neigh

Meanwhile Ariel with legs;

Ariel already loved the human world long before meeting Eric (you don’t get a collection like hers overnight) and when she finally got a chance to explore it, she took it.

Ursula made it about Eric. She didn’t have to. Ariel had to get out from under Triton’s thumb, it could have been literally anything. Ursula took advantage of a desperate victim for her own agenda. Realistic predatory behavior toward a vulnerable person.

And also

There’s always the ‘Eric didn’t want her until she was silent and meek’ criticism - FIRST OF ALL he started out looking for a woman who wasn’t silent, and second of all what part of the carriage driving bit (or any of her other actions on land) is meek, exactly?

1. this is not from a porn site or anything. this was platformed on youtube by someone who seemingly "tries to keep the community as SFW as possible". no one will be surprised by this because the femboy self-sexualisation is so commonplace its absence is more surprising than its presence at this point

2. "princess boy" feels like a direct parallel to "lady boy". i don't need to explain why this is insanely transmisogynistic

3. the fish guy immediatly switching from "this is pretty wife" to "this is sex toy tranny" upon learning that the person isn't "an actual woman" reveals how absolutely normalized it is to view transfems as sex objects to be freely abused, always treated worse than both cis men and cis women would be

4. the femboy character's response to being promised continuous sexual violence by a group being "cool thanks" reflects how the femboy community will do one of 3 things when confronted with the real violence transfems face : completely gloss over it, turn it into a joke, or say "that's hot" and turn it into more fuel for the degradation of transfemininity through sexualisation. this somehow manages to be a bit of all 3. mainly the third though

5. it's the "trap" trope all over again. "i look like a woman but i'm actually a dude! i'm being deceitful i could never actually be a girl!" transfemininity once again treated as a costume that makes you incredibly desireable. but only as a sex object, not as a person or equal. and only if it's a costume, if you're actually transfem you're lower than dirt. hot and fuckable and lower than dirt

But I know. I think it was me.

In my defense I never intended to start a rumor. Many years ago I worked as a cleaner at the school and one evening I had to transport one of those big floor washing machines from the basement to the second level via the elevator. When the doors opened a very confused looking man stood inside. He was one of those slicked back gym-bro IT guys and made no movement to get out. The elevator wouldn’t fit him, me and the machine so I asked “Where are you going? Up or down?”

He gave me a smug shit-eating grin and said “Down?” in a mocking tone.

It took me a second to realize that of course he wasn’t going down, we were in the basement, but his look and tone annoyed me so much I refused to admit I misspoke and instead said “Yeah, down. I don’t know if you’re going to the second basement”

His smile disappeared “There’s a second basement?”

“Yeah but it sounds like you don’t have access to it so I guess you’re going up? I’ll just wait”

I never thought of it as anything other than a funny story to tell about that time I got so annoyed with a guy that I invented an entire second basement, but it turns out he probably refused to believe a cleaner fooled him and the story spread.

Because that makes sense. Anyway, this poison would submit me to its well-known and much-feared symptom: "17 Day Paralysis" in which you're paralyzed for exactly 17 days and you only chance of survival is to be on full machine support for 17 days.

Just before the medical team intubated me I remembered I have a Zoom meeting with my academic advisor today (I actually do in real life) and I needed to email him to let him know I was the victim of a mass-poisoning and would need to reschedule.

I kept trying to type the "□" symbol in my dream but could not figure out how and gave up.

it is going to happen, its pretty blatant ralsei is transfem already, and people are being just as insufferable and transmisogynistic about ralsei as they are with Jax.

this is not a coincidence.

• Villain protagonists who are actually villains and who I so badly want to Study Under A Microscope

• In-universe songs and poetry

• Platonic soulmates desperately trying to snuff out their doomed-by-the-narrative status with the power of Bureaucracy and Spite

• Fascinating deconstructions of fantasy tropes

• Chekhov’s Bard

• Character writing so good you’ll have twenty concurrent favourite characters three of whom have been dead for five hundred years and only show up in the chapter epigraphs

• One of the most satisfying endings I’ve ever read

• Really, *Really* great fight scenes

• Seven Book Long Slow Burn Enemies-to-Lovers Doomed Toxic Yuri for the ages

• The best Metafiction-Based power system ever conceived

• THE WORLDBUILDING DEAR GOD THE WORLDBUILDING

(also Catherine’s character arc over whole series feels like one of the few very realistic coming of age stories in the ways it portrays the ways your political opinions refine over the years, what changes as you gain more experience and what stays the same- specificity from the very childish ‘well since clearly all the people in power are idiots, if *I personally* just had Absolute Power Over Everything obviously I could Fix It All’ to the more grounded ‘actually real lasting change can only be achieved though a change in the root of how our institutions broadly function and the a dismantling of the power structures that support and perpetuate those institutions’)

-instead, the Guide is constantly pointing out the broader implications and reasoning behind why characters and institutions do what they do in the context of it’s world- even when that reasoning is the kind of (infuriatingly realistic in terms of mindset) shortsighted political climbing that makes both you and the main character want to scream into a pillow- well still acknowledging the sheer devastation it can bring. There’s a lot of fridge horror in the guide, because the characters- all the characters- have to take Stories very *very* seriously. And all of them have different perspectives on it that, for all they have varying degrees of validity, make logical sense for each character even when they might not make sense to another.

Like, even when characters bemoan more traditional villainy and heroism the story gives us plenty of examples and fleshed out perspectives for why someone would go down that road- it’s made explicitly clear the kind of power that can be obtained by leaning into it; Amadeus is notably weaker then previous Black Knights because his Evil Overlord List-style approach of avoiding more typical villain tropes means he’s farther away from the platonic ideal of a Villain. And Kairos being so effective at what he does is a very effective foil to that whole ethos (Kairos is actually a very good example of this, for as whimsical and over the top as he is there is a clear logic and perspective to everything he does- one that actually does work extremely well in achieving his actual goals. in a lot of ways his entire arc is a fantastic example of why the more practical side of villainy hadn’t caught on sooner.)

Interlude: A Girl Without A Name, A Practical Guide to Evil, Book 7

The Carrion Lord, she thought, really was such a terrible prick. She’d liked that song once, for all that it was maudlin and banned by decree. It had such a pleasant melody. Only now all that she could think of was that it dated back to the Sixty Years war, nearly five hundred years ago, and already the singers sounded… tired. Of all this around her, of the empire writ in dread. Of the dooms sought to the west, a hundred apiece for every ashen victory.

Interlude: A Girl Without A Name, A Practical Guide to Evil, Book 7

Akua was so very tired of this, she realized. Of the cloak and dagger plots, of the pit of hatred and betrayal that was the Tower. Of this empire of endless teeth, guzzling down its own people not to achieve anything but for the mere purpose of continuing to exist. And they were part of it, too, these masked fools before her. Teeth in the maw.

Interlude: East III, A Practical Guide to Evil, Book 7

“I have grown tired,” she said, “of iron.”

Chapter 78: Curtains, A Practical Guide to Evil, Book 4

“Do you ever get tired, Lord Fasili?” Akua asked suddenly. The man blinked. “Of?” “This,” she said, tone whimsical. “Of what we are. Of what we do.”

Yoko Taro for the fifth time this interview: