Capes are Cool

and Practitioners too

[ewingstan]

Take the following observations:

Taylor kissed Rachel to cure bonesaw's miasma (wildbow 2012, part 14.11)

Taylor could have spit on a bug and had it fly into Rachel's mouth to cure the miasma (@ty-bayonet-betteridge, 2023)

Wildbow has stated numerous times that neither of these characters are supposed to be taken as queer.

Taylor kissing a girl on the lips in a scenario when there were other options she likely would have thought of to cure her is Gay

These three observations all seem to contradict with each other, such that we cannot take them seriously without one of them giving. Most would place their doubt on 3, claiming that wildbow intentionally created a yuri moment for his readers and then backed away from the implications this would have on the larger story. However, careful reasoning reveals that there is no necessary contradiction:

A normally gay action isn't actually gay if all your alternatives in the situation would be more gay.

The most-often stated alternative for what Taylor could have done involved flying a bug down Rachel's throat.

Taylor's swarm is noted numerous times to be an extension of her body.

We can thus conclude there is no contradiction between are initial quartet of observations as long as we accept the following: Taylor having a bug fly down a girl's throat is more gay than simply kissing them.

With this out of the way, we can turn our attention to a section from 19.7:

We have an instance of Taylor doing what she was fully capable of doing in the miasma incident, and sticking a bug down her teammate's throat—in this case in order to stop talking. Based on our above reasoning, we can conclude that Taylor did the equivalent of dipping Lisa into a surprise kiss sloppy style to shut her up. The fact that this strategy worked and Sundancer did in fact nuke those guys is an important piece of evidence for my ongoing theory that Worm acts on the logic of a romantic comedy—

[snazzycrown]

So this is a thing that me and @penelopetheverytrans collaborated on, I did the doodles for the sprites and she put the video together. I hope y’all like it, makes me laugh :)

[aruliart]

Back with more Worm. Found a cute thumbnail of these two and decided to polish it up

[impdidnothingwrong]

If life begins at conception, then it isn't murder to kill an identical twin as long as the other is still alive

[regentdidmanyquestionablethings]

Nice try Tristan

[lakesbian]

lake infinity train is much like blake thorburn in that theyre both like shockingly normal given the circumstances

[lakesbian]

"look, [my emotional reactions right now] have nothing to do with you, it's just [fumbling attempt at explaining her complex psychological problems]" - worlds most shockingly emotionally mature 13yo who has literally never had a single friend in her entire life and has been manhunted by murderous slur-hurling cops for the past 2-3 months somehow managing to attempt calmly and reasonably explaining to an annoying dipshit that shes only being snippy because she is in the psychological torment nexus

[regentdidmanyquestionablethings]

Wow Blake and Lake are pretty similar. I'm going to do some reflection on this.

[byronvera]

so. arc 18 huh

(only just starting arc 19 so no spoilers in the tags please!)

[lakesbian]

some of my favorite facts about blake thorburn are. his favorite swear phrase is just a more serious sounding equivalent of "fuck my stupid baka life, fuck everyone else's stupid baka lives, and fuck this gay earth." he's a really kind and accepting person, but he starts insulting people in his head if he feels their home interior design lacks je ne sais quoi. he hates when people drive while wearing a hat. he likes motorcycles and making things about motorcycles so much that when he sees a fence being magically split in half he automatically thinks "woah, it's like someone drove a motorcycle through it." he keeps nicknaming people based on whatever the first identifiable trait he notices about them is, with top hits such as "calling someone who is absolutely not even remotely related to pizza The Pizza Man for the entire book because he was disguised as a pizza deliveryman the first time blake saw him." he's the forever-babysitter for a dead ten year old and he takes the dead ten year old on motorcycle rides. he has murdered like 12 different abusive husbands. his immediate response to difficult situations is to strategically exsanguinate himself and then collapse smugly in a puddle of his own blood. he knows how to identify bird calls and uses this skill to pedantically correct the dead ten year old he's forever-babysitting on the precise species of the birds attempting to murder them. he turns down a threesome involving a woman he has a crush on because he's scared of sex. approximately 75% of his diet throughout his entire life is nothing but oatmeal. there are various things he could eat that aren't oatmeal, but he just makes himself oatmeal anyway. and then almost starts crying about having to eat oatmeal. his immediate reaction to seeing a pyromancer is to wonder if they use it to light blunts with the tip of their finger. i really like him. i think everyone should read pact. for him.

