bookish side blog

lib | 27 | she/her | usa mostly lumatere chronicles kind of reading and chronicling rote (currently reading: ship of magic) header is a reference to the gentleman bastards sequence add me on goodreads and thestorygraph @libbith220 main blog @fooooof234

[elliewilliams]

whats yalls ultimate fave character. like years have passed, interests have come and gone, yet theyre still here. mines ellie williams

[provincara]

I made a tag filter for #rote spoilers and every time something comes up with that on my dash I have to remind my dumb monkey brain to NOT press the “view post” button

[provincara]

FINALLY started reading ship of magic btw (i don't know why it took me so long to pick up, i fucking love fantasy pirates)

[archersgoon]

ok i went and slept on it six times and i do see the argument for tragedy in olivier's arc. like as far as main series goes he's up there. i think it's moreso that i have trouble understanding what makes a character 'tragic', especially in the context of a series which i guess does go in for tragedy so much. like the happyish ending is very much a result of everyone putting in the work but even so.

and then i had trouble because you have olivier who does betray everyone he cares about and his own values, resulting in the miserable spy who everyone hates -> dungeon guy thing. but in the end i do genuinely believe he is going to be okay (which does not negate what is actually in the text. obviously). versus, say, tariq & balthazar. who were both boykings who were literally nice. and their deaths etc. are presented as a tragedy, but also: they did very much achieve what they set out to do (sacrifice yourself for your younger female relative and she will get the job done guaranteed).

ferragost obviously is a different beast. argus laraunt's whole thing is tragic (he fucked it up big time *and* died) it's just that i don't care about him or his family

[provincara]

the parallels this has to finn, balthazar and lucian...

[provincara]

ok i really thought i had documented more about olivier during my reread but this is all i got. and i considered flipping back through for more but oof i actually Don't Want to do that. so i humbly present these meager offerings

but basically i think Olivier is the most tragic character in this series! like he really was doing his best but was ultimately misguided, and unfortunately there's no easy way back from what he did. i like to think that over the years he can reforge relationships and not just rot in the dungeons, but it's sad that we don't get to see that—everyone else has an ultimately happy ending that we get to experience, but not olivier

[the-chosen-half-of-one]

Achievement unlocked: discovered piece of media at exact right time in your life to experience maximum peak emotional impact and infatuation

[theconceptsofastan]

I’ll never forget this one

[provincara]

expanding on @archersgoon 's thoughts in the replies to this post:

at the end of qoc quintana proves that she's actually quite a good ruler, like she has a good instinct for people and it's a shame that her people will probably never know that. thankfully i think gargarin will actually talk to her about stuff and her homies will know what she's capable of, but she'll never be a figurehead like isaboe

[archersgoon]

constructing an elaborate series of headcanons in which ginny genuinely did suffer from being socially ostracised in her village, but failed to identify the patriarchal society that was underlying this and instead chose the lastborn girls as a concrete target for her misplaced anger, thus beginning her habit of blaming women for misogyny and tying her worth to her ability to perform for men

[archersgoon]

it is hysterically funny that in main series everyone's like ohhh is celie romancing this hot new castellan?? like people died.

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

more people on this website need to be blogging about weird literature no one cares about

[anistarrose]

hyperfixating on a fictional woman who went underdeveloped in canon is literally FUN and the 80-90% of fandom people who only do the same for background character men have no idea of the degree to which they are fucking missing out

[anistarrose]

no tumblr i have faith that this post will be found by the enlightened 10-20 percent

[ID from alt: the "post without tags" pop up. End ID.]

[anistarrose]

hour 1 of thinking about an underdeveloped woman: idk it would've been nice if she had more screentime

hour 100 of thinking about an underdeveloped woman: ok but despite having only eight lines of dialogue she is literally THE most interesting nuanced and tragic character in the entire series and these writers had no idea what they even had. how is no one else seeing this it's literally so objectively obvious

[provincara]

thoughts during my ferragost reread:

...borealis is the name of my cat that died last year :/

"the castellan wasn't one for eye contact" another autistic??

"I have brothers. The four of them together outdo each other with their wicked tongues" froi taught them all how to swear like guard

i love seeing the edits and unpolished sections, makes you appreciate the published books even more

how are we pronouncing "valentien" (va-LEN-ti-en?)

really packs a gut punch in such a short story

and the ending ugh!!! everyone sad! what i'd give for a follow-up story...

i'm thinking for my next reread i want to read this earlier on, so i have this knowledge of celie's character when reading the main books. bc i definitely don't appreciate her enough in fotr (finn's perspective doesn't help)

[archersgoon]

they have two copies of finnikin at this op shop

[archersgoon]

back in the day they wanted you to read this shit

[provincara]

oh also I did finish my reread but I haven’t been posting about it bc, if I don’t think about it, then I haven’t actually finished it

[provincara]

drag his ass