundary", questioning why Harrow would think she'd done wrong. Alecto isn't upset at the kiss. She just has to go do Important Alecto Business.

Harrow interacts with Alecto throughout HtN. The Body is always there, until it isn't. Picking up on what we learned about Revenants from Wake, Harrow is haunted by Alecto in the same way. Dulcie, in the bubble, confirmed that she could sense someone other than Wake. Alecto came forward to Gideon when Harrow's sternum was shattered, her tomb was empty in Harrow's final vision.

Alecto isn't a revenant. She may not even be a ghost. Some essence of her, however, managed to cling to Harrow and infiltrate her mind. Alecto's powers must be strong - did she have enough of a connection with Harrow to adhere to her body? Wake needed Harrow to die to come forward - Alecto may have no such limitations. She's there, in Harrow's peripheral vision, most of the time. I don't think she had the limitation of needing that connection. Anyone or anything would do, hence the locked in an ice cave behind a million wards. Not exactly a revenant, as Alecto's body is almost certainly still alive, but an ability to cast her spirit and let it cling on to something, anything that moved in there.

Is Harrow actually insane? Well, on one hand, yes. She's Harrow, after all. She's had to live with what she thought were hallucinations all her life. She's been hearing things like the Secundarius bell and doors closing/banging as well, which might also be Alecto's input - some sound comes in even through the ice?

Alternatively, well, Harrow has 200 souls inside her, from the kids that were killed. (How did the Ninth, a house of mostly decrepit elders, get 200 children anyway?) Those kids will have left some kind of mark on her soul, and they all would have heard the bell and doors during their short lives. Maybe it's just a reflection of this.

This means that the hallucinations we've seen Harrow have, are all likely caused by souls hitching a ride with Harrow. Wake, Alecto, the unnamed 200.

Doesn't mean Harrow hasn't been hearing things and seeing things that were ostensibly not there, though. All throughout her entire life! That kinda stuff would drive anyone a bit mad.

Mind you, Cytherea under her bed was absolutely real. Ianthe took advantage of Harrow's vulnerability in that moment.

I'm still convinced that Ianthe is with Eden in some way. Eden came to Canaan House first, retrieved Camilla, Coronabeth and Judith, along with part of Palamedes's skull. Cytherea somehow managed to call BoE to the scene before she died. Harrow wiped some memories - maybe she strategically also wiped this memory? I really wanna know what happened at this point in the story.

Okay well I think it's time to talk about what and who we know.

>> Next: Ianthe, Coronabeth and the Blood of Eden

#tlt theories #no nona the ninth spoilers please #tlt liveblog #the locked tomb liveblog #tlt spoilers #the locked tomb #tlt #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow nonagesimus

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cinnamonest · 10 months

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I'm now into the 5th season of hxh. As soon as I finish this series I will actually make a proper post but in the meantime I want to shout into the void how I feel about some of these bastards. Yes I was too lazy to turn off subtitles before taking hulu screenshots. I've been cutting into my sleep hours to watch this since the past week since I keep having to work overtime so this might be incoherent and delirious idk. I'm not entirely sure I'm awake right now. This might be a dream. Anyway

Hisoka was the only character I was familiar with by name prior to watching and like. I always assumed the pervert schtick was like a one-time line/single scene that people just took and ran with it. I was incorrect

I know full well this man would most likely kill me but like. I think I'd be okay with it. I think it would be a good way to go and I would probably accept it. I'd thank him even. I'd ask him to step on me while he does it. Or maybe I'm right at the threshold where I'm so pathetic I'm genuinely not worth killing which I think I'd also be okay with as long as I can still get knocked to the ground and have him step on my neck. Please sir

Also a large portion of me watching this, up until this past week, has been while I'm at home bc I've been home a lot recently and I often have a parallel play thing going on with my mother where in the evenings I'll watch something or play games while she browses facebook or reads her Bible/Christian books and she'll like pay half-attention and make comments every few minutes on anything I watch. In true parent fashion she's managed to be there for like every scene of random naked shots or weird moaning and says nothing, but once just looked up, made a face of deep discomfort and went back to highlighting her Bible. I think about this a lot. I'm sorry mom

I'm very weak to comic relief men actually and I have a triple weakness to token perv characters and furthermore my ovaries were created as such that men who are incredibly intelligent while also being astoundingly dumb are my kryptonite so my boy, be he as he may, dare I admit, does things to me. I think if you pulled the typical tease line where you say something about having a problem and needing a doctor to inspect you or just flash him he might die on the spot and that is very endearing to me. One could torment this man with the slightest of skin or sensuality it would be very easy. I appreciate you leorio

I want to protect Killua but like does he need it really. Like the "oh poor baby I want to hold him and squeeze him and never let anything harm him" urge is there because of my blatant maternal complexes but at the same time I know full well he does not need protecting and would realistically be the one protecting anyone else but like the urge is still there. I don't care. I WILL find something to protect him from and I WILL do it

Also very tsun. I can sense it. I know I'm dumb and weak and I would get snarky comments about it but that's okay. I would let the middle school aged boy bully me. I'd be okay with that

I think Illumi looks kind of like an insect. However he also terrifies me a little bit but I don't think that would particularly bother him. I think I could tell him both that he terrifies me and that he looks like a bug and he would have an entirely neutral response. Would probably just ask what kind of bug but may be disappointed if I name a non-cool bug. I'd probably say a grasshopper. I don't know how he would feel about that

I think what would be infuriating to me most is it is difficult to get much of a reaction out of this dude. Like you can be a total nightmare to have as a captive and the most you'll get is a :/ response. In attitude at least, like he'd probably still snap my wrist if deemed appropriate but would do it with just a mildly exasperated face/voice. I would try so hard to get a strong reaction and would never get it and that infuriates me. What right do you have to infuriate me like this bug man. Stop staring at me with them big ol eyes

I think if this man were to be living a normal life and not running with criminals he would wear socks with sandals on a daily basis. Like those thick white halfway up the calves socks and tan buckled sandals worn exclusively by boomer middle aged dads. And it's not the only trait he would share with middle aged men either I think he would care deeply about the quality of his lawn and mispronounce foreign things in a way that is borderline creative for how wrong it is. I think he just is a middle aged boomer dad trapped in a younger man's body. Release this man into a Home Depot and he will immediately adapt to his natural habitat

I am terrified of this man because due to who I am as a person I immediately evaluate all male specimens on what I think sex with them would be like, and cannot imagine a scenario involving this man where I come out of it without actual internal damage. Like you know how people joke about "rearranging your guts/insides" well this would be that but like actually genuinely. I think intercourse with this tank of a man would automatically necessitate medical attention. However do not mistake my horror for hesitancy because organ rupture is a price I will willingly pay for the experience of a realistic simulation of what I imagine it feels like to be a sick gazelle that falls behind the rest of the herd only to start hearing suspenseful nature documentary music

I cannot look at this man without my blood pressure immediately rising. I have never been simultaneously so strongly attracted to yet have such a strong desire to strangle someone. I think the worst part of this is that he would somewhat let me attempt to strangle him but would find it endearing and would start going on an analysis of my personhood and I will be real with you all that would peak my fury and I would become violent. And blah blah "understanding myself" hey man can you maybe not mass murder and go on your journey of self discovery by doing drugs or taking a road trip or something like a normal person in their quarter life crisis. Is that so hard.

As my fingers type these words I can feel my heart rate increasing and I am filled with immense fury and arousal at the same time. Why are you attractive? What is wrong with me? I hate it and I hate myself for it. I have to unironically take a break from typing to take a deep breath. I have to move on because I'm getting heart palpitations

Shalnark seems underappreciated. I love him so much but he also terrifies me in a way none of the others do. Like sure being blatantly cruel or loud or huge like some of the others is one thing but he's too cheery. It scares me on a visceral level. Sir why are you smiling like that. I do not trust it. Or rather realistically I know I WOULD trust it if I met this man as a stranger because I'm very gullible and that would not end well for me. This boy would probably be like one of the absolute worst people to end up stuck with once you get into it but that is very well hidden from the surface and I do not like that. I know I'm naive as all hell and I would fall for the same tricks over and over and I just know that would be used against me

