#100 agree
One of the funniest things to me about Legolas is that Tolkien’s descriptions of him throughout the books boil down to “he was tall, strong, bright eyed and prettier than you” and if that isn’t the best fucking description I don’t know what is
pentagon loves hongseok so much.. hongseok called himself a person who refuses to give up and that’s how he’s been since he joined pentagon and tried so hard to make up for all the memories he missed out on. he’s questioned himself and his place in the group but really his members love him so much. you can tell they think he’s so funny and reliable and they even said in their letter that he’s irreplaceable and they’ll always have a place for him. and i’m so glad that out of all the places he could have ended up, he ended up with people who really appreciate and care for him just as he cares for them
men should look disheveled and be on the ground more often
God bless Hugh Fraser for the way he made Hastings smile at Poirot.
The Greek Army at IKEA
Automedon: racing Briseis in an office chair
Briseis: eating the Swedish food, rolling down the aisle in an office chair
Diomedes: arm wrestling a German guy
Ajax: bench pressing a couch
Odysseus: criticizing how people build the IKEA furniture
Patroclus: struggling to pronounce the Swedish names
Achilles: ambushing Patroclus to throw him onto the mattresses
seeing some Bad comparisons in my notes so I gotta make something clear.
reading Dracula does not give support to the author. he is dead. he cannot make money off your enjoyment of the novel, it is in the public domain!! it is also a really important historical novel, and reading it bit by bit is a great opportunity to really analyse it, including the biases present in the novel that are still prevalent in modern depictions of vampires. reading it gives the skills to spot things like antisemitism in modern media, as well as just a general good context for the beginnings of this genre
reading Harry Potter directly supports jk rowling. she is still fully alive and profits off any financial or verbal support you give her books. she then funnels that directly into removing the rights of actual transgender people. those books are also not historically important, and there are a million other similar books that are better
these two things aren’t comparable
*dips toe into the discourse*
I think one thing Izzy apologists miss (or ignore) is that Izzy waits until Ed is getting better to threaten him and tear him all the way back down. I’ve read some metas that say Izzy was trying to protect Ed the only way he knows how, which is putting a hard exterior back on. And I can see that, but I just find it interesting that it happens not while Ed is sobbing in the blanket fort, not while he’s drowning in rum and marmalade, but when he’s starting to pull himself up a bit.
Blanket fort Ed needed an intervention, that is true. No shame to blanket fort Ed, we’ve all been there, but contemplating curling up and dying isn’t really a healthy vibe. And that intervention comes in the very capable and gentle hands of Lucius “I’m fantastic at breakups” Spriggs. Lucius is the one who does the hard work of getting him to the next stage of his grief where he’s sharing it with others, making plans for the future, etc. We don’t see Izzy try to help Ed when he’s at the stage which I would argue he was the most vulnerable and needed the most help. If he was trying to protect Ed from seeming weak or hurting himself, blanket fort stage would have been when he should have stepped in.
But no, Izzy waits until he’s out of the fort, he’s sung his song, and he’s literally cleaning up the cabin. He’s saying “I can’t believe I was living this way.” He’s making plans for the talent show. And notably, he has just said to the crew, “Why are we even being pirates?” And I want to argue that this is what sets Izzy off. Not the crying, not the pining, not the robe, not the song.
“Why are we even being pirates?”
There’s also this idea floating around that Izzy manages everything for Ed. That a huge part of Blackbeard’s legend and power and charisma is actually Izzy. And Izzy does claim that, but we never see evidence of this in canon. In fact, we explicitly see the opposite. Ed is shown as a brilliant tactician and as a capable and clever, if somewhat bored, captain. On the other hand, the crew mutinies on Izzy and tries to kill him approximately 30 seconds after he seizes power. He has no power of his own. All of it comes from Ed. And he knows this. And the audience knows it. And it we’ve forgotten it, they conveniently remind us right before the events of episode 10 by having Ed save Izzy’s life solely by reappearing and saying “I’ll have tea in my room.” No argument required, no sword fight, no threats or gun waving. That’s how much power Ed has.
So Izzy is reminded of this. Alone, he has no power. Ed has all the power. Any power he has had or hoped to have comes from being Blackbeard’s first mate. So THAT is what he is trying to protect. What little bit of power he has left. That’s why he does what he does when he does it. He’s terrified by “Why are we even being pirates” because if they aren’t pirates, he’s nothing.
Now I want to clarify that I do believe that Izzy is in love with Ed. And I don’t want to discount that as a motivating factor. But I think Izzy is also in love with proximity to power and I think it’s not doing either character any favors to ignore that. I’m not necessarily an Izzy hater or anti-Izzy redemption arc, but I think if Izzy is going to have a satisfying redemption from the horrible things we have seen him do, those horrible things have to be acknowledged and atoned for, not written off as something he did with a pure heart and good intentions.
I just want to bring this up, I love women who want to stay at home and look after the family from their home, being homebodies. However, this is not how entirely I imagine Esme, she might be a homebody, but I don’t believe it should define who she is, as SMeyer is trying to serve us this Esme; who loves to stay at home and not to mingle with humans. Due to the Meyer’s questionable portrayal of women (like you are not a proper woman without a child or you cannot be a happy woman without a child), if Esme’s gift was immerse love, then I just cannot see her staying all those decades at home doing projects at home. I want to see adventurous Esme, who travels to different countries to learn new art techniques. I want to see Esme, who is restoring a hundreds of years old house or run workshops to empower people around the world. I want Esme to do more, than just being at home, doing chores. Basically, I just want to see MORE OF ESME. Thank you.
Oh, I totally think she’s the type who loves to pick up new hobbies, explore new places and socialise with people. I’m sure she’s also held a job or two. I refuse to believe that she never leaves the house; I’m sure she has the self control to be able to mingle among humans with some ease. She loves her family and loves being a motherly figure but those are just characteristics, not her entire being. SM did her dirty.
