the current state of fandom needs to be old yellered immediately. im loading up the shotgun as we speak

this is the PERFECT addition bunny omg

put on the clown makeup everyone

actually we don't talk enough about kiriona killing crux and how heartbreaking that scene it is. imagine growing up being beaten and kicked and kept prisoner and being locked away and told that you are nothing if not a big mistake. now imagine then finding out that it is just untrue. not because you have found your value as a person and bla bla bla but because it turns out that you're the child of like, the most important guy in the whole universe. you go back home and you finally, finally get to prove your abuser wrong! you did all of that to me and yet look! i'm actually so very important and i deserved to live amd you were wrong all along!

and yet that is not enough. you show to your abuser that they were wrong, like, you treated me like shit when i am a big deal, and they say, i don't care, that doesn't change anything. you are still something that deserved to get beaten and kicked and locked away. but, hey, since you're a big fucking deal, you get to kill this guy. you get to kill the man that has abused you all your life. you get to give the man that has been terrorizing you since childhood what he deserves. sweet revenge. it doesn't feel good. you are a big fucking deal and he is dead. you still were beaten and kicked and kept like prisoner. you still have been nothing if not a big mistake for much longer than you have been the child of the emperor.

"The boy just looked a bit of a dick:" A Discussion of Narrative Dynamics between Gideon Nav and Naberius Tern.

Thesis:

Naberius is Gideon's primary narrative foil and closest character parallel.

Outlook and Attitude:

As cavs, both Gideon and Naberius are members of an exploited class, and though they have experienced very different levels of material privilege within that class, they are both physically and emotionally abused by individuals (not just structures) in power over them. (This puts them in the minority of the Canaan House cavs, alongside Colum. I am discounting Protesilaus here, as he does not seem to have been personally abused in life, only in death--and not by his necromancer or current Seventh House leadership-- so the circumstances are different.)

Understandably, given all that, they are both prone to lashing out in anger. They have similar axes for qualities they respect in people (physical aptitude, martial accomplishment), and are quick to judge people harshly. Gideon is better about keeping her negative comments to herself--partially (if not mostly) because she is faking a vow of silence for a large chunk of the book. We (rightfully) clown on Babs for beefing with a literal 14-year-old...the same 14-year-old that, in her narration, Gideon was calling awful, dreadful, crap, abominable, etc. I imagine she would have been a lot less popular at Canaan House if she started out speaking her mind as freely as Babs does--or, y'know, as freely as she herself did on the Ninth.

Gender Performance, Sexuality, and Coding:

Gideon is a butch lesbian; Naberius is queer-coded. He is a low-tier member of a Mean Girl Posse. He cares too much about his appearance and his smug little jacket. He sews. He has a posh accent. If Corona and Ianthe are to be believed, he has at least once voiced the opinion that studs are earrings on a diet. Any one of these items is enough to get a man called a slur in certain circles. Any two taken together and you've got a 90s Disney villain. All that is to say, Babs is not performing hegemonic masculinity, at least not as we would understand it in a contemporary context.

Is Babs explicitly queer, though? No. Neither is he explicitly straight and/or cis. We don't have access to his internal thoughts on the matter, only the choices he makes in Gideon's presence that the narrative deigns to report on. And what do we see him choose to do? Why, he tries to impress Marta until she shuts him down, and then he starts following Colum around like an overeager puppy. Bi rest my case.

Which leads neatly into...

Inter-House Relationships:

I'm just saying, if Cytherea was actually Dulcinea, and assuming Colum is the youngest Asht brother, both Gideon/Dulcie and Babs/Colum would have an age gap of 9 years. Is that a coincidence? Quite possibly. But what seems less of a coincidence is that Gideon and Naberius, both feeling ostracized, both latch on to the first person they can find who will tolerate them. And in both their cases that person appears about a decade older than them, is chronically ill and disabled*, and seems perpetually exhausted.

And--oh boy, tragedy time!--If Ianthe hadn't eaten Babs, Colum's death could have been averted. Meanwhile, if Harrow hadn't eaten Gideon, Cytherea couldn't have been defeated.

About that.

Structural Parallels:

The Big What If:

If they had been switched at birth, somehow. If Gideon had been raised on the Third to be the Tridentarii's cavalier. Would she have turned out like Babs?

Let's see. Perhaps that question is already answered for us, more or less. Because we do have a version of Gideon who was brought up under conditions of extreme privilege. We do have a version of Gideon who's been taught she is special. We do have a version of Gideon who has a strange relationship with Ianthe, a version of Gideon who is sad and sulky and has nothing kind to say, a version of Gideon who makes a remarkably Babs-like little speech about her new superhuman enhancements.

That version of Gideon is called Kiriona Gaia.

--------------------------------------------

poor ilya… when your dad sucks and then your mom kills herself it totally makes sense to be like, “yeah my mom was an angel she was the best person ever she was incredible,” because you’ve got to have somewhere to put all the hope and the love and the idea that there are still good things in the world, you’ve got to maintain something to hold onto. however this does mean that it’s probably not until he is stably and happily married for about 10 years and secure in his new relationships and network that he’ll be able to unravel that one. like he’s definitely going to be about 45 years old and wake up in the middle of the night and go, “hang on. i think i’m mad at my mom for killing herself. the thought has never occurred to me before.”

to everyone reblogging this and tagging it supernatural that’s understandable but unfortunately this was prompted by something even worse which is that i was listening to the song “blown away” by carrie underwood.