On the bright side though this does mean he would actually fit the classic, original yandere trope since originally yanderes are supposed to be super sweet and cheery externally, so there's that

My skrungly. My tiny son. Y'all do not understand my predicament because I have a NEED to squish his face in my hands, I have an unbearable urge to pat his head and ruffle his hair, it is a literal physical intrinsic need like food and water and I need this but like at what cost. Is the price one I am willing to pay. The answer is probably yes actually. What are a few broken fingers for a moment of pure bliss. Likewise even if by a mere 2 centimeters I am taller than this man and that brings me great satisfaction. I hold great power in my hands. I would be sure to bring this matter up on a daily basis at great risk to my well-being

Baby boy you are the warmth of my soul and the love of my life and the brightest star in my night sky which is really saying something because you have about as much positive energy as a funeral. Regardless. Baby boy. Baby

I want Kurapika to know I love him. If Kurapika has 100000000 fans I'm one of them. I'm Kurapika has 10 fans I'm one of them. If Kurapika has 0 fans I am dead. If I were a shounen anime protagonist that just got the shit beaten out of me and I'm crumpled on the ground on the verge of unconsciousness and/or death I would have flashbacks and imagery of Kurapika go through my head and then I'd get a sudden burst of willpower and energy to miraculously get back up and kill the villain in a single blow. If I'm having a bad day and a singular thought of Kurapika passes through my mind it becomes a good day. Knowing Kurapika is a spiritual experience for me. I have a small orgasm every time my eyes are graced with Kurapika's visage. I think about Kurapika at minimum 127 times daily and if I fail to do this I will die instantly. I would protect Kurapika with my life. And by God I would gladly volunteer myself for clan rebuilding. Sir if you ever want to spread your bloodline I am right here. I will leap at the chance to spend the rest of my life as your personal incubator. I feel like he'd be paranoid and overprotective and lock me in the same house forever but you know what? I'm fine with that. Walking through our house at night will be like a semi-obscure 2000s Japanese horror rpg because every step you take there's a set of big red eyes staring at you but instead of weird Japanese demons its just pouty tiny kurtas. I am in physical pain because the most screen time he's had in ages is a phone call. Where is my boy. What have they done with my boy. If he does not return soon I will become violent

#i need to compile my mom's commentary because oh my God #she doesn't understand anything going on but comments all the time and it cracks me up #shes very opinionated on the characters #but can never remember their names #every few minutes of watching in silence from across the room i hear her just #'oh him again. i do not like him. i've had enough of him'#and just resumes her Bible study

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avelera · 1 month

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Apologies for screaming into your askbox like this but

EVERYTHING YOU SAID ABOUT BENIOFF AND WEISS IS SO FUCKING TRUE AND I AM SO GLAD SOMEONE ELSE IS FINALLY SAYING SOMETHING

As someone who read the Game of Thrones books (probably younger than I should have...but that's beside the point) the sorts of things that the two Ds decided needed to be added for the sake of "realism" or "accuracy" was ALWAYS just an excuse to brutalize someone. Be it kids, be it women (though in GoT is was usually women) and so much of it was not in the books!!! Like, sure, the books have accrued a reputation for being brutal, and they totally are...but they never seem as gretuatus in the way that David and Dan seem to revel in the crualty. Utterly original characters are introduced for the express purpose of being killed or assaulted, and it makes watching Game of Thrones a harrowing experience.

I'm not surprised that this has continued in their other work, in so many ways, the bloodlust became their calling card. I am deeply thankful that most of the other places that had been courting them to make projects have dropped them.

I will say in defense of the no doubt huge team who worked on Three Body Problem that it's not a gore fest or anything. There was a lot I've enjoyed in eps 1-5 (which as far as I've gotten at the moment) and scenes of violence are hardly the only thing that happens (though umm... maybe be prepared for the opening scene. It's also a doozy.)

