Thoughts On Pale Arc One:

hello people who follow me whose interests presumably align with my own, i would like to strongly recommend to you the serial web novel Katalepsis. there's a plot summary on that linked page if you want to take a peek, as well as content warnings, but you can also start blind here (unless you feel like you need to take a glance over the content warnings!)

very nice blend of cosmic horror/urban fantasy with a dash of lesbian romance (there are a lot of lesbians in this), generally a fun story and very worth a read. the pacing is probably the best part, i managed to carve through this one pretty quick despite its volume because it doesn't feel like a lot to read in practice. so very enthralling and with worldbuilding that has me very intrigued

I'm always a little sad that Evelyn so rarely gets to win her battles, so I really do hope she gets to fuck Edward's grinning demon wife

Ohhh my fucking god. There’s genuinely something wrong with her. There’s something wrong with her and it can’t be fixed. The “Floret wasn’t a fighter, even less than I was” right after she just committed probably fifty fucking murders like it was nothing. The. SHE’S SLICED AN S-CLASS THREAT IN HALF. SHE’S THREATENED TO KILL EIDOLON WITH FULL CONFIDENCE. SHE DID KILL ALEXANDRIA. SHE’S BEEN TO 10+ ENDBRINGER FIGHTS WITHOUT KICKING IT. SHE’S DISPATCHED TEAMS EXPLICITLY DESIGNED TO COUNTER HER WITHOUT ANY PARTICULAR EFFORT. NOT A FIGHTER???

NOT A FIGHTER??????

TAYLOR GIRL WHAT THE FUCK 

I just read Vyre's interlude in RoW and this meme is all I could think about

snail and ants eating a worm

the more that i think about it, the more i feel like the undersiders are a really good litmus test for ability to understand/be sympathetic towards neurodivergency w/o reacting w/ hatred when it’s unpalatable. like, yes. they do in fact do a lot of violent and terrible things. but they’re from “trauma viscerally literalized as superpowers which are taken to extreme usages to better represent how devastating and emotionally total being traumatized feels” the book–it makes sense that every character is messy, it makes sense that every character does and thinks shit that extremely fucking sucks. trauma extremely fucking sucks! bitch literally tearing a man’s arm off because she’s been taught her entire life that people will always mock and hurt her for who she is and has learned to use aggression as pre-emptive defense feels significantly more relatable to what i was like when i was an autistic teenager than any quirky-funny representation of autism out there, and she’s not even explicitly autistic. 

like, yeah, taylor has a paranoid and irrational worldview. lisa is hypervigilant and secretive and manipulative. brian can barely function & still refuses to be vulnerable. aisha acts out and it being for attention doesn’t make the behavior any less grating. rachel is aggressive and stubborn and violent. alec doesn’t understand ethical or social boundaries. those are all things i’ve seen people complaining about, saying they hated those characters for it, saying that it was fucking irritating to read about. which is like…Yeah, That’s How Traumatized Teenagers Act! 

taylor had any ability to be “rational” about social interactions eroded from the years of irrational cruelty she faced. lisa micromanages her loved ones’ wellbeing because the last time she didn’t, her brother died. brian genuinely doesn’t know how to function at all if he’s not trying to be strong because it’s the only coping mechanism he’s been taught. aisha, chronically abused and neglected, is trying to assert autonomy & gain attention in the only way she knows how. rachel has learned that the only way she’ll be afforded any respect is if she takes it by force. alec says & does wildly inappropriate things because 13 years of grooming taught him it was normal. 

& yeah, all of those things suck to deal with, but that is in fact because trauma sucks to deal with. litmus test for ability to realize that and be reasonably generous about the fact instead of shitting on the involved teenagers for having a hard time being perfect people after experiencing things built to make them feel less than human.

👆🏻This is Zed

Zed seems like he’d be part of the shadow wizard money gang and loves casting spells.

there is a wasp called the "beewolf" that hunts bees

(theres over a hundred species of beewolf actually)

I remember reading beewolf epic poem in college and he did do all of that

You know what, despite the horrors, at least there's still butches.

Victoria has such a way with words