Latest Posts by chimera-like-creature - Page 4

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New story, new Tattletale🖤🤍💜

OBSESSED with how Ward dives into Tats and how she’s changed since GM. Get this woman some industrial strength excedrin and a therapist please

Also just got to her interlude in my read through and lord, love me some good Ace rep. We do not get enough and I love her story’s subsequent focus on other types of bonds (familial/platonic). Anyway: she!

Notes I’ve taken on arc four of Pale:

I think this was my favourite arc so far and that last chapter was my favourite chapter so far. Now that the characters and their relationships are all well established, I feel like, it can really focus on the emotions of the characters and play with their relationships. Which I absolutely love and which I think is the authors biggest strength.

So about the arc: It is cut into two pieces, with the first four chapters being set (mostly) in Kennet and focusing on the party. This part was absolutely great and I really like the dynamics the trio has with their classmates, Melissa and Jeremy in particular. (Same is also true about their new „classmates“ at the BHI.) The second half, set in the BHI, was really exciting in terms of worldbuilding and magic and almost tricked me into thinking school is useful or fun. What I liked most about this part was seeing the different attitudes of the Practitioners towards Others, others and morals in general.

I was about to say that Avery is my new favourite because of her character development with the forest ribbon trail, snowdrop and her relationship with her family, but the last chapter where the girls create echos of themselves really cemented Verona as the best. I really appreciate having a good person protagonist who has problems feeling emotions like other people.

Also I am not quite sure whether Verona wanting to become an Other is allegorical for dysphoria, suicidal thoughts or not an allegory at all. Either way she continues to be the most relatable character and I love her.

she did the unthinkable to you and shes the only one who can fix it. wanting her is written in your very bones and its because she did the writing. she needs to do it again. youve spent years fighting to come to terms with what your life was going to be and the everythings changing so much and shes right there and you feel sick and you feel happy and shes sorry and shes telling you shes going to make it better now and youre starting to get a sense of deja vu

To be clear, riley would do better bottom surgery

i can legally be a prime number have a quick wolfspider 🥳

👆🏻This is Zed

Zed seems like he’d be part of the shadow wizard money gang and loves casting spells.

Brie in Pale 3.z

Zed seems like he’d be part of the shadow wizard money gang and loves casting spells.

Thoughts on Pale arc one:

People seemed to like my posts about Pale, so here are my thoughts after finishing the first arc:

Oh my god, I did not know that this was a horror story. I thought this was urban fantasy + murder mystery and a lighter break from the author’s usual stuff. 1.z was one of the most tense things I’ve ever read. The devouring song was so wonderfully creepy and the ritual really felt unwinnable. Despite that I still expected Gabe to survive tho and the moment he threw up I was so shocked and had to stop reading for a bit.

That out of the way; I fucking love this story and I would be surprised, if this isn’t my favourite book, when I finish reading it. The characters, the dialogue, the worldbuilding, the magic and the pacing are all fucking amazing.

From the protagonists Verona is my favorite so far; she is so great: She is a weird loner who hates work and people (so relatable). Is she aromantic or just a depressed teenager with attachment issues? I don’t know and neither does she seemingly (very relatable). She doesn’t feel totally human and wants to leave all of her humanity behind (so very relatable (look I said it three times; it’s a curse now)).

Im binging arc two now.

it's really important if you're going to make alec gnc (everyone loves to do this) (it's so fucked up when once a blue moon i see someone drawing him like he's straight) that you understand it is not a personality trait. zero impact on his personality. zero cutesiness allowed. that is still a terrible 15yo boy who says slurs over fortnite and takes up the entire couch because fuck you and smells bad because he passed out after the last casino robbery without showering it's just that he's doing all of those things in a pale pink romper. rachel however you have to make her like if the imaginary butch woman cishets are afraid of was real and personally going to bite your arm off

Verona watching her sobbing pathetic father:

Pale 1.7

Some things that are great about Pale, if you're unsure about reading it:

A murder mystery in which none of the suspects can lie, and yet half-truths and sneakiness make this absolutely riveting to investigate

A social justice story about working your damndest to make a better world and a serious examination of what it really takes to change the system

Three teenage protagonists who are all incredible people in rich and diverse ways - seriously, I want to be each of them when I grow up

Teens do extremely cool magic stunts

Characters who you come to appreciate on a deeper level than arguably any other work

Number one source for opossum appreciation and memes

A magic system so good it doesn't even feel fair to call it a magic system; this is just what magic is to me now

Arguably the best introduction to that system and universe because it makes it playful and fun (and doesn't spoil anything from other stories in that universe)

So many different kinds of magic!

