sunderwight:

Imagine you’re Lan Xichen. You’ve spent the past decade+ worrying about your younger brother who, according to your own perspective on things, fell wildly in love with an evil heretic cultivator, kinda betrayed your sect for him, got punished within an inch of his life by your elders, and spent subsequent years in mourning when said evil heretic cultivator got killed.

You’re starting to think that your brother is never going to get over this, is always going to be holding onto a certain amount of grief and anger and lonesome distance.

But then one day, he brings another guy home! And, yes, this guy is not perfect either. He’s also a heretic cultivator and a notorious lunatic, who is in a bad position with your own situationship. But! Maybe Wangji is finally starting to move on? Even if his bad taste persists, this one is at least more manageable. How fortuitous that your stubborn, obsessive brother should finally find a new yeah no that’s Wei Wuxian, isn’t it?

It’s just Wei Wuxian again.

(via kirayaykimura)

dark-lord-tom-returns:

So I’m reading Witches Abroad and the first time we see Granny use magic is in Desiderata’s cottage. Desiderata (deceased) was a big proponent of everyday magic. She was also quite blind. So when Granny and Nanny check on her cottage and definitely are not looking for her wand, there are no matches for the fireplace.

Granny doesn’t like everyday magic. She says so. She even tells Nanny that if they found the wand she wouldn’t use it, emphatically. She doesn’t like the habit. But she’s annoyed and wants her tea and needs a fire for that. So she uses magic.

But then she sees the mirror. And the face looking back isn’t hers but Lilith’s. Heres a quote about Granny:

“Very few people in the world had more self-control than Granny Weatherwax. It was as rigid as a bar of cast iron. And about as flexible.”

And she smashes the mirror immediately and without hesitation.

Now we don’t know who Lilith is to Granny at this point but upon reread this is a particularly interesting passage. By the end of the book we know Lilith is “the bad witch” and because she is Granny “had to be the good one”.

Granny hates the fact she has to be the good one. She knows that if she was the bad one she’d be the most terrifying witch the Disc has ever seen. But she has to be the good one. That’s her responsibility since Lilith turned out bad. She has to be good and she has to be responsible, especially since she has the power to be so evil and do so much damage if she ever lost control.

And I think that’s why Granny smashes the mirror right then. She was annoyed at the lack of matches, she wanted tea, she used magic to get it. And that’s not responsible witchcraft in her mind. So when she find Lilith looking at her through the mirror, she sees the person that forced her to have that self control. That made Granny Weatherwax a good witch when she wanted to be the bad one. And that hurt her.

This is also interesting when you consider Sam Vimes relationship with alcohol. Vimes used alcohol as a way to deal with a feeling of helplessness and lack of control. That addiction numbed the emotional pain and he had to be so careful in later books not to fall back into that habit.

Granny is the opposite. Her power is, maybe not addictive, but something she takes immense pride in. She wants to use it, she became the most powerful witch (not the most talented, that’s Nanny) through hard work and dedication. But she can’t use it because that wouldn’t be responsible. Because everytime she uses it, it becomes a little easier to justify using a little more until she’s using it for everything. Or anything. And she can’t because she has to be the good one.

How much self control must that take? Granny spent her entire life becoming the best at what she does. Decades of mastering her craft and when she reaches the top she had to essentially stop. To put it aside and only use it in the most responsible way possible because if she slips, it’s a long long way to the bottom.

Cast iron indeed.

(via thebibliosphere)

fierceawakening:

callmebliss:

feynites:

minesottafatspoollegend:

i love in fantasy when its like “king galamir the mighty golden eagle and his most trusted advisor who would never betray him, gruelworm bloodeye the treacherous”

When my sister and I were kids we had this one action figure, who was actually a brutalized batman doll without his cape (the dog chewed half his head, too), who we dubbed ‘Evil Chancellor Traytor’. The idea was that in the fictional society of our toys, ‘chancellor’ just came with the word ‘evil’ in front of it, as a matter of ancient tradition. Like ‘grand’ or ‘high’ or something along those lines.