Anyway, as I see it, Benioff and Weiss's sadism is more like... Tarantino's foot fetish. It doesn't consume the entire story, but when Tarantino does a loving closeup of feet you're like, "Ah, there it is. I was wondering when that would show up." If B&W work on something, like it or not, they're going to mash the cruelty button and heighten the cruelty of canonical scenes (if it's an adaptation) in order to try to get a reaction out of the audience. It's just how they work. For some audiences, that might even be a feature, not a bug!

The thing that makes me so frothing at the mouth enraged about Benioff and Weiss is how fucking coquettish they are about their sadism. They always act so fucking surprised like they're shocked that anyone would think that the gore and the horror were the point and what drew them to the story (I know, I'm just repeating my post at this point but STILL--!).

Look, when I was a teen, I totally first started writing angst to sort of... express this vein of sadism in myself in a safe outlet like fiction. I wanted to make people cry with my writing. So I'd do things like just kill off all the characters and be so proud when a reader said they were sad after.

But that's just... really flat and amateurish angst, y'know? There are so many more sophisticated and meaningful ways to create emotion, including sadness, in an audience other than just killing off all the characters or torturing them.

But I feel I remember enough from those days (I'd like to think I've long since grown out of that impulse) to know a sadist when I see one? And Benioff and Weiss's storytelling, to my eyes again, is simply sadistic. It glories in watching people in pain and it finds ways to exaggerate that pain and the chance to exaggerate moments of pain is what draws them to the stories they like to depict.

And that's fine. Plenty of horror creators revel in gore and cruelty and it's an entirely worthy art form!

But for the most part, those horror creators know what they're doing and they're open or even joyful about the fun they have creating these horror stories! Enjoying creating horror stories or depicting suffering or even being sadistic, particularly in fiction where no one is actually getting hurt, is perfectly fine.

I just fuckin... wish Benioff and Weiss would admit that's what it is goddamn it makes me INSANE.

#benioff and weiss #game of thrones #netflix three body problem

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liketolaugh-writes · 2 months

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I know I've talked about this before, but God, I'm never going to stop resenting the hold that Harry Potter has on me.

As an autistic person, special interests never really leave you, and that's more true for longer-standing ones. I really can't explain how all-consuming they are, how much time and energy and love you pour into them, how much joy and comfort you get from them. I'm kind of between special interests right now, after finishing both Constellations and Blue Food Project, and it's unsettling. Makes me restless, leaves a lot of time in my day. (Time I can use to look for jobs! Positives.)

Anyway. Harry Potter was definitely my longest-standing special interest to date. It was my SI through most of elementary school, and given the choice, I would do nothing except reread them, over and over and over and over again. My parents had to institute a rule where every time I finished the series, I had to wait a certain amount of time before I read it again, and I always did as soon as the time was up. There are parts of it, useless stupid lines, that I can still recite from memory. ("And he was even brave enough to nibble the end off a funny gray one that turned out to be pepper" has always been my favorite example.) I don't engage much with the Harry Potter fandom, because it's a mutant factioned thing that kind of scares me, but the story stays with me nonetheless.

Like many other fans, this letter broke my heart; I'm sure you know the one even without clicking the link. She's only gotten worse since then (every so often I still look at her Twitter account and mourn) but this was the beginning of the end. Most authors, I can forgive their transgressions; I can trust that they've grown, I can accept that their work is flawed, and I can enjoy what I read despite that.

Every since that letter, and plenty of the subsequent scandals besides, I've been unable to do that. I read any part of Harry Potter and I can see nothing but flaws. I see sexism, and ableism, and cultural appropriation and colonialism and hypocrisy. I think, why are there so many crowds of tittering girls? and why does everyone hate Fleur seemingly just for being French and pretty? and why did she design the Slug Club without any acknowledgement of 'this is literally how to break into a career field?' There is nothing there for me but frustration and hurt.

