He lifted one volume off the shelf in both his arms, a massive tome nearly three feet tall. I reached out to help him and jerked my hands away, involuntarily: it was bound in a kind of blackened leather that felt dreadful to the touch, sticky in a way that didn’t want to rub off my fingers.
“Yes, I know,” he said, heaving it onto his reading-chair. “It’s a necromantic text; it’s hideous. But I’d rather spend dead men twice than any more of the living.”
Sarkan; Uprooted- Chapter 27 (Naomi Novik)
I have a soft spot for dark-haired, long-living wizards, who'd rather sully their hands with forbidden magic, than sacrifice more human lives.
Apparently a hot take but anyone who thinks TMA is copaganda missed the entire point of Daisy and Bastira's character arcs. Simply having characters who are cops and act like human beings instead of cartoon villains does not make a piece of work copaganda.
Daisy is consumed by her violent urges specifically because she refuses to give up the Hunt - which in her case is a huge analogy for the warped values and desires her job has trained into her. Her sense of superiority, her urge to kill first and ask questions never, her disregard for the pain of others. She fights it for a while but in the end she decides she can't escape what she sees as her true nature, and she becomes a monster as a result.
Basira clings to Daisy and her past as a cop because it's the only thing that gives her a sense of power and control, but in the end she has to face the truth, which is that she'll never get better, or even survive, unless she leaves it all behind. So she kills Daisy. In the most literal, on-the-nose way, Basira kills the cop in her head.
The entire narrative purpose of TMA's cop characters is to illustrate that being a cop is a violent, cruel job that corrupts even the people who start on that path with the intent of doing good. In TMA, the only good cop is a dead cop, or a cop who quit. Come on people. Develop a little media literacy.
ok but the idea that jay steals from the safe houses even though Bruce literally gives the tech to him every month is so fucking funny like. he probably does the same thing with Bruce’s money
Meet my tiny little songbird, she's vsmall and soft, but those legs are also about 90% muscle and her core is solid so, just be aware that she's much stronger than she looks.
Despite having a beautiful face, she rarely ever takes her hood off around others, so most people never see more than her mouth and her nose - though you can sometimes make out the hint of bright eyes in that darkness. Whenever she's feeling any particularly strong emotion, she pulls up her scarf and hides her face in it as well - thus becoming nothing but whispy white curls and sometimes a nose too.
She's generally soft spoken and her smiles are delicate and kind, when she shares them. She smells like a fresh cool breeze with the gentle hint of baby's breath and woodsmoke along its edges. She's very warm bodied, her hands are always hot (and small - workworn too, but still soft). Her touches always leave tingles running up your spine or goosebumps on your skin, she frequently touches your arm when she speaks.
Her magic shop basically specialises in anything that has to do with a bed. Spells, potions and poultices for anything from healing an illness or injury, to help with sleeping or dreaming, to the exact opposite of that with a variety of aphrodesiacs for those who want a little spice in their life. She also does a lot of hands on work, helping people with her magic directly, when it's needed.
Also, she sells pillows. They're perfectly between firm and soft.
One can probably guess from her nickname that she loves to sing. Kitt'n would be the Sirin in relation to her familiar (Dia) being the Alkonost (In a reversed ending, the Sirin is the creature Kitt'n would become - enthralling anyone who heard her into an endless persuit. As she is now, however, she is simply a breathtaking young woman that is almost irrisistably attractive to most people that meet her). She also loves to dance, to the point that she will start to sway to the sound of any music she hears - even her own humming.
Asra and the Baker are the only people she's really partial too (and Muriel, when he's partial to her) so she doesn't have much of a social life. Not to say she's unfriendly, she just has a bad habit of focusing on her work (she would probably collapse if Asra didn't make her rest). When she does step away from the shop, it's usually to wander the beach and let the ocean wash all her little woes away.
Dad turned 50 in September and he got those helium balloons shaped like numbers and the only thing that kept me and my sister from popping them was the chance of getting to breathe in helium and anyway now I’ve heard wap as if it was sung by Alvin and the chipmunks