Anyway, the running gag was that the king (an old Power Rangers knock-off doll) had absolute and unwavering faith in Evil Chancellor Traytor, who basically comported himself like a mix between Grima Wormtongue and Jafar from the Aladdin movies. Everyone was always sure that Evil Chancellor Traytor had something to do with the nefarious scheme of the day. The dude even carried around a poisoned knife called ‘the kingslayer’.

The additional twist on the joke, though, was that he never was behind anything. The king was actually right. Evil Chancellor Traytor was the most devoted civil servant in the entire Action Figure Dystopia. He spent his nights working on writing up new legislature to ensure that broken toys had access to mobility devices, was always on the lookout to acquire new shoeboxes for expanding city infrastructure, and drafted a proposal that once got half the ‘settlement’ in my sister and I’s closet moved to the upper shelf so that vulnerable toys were less likely to be snatched up by the dog.

The knife, as it turned out, was as symbolic as the ‘evil’ in his name. See, Action Figure Dystopia had a long history of corrupted monarchs getting too big for their thrones and exploiting the underclasses. The job of the Evil Chancellor was to always remain vigilant, and loyally serve a good ruler - or, if the regent should became a despot, to slay them on behalf of the people.

But since killing the king would be a terrible crime, the Evil Chancellor had to be the kind of person who would willingly die to spare the people from the plight of a wicked leader; because the murder would be pinned on them, in order to keep the ‘machinery of politics’ working as smoothly as ever.

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor had a diary, in which my sister I would take turns writing out the most over-the-top good shit he’d done behind the scenes. Usually after everyone else had finished talking shit about him. I don’t know why but we got the biggest kick out of being like:

Barbie With the Unfortunate Haircut: Oh that Evil Chancellor Traytor! Why can’t the king see how wicked he is?!

Charmander From the Vending Machine: Char!

Jurassic Park Toy of Jeff Goldblum With Disturbingly Realistic Face: At least if someone puts a knife in the king’s back, we’ll know where to look!

Evil Chancellor Traytor’s Diary: Today I was feeding ducks at the park when I noticed another legless action figure sitting by the benches. I put a hundred dollars into his bag while he wasn’t looking. I really need to increase budgeting to the medical treatment centers. If only we had enough glue, I think we would see far fewer toys trying to get by without limbs… *insert iconic evil laugh*

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor eventually fell victim to one of my mom’s cleaning sprees, and she decided he was too busted up to keep and tossed him out. My littler brother, who tended to follow my sister and I’s games like he was watching a daily soap opera, cried so hard that we had to do a special ‘episode’ where one of the toys found the Evil Chancellor’s diary, and so he got a big huge memorial and the king threw himself into the empty grave and then ordered the toys driving the toy bulldozer to bury him so that ‘Traytor’s grave would have a body’ (this seemed very important for some reason).

And then we had the Quest For a New King. Somehow or another that ended up being a giant rubber snake called ‘Tyrant King Cobra’.

::closes tab, shuts off computer, and proceeds to have the best day ever just by knowing this exists::

i will always reblog Evil Chancellor Traytor

(via xiaq)

danshive:

ALT

I sometimes see people argue about one of these circles as though it were all three circles.

Sometimes something can totally make sense in-universe, and fit with the themes of the story, the characters, etc… And you just don’t like it for whatever reason. Maybe it wasn’t done well in spite of that, or touched a nerve, etc.

Maybe you loved a story, and it was an excellent exploration of a character, but it would be totally fair to call out the technical nonsense, and how, even in-universe, it doesn’t add up.

And maybe you thought this episode of a show was GREAT! But it was non-canon, nothing made sense, and, ultimately, it was UTTER NONSENSE.

And so on, and so forth. Heck, you could fairly add more circles to this. I’m keeping it simple with three.

My point is mostly that there’s nuance to opinions, and sometimes, someone not liking something in a story has nothing to do with whether it made sense, or complimented the narrative.

