useless space

[practicallyliving]

SPOILERS FOR SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT: A MIND FULL OF MURDER BELOW, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

My little shipper heart has DIED AND COME BACK TO LIFE at the valencholia mention in this book <3 <3 <3 10 years ago I wrote a piny little fanfic about this couple because I loved the idea of them, and now my dreams have come TRUE

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[practicallyliving]

grimoire make sad

god fucking damn it man I was so excited for it. spoilers under cut. also big rant under cut. coming out of my cage and Im not doing just fine

so first of all........ wouldn’t it have been better for them to, like, wait til the series was finished to publish a comprehensive guide to it than do it just after the second to last book?? I get that it’s probs for a reason, like linked to the corruption of the sanctuary at this current time etc etc and it’s supposed to have a “””mysterious ending””” but like, it just feels like it would’ve been better to wait an extra year and have more time to put into making it not a piece of trash and then it could have all of the content from all the books instead of just ending right before the last one? am I being dumb? and also may I re-emphasise that if they’d had an extra year to work on it, IT MIGHT NOT BE SUCH FUCKING TRASH? like seriously did this fucking thing even have an editor like did anyone even read it before publishing it. felt like I was doing a goddamn proofreading test for a job application picking out the flaws and inconsistencies. booooooo 

also, genuinely disappointed at the lack of character profiles/portraits etc. the artwork is great and all and every respect to the artists who did it, but they just.... were not the kind of in-depth character portraits I wanted. I wanted pics with heights, fun facts, quotes, descriptions, etc. I wanted Valkyrie Cain at 26 with her tattoos and her girlfriend and her dog, and omen and auger and never to be more than just random blurs of children in my mind, and tanith and ravel and just. wanted more art. more art pls. all the art. I wanted definitions of words, descriptions of magic disciplines we don’t know a lot about, details about witch covens like the brides and other sanctuaries and stuff... not books 1-14 recapped with a slight commentary.  like, I have read and re-read every book in this series at least six times, I KNOW what happens and I don’t need a recap of every single goddamn event in every single goddamn book. If I wanted to find something out from a book, I'd simply re-read it instead of spending money on a new book that basically just recaps everything we already know. and if this was the purpose of the grimoire in the first place, then I reiterate: why not just WAIT til the last book was out so you could recap them all at once?? 

trying not to be negative about this series any more so ummmmm on a positive note, the comic was very very good and I hope we get more stuff like this in future. despite the ultra low rise 00s jeans. and a lot of the art was great and I really enjoyed hearing some characters’ commentary on certain events. basically, if I hadn’t been expecting something completely different and hadn't gotten my hopes up for this completely different thing, I probably would have been very happy when I received the grimoire and will probably warm to it in the future. for now, tho, just pretty disappointed and wishing it had been done a little differently. 

[practicallyliving]

doa verdict- spoilers after cut

dude what

in terms of character/relationship development this was my fave book of phase 2: loved every moment between val and militsa, val and skul and val and tanith and even val and fletcher (even though he’s in it for 2 seconds then disappears for the entire rest of the book lol).

I even got a little more invested in omen’s story in this book, which is something that the last few totally failed to achieve. only a little, though- I still found myself skimming through some of his pages towards the end. idk the whole school kids thing just doesn't really interest me, anyone else? and also DL switching never’s pronouns literally MID FUCKING SENTENCE will never not annoy me. just use they/them when you aren't sure bro I promise it’s not that hard 

the trend in earlier books of phase 2 that really irked me was val and skul splitting up for huge chunks of the books, and im glad that didn't happen in this one. they will forever be my 2 faves so seeing them interact and have their little moments together was great and really reminiscent of phase 1. val seems so much better by this book, too, so it’s nice to see remnants of her old personality shine through. this book had me actually laughing out loud in parts, which hasn’t happened since, like, tlsodm. 

the story, however, is getting so weird that it’s really hard to follow everything that happens. the time travel thing was so so exciting until it basically just turned into liebniz 2.0- don't even get me started on the harpy thing- and I really just.... miss china sorrows?? where is she?? give her back to me??????? hopefully she plays a bigger role in the next book now that she's finally awake cos her feature in this book was literally blink-and-you-miss-it (excluding that fucking weirdness in the future). cadaver cain gave me feelings and I don't even know what those feelings were. I loved it until he went into all that seeing the future and praising evil gods thing. I get that skul would go totally off the deep end when he lost val but....  like, he already has vile to turn into, so maybe he should've just left it at that instead of making himself ANOTHER alter ego. they could populate a new dimension with other versions of themselves at this point. when will it end? 

I hope Sebastian’s doing well with baby Darquesse because I honestly stopped caring enough to read those chapters by the end. I assumed she might be coming back as the child of the ancients to fight Alice (somehow??????) or something like that but I've totally lost it now and just. hope they're happy and stuff. wishing you well but stay away from me. let me know if you start being actually important any time soon. 

my biggest gripe from this book though is the coda thing. I wish coda had a better storyline than basically just being caelan 2.0. he’d been built up from the previous books and I was actually so excited to meet him and he just ... had one single interaction with val then turned psycho and got himself killed? I feel like his plan towards the end was something derek maybe wanted to flesh out for the originally-planned 9 books but had to cut when they shortened the length of phase 2 (which, I wish they hadn't if only because it’s gonna suck seeing him attempt to tie up ALLLLL these loose ends in one [1] single book). idk it just felt a little pointless even bringing him at all considering all he ended up contributing was (technically) breaking val and militsa up. I just... was really looking forward to his storyline and idek why cos he was mentioned like 3 times and I should've known that

val ending up just saying fuck it and becoming the child of the faceless was genuinely unexpected so im super interested to see where that goes (also SUPER FUCKING GLAD SHE DIDNT TURN INTO A FUCKING HARPY WHAT THE DAMN HELL). I was worried about her becoming the child of the faceless because I didn't want to just see a Darquesse round 2 thing where she gives in to another dark side and everyone has to team up against her. but, hopefully that won't happen and he’ll do it well. I have hope (even though up to now 99% of new plots/characters have been alarmingly similar to old ones).

final gripe- SORRY BUT WHERE THE HELL WERE SERPINE AND VEX? WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE SHIT THAT HAPPENED MERE MONTHS PRIOR IN SOW? I was hoping for a whole thing about val growing back serpine’s hand, maybe some angst from vex about rue’s death or maybe just some general badassery from them, or even a simple mention. but no, nothing. hopefully one or both of them appear in the final book. who knows. probably not.guess we’ll see next year.

I literally haven't made noise in this fandom since like 2014 but the hype over doa has literally brought me back from the ashes. keen to hear everyone else’s thoughts on the new book, too, so feel free to hmu with those. this was accidentally the longest post ever I guess I had more feelings than I thought I did about doa. 

tl;dr..... dude what

[lilsoft]

[tanu-the-avocado]

[hellonheelz93]

‘Conversation between the Moon and a Star’ by Paul Rumsey

[angelmonstrosity]

[millktree-deactivated20121024]

[heavenlyyshecomes]

Adonis, ‘The Passage’, from The Blood of Adonis: Transpositions of Selected Poems

[vesperwood-blog]

Posting mainly over on instagram these days~ @papercrake

Cross My Heart, 12 x 16 inches, oil on linen

[vesperwood-blog]

Posting mainly over on instagram these days~ @papercrake

Cross My Heart, 12 x 16 inches, oil on linen

[windowwaterr]

[the-memedaddy]

me_irl

[timotaychalamet]

Malèna (2000) dir. Giuseppe Tornatore

[fyblackwomenart]

Tim Okamura – The Parlor 

[catasters]

[nature-travel-photography]