"virility-brown eyes"

age gaps in relationships brandon’s age gaps are really screwed up. let’s start with elantris. though it doesn’t come to fruition, hrathen (50+) falls in love with sarene (25). then there’s mistborn, with vin (18) and elend (23-24), and the stormlight archive with shallan (17) and adolin (23), and siri (17) with susebron (50+). all three latter couples get married canonly.  now what’s my problem with this, you ask? at 50+, hrathen has a far greater deal of life experience and maturity than 25-year-old sarene. same with vinlend, shadolin and siribron (don’t come @ me with the excuse of susebron being mentally and physically 19-20. he has had that long to live and grow, and his life experience, however confined to the palace, is still vaster than siri’s. he lived out those 50 years). in summation: ew. would it really be that hard to age down the men or age up the women? no!

lgbtq+ rep brandon’s books feature little to no lgbtq+ rep. he has expressed homophobic views before (x, x) and the few gay/lesbian characters that are present in his books are very minor. though he did… vaguely confirm an MC, shallan davar, to be bi, we cannot take it as rep unless it is written right into the book

autistic rep the representation of adien in elantris was super iffy. though brandon did much better with renarin, adien was extremely stereotypically and harmfully represented

hypersexualisation of women this isn’t something he does much, so it really shocked me in warbreaker. siri was constantly hypersexualised by putting her in ‘low-cut’ dresses that take after the hallandren style. girl is 17 can we not?! also making her do it with susebron (who is 50+ btw) is just disgusting

I don’t like how the fandom immediately jumps to defend a straight cis white male author. I don’t like how we are glorifying him for doing the bare minimum. The rep we have from Branderson is not enough. It is nowhere near enough. If his religious beliefs and his church do not allow him to represent the LGBTQ+ community right, then hell… we don’t want any other rep. We need to push for more and not let this go. Okay, fine, Branderson has changed his stance and is trying for more rep. But we cannot just excuse shit like that because he is changing. We have to keep it in mind and bring it up to make sure we get the rep that we deserve. 

Don’t say they’re “his books” and “he can do what he wants” – the harmful portrayal and/or exclusion of any marginalised community should not exist, and those who do not fall under any marginalised communities must do better. We cannot sit here and make excuses for privileged people – we gotta get after them to change!  Branderson can do better, we ALL know this. We need to look at shit through a critical lens. A rose-colored glass over our eyes will just obscure all the things we need to be calling out.

(this is the last one, i swear…)

so this isn’t going to be addressing what happened yesterday (other than to say that i have screenshots and i’m perfectly willing to share them if anyone wants to see what happened), but it is sort of inspired by it.

recently the anti s/jm community on tumblr has been getting a lot bigger, so i wanted to lay some things down real quick that newer antis or ones who have just transferred over from instagram or other websites might not know!

we have always had behavioral standards here. yes, we mainly critique s//jm, but it is always important to be able to call out people in our own community when they do something wrong. racism, disrespect, & pettiness/general rudeness have never been tolerated. this is not a “new” thing invented to gatekeep the community. you simply do not get a free pass for shitty behavior just because we all don’t like s//jm’s books. 

certain antis getting blocked for shitty behavior is also not something new. antis who have just joined us may not know this, but there have been multiple instances where someone in the community (for example, marta) has done something shitty, refused to apologize & fix the problem, and then been blocked by all or most of the main antis. once again, this is not something recently invented to gatekeep or personally antagonize people (harassment is always bad, folks), we are merely not going to compromise on our behavioral standards just bc we all don’t like sjm’s books.

we are in the ANTI tags for a reason. we censor names FOR A REASON. and that reason is to keep us away from stans, who have a long history of invading our tags, sending anon hate, & harassing people. newcomers may not know this (though recently we have had a slight uptick in anon hate & one person was driven off tumblr by stans), but it’s always good to educate yourself on the etiquette of the communities you join. going around picking fights with stans (who will, at the end of the day, probably not change their opinions so quickly) and giving us excessive publicity will likely only contribute to an increase in harassment from stans, which we’d like to avoid. it’s always nice to help educate ppl on s//jm’s flaws but at the end of the day we want a calm space where we can critique her books without being harassed.