I've seen people in the trans community complain about cis folk asking if they can 'still enjoy' Harry Potter, which I understand. (I consider myself nonbinary, but my gender identity is so unimportant to me that I still consider my place in that community tenuous.) But this isn't that. This is frustration. Harry Potter was carved into me years ago, and I can't seem to dig it out, and I have yet to decide what to do with that.

But the story stays with me. The memory of it is inescapable. I don't even really need to reread the books to write fanfics, most of the time; I know every plot point by heart. How could I not? And every unanswered question, every point of shoddy worldbuilding that drives me nuts about that world - I can fix those. I do it all the time in other fandoms. It's really not that hard to create the answers to the plot holes that bother you.

Most of the Harry Potter fics I write are crossovers - Harry Potter goes well with just about any world, kind of like Avengers does. But there's one I've been playing with that bugs me in a special way.

I mentioned finishing 'Constellations,' my two part series where Percy Jackson goes to therapy for everything he goes through in the PJO and HoO books. That was a love letter to Percy Jackson, to Rick Riordan's writing. Like any writer, he has his flaws and weak points, but I love it nonetheless, every part of it. I wrote it with the intent to supplement and highlight canon for everything I love about it.

Now, I find myself writing a similar fic for Harry Potter, with Harry Potter going through therapy. It's in the beginning stages yet (such stories are obviously difficult) but it's such a fascinating topic that I can't shake it. What happens when a survivor of such vicious neglect suddenly is accused of seeking attention at every turn? How can someone so victimized by the Ministry come to trust them enough to work as an Auror? Did Dumbledore truly understand what he subjected Harry to with the Dursleys?

But with Constellations, I had respect for Riordan's writing that I don't have for Rowling's. Such a story would come from a completely different place. And that's fascinating, too. It's just complicated.

I'm not going anywhere with this, I guess. It's just- frustrating, to so thoroughly resent a story and a cast that I also love so much.

#long post #harry potter #hp #jk rowling #sorry it didn't seem right to break it anywhere #it has been YEARS now of trying to deal with this #autism #special interests #just because this post is arguably almost more about that than about harry potter #i kind of want to do a complete reread of the books and annotate everything that bothers me #would that help? maybe!#i don't know

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lilysaus · 10 months

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okay. this fucking picture made me so mad i went on a 15 minute rant to my sister while she was trying to read her book.

so ive been looking at a lot of pictures of posts on pinterest because thats just where i spend most of my time. most of these posts are on the topic of adhd. ive never been properly diagnosed, but reading through these posts has made me feel so welcomed and understood (more than my parents have made me feel, pretending that this is "all just a phase that ill get over soon because pretending to have adhd is just the thing right now") that i realized ON MY OWN that "hey maybe i do have adhd." well.

i found this post while scrolling through pinterest, and it really sparked my anger.

i have a friend who was diagnosed with add before it was considered an "outdated" term and scrapped because apparently ALL FUCKING FORMS OF NEURODIVERGENCY THAT ARENT AUTISM ARE JUST "ADHD".

i read this post and it was what sparked my anger and my 15 minute rant to my sister. people who get degrees in this stuff, or counselors at schools, never really know what youre going through. all they know is that youre having some problems and they need to be solved.

which brings me back to this picture. if you look up "is add still a thing" on google, this is the first picture to pop up. and just seeing the visual aids they put with it makes me furious enough to throw something or someone out a fifth story window. the little girl is fucking SMILING while thinking about the most common shit people think us neurodivergent folks think when distracted. first off, no. false. we dont just think of video games and candy. we think of the randomest shit possible, like how long can i sit here without blinking or what kind of funny shit can i draw on this one sheet of paper.

and ALSO.

you cant just categorize adhd as TWO SEPARATE THINGS and call it good. we dont fit under two umbrellas. theres too many of us. we each have our own figurative umbrellas that only we ourselves can fit under, no one else. thats the problem with neurotypicals. they fit the typical stereotype for humans: we try to understand everything by putting it in a box. those lists of "symptoms"? i match every single one. on both sides. so ha. take that SCIENTISTS. what am i? some kind of freak of nature because i dont fit under just ONE of your precious categories?

