#jester-mereel

[thecyndimistuff]

new star oc challenge. draw ur oc in the "lost the star war" booty shorts

I LOVE IT. ME FIRST!!

please please please feel free to add on if anyone else wants to do this!

[cafffine]

if boromir isnt gay then why did i hear the grindr notif from his pocket once?

(ID in alt)

[neechees]

ship opinion: katniss/peeta?

They're sweet! I think they balance each other out nicely. Even if not from a romantic approach, I think they need each other & are good for each other. Katniss loved Peeta before she understood she did but literally everyone else around her knew it. Native hunter girl & her little Appalachian baker boy, I love them

[leofrith]

top 5 tropes in fiction? 👀🍿

soooo sorry for how long this took me king but it's only because you asked me this and then i immediately forgot every single trope to ever exist :/

found families. groundbreaking, i know.

this one is pretty broad but i go craaaaazy for when lovers, friends, family members, etc. are forced apart, whether by being on opposing sides of a conflict, their duties taking them far away from each other, they undergo character development and drift apart due to irreconcilable differences..... i YEARN for that shit. and maybe they're able to reunite, but perhaps not. 🥰

fucked up dream sequences!!!!! i keep coming up with ways to incorporate these into my own writing (or story ideas that revolve around them) because they're just so fun and can be really versatile. the metaphors!! the psychological horror elements!!! the unreality!!!! slurping it up with a spoon.

non-linear narratives!!! this..... is more of a narrative device than a trope but i fucking love when stories happen out of order. i love stories where the timeline is so fucked up that nothing makes sense until it suddenly clicks. i love gratuitous flashbacks that seem pointless in the moment until you suddenly understand why the writer needed to show you that moment in time in the first place. i love an unreliable narrator who relays the story out of order because that's just how memory works sometimes. i feel like "non-linear narrative" encompasses a lot of tropes and storytelling devices that i enjoy so. whatever.

uuuuuh what's a fifth one uuuuum i adore hurt/comfort bro. maybe that's because i too yearn to be comforted. someone please hold me. :/

[spacehorrors]

fascinated by the qgj apprentice shenanigans. what do u mean xanathos would be an interesting parallel to anakin? I know the basic stuff, how would his existence haunt(??) obi wan and anakin??

haunt is the perfect word yes ok so I'll break down some basic similarities and differences to anakin first.

similarities:

had a master who saw themselves as a father figure/protective familial figure to the person even though they knew this was against their code

said master then indulges them and is blind to their flaws (true master shifu attitudes right? right)

is brought away from their birth family at an age where they still remember them/has familial roots that they are encouraged to ignore but don't.

believe in their own power and that they should exercise it.

to different extents and for different reasons they blame their master for their parent's death

differences

most obviously xanatos' family connections stem from privilege and wealth and anakin was a slave. they both seek out their family for very very different reasons.

so I think xanatos would be an interesting character to compare with anakin even if he wasn't in the same lineage as him because it could've actually delved into jedi and their families a bit more and examined where jedi see the root of their power being. also whether they feel like they are owed something because of their power or whether they owe something themselves.

their relationship with their masters and the flaws of having master padawan pairs and a rule of non attachment could shine a light on that contradiction.

he just makes an effective foil simply you could see on the surface they both fall to the dark side for their family but deeper than that they are very different. so it's a fun exploration!

where it gets interesting is the fact he's in the same lineage as anakin. this creates the idea that this lineage is doomed to repeat its own mistakes and is trapped in a cycle as they are so similar.

on a more character based level you can see the way xanatos might have impacted obi-wan. xanatos is the perfect, and perhaps too easy, an example on why jedi shouldn't contact their families.

the fact, in canon, this is one of the only examples obi-wan sees of jedi and their birth families might suggest why's he like that later on. do I think he's right? no! do I think xanatos changed his perspective of attachment and parenthood? yes.

xanatos also haunts obi-wan because of his impact on qui-gon! and he haunts anakin by his impact on obi-wan's childhood.

side note that I also think qui-gon was thinking of xanatos when he first met anakin. but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

hope this is an ok explanation? yeah. feel free to ask me more things if you want to!

[agroupofcrows]

for ur judgement: the scenario in my head where gintoki sells shoyos, probably well-crafted, sword for funds to use to supply their small faction when they decided to join the fighting. takasugi and zura saw it as a personal sacrifice and a silent show of gintokis conviction to getting shoyo back. gintoki does feel most of the above, but also it just felt wrong to draw it for bloodshed.

oh lovely *cries* i really want that sword to be the one gintoki uses to behead shoyo though. maybe oboro put on his tengai hat and bought it in a moment of regret and then, regretting his regret, kept it until he could give it back to gintoki on the cliff? big brother prank

[tarrevizsla]

when you walk the way of the mandalor you are both masc and fem

literally so true bestie

[essskel]

hello babe hiiiii, opinions on getting into the witcher via the novels?........

!!!!!!! I have . So many opinions! It got long I'm cutting this :)

(Disclaimer - I actually got into the Witcher from the games - stopped to read the books - then finished the game)

I'll start with the pros: the story is mostly linear and easy to follow in relation to most popular adult high fantasy series, there's 8 books but none of them are longer than around 500 pages so it's a low time commitment (I recently reread the whole series and it took me about a month and a half? Two months? (I was reading other stuff in-between idk), the translation is not over-worded or dry, and reading the books will tell you everything you need to know about the Netflix show, and provide backstory on 90% of the video game main players.

Cons: The treatment of women is hard to read. There's a lot of sexual assault mentions and near-depictions - especially with the very underage Ciri, the female characters - despite being overall well-written, strong, and full of agency and character!!!! - fall into some pretty obnoxious tropes of 'her boobs were huge did I mention that her boobs were huge', the world-building is fun and not overly dense, but not clearly explained in any glossaries or preambles - you just sort of have to run with it , and unfortunately I've heard from a lot of Polish fans that the english translation by David French sometimes takes some minor liberties with dialogue changes or character descriptions.

Sidenote - the Netflix show is the most accessible gateway to the universe, I totally get that. However, Season 1 of the Netflix Witcher was notoriously confusing. Yes, it tells you that Jaskier is goofy and Yennefer is a hot sorceress and Ciri is a Chosen One that Geralt needs to adopt, but it completely botches the world and timeline. If you're going to watch the show first, you're definitely going to need a wiki - but! If you're ok with doing some background research and homework to avoid a lot of reading and/or an 80+ hour videogame published in 2015 - I'm not gonna blame you.

With all that in mind though, it's the inspiration for so many wildly successful projects for a reason. It's a modern story, it's themes are alive and well in our society, the characters are memorable, and it's not a slog, it's not a textbook - it's a very self-aware, fantasy-genre-critical story about parenthood and politics. It will also make you cry.

So, my best advice would be this:

Read the first two books: The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny. They're collections of separate, tonally diverse short stories that take place in the Witcher Universe and slowly introduce you to the characters you're going to need to know later on. They're fun, short, easy to understand, and will explain all that was muddied in season one of the Netflix Witcher that you can then watch without any confusion.

If you you want to stop there, cool, but if not - great! There's 5 more fantastic books waiting for you, go crazy.