(this is the last one, i swear…)

so this isn’t going to be addressing what happened yesterday (other than to say that i have screenshots and i’m perfectly willing to share them if anyone wants to see what happened), but it is sort of inspired by it.

recently the anti s/jm community on tumblr has been getting a lot bigger, so i wanted to lay some things down real quick that newer antis or ones who have just transferred over from instagram or other websites might not know!

we have always had behavioral standards here. yes, we mainly critique s//jm, but it is always important to be able to call out people in our own community when they do something wrong. racism, disrespect, & pettiness/general rudeness have never been tolerated. this is not a “new” thing invented to gatekeep the community. you simply do not get a free pass for shitty behavior just because we all don’t like s//jm’s books. 

certain antis getting blocked for shitty behavior is also not something new. antis who have just joined us may not know this, but there have been multiple instances where someone in the community (for example, marta) has done something shitty, refused to apologize & fix the problem, and then been blocked by all or most of the main antis. once again, this is not something recently invented to gatekeep or personally antagonize people (harassment is always bad, folks), we are merely not going to compromise on our behavioral standards just bc we all don’t like sjm’s books.

we are in the ANTI tags for a reason. we censor names FOR A REASON. and that reason is to keep us away from stans, who have a long history of invading our tags, sending anon hate, & harassing people. newcomers may not know this (though recently we have had a slight uptick in anon hate & one person was driven off tumblr by stans), but it’s always good to educate yourself on the etiquette of the communities you join. going around picking fights with stans (who will, at the end of the day, probably not change their opinions so quickly) and giving us excessive publicity will likely only contribute to an increase in harassment from stans, which we’d like to avoid. it’s always nice to help educate ppl on s//jm’s flaws but at the end of the day we want a calm space where we can critique her books without being harassed.

sad backstory dance

okay so i’m gonna put this under the cut. this is mainly about her writing! i don’t have much care to keep up with leigh herself but if any of my mutuals wanna add smth, feel free!

So in the poison challenge in t/og, I realised two of the poisons mentioned where bloodbane and monkshood.

One big problem: they’re the same plant

The active ingredient in both is aconitine, my personal favourite poison. It’s an incredibly lethal and efficient neurotoxin which is soluble in oil and fat, and has no odor nor colour. 

However, in the poison challenge it is also described as tasteless. It’s not, as aconitine itself tastes incredibly spicy (there has been a case where a chemist identified aconitine solely by its taste). It also has no cure to do this day.

The lethal dosage of aconitine is 1/60th of a grain, which is a measurement used by toxicologist which equates to about 63 mg (for imperial system users, this is 3.7 times 10 to the power of minus 5 ounces). Chances are that there’s more than this amount in the wine the contestants drank, which would lead to death in somewhere between a minute and 24 hours depending on how much there is.

Celery also identifies monkshood by dipping her finger in the wine, and looking at the purple colour on her finger. I’ve said earlier that the poison is colourless, and it is also soluble in fat and oil, meaning she would have been introduced to the poison. There have been cases of gardeners dying from brushed their hands against monkshood flowers.

In her fight against cane, Celery’s symptoms are completely unrelated to aconitine. Aconitines symptoms are quite characteristic and also incredibly painful, Celery wouldn’t be able to stand, let alone fight. 

Her symptoms are: nausea, a spinning head, hallucinations and disorientation. These can be effects of aconitine poisoning, but there are a few obvious ones missing. 

The first is excruciating pain. No matter if the dose is lethal or not, Celery should be on the floor. Aconitine causes a feeling of intense swelling and pain in the throat and mouth (although neither actually swell up). 

Secondly, loss of strength. Celery is still strong enough to stand up and fight against Cane, which would not happen. Seizures are also a relatively common effect of aconitine poisoning, but may not happen (aconitine has a lot of symptoms and some of them may not happen to an individual).

Loss of strength is combined with a shortness of breath and tachycardia (rapid heart rate). Celery describes a slower heart rate than usual, which is completely wrong in every respect. But then we all know how much research s/jm does.

There’s some more mental effects as well. Victims of aconitine state that they felt “the oncoming of death”, no matter if the dose was lethal or not. This is probably due to the brain recognising its symptoms as lethal.

Last part in this series.

Pt 1

Pt 2

Pt 3

You can also read my rant about how s/jm failed with poisons here

deep inhale

Cain’s black eyes met with hers for a moment before his other arm lashed out and connected with her shoulder. She heard the crack before she felt the pain, and Celaena screamed, dropping to her knees as her shoulder dislocated. His foot met with the shoulder, and she went flying backward, falling so hard that her shoulder relocated with a sickening crunch. The agony blinded her; the world went in and out of focus. Things were so slow . .