Those things can be separate points. Stories don’t have to be a failure at everything to be disliked, or succeed at everything to be liked, and arguing as though that were the case is silly.

(via ilikesallydonovan)

saintmaudes:

The evil stepmother is a fixture in European fairy tales because the stepmother was very much a fixture in early European society–mortality in childbirth was very high, and it wasn’t unusual for a father to suddenly find himself alone with multiple mouths to feed. So he remarried and brought another woman into the house, and eventually they had yet more children, thus changing the power dynamics of inheritance in the household in a way that had very little to do with inherent, archetypal evil and everything to do with social expectation and pressure. What was a woman to do when she remarried into a family and had to act as mother to her husband’s children as well as her own, in a time when economic prosperity was a magical dream for most? Would she think of killing her husband’s children so that her own children might therefore inherit and thrive? […] Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the fear that stepmothers (or stepfathers) might do this kind of thing was very real, and it was that fear–fed by the socioeconomic pressures felt by the growing urban class–that fed the stories.

We see this also with the stories passed around in France–fairies who swoop in to save the day when women themselves can’t do so; romantic tales of young girls who marry beasts as a balm to those young ladies facing arranged marriages to older, distant dukes. We see this with the removal of fairies and insertion of religion into the German tales. Fairy tales, in short, are not created in a vacuum. As with all stories, they change and bend both with and in response to culture.

— Amanda Leduc, Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space

(via lelephantsnail)

nirelaz:

Inktober Day 21: Chains

Sabriel lay on the bricks and smiled up at the cat, blinking back tears. The cat twitched and turned its head ever so slightly to look at her, revealing bright, green eyes.

“Hello, puss,” croaked Sabriel, coughing as she staggered once more to her feet and walked forward, groaning and creaking with every step. She reached down to pat the cat, and froze–for as the cat thrust its head up, she saw the collar around its neck and the tiny bell that hung there. The collar was only red leather, but the Charter-spell on it was the strongest, most enduring, binding that Sabriel had ever seen or felt–and the bell was a miniature Saraneth. The cat was no cat, but a Free Magic creature of ancient power.

“Abhorsen,” mewed the cat, its little pink tongue darting. “About time you got here.”

Sabriel stared at it for a moment, gave a little sort of moan and fell forward in a faint of exhaustion and dismay.

-Sabriel, by Garth Nix

We’re not at the 21st day prompt yet but I got inspiration out of order!

(via abhorsen-s)

twobitsandanibble:

knight-of-skyloft:

twobitsandanibble:

Sometimes I think about how most of the bridgemen got stuck being bridgemen because they were slaves or criminals or something

Not moash though, some lightened officer was just like, “we’ve got too many recruits, and I don’t feel like training them all to use spears or whatever. Let’s send moash to go die for no reason” and I think “wow, that’s super fucked, isn’t it?” and “the narrative really doesn’t linger on that point for long, does it?”

Most of the bridgemen were sold into slavery or put on the bridge crews for horrifically bullshit reasons (Dabbid was falsely accused of raping a lighteyed woman, Hobber was at a bar fight where someone died, Leyten was an apprentice armorer and took the fall when a lighteyes’ armor broke during battle, Lopen was “a nuisance”, Rlain was too good at math, and of course we know what happened to Kaladin). It also seems like common practice to enslave someone and send them to the bridge crews as part of the same punishment (iirc that happened with Skar, Hobber, Mart, Eth, Leyten, and Teft, among others). I don’t know if I have a point here other than that the whole thing is insanely fucked for absolutely everyone.

yeah, totally - they were all absolutely put into one of the shittiest situations imaginable for basically no reason by a corrupt system

I think what I find particularly striking about moash’s case, though, is that they didn’t even bother to come up with a bullshit flimsy excuse to essentially sentence a man to slavery and death? at least with dabbid there was an accusation, and hobber I guess got accused of murder or something.

but with moash they were all “oh, we already have too many spearmen trying to enlist. enslave and kill that one I guess.”

