Paige Against The Machine

I obsess over a lot. I'm the millennial fantasy nerd of your nightmares.

[tardis-technician]

Girl who makes everything about doctor who: so there’s actually a doctor who episode about this

[tardis-technician]

Glad we’re all in agreement

[enjoyerofstories]

"Not for this."

[enjoyerofstories]

Some ramblings about breenick below (ft a little bit of breeselnick)

"All i have to do is get through dinner" the fact that nick was very possibly thinking the same thing at that moment 😭

I'm never getting over the quotes of nick "seeing" bree. Like "he's a dagger to my heart quick and true" and "his focused gaze unmoors me. Strips me bare"??? Miss deonn!???

What was nick's plan with all those security cameras tho? Like turning off the lights wasn't his plan so what was it?

Nick making it clear multiple times that he had fun fighting bree and that he'd have another go and bree also admitting she had fun omg please. I said it before but i'm counting that scene as their dance scene because they both talked about it that way.

I'm sorry but bree saying she sees desperation in nick when mikael announces they'll spend 3 days at penumbra is so.... i can't wait to get to the "so drown" scene.

Nick telling bree how to stab him in order to not draw attention *giggling and kicking my feet*

"I watch nick roll his second sleeve up for reasons i choose not to examine" ok girl 😂. This is like the third time where she talks about his arms or hands tho lol. Or the fourth? Anyway

Nick's fingers trembling when he catches her wrist!!! Omg. That boy almost died from yearning in this book lol

"How can i tell him i missed him when i didn't know him? I can't. How do I explain the clear resonant bell of my own longing?" The longing and yearning in this book... omg tracy cooked with the romance in this one.

Breaking from my breenick rambling to say that nick telling bree he feels in his heart sel is not gone is just so.... i can't explain into words. And bree agreeing and nick saying "then that's where we'll hold him until we find him" 🥺

Sel literally calling her bloodmark while they were discussing him lmao

One thing i love about breenick is how familiar they are around one another. Like bree describing his touch and features as familiar. Her body remembering him. "What does my body know about this boy that my mind doesn't?" and "My heart quietly unfurls inside my chest like it knows him, even if my mind can't put the pieces together"

I'll probably make another post about this but nick not judging her and simply wanting to understand more. like bree expected the people she loves to reject her when finding out about her missing knowledge but nick doesn't. also he understands better than anyone the choice she made. the choice of severing herself from the order because he did the same thing when he was younger. the trio's arcs mirror each other and i love it so much.

[enjoyerofstories]

Natasia saying Sel used to be talkative and bright as a child... Anna telling child Nick you can read him like a book...

[enjoyerofstories]

Thinking about how nick's hopes of getting his mother back probably dwindled the more he researched mesmers, thinking about how he was probably resigned about it before bree showed up, thinking about how he most probably doesn't even want to bring his mother's memories back now since he's only "borrowing" himself time

[vastlyblindingfragment]

Think about this frequently.

[enjoyerofstories]

Legendborn cycle bonus chapters

This cat and mouse - sel pov bonus chapter legendborn (the pics are low quality i'm sorry)

Oathbound - extended version of chapter 51: part 1 part 2

william pov from the bloodmarked paperback (the oathbound first chapter sneak peek is first and then the will pov bonus chapter. you just have to scroll down)

sel commentary oathbound: part 1 part 2

Legendborn Collector's edition bonus content: part 1 part 2

bonus chapters from the oathbound paperback: part 1 part 2

I put these in the order of their apparition. Except for the legendborn collector's edition the rest are either from b&n exclusive editions (and b&n doesn't deliver to a lot of countries outside the usa) or usa paperbacks. I decided to put all of them together and i'll try to update when/if new bonus content drops.

[raichett]

liking a ship but disliking the distinct set of stock fanon that they have been assigned is like one of those punishments dante came up with when he wrote the worldbuilding for hell in inferno

[enjoyerofstories]

we talk about nick going from being a sloppy ally in legendborn to calling out the regents/order at the curia but his attitude regarding sel also changes so much. i mean it's very complicated between them and bree doesn't fully understand their relationship in legendborn but going from telling his father about sel and risking him getting cast out and not trusting him with bree at all (rightfully so) to "they're blaming him for my father's sins, just as they did his mother" and telling bree that she should trust sel and reassuring sel that he does trust him with bree? nick had so much character development and i so wish we could get a glimpse of his inner thoughts during bloodmarked.

[vastlyblindingfragment]

All of Bloodmarked Nick stayed in Bree’s and Sel’s mouth. All of Oathbound Sel stayed In Bree’s and Nick’s mouth. They are hopeless and embarrassing. I can’t with them.