[lakesbian]

he has a birdhouse in his soul and is also a birdhouse in someone else's soul. he has eminently fuckable ribcage lacunae. he turns into a the dracula and wanders around covered in blood (not his) thinking "it's weird how everyone is treating me with suspicion even though i am a normal guy who is a normal person that says things in a normal tone of voice." the one time he manages self-awareness about his transformation and morbidly acknowledges that he must look rather unpleasant the woman staring at him goes "oh sorry i was actually gawping because you're hot. Would." he deserves a best-sacrificial-lamb-ever mug. there is a point where he rips and tears doomguy-style in granny panties. he is the world's first horror protagonist to coincidentally witness a deep and utter betrayal of him and respond with "well, maybe i can give them a chance to clear the air." he makes himself a moldy grilled cheese because he doesn't know cutting the visible mold off doesn't actually get rid of it. the person he was born to loathe tells him she needs his humanity and he insists "take it." he almost fucks up his first summoning ritual by trying to hug a ghost. he does eventually get to hug a different ghost later. he is so sickly and faint he takes damage from trying to get out of a car seat, disco elysium uncomfortable chair skillcheck style. he genuinely believes he can fight a literal demon while in said sickly and faint condition. someone offers to get him mpreg one time. i miss him every day.

[lca-3rd]

CUTTING MOULD OFF DOESNT GET RID OF THE MOULD IN THE CHEESE?

[lakesbian]

hi. the visible mold you see on food is only the spores. the rest of the body penetrates into the food beneath the surface and is much harder to see. you can safely remove mold from and continue to use hard cheeses and firm fruits and vegetables by cutting at least an inch around all of the visible mold (avoiding touching the mold with the knife), because it is not porous enough for the mold to penetrate very far into. in soft cheeses, crumbled cheeses, sliced cheeses, and basically all other foods, the food is porous enough for the mold to fully penetrate, and thus remains contaminated even if visible mold was removed. blake was cutting the visible mold off the bread and thus definitely still eating mold, but that's ok, because that's only like the 500th worst thing that happens to his body in pact

[lilliankillthisman]

[henghost]

the wyvern formula would be the sickest fucking name for a strain of weed

[vikugnavikugna]

My dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “wyvern formula” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit

5 minutes later: dude I swear I just saw Fray in the forest

My buddy Gordon pacing: the Academy is lying to us

[rosenkranz-does-things]

There was silence, except for Camilla’s ragged breathing and the lieutenant’s tiny, half-amazed gasps. Then Jeannemary said, “Hot dog.”

[id: a digital painting of a scene from Gideon the Ninth, depicting Camilla and Palamedes. Pal is a young white man with dark curly hair, gray eyes, dark gray robes, and round glasses. Cam is a young brown woman with shoulder length dark hair, she's wearing a dark gray robe, and wielding a knife and a rapier. at the top of the drawing there's a frame with Palamedes saying "Cam", and at the bottom there's one with Pal pushing his glasses up, and they're shining like an anime character's. he's grinning and saying "Go loud." /end id]

[rosenkranz-does-things]

keep it up everyone

[id: three screenshots with the tags 'cam go loud friday]

[paladin-tourney]

Paladin Tourney - Preliminary Poll #7 (The Locked Tomb)

Gideon Nav (The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir) vs. Camilla Hect (The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir)

Who is the best paladin?

Gideon Nav

Camilla Hect

Voting ended onNov 27, 2023

Propaganda:

Gideon Nav

first she just wants to get away from her shitty nun planet and join the space military, but then she makes a deal with harrowhark, the only other person her age and also the ninth house's necromancer, that, if she poses as the ninth house cavalier (a knight who not only protects their necromancer but also provides death energy for them to do death magic with) for a specific job, that she will be made free afterwards. shit gets complicated. she tries to protect every single person and, since they're in a murder mystery, she doesn't exactly succeed. when harrowhark tells gideon about her backstory, after nearly two decades of antagonising each other, gideon immediately forgives her for all the wrongs she's done to her and vows to protect her. one flesh, one end, baby. for the ninth

Gideon holds herself fully to her oath that she swears to Harrowhark. While she was reluctant at first to swear herself to Harrow, she eventually fully throws herself into her role, and eventually dies in order to protect Harrow, offering up her soul to Harrow once she realizes that it is the only way that Harrow will be safe.

Camilla Hect

She will protect Palamedes Sextus until the end. She learned two swords instead of one because it's more efficient. She is devotion made a person. He died, and she carried him. He gambled, and she covered his bet. She kept the faith, and was the instrument of both his vengeance and his grace. She will always know him.

[regentdidmanyquestionablethings]

You can't and won't make me choose between them

[cyclical-polyp]

This is a post about Sylvester Lambsbridge from Web Serial Twig by Wildbow. He's Plural Btw.

(Warning: Major Spoilers for LITERALLY ALL of Twig. I can't talk about this without covering the entire story and talking very explicitly about the ending.) This is really a take I haven't seen anyone make about him ever before I don't think (not that many people are out here making takes about Sy, but) so here I am to loudly shout to twigblr that Sylvester Lambsbridge is plural and he makes factives of all the people important to him and he's a fucked up little freak about it. Now obviously Wildbow didn't write him to be plural. I think if he'd *tried* to write Sy that way he would've done a dogshit bad awful job, because he's Wildbow. That said, Sy's hallucinations of the Lambs (and later a number of other notable figures) that he conjures, who act with varying degrees of independence (especially later on in the story as he gets more unstable), match pretty closely with a lot of my experiences with being plural. The ways that each of his alters are interconnected and how they're tied into deep-rooted concepts (Duncan is Politics and Social Engineering, the Infante representing Power, etc) matches a lot with how things are structured with us. Also a lot of him is tied up in his fucked up relationships! Sylvester cultivates the people around him into the shapes that best please him. He does this because he is a very very traumatized, scared individual who was sold to or seized by the government and made into a child assassin when he was a toddler. They inject his brain full of neuroplasticity drugs which cause excruciating agony on the regular. This has, naturally, leads to him having an somewhat skewed worldview from someone from a more reasonable world. He views people as either Threats or Allies, and neither can be trusted fully, ever. Both can be manipulated, though for different purposes. For the Lambs of course he'd say that he was trying to help them thrive, help them get everything they want (and genuinely he does). But he still manipulates them actively, willingly, consciously, and deliberately. This means that fundamentally, no one can ever trust him (except Jessie but this post is long enough without getting into their relationship) and so he can't get the kind of human connection that he craves. This is where his alters supplement that human need for connection. All of Sy's alters are factives of real people (and monsters), both allies and enemies. The most powerful and concrete of them are the Lambs of course, as they're the closest thing he has to people he can trust and be vulnerable with. His alters serve to help him understand and predict them, since they will never trust him and open up to him in the way he craves (because A) he's Sy and B) they're all also sooooooooooooooo fucked up in their own ways :3). Sy's deteriorating memory also fits really really well through this lens because, well, dissociative amnesia! During the time that he was on his own and his mental state got worse and worse, more and more alters started forming. He starts losing more and more memories. This is just kinda stuff that can happen when you go through a big period of trauma and you're plural. It really just Fits. And the ending of Twig, well. The alter that was Sylvester is gone. Now the host is Lord Simon. Lord Simon is a somewhat more integrated person; a lot of the crowds and voices that built up alongside Sylvester got woven in. Fusion of alters is also a thing that happens, especially during big crises. A major headspace restructuring is also not particularly weird! This man is literally just part of a system. I think I've kind of finished what I was trying to say. No clue if this is coherent or if the people will care to read it, but here it is! Maybe I'll post more Twig thoughts in the future, who knows :3

[skitter-queen]

mr beast would have been a great one-off twig villain

[regentdidmanyquestionablethings]

Imagine late story sy with the mr. beast introject talking to him. Idk what mr beast really does besides have lots of money but it still sounds funny. Would he get along with the Infante

[skitter-queen]

jessie & helen: ok sy we'll be away for just a couple days. you better not have dismantled our entire rebel plan and wreaked havoc upon our allies when we get back

my wyvern ass: 🥴

[skitter-queen]

jessie: did you at least use the bathroom

[skitter-queen]

at this point i dont even want anyone else to read twig. its funnier if no one ever reads it. ( <-copium)

[skitter-queen]

at this point i dont even want evette to be given a chmace at life. its funnier if she is never sifficently potentiated.

[bug4932]

missing the tynewear days

[kasmusser]

As the most Pale poster on tumblr, I'm here to announce that the main story has wrapped up & now we are just waiting on epilogues. That is 24 arcs plus epilogues for all of you at home. Three years and 3.5 million words for this 'short' web serial

[regentdidmanyquestionablethings]

He's come so far from writing shorter web serials, like worm which only had a measly 1.6 million words.