#topic meme

I don’t mess with the fae. I might be an arrogant bastard when it comes to most other things, paranormal and otherwise, but with the fae I do not mess. I mean, this is common sense (or at least I think it is) (and if it isn’t it should be) but the amount of people I’ve had to warn about fairie circles and what have you!! it’s stressful!!

like. I’m Irish. I grew up, funnily enough, in Ireland. the fae are very much a part of daily life there. I’m not joking. sure you probably don’t get it much in the cities, but out in the country (where most people live because there’s a lot of countryside!!) the fae are something that you have to keep in mind!! I grew up in Rural As Fuck Ireland, and I grew up damn near feral. I’d spend whole days just running around the countryside with a bunch of other kids, and it wasn’t about strangers we were warned! it was the fae! (and bombs and soldiers, but that’s a different story.) there were two pieces of knowledge hammered into our heads: the invisible borders you could run across so the police couldn’t come after you, and do not mess with the fae. I mean, the songs the adults used to sing us kids before we went to sleep had lyrics like “they’re the ones that you see when you wake up and scream, the cold things that follow you down the boreen, they live in the small ring of trees on the hill and up at the top of the field” and “may the ghosts that howl ’round the house at night never keep you from your sleep; may they all sleep tight down in hell tonight or wherever they may be”!!

there were many places that were associated with the fae where I grew up. there were trails that were fine to walk down in the daytime, but at dawn and dusk you couldn’t go down them because you might not ever come out. there were country lanes (the aforementioned boreens -- barely even roads, just basically two tyre tracks in the ground) that were said to go to the fae realm, and sometimes when you looked up them there was a weird haze like a heat haze but it wasn’t even warm. weird animals roamed around that looked too human or just seemed off somehow. one of my friends’ older brothers swore up and down that when he was walking home from the pub he saw a woman sitting by the stream and she was crying and combing her hair and he ran like fuck and my friend and I were terrified for the rest of the night. now I’d usually say that he was messing with us but Dónal used to frequently take on British soldiers with nothing but a shitty weapon circa 1922 and a moped so he was not easily shaken and he looked scared, my friend! he looked a-fear’t! 

one time when I was about 12 I was waiting for my friend so we could walk to school together and an old man with really weird eyes came up to me and started trying to get my name out of me and when I deflected he started trying to get me to agree to answer a riddle and I was just like no thank you sir! no thanks! you think middle names are top secret normally? I had friends for a decade whose middle names I never knew, because you can never be too sure!! I could honestly go on and on because the fae are very much alive and kickin’ in Ireland and to this day if I see a circle of flowers or mushrooms on the ground I will go right the way around it!! if I hear bells ringing I get the hell out!! if things just seem Weird I’m off!! if an animal looks a little off I’m out of there! you might all laugh at the superstitious Irish but you do not know what we deal with!!

Kaz is the EXACT kind of bastard I would have stanned hard when I was 16 or 17 like I know this for a fact. I would have replaced my entire self concept with that little shit. “Kaz” would have been a name I would have gone by. I know this for certain because I still stan that little shit now. call me predictable but I just love characters like him. he’s so edgy and dramatic but at the same time I can totally believe everything he gets away with -- sure, some of it is pushing his luck a little but it doesn’t matter because I love him so he gets away with it!

something I love about Kaz is the fact he has his limitations and these are consistent. not just with his trauma and his disability, but also the limitations of the people around him. something I appreciate about Kaz is the fact that he knows his own limits and if he can’t work them into something he can use, he does his best to work around them; with the people in his gang he’s aware of everyone’s weaknesses and instead of trying to bully people into just Getting Over It he works around it and ensures that it’s an issue as little as possible -- not out of any goodness or empathy, but because he’s practical and he knows to choose his battles. he’s an incredibly ruthless asshole and I love how it’s evident in everything he does. I see a lot of people complaining that he gets away with too much and everything always goes right for him and yeah, in the end it does, but I think people forget just how much goes wrong for him, too. I can really believe he’s as scheming and strategic as he’s said to be because that’s proven time and time again in the narrative and it’s all believable enough. 

