#locust rambles

[the-faustian-locust]

Project hail mary confirmed to me that I'm not getting worse, its the media that is. It's been fucking years since I've fixated this hard. I have seen the movie twice in theatres. I bought the book on saturday. I read 50 pages of the book yesterday on the drive to a family gathering (mothers day gathering for my nana who I convinced to see the movie) and didn't get distracted the whole time. I'm actually finishing the fics I write about it. Holy fuck I missed this. The last time this happened was with Lord Of The Rings. Which became a background fixation years ago. I DON'T EVEN LIKE FIRST PERSON BOOKS AND PHM HAS CHANGED THAT DO YOU KNOW HOW INSANE THAT IS???? I can unironically say that Rocky being a puppet has snowballed into me having genuine hope for movies and fandom culture going forward oh my lord.

[stainlesssteellocust]

To actually talk about other books for a moment I’m rereading Apocalypse Codex and it’s very fun

some of the meme references have dated themselves a bit tho, I think it’s appropriate that a quote from Stross was put on Gideon the Ninth’s cover because for all the two series’ many differences, many of the Locked Tomb’s jokes will also feel dated in a few years

not a knock to either book but it’s just an occupational hazard (hah) of writing a book like that

More on that book, and maybe an example, when I’m done

[the-faustian-locust]

I know I’m writing strattland stuff but I will say if we’re going strictly canon.. I am a “Eva was in love with Ryland and didn’t realize it until after she’d irrevocably betrayed him” truther. Grace thought of her as a friend, absolutely, but not much more, and I think he probably forgave her eventually but yeah. I don’t plan on writing anything involving this tho there’s already so many unrequited strattland and tragic strattland, I’m here to write hurt/comfort, not-quite-romance-but-long-past-friendship silliness and maybe some asexual people can’t be fcking normal about relationships stuff as a treat

[the-faustian-locust]

I think I figured out why I like Eva so much- she’s both sides of my favourite dynamic: character forced to be a monster (figuratively or literally) for the good of someone they care about/the greater good and character who keeps them grounded and acts as/is seen as the saviour/martyr. I mean this pretty loosely and isn’t strictly grounded in canon for some but the most default of the dynamic in my head is Teaholding (Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood) Madoka and Homura, and JayVik (Jayce and Viktor) and if I need to elaborate on that I will. Also yes I’m aware she has this dynamic with Grace but this isn’t a strattland post.

Eva is both the monster and the martyr; she did everything in her power regardless of how destructive it was in order to save humanity, and she paid the highest price for it; losing her only actual friend and spends the rest of her life in prison or hiding, utterly isolated. She doesn’t become inhuman but I’d imagine it’s hard to be so thoroughly abandoned for doing what was necessary while keeping a sense of humanity intact.

Genuinely she is one of the few characters I would directly compare to Makoda Kaname or Cyrene. If she could have been the sacrifice, she would have been. She was fully on board with dying for humanity without even thinking about it, without any kind of persecution complex or anything that implies selfish reasons. Even if she was doing it for selfish reasons- saving the world is still saving the world.

No I don’t know what it says about me that I consistently fixate on this type of character it’s probably nothing.

[stainlesssteellocust]

Shitpost incoming:

Nightmare Stacks is funny bc it baits you repeatedly

first it presents you with this bitter nerd (also vampire) who runs into a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, see, and you think you’re along for the standard ride

but then turns out that little miss cheerful green-haired goth theatre kid had her own stuff going on, wouldn’t have found the lead particularly interesting, and didn’t seem to have much desire to be anyone’s Ramona Flowers tbqh…

…except she was actually kidnapped and replaced by this spooky fae doppelgänger before we met her, and she’s dead, and the doppelgänger absorbed her soul and took her appearance and assimilated her personality and sorta thinks she is the girl,

and she’s got some deeply malicious reasons to be hanging out with our bitter lead, who increasingly proves to be a genuinely decent human being except he has a horrifying reason to be bitter which is thoroughly damaging his mental health in bleakly sympathetic ways, and he really doesn’t deserve to be catfished by a brutal invading empire just because he feels lonely and alienated-

-but it’s cool because it turns out that the soul-stealing fae doppelgänger working for the malevolent empire is also a Manic Pixie Dream Girl

and she’s into angsty vampiric nerd boys so we’re good

[stainlesssteellocust]

Laundryverse Crack Pairings

Janice tries to hit on Mhari because it’s that, expose a human to V-dementia or try to date a man

Various of the Unseen Family Members Who Only Exist To Get Mocked form a polycule

After Mhari’s banker boyfriend croaks and Bob’s marriage goes south they hook up like in the old days and Make Each Other Worse

One-sided Alex x Yarisol wherein she sees his Automated Number Counter Demon Army Summon and faints from pure lust

If tumblr cared about this series they’d have flooded the tag with Old Man Yaoi between Angleton and Old George

Persephone is ace that’s not even crack she just is

Mo already fell for a cop, a nerd, some invertebrates and a musical instrument in canon I can’t top that

Dick the Vampire x bullet in the brain, unless they already did that, I wouldn’t be surprised tbh

et cetera

[stainlesssteellocust]

I put some thought into what the Top Five Freaky Sex Moments in TLF would be and I think I have a decent idea

what’s scary is that ‘Mo gets seduced by a Great Old One by way of a literal musical instrument’, ‘Cassie blatantly gets off on having a raging vampire pin her to the floor followed by Alex blatantly getting off on eating someone alive’ and the entire fucking. Hypercastration Rampage didn’t make the list

[the-faustian-locust]

I guess I did some healing behind the scenes because two of my friends are gaming together and I felt.. no jealousy. My first thought was just "Oh thats why [x] is slower to respond today okay" and it took a second to realize I wasn't feeling possessive.