well, well, well, what do we have here?

killed by john

killed by john

killed by john

killed by john

killed by john (more detail on why that was)

mandatory vaguely James Ortiz shaped human Rocky art, bc human rocky lets me project my Problems (light sensitivity headaches :) and such).

My human rocky design is Very inspired by @kit-screams-into-the-void , whose Rocky is incredibly Little Guy coded. Gremlin thing. Engineer who climbs through vents. I REALLY like the opaque visor as a nod to eridians not having uhh faces.

thanks guys. please welcome my beautiful new child into the world

secret wizards control the government > [wizard equivalent] are an oppressed visible minority

white British monoculture > Star Trek style multicultural pluralism that treats "being Black" and "being an elf" as basically interchangeable

As in

This character:

Ciri.

In this trailer:

Because those takes are very similar to it and the prologue is the legend perpetuated by the Heavens. It's the propaganda. It's people perpetuating it going:" Here is what happens when people try to change things, they get punished...", even though he was right and if they had helped, none of this would have happened.

One of my CLEAREST memories of the many, many “oh shit we are doing things with that” moments — in which we realize that a recurring detail or “joke” actually does have backstory and thematic relevance — I had reading TGCF books (arcs) 1 and 2 was in book 2 when we reach the scene where Xie Lian refuses to apologize for saving a child’s life, and we see exactly how much he’s been reduced in the retelling.

The prologue/propaganda version reduces his thoughtful, well-reasoned discussions to these pithy one-liners that are easy to repeat as part of a story and present as naïve, unfounded opinions.

And years later, I still remember the feeling of reading book two and realizing, for the first time, that all of his kindness, his consideration for the feelings of others of any class, his consciousness of his own power and the effect that kind of thing had on people? He ALWAYS HAD THAT. Everyone, even the narration, would have you believe so many of his fantastic, thoughtful, insightful qualities, were the result of “learning something” where he used to be naïve.

Meeting a young Xie Lian who was not only less naïve than anyone else had told you, but also not nearly as naïve as even Xie Lian has been indicating himself? Narrative-shaping right there.

There had already been implications in book 1 that Xie Lian wasn’t ok and that not reacting to pain was ultimately going to be more about trauma than the comedy Xie Lian has learned to try and make it, but realizing that he’s learned to make fun of himself on an ideological level? In addition to on a physical one?

THAT was the point I sat up and went “oh, something is going to go WRONG wrong here in this flashback. There is SOMETHING ELSE going on here.”

And then the whole flashback and major portions of book 3 and basically the rest of the novel was more or less about the disconnect between the official story/the version of you known to the public, and the true/private you. For our main characters both, and many, many side characters as well.

We even do this in BOTH FLASHBACKS. The contrast is even more stark, in the second, between the actual circumstances and motivations behind Xie Lian’s banishment, and the neat, comfortable, easily-digested version that most of heaven accepted for centuries.

And then after everything, we END the novel on “what legend says about these characters/gods” as in, the story commonly told by people who don’t know all the details. You know, a parallel bookend to the prologue. In case it wasn’t already clear that that’s the type of unreliable version of the story the introduction was.

And the actual scene goes:

example: we know he was institutionalized because of an aside in a coloring book. we know he’s on some kind of psychiatric medication from an aside in the DS game.

And also a Coritiba player jumping over the barricade to celebrate his goal without realizing there’s a hole right behind it

A Coritiba player was celebrating a goal yesterday, 12 years after the original meme, and once again fell in a hole behind the barricade

Firefighters and residents of south Lebanon have accused the Israeli military of lighting wildfires in the region, as forested areas burned down in blazes sparked by Israeli bombing. Environmental groups said the fires in recent weeks were part of a longstanding Israeli practice of targeting Lebanon’s natural environment. On Tuesday, the Israeli military dropped flares in a wooded area outside Khiam, in south Lebanon, sparking blazes. When firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, a drone struck close by, forcing them to withdraw, said the head of the civil defence in the Nabatieh region, Hussein Fakih. “Most of our missions are now related to fires,” Fakih said. “There are enormous areas of woodland that have burned, I don’t have the exact figures, but in the areas close to the [frontline], around 30-40% of the land has been affected by fires.” The Israeli military has caused fires across south Lebanon, in particular in olive groves and on agricultural land, according to videos and testimony from emergency services, in the nearly two-months since the 17 June ceasefire that mostly ended fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

[...]

According to environmental groups, the fires are part of a pattern of Israeli attacks against Lebanon’s environment that threaten the country’s woodlands and the biodiversity they support. Hisham Younes, the founder of Green Southerners, a Lebanese conservation organisation, said: “These are long-established woodlands, dominated by productive stone pine alongside oak. They perform critical functions. The wider area is also an important passage and resting ground for migratory birds.” Younes called the Israeli attacks an ecocide. “It is not about any single fire or attack, but a pattern of destruction that progressively erodes the ability of ecosystems to function, regenerate and sustain life. When those cascading effects also undermine livelihoods and people’s ability to return to and remain on their land, environmental destruction becomes inseparable from the wider transformation of the territory itself.”

[...]

It is not the first time Israeli forces have been reported to have set fires deliberately.In the summer of 2024, Israeli troops used trebuchets – medieval catapults – to fling flaming debris over its border wall with Lebanon, while the Lebanese army published photos of Israeli drones that carried hoses that doused forests in flammable materials. Health and environmental experts raised the alarm in February when Israeli planes dropped herbicides linked to cancer on farms in south Lebanon. Besides the environmental and health consequences of these fires, residents of south Lebanon have mourned the loss of the green spaces in the villages where they grew up.