— puella via puella.nya

I kept myself occupied today by wading through my pile of sewing projects that have been languishing in my office for... I don't want to think about how long.

Anyway, I was halfway through hemming a curtain I'm pretty certain I started making in 2021 when I realized my background TV show had switched at some point and I was now 'watching' Ghost Adventures.

After another twenty minutes of only half-listening because I couldn't be bothered to get up from my sewing machine and change it, I realized they were talking about the physical manifestations of possessions and ghost attacks, and I looked up in time to see a woman sitting in a mold-riddled space (it's worth pointing out the host was wearing a respirator for this exact reason), with all these excited men pointing at the flushing on her neck and face, all of them going, "wow, look! Something hit her, a ghost hit her! That's crazy!"

And the longer I watched, the more I realized she was experiencing what looked like MCAS pattern flushing (which can sometimes look like the lupus butterfly rash, but can spread far more rapidly and will just keep going unless you get away from the trigger. The neck can become especially affected), and then the next day, they asked her how she was feeling and she said, something along the lines of "I'm okay, I had a bit of a migraine this morning, I feel really drained from the ghost attack."

And I was just sitting there. Squinting.

Like, obviously, I cannot diagnose anyone, let alone over a TV show —and who the fuck knows if any of it was real or if the whole thing was faked somehow — but also... I think if you're only experiencing ghosts in your moldy haunted house, and the physical symptoms you describe are flushing, dizziness, nausea, headache, and "feeling an oppressive weight on your chest,' I think you might be having an allergic reaction, actually. (Obligatory Vicotiran doctor: you got ghosts in your veins, here, do some cocaine Benadryl about it.)

"But I was seeing things!!" Mast cell inflammation in the brain can literally make you hallucinate and lose time if it's bad enough. I used to get auditory hallucinations post-anaphylaxis because of how my untreated mast cell disorder manifested. If I start hallucinating sounds, I know it's time for a trip to the hospital because I'm about to need my body weight in intravenous steroids to stay alive.

"But I went to the doctor, and they couldn't find anything wrong." lol. lmao, even.

Like maybe there are ghosts. Maybe they are throwing things at you and telling you to get out. But I think it's because they're trying to save you from the mold. God knows, you're certainly not helping yourself. Wear a mask, get some nasalcrom. Jesus.

None of these people would survive my house.

They'd be downstairs screaming about the horrors, and I'd just be like, yeah, that's the gas lines. They need to be replaced. You might want to come up here and get some fresh air.

Marie Curie's notebooks are crazy once you think about it. They're so radioactive they have to be sealed in a lead box. Imagine a world where atomic theory is forgotten and a dude just goes "yea there's a book that details the secrets of the universe, the machinations of the creation of existence down to its barest essentials, but if you get close to it you fucking die. The more you read it the more your body slowly disassembles into mush." like wat excuse me

My boyfriend, again blending together fanfiction tropes: So what if when you finally find your soulmate, that’s when you discover if you’re alpha or omega, right?

Me, hands shaking as I frantically search for pen & paper: KEEP TALKING

Me: Seems hellish

Boyfriend: So does being an ant person

Me: Again, baby, they’re not ants

Boyfriend: YES THEY ARE. They communicate via pheromones— LIKE ANTS.

Me: So back to the soulmate thing….

Boyfriend: You could trick them into following orders and thinking they’re dead by spraying them with a spritz bottle. I think they need a queen.

Me: So back to the soulmate thing…. Seems hellish!

Boyfriend: Not really. If being around the other person is what triggers the changes, if you want to go back to normal… all you need to do is leave.

Me, writing: (You found your soulmate. It’s changing you in scary ways. All you need to do is leave… how difficult would it be to leave? What pressures exist to stay?)

Boyfriend: So these ant-people—

Me: OMEGAVERSE IS NOT ANTS!!!!!!

Cecília Meireles, from a poem titled "And There Was Fire," featured in Antologia Poética

Stop getting mad at me I raise undead when im in distress

Im unveiling a new unique condition of my own soon

HRM

outside of the obvious reasons why the hollanov relationship reveal must be crazy to shane’s parents, it’s gotta be wild to them that their shy, awkward kid is dating the league slut. their kid, who cannot even say the word “sex” without blushing, has been fucking a man whose sexual reputation is a topic of conversation. for a decade. they are in fact on a sexcation together. if you want to see them, you need to text them that you’re on your way there, because even if they know you’re coming in advance, they cannot keep their hands off of each other long enough to properly keep track of time. david hollander sees things start to heat up between them and knows instantly that they have probably fucked against every window in that extremely glass house.

idk i’m obsessed with how shane bringing ilya home is not just him coming out as gay, it’s him coming out as an experienced sex freak.

Hold on i need to ask my friend Claudia, who is a college student and edits wikipedia something real quick...

THIS IS MY FRIEND CLAUDIA

every reread kills me a little bit more

reread and enjoy <3

my corner store guy is a 50 year old man who's my best friend in the world and recently he was like "you're too pretty to be single I have some nephews you should meet. very handsome!" and I was like "a niece might be more up my alley" and he just got more excited and said "ah even better! I was overselling my nephews but my nieces are very beautiful"

OP the tags!!

in honour of our collective Heated Rivalry obsession, here are some hockey culture tidbits for anyone who didn’t exclusively date hockey bros in their teens / early 20s. for all you fic writers out there who want to add a dash of authenticity 🏒🥅