I just really love that he has these things he has to deal with and they don’t go away. I cannot state that enough. it’s so refreshing to see a character with trauma that doesn’t go away when it’s convenient, and who genuinely becomes a terrible person because of it. even when he sees how Inej deals with her trauma and thinks to himself that she’s a better person than he could ever be, he doesn’t have this epiphany and change. he’s just like “well that’s her” and carries on, and he’s not happy about it and he does wish that things were different, but they’re not and he’s going to just roll with it. as someone with a lot of Baggage™ from childhood trauma and the situations dealing with it led me into, I appreciate seeing that. yes, it’s not like that now, but to see it even acknowledged is very, very nice to see. so many other narratives paint that kind of thing as bad, and kind of lecture on the idea that being traumatised should make you into a better and kinder person -- but sometimes it doesn’t, and that side of things needs to be explored as well.

speaking of Representation™ and whatnot, I was also super psyched to see a character who has to deal with the same physical limitations as I do. I’ve always thought my limp makes me look rather mysterious and distinguished (double for a cane) but it was really cool to have something so specific in common with a character I love. my biggest annoyance is people saying he’s bad representation because he can still run and climb and stuff, because those people seem to think that we’re all helpless and a limp just ruins everything forever. not the case. Kaz’s abilities are well within range -- if I see something I can climb I’ll climb it, and I can sprint faster than almost everyone I know. I just do so a little more lopsidedly.

I just got done (well in the last couple of months) reading a book about Celtic myths and legends and there was so much I remember hearing about when I was a kid and it was a trip down memory lane, oh man. it’s not just hearing the legends told and stuff; there were places all around me that were associated with various settings or people or objects from mythology and the Tuatha Dé Danann definitely felt much closer than just mythology. 

I remember always feeling sad (and still do, if I’m honest) hearing about the time when Christianity came to Ireland and the old beliefs were dying out. there’s a lot of stuff in the legends about that, and while it’s never told in any kind of accusatory way (or at least the versions I’ve heard weren’t) there’s a sense of sadness at the decline of the old beliefs, which is pretty cool to think about when you consider that Ireland had a primarily oral history and storytelling tradition until Christian monks put all the stories down for the first time; this kind of loss still came across even with some of the Christian edits that came along (such as rewriting the Tuatha Dé Danann as kings and mortal royalty rather than gods, etc). I don’t know, I always thought that was interesting, and spoke of something greater that perhaps wasn’t recorded.

anyway, where I was going with that was that I always felt sad thinking about it, but something that’s been consistent across a lot of what I’ve read/heard is the idea that the old gods will never go away so long as there are still people to believe in them, and while I have a lot of my own beliefs and a very specific way of integrated my beliefs with the world around me, there’s a part of me that still Believes. I don’t think I could ever adequately explain why, but if you’ve ever been wandering around the Irish countryside at the right time when the light hits just right and the whole place feels ancient, you kind of get it.

so I’ve been both vegetarian and vegan in the past and I have zero problem with the kinds of food I was able to eat with either -- I was able to eat really tasty things, but the thing is being vegan is just inconvenient for me. even outside of the fact that I fucking love cheese, it’s so difficult to eat enough (and it’s expensive, too!). I have chronic anaemia and also I have to be very careful with food because I quite literally medically starved for years and did you know that when you medically starve it’s not as simple as just eating again and putting the weight back on? nope! that shit affects you permanently! so I have to be very careful to get everything I need or my body goes from 0 to corpse within literal days. being vegan just isn’t practical for me, and ethically I’m not opposed to dairy products because like... I basically live in a giant farm. everything is locally sourced. I drive past the farm that provides my shop with milk daily. I know for a fact that the animals are well looked after, and because it’s all local, impact on the environment is minimal (this is a small family business and the milk doesn’t have to go far, for example). every so often I’ll have a meal that just so happens to be vegan, but the diet is impractical for me long-term and ngl, a lot of the vegans I see vlogging or whatever look... really unhealthy. I mean, if that’s what people wanna do go ahead, but it’s really not for me.