i also looked up what "inattentive" means and it made me angrier. according to oxford languages, "inattentive" means "not paying attention to something", which doesnt seem too bad, right? it fits some people perfectly with their symptoms, right? but its not the definition that bugs me. its the example sentence thats used. "a particularly dull and inattentive student". basically saying that if you dont pay attention well to something, youre dull and boring.

im sorry, what? sometimes i have trouble paying attention, sure, but you ask any of my friends and they can agree i am NOT boring in any way, shape, or form. non of them would describe me as "dull". inattentive? sure, but not dull. so to call it "inattentive" adhd, instead of just add, is stupid! my friend with ADD (not fucking adhd, stupid scientists) is one of the funniest, most entertaining people ive ever met. shes an incredible artist, super smart, and knows how to make anyone laugh. does that sound dull to you? does she have problems focusing sometimes? yes. does she struggle with doing something sometimes? yes. but dont the rest of us?

my point is, when i see things like this, it pisses me off. like, unless all of the scientists who agreed "add" is an outdated term have it themselves, i refuse to believe its outdated and i will continue to say that my friend has it. she was literally diagnosed by the doctor telling her "you have attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder without the hyperactivity." THATS JUST FUCKING ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER YOU DUMBASS!!!

anyway, i hope im not the only one who feels this way. i just felt it necessary to get this out there. maybe someday, people wont be so dumb and single minded. in my opinion, neurodivergent people are superior in intellect and creativity, but i guess until someone like that takes over the world and dropkicks neurotypicals into the stratosphere, we'll never know.

#adhd stuff #undiagnosed adhd #living with adhd #neurodivergence #neurodivergent #add #its called add not adhd #you dumbasses #scientists are stupid sometimes #make that all the time

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demonicchicken1121 · 5 months

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Give me your Charlie head cannons :3

i haven’t worked on her character as much as I probably should, but oh well

Charlie is adopted! Henry is asexual and had no interest in marrying. He really wanted to be a dad, but he weighed the options and decided that the adoption process would be less stressful for him than the other process.

It was really difficult for Henry to get qualified to adopt, given that he was a single dude. A lot of people suspected him of being gay or a creep, and would give him A LOT of trouble.

Charlie was adopted when she was two. She had some trauma, but was still able to live a relatively normal life.

Charlie is also black, so she and her dad would sometimes get weird looks from people. Henry also had trouble with doing her hair, but he asked around and read books. He eventually got really good at it, and Charlie would brag on him at school for making her hair look pretty. That shit would make Henry’s whole week.

Charlie was really close with Michael. They’re about a year and a half apart in age, so they could relate to each other really well.

the Afton’s and the Emily’s essentially lived as a single family unit, so despite technically being an only child, she considered Michael, Liz, and Evan her siblings.

Charlie died in early 1984, and her death was actually an accident on Williams part. I haven’t fully fleshed out what happened, but essentially: she slipped and fell in the rain outside the pizzeria, hitting her head and breaking her neck. She didn’t die immediately, and William, in a moment of panic, decided to put her out of her misery.

that would be a really fucking sad point to end on, so I’ll wrap this up with some goofy wholesome stuff: her favorite color was green and she loved to play outside. She likes dirt and bugs and rain. She wasn’t scared of anything either, and would casually pick up spiders and yard snakes. Michael and Henry hated spiders, so Charlie always felt the need to show them the biggest spiders she could find.

elizabeth was also super into playing outside, but wasn’t quite as cautious or gentle as Charlie. So Charlie took it upon herself to teach her what bugs and plants were dangerous, but Lizzie always managed to get herself hurt anyways.

wow this was long. A lot of the adoption stuff is actually based on my own observations. I’m not adopted, but my mom and my grandma have both worked very closely with adopted and foster kids. The system is really fucked up and I wish everyone in the foster care system the best <3

#fnaf #five nights at freddy’s #henry emily #charlie emily #charlotte emily #fnaf au #fnaf road to hell #road to hell au #bug mention #snake mention

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basically-on-fire · 6 months