At this point I just want to catalogue her injuries. She’s been poisoned, concussed, probably has spinal cord damage, a dislocated shoulder and soft tissue damage around that area. The fact that there is a crunch also means the shoulder has been broken another time by his kick, and her position means he probably stamped on her shoulder hard.

If you take a look at this image of the arteries in the shoulder, you can clearly see there are several major arteries around the area. The brachial artery is probably damaged or severed. Cane probably hit her clavicle or upper ribs rather than the shoulder because it’s a hard place to land a hit and not very effective, and the force of that kick combined with the force of her fall would result in the damage of all those soft tissues. This would create a hematoma and she would die of blood loss.

Cain swung his sword at Celaena, who threw herself backward—but not fast enough. She yelped as the blade sliced across her thigh, clothing and flesh ripping. Blood colored her pants. Despite it, she stood again, her face set in defiant rage.

Oh look, another potentially lethal wound. He could have potentially cut the femoral and even if he didn’t, she cannot stand up now. His blade is also embedded into her leg so he would need to pull it out of her before using it. Again there is a lack of fluidity between movements, both of them need to follow up with more attacks after they’ve landed a hit.

So he watched, in growing horror and despair, as Cain’s fist slammed into her jaw. Her knees twisted as she fell.

That comma is unnecessary, and now Celery has a fractured mandible. She’s probably upset her shoulder even more now she’s fell. 

Anyway there’s this long bit where Cane starts taunting her and she gets angry, I’ll skip that.

She let out a wordless scream that shattered through the frozen wind as she scrambled to her feet. Her pain lost in her fury, she swung at his blade with the remnant of the staff. “Good,” Cain panted, pressing her staff so hard that his blade sank into the wood. “But not good enough.” He shoved her, and as she staggered back a step, he brought up his leg and kicked her in the ribs. She went flying. 

For starters, he shouldn’t let her back up, and it would be more effective for Celery to stab at Cane instead of wasting the little energy she has left on a swing. Again, more upsetment of her previous wounds, with broken ribs as well. At this point I’m just cataloguing the damage she’s taking.

The next part there’s no combat, she just takes two more concussive blows and starts hallucinating. Oh and she gets cured from the poison by mystic spirit magic. She somehow manages to get up once again after all her injuries as well.

Cain growled as he swung his sword, making to behead her. Celaena shot forward, as fast as an arrow of Deanna. Cain’s eyes went wide as she buried the jagged end of the staff in his right side, exactly where Chaol had said he would be unguarded. Blood poured onto her hands as she yanked it out, and Cain staggered back, clutching his ribs.

A decapitation? Really? Like I know she’s damaged and should be dead but it’s so easy to dodge and duck a strike like that. Celery actually made the right move here, but she doesn’t follow up with a hit to immobilise or even kill him.

She forgot pain, forgot fear, forgot the tyrant who stared at the burning mark on her head with dark eyes. She leapt back a step and sliced open Cain’s arm with the broken end of the staff, ripping through muscle and sinew. He swatted at her with his other arm, but she moved aside, cutting the limb as well.

She should be on the offensive, and I’m not sure how effective that staff would be at ripping muscle and sinew. Cane is incredibly strong and a lot of swords have trouble ripping through heavy muscle, and Celery has only been gaining more muscle for a few weeks. He also keeps his body completely open for an attack when he’s swatting at her.

He lunged, but she dashed away. Cain sprawled upon the ground. She slammed her foot into his back, and as he lifted his head, he found the knifesharp remnant of the staff pressed against his neck.

I’m not sure what he’s using to attack if both arms are heavily damaged, and I’m unsure of how he fell over. It’s a decent ending other than that. 

The third part of this “series” where I rant about how terrible this fight scene is.

read pt 1 and pt 2 here

She attacked—faster and faster, stronger and stronger. Cain laughed, and she almost screamed in anger. Each time she moved a foot to trip him, each time they came too close, she either became clumsy or he stepped away, as if he knew what she planned all along. She had the infuriating feeling that he was toying with her, that there was some joke she didn’t understand.

So I’ve said before one of the staff’s greatest advantages is reach, so she should not move close in enough to trip Cane. I’m also not sure about how he managed to fend of a barrage of strikes from a staff unless Celery is moving much slower than she thinks she is.