Robust enough to accommodate any fantasy/horror/urban fantasy plotline

So many well-classified types of guy. Like, you've been through a million groundhog day style loops? That's a type of guy

Feels like a courtroom drama half the time

Maybe the best take on the "is it bad for kids to be protagonists?" question ever

The coolest trans guy in the world

Gay shipping wars (takes a while to get there, but so worth it)

Will probably make you cry

There are podcasts! Pale Reflections, which comments on Pale, and Pale In Comparison, which compares Pale to Pact, the other big work set in this universe. Both are very good and will 100% enhance your understanding of the story's themes

Judicial extrajudicial judicial murder (Is it good? Bad? Discuss)

In a sense that is totally unfair to both parties but nonetheless feels inescapably true, the antagonist is Taylor from Worm

moash's vs adolin's snapchats to kaladin

the funniest part of the endgame sequence of Worm is when the narrative completely forgets about the END OF THE WORLD for a hot second to describe in great detail how sexy and effeminate Marquis is. how even though she isn't usually interested in feminine men or older men Amy's dad is gnc af and just so incredibly fuckable. Taylor there's people that are dying

fellas is it gay to be mostly unchained

@basket-of-radiants

if you think about it. it's really funny in a fucked up tragic way that aisha told taylor brian went to go live in a cabin. like she really lost everything. she really lost everything and just hit the Fuck It point in life. like sure, i'll tell taylor that, fuck it. she really looked taylor straight in the eye and straightfacedly went "Yes. My brother, Brian, is still alive. He went to live on a nice farm upstate. He has lots of fresh grass to run around in. They feed him every day. He has all the punching bags he could ever punch for when he's feeling angsty and emotionally repressed. He gets to fill out taxes and apply for mortgages on a regular basis as enrichment. They let him listen to his Linkin Park CDs as loud as he wants. He even has his sad rebound girlfriend with him. He's free and happy on the farm upstate." it's like taylor's pet hamster got ran over by a car but nobody wanted to tell taylor because if she found out she would go stand in front of a moving car herself except instead of a hamster it's brian. and instead of a moving car it's jesus. and taylor BOUGHT it. she BOUGHT it. she really thought her hamster didn't get squished. she thinks her hamster is off playing board games in a fucking cabin. taylor really sees aisha going [clenches fist] i hope this fucking sucks for scion. because of when my bro... (stops bc she realizes taylor is right there and doesn't know jesus threw the sun at brian) and taylor's still like. Ah yes, when he got Bonesawed :) I'm sure you're not bringing him up in response to seeing jesus for any particular reason! He's happy and free upstate :). it's SO fucking...😭 taylor brian and aisha man. Man.

lisa felt the need to request no tongue bc her shard told her exactly what taylor did to that poor girl

As a worm fan I have to speak up about the best character in worm, the greatest hero in worm, a tragic and severely underappreciated character (I've seen like 1 fanfic with him in. And it was a pretty mediocre one imo) and a character I seem to be the only fan of.

The most powerful man in the world. Kevin Norton.

This is gonna be a big ramble and I have not planned this out and it's gonna contain a shit ton of worm spoilers so ignore if you don't want to be spoiled.

And considering its involved in his backstory, trigger warning for homophobia, rape, homelessness, and partner abuse.

Kevin Norton, unhoused gay English man.

We get 2 versions of Kevin's backstory, the one he tells Lisette and the one from scions interlude.

I'm pulling this from memory so please forgive me for errors.

To her he says essentially he went to college, got a girlfriend. Lived with her for a while, and eventually realised he was gay. When he informed his girlfriend it didn't go well, got abusive, and eventually he left, to live on the streets. There he, eventually, found Scion (and Duke, his dog, the more important character). Scion at the time wasn't exactly a hero. He had healed Vikare and his sister and he definitely wasn't a villain, he just sortof floated around. Kevin goes off on him about all Kevin's been through, how dare he look sad etc. And tells him to help people. And Scion listens, and begins to help. Later he meets with Scion a few more times, to talk to him.

Then there's scions interlude. Its about the same, with one slight difference. He explicitly mentions that he has been raped. I don't believe, off the top of my head, that it's made explicit it was his former girlfriend, but l feel that's very obvious.

I live in Britain, and I've seen a lot of people on the streets like Kevin. I doubt any of them are talking to alien god beings but many of them are on the streets for very similar reasons to Kevin. LGBTQ+ people get kicked out a lot when they come out, many do end up on the street like Kevin when the homophobia from their family or partners becomes too much. There are also a lot of people with abusive partners who end up on the street, or who, upon realising they are LGBTQ+, get a very negative response.

He is a character who's suffering a lot. But, and I don't phrase it like this to minimise it, it is a mundane sort of suffering. He didn't end up on the street because Behemoth sent a lightning bolt through his house, or the slaughterhouse nine altered his face to look like Jack Slashes, or even a possible but still unusual form of suffering like Taylors locker.

The tale of Kevin Norton (minus scion) is one that no doubt countless people are going through now. And I know it's kinda tiring that a lot of stories of LGBTQ+ people revolve around our suffering, but idk, I'm fine with it here.

And yet, and this is the thing that sticks in my brain and makes him so intriguing to me, he doesn't ask Scion to fix it. Kevin Norton dies of a disease (cant remember which), and he knows Scion could cure it. The first thing he did was cure a man's cancer. And Scion could easily give him whatever he needs to live, whether directly with his powers or by just yknow, asking Scion to take him to a nearby hero team and going 'hey, I command Scion and made him a hero, I've saved millions of lives through this, can I have a house'.