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- Things that bug me about the plot of Iron Flame -

*Spoilers Obviously *

****

Beware I wrote this late at night right after finishing the book

*****

Things that bug me -

Mostly because they're a) plot holes and bad writing or

B) Xaden still lies everytime he opens his mouth :

1) what's with the second signet? I know we had the theory that it's all the rebellion kids because of the relic. Imogen can erase recent memories and is also very fast (and that IS a signet hence why it was forbidden to use on the mat), Liam had farsight but also somehow wielded ice in the final battle of FW... His dragon's name literally meant ice - and most of the dragon's names are related to their riders signet somehow -

So can anybody explain why the two signet thing is suddenly something only Xaden has? And only because sgaeyl bonded in his direct family line?

That doesn't add up. Unless he's still lying and he has actually three...

2.) Speaking of Xaden's second signet - I think he's still lying about the extend of what he can do. If he could only read intentions then he should not be able to respond to things that violet was thinking in that detail. There is also a line "but I have to know what she's thinking" THINKING - not just her intention or half-before-whatever thought. Yes that would explain why he is such a good fighter but he has to be much more powerful than that.

He also projects his thoughts to Violet at one point (You know when) . Probably unintentionally - but now I have only two explanations :

Either violets second signet is also mind reading (YR confirmed it is already manifested in IF and we will spot it if we know what to look for)

OR Xaden can invade other people's minds. Which then got me thinking that maybe there is no bond between the two at all. It's just Xaden reading Violet's mind and projecting his answers into hers. Now that would be a plottwist.

3.) The Rebellion relics. We learn in this book (from Xaden of all people) that the relics are the result of a rune stone that all the children were holding in their hand while their parents were being executed. It was supposed to counter the signet of the dragon that did the execution - which it does - but how can it be that in FW we learn that the youngest of them was born with one?

So is Xaden lying (can you tell I don't trust that guy?) or is it just sloppy writing?

4.) Last but not least - lazy writing or maybe I was too tired during this part and missed something -

But why can Violet only power one ward stone? I get there had to be a plotpoint to reveal Andarna as the 7th breed but when does it say that every dragon's flame can only be used once? Because she couldn't use Tairn again and had to ask Codagh... And now with Andarna being the only one of the 7th there is only one wardstone that can be powered...

You know what - even if it was explained and I missed it that's still lazy writing imo

Anyway I did not hate it. I actually liked it a lot. Andarna and Tairn bickering actually made my day.

I just hope these things will be explained at some point 😂

#iron flame #iron flame theory #rebecca yarros #forth wing #xaden riorson #violet sorrengail #violet and xaden

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loveandmurders · 1 year

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Hi!! So each Sinclair brother has his thing. Bo has cars, Vincent has art/sculpting, and Lester has animals/roadkill. So could you pretty please write something where either little sister or daughter reader is into bugs? Just doing weird kid stuff like “Caterpillars and ladybugs are my friends. No!! Don’t swat at it!!” And rattling off facts excitedly like “Did you know moths don’t eat and only live for about a week?” But then later her years of having bug collections comes in handy as she grows up to be an entomologist. 💛🐛🐞

Hello there <3 This was such a cute idea, thank you for requesting it!

I hope you'll enjoy <3

LADYBUG'S BEST FRIEND

Warnings: silly facts about insects, mentions of murders, dangerous reader. If there is any mistake I'm sorry!

You were still quite young when your parents noticed your interest in insects. You could be playing in town and whenever a bug or a butterfly or anything would fly near you, you would stop to watch it with a certain fascination.

Very quickly you started to love to follow them and talk to them.

You even called them “your friends” (it wasn’t like you had anyone else in town anyways).

You enjoyed flying insects the most at first, but then you grew as fascinated about the walking ones, like ants, or even spiders (even though they are not insects).

Bo always found that weird, but he was glad he didn’t have to deal with a child who was screaming anytime she saw a little insect coming closer to her. Vincent enjoyed seeing your fascination and how your eyes lit up. Lester also absolutely adored it! He loved roadkills and animals, so your love for insects wasn’t that far and he could totally get it.