The “view post” button for long posts is unironically the best feature this website has ever initiated and I cannot fathom why any of you are complaining about it
I don’t normally do posts like this unprompted, but this idea’s been hanging around in my head for the last couple of days and I want to throw it out there properly so here’s a short, not very in depth version of it (I’ll dig more depth out of this later if there’s interest, don’t have book access to do a formal theory post right now)
Apollo’s kids are simultaneously Greek and Roman.
Disclaimer: this is a headcanon with no explicit canon backing, but it’s an interesting (I think) idea that could be canon because it’s not disproved either.
Apollo himself does not change between Greek and Roman. He’s not affected by the schism (in BOO he’s hiding from Zeus, not being assailed by the headache most gods are), and he thinks about his fellow gods in both their forms with no issues at all (Ares and Mars, Artemis and Diana, Zeus and Jupiter, etc.)… It’s even supported by actual history because Apollo was never superimposed over an existing Roman deity and was kept in his original Greek form, more or less, if I’m remembering my little bit of A-Level Classics correctly.
So why should his kids have a divide? If Apollo does not change, then how could some of his kids be Greek and some be Roman? Why aren’t they all Greek? (If not for known Legacies like Octavian, and Frank hoping to be an Apollo kid, we could argue that that’s the case, but clearly CJ recognises Apollo kids exist, so…)
Conclusion:Apollo is both Greek and Roman all the time (would explain why he’s the sun god when in rrverse Helios fades at about the same time the chronology switches to Roman, actually), therefore his kids are both Greek and Roman.
What does this mean for the kids? It means they can go to either camp (most end up at CHB because Apollo’s the patron and guides them there etc., also archers are treated better in CHB than CJ, but they could go to CJ instead - this is where I point out there are loads of Apollo kids in CHB but none in CJ at least during TTT). It means they’re fluent in both Ancient Greek and Latin (explainable in CHB by Latin being so prominent in medicine; Latin is a used language in CHB anyway - see Chiron sometimes, maybe he’s trying to make Latin-speaking seem more normal).
What does this mean about Octavian? It means Octavian probably realises he’s effectively half-Greek, hence the earlier awareness/acceptance of the Greek demigod existences, tries to hide it (maybe even tries to convince himself he’s wrong), and basically spends his entire storyline denying who he is. Generally this makes Octavian’s entire role in the story even sadder to someone who doesn’t view him as a cold-hearted villain, butI refuse to make this longer than it’s got already so that can be a more detailed discussion later, if people are interested.
In fact, any or all of this can be a more detailed discussion later; just let me know if you wanna hear it and if so, I’ll give this a proper essay treatment sometime next week or so when I have book access again.
alright friends. best revision tips: GO
My one tip is to not edit in the draft that you already have, rewrite your entire book.
It makes it so much easier to make huge changes, because you’re not trapped within what you’ve already written. I know it’s a lot of work, but I swear by this and I do it for every draft of every single book.
If you’re just copy editing or line editing, that’s one thing. But if you think you need to make changes, you should try this.
Literally went through the notes to see if someone already said this
In the initial drafts of a complex/long story, it’s important to entirely rewrite the previous draft in a new document
Not just because of how your brain will interact with the previous text as it notices mistakes and oddities and formulates solutions, but because you need to keep intact copies of the first drafts
Along the years since I started rewriting the drafts various times till only some basic grammar check and proofreading is necessary, i have noticed that the relevance of whatever was done in a previous draft, even if badly, is never properly noticeable at first or third glance
I mentioned it before - you delete something on chapter 15 because it’s not what you wanted, but in later editing chapter 3 you might realize that thing you deleted could be really useful in this part
Even when I was completely disappointed and frustrated with a passage I wanted to burn away from this world, as I kept working on the new draft, it sooner or later could become important
There’s also how if you’re still struggling with a scene in draft 4, you can compare the previous drafts to see how you’ve approached the event each time, what was working, how it failed, etc, and better strategize a new attempt
And though rewriting everything itself is extra work, it speed runs a lot your ability to pick up things that need adjustment since the process, along with changing fonts here and there, can avoid a lot of how the brain can get so used to staring at a document, it no longer catches things that aren’t how they should be
You know, I literally never even thought of it like this! But that’s a really good point too!
For me the first time I tried to edit something made one change in chapter 2, it just led to a snowball effect of ever-expanding changes which were harder and harder to work into the draft, and I never edited “in draft” like that again LOL
But also, I was constantly emailing files to myself, so I always had backup of older versions.
I have definitely found, over the years, some things that I added into a book - even if they weren’t necessarily in the right place originally - did end up being relevant in a later place, as you suggested. There are many benefits to rewriting your book hahahaha
with every episode it becomes clearer that kenobi was not written for the star wars dudebros who want to see darth vader and obi-wan kenobi duke it out. it is made for the ani and obi girlies who want to see their boys as pathetic middle aged men going through a divorce and as one of those girlies i am THRIVING
Idk why, but I read so often in fics where Azula is asking herself why Zuko isnt angry at her and she also is very mild to Zuko… but why is that, where is Azula’s anger at Zuko for being part in the group that destroyed her life, why is it always framed like only Zuko could express anger at their sibling and Azula’s feelings are non existent she just is always grateful when the good brother card is pulled. It just doesnt make sense to me, both hurt each other but only Zuko is allowed to feel anger towards Azula while she is just feeling okay with Zuko.
Speaking straight facts
*cough cough* i wrote i fic about this exact premise of azula being angry and scared despite zuko pulling the good brother card and yall should read it my ao3 is in my tagged post its called malaise okay byeeee *cough cough*