being a vegetarian on the other hand? love it. I’ve been vegetarian three times in my life now (this is the third) and the other times I had to quit because of anaemia and meat being the only convenient, affordable way I could get iron (and I still deadass almost died from it 😂) but now I have more time to cook and I can get all the ingredients I need, I’m enjoying it and I hopefully won’t have to give it up. I’m vegetarian for a mixture of ethical and personal reasons, and to be honest with you I think my meals are tastier now I’m a vegetarian. I always resented the way that meat was the centrepiece of a meal and that if a meal didn’t have meat it wasn’t a “real” meal; very often the meat’s presence would mean that the other aspects of the dish were afterthoughts and just there to be eaten with the meat, which I wasn’t a fan of anyway, and mealtimes were just kind of stressful in general. now I’m vegetarian everything is fresher, tastier, I feel less gross after eating it, I stay full for longer, and overall I just look and feel healthier. it’s definitely something I’m glad I finally got back into, and honestly there’s so much I like eating that I don’t feel like I’m missing out at all. I think even if people ate vegetarian even twice a week, they would find a lot of stuff to like and they would feel healthier -- plus it’s better for the environment!

finally pad thai is delicious. @vestriis got me to try it once and I’ve loved it ever since, though we don’t get it often (Thai places aren’t common around here; it’s mostly a London thing). we have been planning to try and make our own for a while, however! hopefully that works out. I’d love to have limitless pad thai.

OH BOY.

☕️ Alina Starkov

my bitch is so dumb but I love her 😩 like a lot of the time I kind of want to shake her but what can you do!! I really do think she put up with far too much shit lmao but at the same time over the course of the three books she does get much better at asserting herself and she stops being so directionless, and I was super psyched to see her punch Nikolai and tell people to suck her long and hard through her jorts and stuff. I see a lot of people complain that she’s boring and whiny but like... I don’t see it? she definitely has her whiny moments but then you remember she’s a seventeen-year-old girl stuck in what was perhaps the World’s Suckiest Situation so I can hardly blame her.

overall I think her defining feature is bravery. time and time again she has to face the worst possible scenario and she still does what she believes is right, when many other people would have flinched away from it. she has a very strong moral code (perhaps the strongest in the series, if I’m honest -- Alina alone does things because it’s the right thing to do, and not because of any ulterior/personal motive) and she’s pretty fucking badass. she’s also funny as hell. like, why don’t more people talk about how funny she is? my girl is a comedic genius. 

my main criticism of her is that she didn’t say fuck it and go ape shit and rule Ravka forever on the shadow throne she shares with her hot evil boyfriend the Darkling but like whatever, it would be unrealistic if a character didn’t have flaws.

I love my boy Nikolai, what can I say? he’s a delightful asshole which is something I think isn’t appreciated enough. I mean, he gets a lot of appreciation which is a good thing, but he seems to be the Golden Boy but in actual fact he’s quite a dick. I like arrogant dickhead characters so I can’t say I’m complaining (especially when they back it up, like Nikolai can) but it’s a shame that his ruthlessness and scheming and assholishness isn’t as celebrated as his charm and his cheek.

apparently Leigh Bardugo intended to kill him off in the second book and I am super fucking glad she did not. I can’t imagine the series having a satisfying ending if Nikolai was dead lmao I just... cannot. I can believe that he’ll actually make a good king and it’s clear he really does love Ravka -- I really enjoyed how he and the Darkling played off against one another in that respect, because everything they both did was for the good their vision for the country, and at root they had many things in common (hated how the royals were running the place, for example, and wishing for an end to all the wars) but they went about it in totally different ways. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the two of them had teamed up. that would be one hell of an unstoppable team.

I absolutely loved the shit he went through in the series as well, like. holy shit. I don’t think I’ve ever read about something like that before, and it’s fucking horrific. naturally I was then super pissed off that King of Scars was basically one long gush about Zoya and she eclipsed Nikolai in his own fucking duology, because I really wanted to see how he was going to deal with the long-term ramifications of what happened to him. I feel kind of robbed, tbh. he was brilliant in the trilogy but I feel like he’s been really screwed over now; it felt almost like his character was a hook to pull in readers just so Bardugo could remind us Zoya is her favourite character 😂 like we could ever forget.