You started to ask a lot of questions about bugs and insects to your parents but their knowledge was soon not enough for you.

As you grew older, your love for them never stopped and you continued to wonder about them, and you were often asking Lester to bring you in the woods or somewhere you could discover new insects.

Bo bought you books and he tried to read some to you, even though he found this absolutely boring. He was always gently teasing you for this hobby of yours.

Vincent taught you how to draw animals and insects and dead nature. You became actually quite good and when he showed you some Vanity paintings of the Renaissance, it became your favourite genre.

You started to draw the insects you saw, or to follow some with your notebook and pen but you were always complaining about the fact you didn’t really remember them or that you hadn’t been able to see them well enough to do a good reproduction. So Lester started to bring you the insects he found dead on his way.

He didn’t find them often, but when he did he knew you were going to be really happy about it.

That was how you started to collect insects. And you continued to read books, and whenever you were finding a species you were trying to guess the family, and then you were looking up the exact name of it.

You also started to know a lot about them and you couldn’t help but share facts about them to your parents.

“Did ya know some moths, like the Luna moth, don’t have a mouth and so they can’t eat? And because of that they can only live for about a week?”

“No I didn’t, honey, but ya do have a mouth so please eat your soup now”

“And did ya know one ladybug can eat up to 5,000 insects in its lifetime?!”

“Yes, and ya eat heigh spiders every year, darling”

“That’s impossible, father, because the vibrations of our heart and breath are probably perceived as an indication of danger for the spiders!”

“... Ain’t knowin’ if I should be impressed or terrified right now, Y/N”

“Oh speaking of fear, caterpillars or larvae in general can feel stressed out because of loud noises! Isn’t it crazy that little things like that can feel so much! I wonder if they understand me when I talk to them, like Jonesy!”

Lester loved to listen to you and he totally encouraged you to keep talking about your passion, because he enjoyed how interesting you were but also because he wanted to let you know that he was proud of you and that he was supportive.

The twins listened as well but also shared looks, thinking their daughter wasn’t fully sane (but they still loved you).

You also started to get very interested in poisonous insects and deadly ones.

It was probably because you had been raised by killers, so you always loved dangerous characters in books and movies, and dangerous insects in real life.

You found it fascinating that a little thing could kill a human.

You also loved the idea that one day, a little thing like yourself, could kill a grown man.

On the other hand, it meant that your family wasn’t allowed to hurt one.

Whenever one of your parents would try to get rid of an insect, you would jump on their arms and beg them to let it go and to not touch it.

As you grew up, your collection grew as well: you also had more and more notebooks filled up with drawings and names. You also started to study the insects’ bodies and the way they eat, procreate, react when they feel in danger. You noted everything down in your notebooks. You also tried to fact check the books your parents bought you.

It happened that you sometimes proved the books wrong and you were so proud about it.

As you grew up, your hobby became a lot more serious for you and you started to really want to study insects.

Lester was really supportive of this. Vincent thought it would allow you to keep drawing so he was happy. He was also trying to make you do wax sculptures out of your little friends and you often agreed, so it was all good for him. Bo was quite proud that his daughter was going to study in the field of science, so he was also eager to let you go to college and then university for you to become an entomologist.

You were very grateful, especially because in a bigger city you also discovered how insects were reacting to the human impacts on their environment.

And that was how you decided you wanted to especially study this: the cohabitation and coexistence between insects and humanity.

Later on, you started to write articles about it and to work at a research laboratory that wasn’t too far from Ambrose.

Your parents were so proud they had been able to raise you right enough for you to have a normal job.

At the same time, your “normal” job allowed you to do some research such as reproducing the cell-killing protein of the spider Brown Recluse (Loxosceles reclusa), to make it more dangerous and then to use if on your blades, so now, when you came back home to kill tourists, your attacks were able to create instant necrosis on their flesh.

You ain’t a real Sinclair as long as you don’t use your knowledge to be destructive.

And gosh, your parents couldn't deny: you were one of them.

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