(via bengiyo)

emilysidhe:

lizardsfromspace:

Love the random censorship in Victorian novels. Mr. ——- came down from —–shire in the summer of 18–. Who? Where? When? Wouldn’t you like to know, book boy

There was a footnote about this in the annotated Jane Austen I’ve been reading. I can’t find it again right now (will post if I manage to come across it again), but if I remember correctly, this kind of thing happened because people were so aware of who the most important landowners were in each county and where the military regiments attached to each shire were stationed when that it would break disbelief if an author said something like, “Sir So-and-so was the Earl of Shropshire,” or whatever, when the reader knew that the Earls of Shropshire were the Such-and-such family. So the dashes formed double duty of not having the fictional person contradict anything the reader might know about the real people in the real place, and avoiding making it seem like the fictional people are veiled commentaries on any real people.

Austen didn’t tend to censor where her characters were from as they weren’t high rank enough to bother with, but she censored the counties attached to her military regiments so that she could play fast and loose with the regiment’s movements and no real regiment would be slandered by having Wickham’s behavior associated with them.

(via ilikesallydonovan)

thesameoldstreets:

Texts from the road #3:
Connor & Shane, after the trade

Shane: so?
Connor: ???
Shane: u there yet
Connor: just picked up my rental car
[two hours later]
Shane: do u hate it
Connor: haven’t even unpacked
Shane: i bet it’s terrible without me there
Connor: it is
Shane: stopppp I wasn’t being serious
Connor: well
Shane: 😭😭😭
Shane: come back
[one hour later]
Connor: ok
Connor: your not ready for this but
Connor: [picture of a Golden Retriever lurking in the doorway to Connor’s new room]
Shane: WHAT THE FUCK WHO IS THIS I’M ASKING FOR A TRADE RIGHT NOW
Connor: his names byron
Shane: I LOVE HIM TELL HIM I LOVE HIM
Connor: I knew you were gonna be totally chill about this
Shane: bet u are are also totally chill about this
Connor: he’s my new best friend
Shane: duh

approximateknowledge:

ok so hear me out

(via ilikesallydonovan)

Anonymous asked: do u ever think maybe the entire series of teen wolf was actually just a really bad fever dream greenberg had after chipotle food poisoning

lavenderek:

lavenderek:

i think it’s probably an elaborate make believe game they all played. they’re actually eight and all live on the same cul-de-sac. occasionally they get bored and play lacrosse instead but the game gets really compelling.

laura is thirteen and she invented the game to keep scott and stiles from throwing eggs at each other. she played for the first day and then announced she was dead and let scott take over.

derek is NINE AND A HALF and kept getting annoyed with all the LITTLE KIDS and storming off (“i MOVE AWAY and get KIDNAPPED and DIE”) but he always came back the next day.

erica and boyd left partway through because they are stepsiblings and they had to spend the summer with their respective separated parents. isaac got mad at his dad for taking away his xbox and killed him off in game. his dad has no idea that he was murdered.

jackson got mad because everybody made him kiss lydia and he stopped playing.

malia moved in to allie’s old house when she moved away. she was like, REALLY GOOD at pretending. she literally just went “hi i’m malia” and scott was like “you’re a coyote” and she was like “ok”

danny’s mom signed him up for a cooking class and he stopped showing up as much. he made new friends and didn’t seem upset about it.

heather and danielle came over for cora’s birthday sleepover and played once but stiles had an instant crush on heather and made it weird.

kira is the new girl and everybody has a crush on her. they made up an ENTIRE STORY JUST FOR HER even though stiles kept ruining it by being possessed or something.

then he broke his arm falling out of a tree and he cried and everybody felt bad for him, so he was allowed to be in a crazy hospital for a while. he and lydia got really close while he was in the crazy hospital. she pretended to hear ghosts that talked about him being possessed.

mason and liam are the kids scott’s neighbor is babysitting and they’re only SIX but scott’s mom told them they HAD to let them play too.