Celaena whipped the staff through the air, hoping to catch him upon his unprotected neck. But he deflected, and though she spun and tried to knock him in his stomach, he blocked her again

Alright this first movement is not something I would ever do against a prepared sword wielder because it can be blocked so easily, and after blocking the sword wielder can quickly close that distance. After he deflects, she spins a full 360 degrees to try and strike him in the stomach, which leaves an unprotected back and that hit is also really easy to block. Once again Celery should be dead.

She grinned as the shaft of her staff slammed into his side. He bent over, and her leg lashed out and swept him off his feet, sending him crashing to the ground. She raised her staff, but a sick feeling rushed through her so powerful that her muscles slackened. She had no strength.

So Cane has taken a full force blow to the stomach, and then immediately bends over, which is not realistic. What should actually happen depends on where exactly he is hit, but if it hits on any of the floating ribs then they are broken and if he gets hit on the liver he’ll be on the floor. Cane’s musculature means he could probably take a full force blow to the muscles on the side of the abdomen. 

Even if he is bent over, tripping someone using your legs requires a lot of force and you usually need to be heavier, or you will break your ankles in the process. It also can’t be done on a much heavier opponent unless you throw your entire weight with it, so it can’t be done while holding a staff. It’s also easier to kick him in the liver, activating a nasty reaction which will send him to the floor.

He knocked aside her blow as if it was nothing, and she retreated while he rose. And that’s when she heard the laugh—soft, feminine, and vicious. Kaltain. Celaena’s feet stumbled, but she stayed upright as she dared a glance at the lady, and the goblets on the table before her. And that’s when she knew that it hadn’t been wine in that glass, but bloodbane, the very drug she’d missed in the Test. At best, it caused hallucinations and disorientation. At worst …

Cane is on his back on the floor and manages to parry Celery’s hit. The solution isn’t hard - just hit him again but go for somewhere harder to block like the groin. Letting Cane get back on his feet wasn’t a good move as well because as you get up you are completely unprotected.

I’ve talked about how bloodbane doesn’t do this here, but if you’re not bothered to read it Celery should be in excruciating pain or dead by now. Also there was wine in the glass. Duh. Do you think it’s all poison?

She had difficulty holding the staff. Cain came at her, and she had no choice but to meet his blows, barely having the strength to raise the weapon each time. How much bloodbane had they given her? The staff cracked, splintered, and groaned. If it were a lethal dose, she’d be dead by now. They must have given her enough to disorient her, but not enough that it would be easy to prove. She couldn’t focus, and her body became hot and cold. Cain was so large—he was a mountain, and his blows … they made Chaol seem like a child …

If she has difficulty holding the staff, Cane’s hits mean its been knocked out of her hands by now. At this point her attacks are slower than his, and Cane is close enough to hit her with a sword. She has no chance in surviving. The staff should also be split by now, judging by Cane’s body weight.

He slammed his fist into her spine, and she only saw the blur of the slate tiles before they collided with her face.

There’s no recovery from this. He’s probably hit hard enough to damage the spinal cord and she definitely has a concussion. I’ve never experienced either of those but I know you absolutely cannot fight like that. 

Her breath came fast and hard, and her knees ached as she stumbled upright, charging at him. Too fast for her to block, he grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and hurled her back. She kept upright as she tripped, and stopped a few feet from him.

Again, if an opponent is on the floor you don’t let them back up. Also why is he far enough away for her to charge at him? I’m pretty sure she still has the staff, so that reach means Cane can’t grab her. She also shouldn’t be wearing something that you can grab on to, and I’m confused as to where she was thrown. Did Cane somehow manage to grab her and throw her behind or in front of him? Logically it makes more sense if he throws her behind him but the text suggests he throws her in front. Oh and she should be on the floor yet again because Cane literally threw her.

Celaena shot forward with a sweep of the staff. Wood slammed into steel. The staff snapped in two. The iron-tipped head soared to the other side of the veranda, leaving Celaena with a piece of useless wood. 

So it;s the inevitable moment I’ve been waiting for: the staff snapping. I’ve snapped my staff before swinging at another person, and it does not fly that far. It’ll go maybe 3 metres and then keep rolling but it won’t fly to the other side of the room. It also says a lot when Celery says that the piece of wood she is holding is useless, she now has a sharp stick which will splinter and cause extra damage if she stabs him.