[enjoyerofstories]

"With Nick we have Bree having, you know, they're both sort of doing something sneaky together and they have to trust one another and they know things that other characters don't know about: why she's there and what she's capable of and there's sort of a trust built between them. They have an easy way of interacting. The thing that marks their relationship is that Nick is easy for her. I don't mean that in a boring way. I mean that in a safe and like wavelength way. They're so built the same way. In a lot of their interactions you can see that there's a shorthand and there's a quickness." (Tracy Deonn Answers Your Questions About The Legendborn Cycle )

[quasi-normalcy]

[mephistopheles]

i bring a sort of “you should maybe interrogate your so-called ‘preferences’ to make sure they’re not literal textbook examples of severe unconscious bias” vibe that my woke gay friends dont really like

[mephistopheles]

what this post does NOT mean

go out and fuck someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to

go out and date someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to

You’re Not Allowed To Be Gay Anymore

what this post DOES mean

if you just ‘prefer’ to avoid majority black areas of your city

if you just ‘prefer’ to read, write, think, and talk about men

if you just ‘prefer’ to socialize with people you (perceive as) your assigned birth sex

if you just ‘prefer’ to exclusively watch white-directed movies, read white-written books, listen to white-authored music

if you just unconsciously perceive men as more authoritative/competent and ‘prefer’ to be spoken to by them

this is a post about acknowledging unconscious bias. it is not a post about dating. please stop coming into my inbox and accusing me of rape apologism and telling me to kill myself. thank you

[enjoyerofstories]

If alice and nick have zero defenders then i'm dead

[punkeropercyjackson]

Bree on the mind.Someone like her existing in an official,published book saga is something i sometimes can't believe is actually real and none longer a fantasy.She's the protagonist of her series,that alone is groundbreaking,but the parts that really do it are the sums of her.Stereotypical YA novel series mc is an archetype almost exclusively reserved for white characters and the treatment of the black fems in most literary runs(fullstop really,not just in YA)is nothing short of downright revolving to anybody who dosen't hate us irl to a measurement high enough it jumps out as a 'defense mechanism' according to oh so coincidentally and not at all a pattern reflective of and causes by irl systematic oppression and enforced biases and lines of thinking universally misogynoirist fandoms

She fills out all the boxes-Name short for a nickname treated as her 'true' name and her full name is only busted out by villains as signs they aren't friendly company,story kicks off with a soon to be revealed caused by her magic ancestry she didn't know about yet mystery and the foreshadowing to her being nonhuman is misfit status brought by a mix of mythological circumstances and accidentally autistic/audhd-coding,she's super rebellious except for good reasons i.e helping others and combating oppressive hierarchies(and it needs to be said,unlike a disturbingly long list of certain protags,she includes irl oppression in that even if it isn't the direct focus point of her stories and isn't all that too keen on shitting and mistreating on minorities for a so called 'hero'),her sense of humor is quippy and snarky and out of pocket and dorky and just plain weird on a regular basis and proves herself an expert at landing a joke no matter what it is,she's The Chosen Hero and The Hero Of Legend and Who The Prophecy Kickstarting Our Adventurers Spoke Of Gallantly,she's a geek who runs on endless fleek,she leans into ordinary experiences gendered and neutral as is natural and as we're told subliminally necessary aspect of hers to keep her who she is and she's in the middle of a love triangle between two conventionally attractive men who land on opposite spectrums of healthy masculinity and risk practically tearing eachother apart over her

Everything else is equally important to what a good character Bree is but that last touch is the strawberry on top of a deluxe milkshake.Bree gets to not just be King Arthur Pendragon-and there are zero jokes shot at her femininity and womanhood even slightly!-but a sought after beautiful,soft,vulnerable,human despite her closeness to genuine invincibility,girlish princess.Her desirability isn't brought to question and Nick and Sel might as well have written a saga of odes to her themselves with how down catastrophic and hopelessly hopeful they are in their feelings love for her.They love her,romantically,BECAUSE she's a black girl who's in-tune with her culture and her black woman features are the literally peakdom of prettiness to them.How often do we get that?'We' both as in 'general audiences' and 'black women'.Black fem characters at love interest position are depicted as pity picks,and usually aren't even the endgame as seen through 'disposable black girlfriend',and rentlessly mocked on their blackness being tied to their girlhood as blackness is viewed as inherently 'removing' female gender from any equation

Bree means so much to me.She's defined as a black girl protagonist who isn't reduced down to diversity points.Legendborn wouldn't be Legendborn if it didn't star an african-american girl in modern America raised as that and didn't shy away from the downs and lows of that lived experience.I am not AA specifically(afro-dominiciana and stayed in my homecountry minus that little bit where i was born in New York due to my parents' traveling)but i still see a lot of myself in her and it brings me so much genuine and pure joy seeing other black women who're Legendborn fans and AA because they relate to her and are represented by her even more than i am.Bree Matthews is a legit and objective legend and she did 'Katniss Everdeen/Percy Jackson variant' a million times more accurately than Booktok and whitewashed crossovers dares to try.Everyone get Legendborn,Bloodmarked AND Oathbound e-books,pdfs,library copies or bookstore bought NOW❗❗❗and behold her like you haven't beholded before.Y'all love your tortured but cutesy white streak characters,don't y'all?

[enjoyerofstories]

extended version of bloodmarked's chapter 51

[heart-locket-musicboxless]

There are three kinds of LGBT headcanons:

Actual queer coding / metaphors ("Nimona is trans because her creator made her as a way to express his feelings as a trans person")

Vibes ("Link is genderless because I said so")

It's funny ("Phoenix Wright is asexual because he's the Ace Attorney")