at the end of summer scott told them they had to come up with a cool way to end it for good until next summer and stiles immediately went I GO TO THE FBI and everybody was like that makes no sense stiles this is a MONSTERS game. he still played the monsters game he just kept reminding everybody he was also an fbi guy. look he’s just really annoying, they have no idea why scott likes him. derek kissed him behind his mom’s geraniums.

jackson came back right at the end and RUINED THE WHOLE ENDING but scott had learned a lot about saying “yes, and” and let him stay. stiles still didn’t let him sign his cast.

scott and malia were boyfriendandgirlfriend in fifth grade but a kid transferred to their school after winter break and they amicably parted ways so malia could woo the new kid. lydia is in scott’s reading group in Reading Corner. we will see what happens next summer. (we won’t. the show is over.)

final grades:
laura: A+++, she quit but she’s THIRTEEN she’s SO COOL
scott: A+, got really good at making up new stories
stiles: D+, derailed every new story but was really sweet when he was sad
lydia: B, it took her a while to warm up to the game
jackson: F. shut up!
allie: B-, didn’t tell anybody she was moving until the trucks were there and wasn’t super upset about it. but she was really good at darts
derek: B+, was super grouchy until july
danny, erica, boyd, and isaac: incomplete
malia: A-, played along really well but was kind of weird
kira: B+, smelled good and her dad bought everybody pizza once but she started taking ballet in july and quit showing up
mason and liam: D-, lots of tantrums and mason kept pointing out that werewolves aren’t real also the tooth fairy
cora, heather, and danielle: incomplete
dr. deaton: C-, kept forgetting he was playing but he did introduce flour as the magic stop-you dust and have dogs
laura again: A+++, she wears COOL SOCKS and has a SCOOTER

i’ve been asked to clarify about the adults and villains of the game.

peter is a teddy bear, but like, evil. him being derek’s uncle was perpetrated because it made derek really mad.

chris argent is a barbie doll with clothes drawn onto her naked body with sharpie. they lost him for a couple weeks.

gerard was a baby doll with a missing eye but they chucked him over a fence during a final battle and didn’t get him back until like a week into august.

victoria snapped at scott for tripping into her planter area and almost stepping on a tulip. after that she was a bad guy who tried to commit killing on scott and then she died. allie had conflicting opinions about this.

the berserkers were malia’s dogs.

theo and kate are the mean kids from the next street over. sometimes they came over to brag about having new bikes and how their mom let them go anywhere they wanted in the neighborhood, and everybody was all like, GO AWAY!! NO ONE CARES, KATE!!!!! only scott liked theo and everybody was mad at him for it.

jail was represented by a lacrosse goal. derek had to get sploded out of jail when a high school soccer team showed up to practice.

stiles fell out of the tree across the street and just laid there crying until scott’s mom ran over with a temporary splint and a water bottle and held him for a minute. they were pretty lucky it was melissa’s day off. he is embarrassed and thinks he was a big baby about it. fbi guys don’t cry. they just don’t!

they all wrote their initials on the fence post by the drainage area behind their houses on the last day before school started.

germanysnexttopgedicht:

Germany’s Next Top-Gedicht Runde 1 Gruppe 1

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Welches ist das beste deutschsprachige Gedicht?

Friedrich Schiller - Das Lied von der Glocke

Conrad Meyer - Die Füße im Feuer

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germanysnexttopgedicht:

Vorauswahl: Ernst Jandl

Welches Gedicht soll in den Wettbewerb?

liegen, bei dir

Markierung einer Wende

wien: heldenplatz

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germanysnexttopgedicht:

Vorauswahl: Mascha Kaléko

Welches Gedicht soll in den Wettbewerb?

Seiltänzerin ohne Netz

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Interview mit mir selbst + Post Scriptum

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germanysnexttopgedicht:

Vorauswahl: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Welches Gedicht soll in den Wettbewerb?

Der Zauberlehrling

Prometheus

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