So... why doesn't Kevin ask for that.

There's 2 answers I can think of, the selfless (but still kinda depressing) and the full on depressing.

The first is that he recognises scion has so many people to save and doesn't want him wasting time he could be spending saving 10 peoples lives to help him live better. In this interpretation, Kevin has made his peace with living on the street, and with his eventual death.

The second is that Kevin Norton is tired. He has suffered a lot, he has lived on the street for years, he has borne the emotional burden of being the man who commands the strongest hero in the world, and he has discovered that he could have done so much more, if he had just phrased things differently. In this interpretation, Kevin Norton just doesn't want to go on.

There's other possible interpretations, but in truth I think it lies somewhere between these.

There's something tragic about him that captures me. The greatest hero in the world, who has likely saved more people than any member of the triumvirate, and he likely dies alone, bar perhaps his dog, with only one other person knowing what he did. His last act as a hero, is to pass on the torch, an act he clearly feels guilty about, knowing the burden its been for him.

And that's captivating to me. And I don't know if I've even fully explained why.

I like to think he died after hearing of Behemoths death. He would know he had fixed his mistake, and performed a last, great act of heroism.

And there's something to say about how, for only a small kindness of money and a few minutes, he made Lisette the most powerful woman in the world. I try, when I can, to give money and time to the people I see on the streets. But I don't always have money, or time, and whenever I walk away I always feel a great amount of guilt. I'd like to think the little helps I give make as big an impact as Lisettes to Kevin's, but I doubt it. We don't have alien god beings.

Perhaps his rant to Scion was unfair. He didn't know Scions perspective or history. Scion could have suffered a lot. But it was very real. An outburst of a man so powerless and suffering to one who seems to have all the power in the world and is doing nothing with it. There's something about that that resonates with me, despite having had a pretty privileged life myself.

Speaking of privilege, this is sortof a tacked on note but there's something interesting to note about the stories 2 more impactful (in setting) gay male characters.

We have Legend and Norton.

Legend has a lot of power and influence, he has a husband and an adopted son. He definitely suffers from homophobia, not taking that away from him, but he lives pretty well. His suffering doesn't come from his living situation, but from external forces: Endbringers, supervillains, the weight of the entity over his head, the lies of his teammates etc. He has done good. He has saved many.

Norton suffers because of his living situation. He suffers very directly from homophobia, as essentially the cause of his living situation. Other than Scion he likely hasn't really been directly impacted by Cape stuff much. He has done good, he has saved many.

They both have such drastically opposite lives, and you can see it in their relationship to the being that plays an important part in both their stories. Scion. To Kevin he's a seemingly mentally broken man who has saved thousands under his direction. To Legend he's a Venus fly trap, an entity appearing heroic waiting to destroy hundreds.

Under a certain perspective, you could argue both are right.

You could also make a point about how privilege can shield you from some of the worst impacts of homophobia and seeing that by comparing them etc etc but I find such conversations often end up being very dismissive and suffering Olympicsy, and don't feel entirely qualified to talk about it as I am a not out trans woman, not a gay man, and only know about that effect of privilege in relation to homophobia second hand, from discussions other people have had. If other people want to talk about that who have more experience there, feel free.

There's more to say about these two characters, but I can't grasp it right now.

One last point I want to make.

Fiction... does not treat people living on the streets very well. It would have been very easy to have Kevin being a raving man, wearing a tinfoil hat and ranting about how powerful he is. And many other stories would have.

And to a degree, he does initially come off as such, and it appears that Lisette, for a moment, thinks he is after hearing him talk about being The Most Powerful Man and so on.

But he isn't. We get in his head and he's never treated as anything but a human being in a terrible situation.

I don't know what else to say about this part of it other than that his interlude is very well done, and while there's a lot you can, and people have, say about how Wildbow handles certain subjects, I think he did well here.

Also he has a cute loyal dog and one of the best interludes in worm.

I stan Kevin Norton

kick the jesse :)

i think after taylor first joined the undersiders when alec was teasing brian abt a hypothetical romance brian was like "Haha nah man she's not my type" and alec was like "lol ok what is your type then." at which point brian realizes that he's been too busy being the world's first 17yo 50yo twice-divorced single father who has never dated anyone to spend literally any time thinking about girls, but he doesn't want to admit that he doesn't know what his type is because it would make him sound gay, and despite it all, he is in fact a 17yo boy who really doesn't want to sound gay.

so he starts immediately stream of thought making something up but the entire time he's just thinking "hmm it would have to be someone who's ok with aisha living with me and she'd have to be responsible and good at vacuuming and..." so alec is just sitting there feeling more and more certain that there's something deeply, unfixably wrong with brian while brian describes karen, 41 from accounting, smooth liquidation, good dividents, at citibank they will meet accidentally, they'll start to talk when she borrows his pen,

when i first read worm as a kid i was like damn this case worker is being pretty harsh on brian that sucks he just wants to do right by his sister

and then when reading it again as an adult that scene makes me burst out laughing every single time. HE’S SEVENTEEN

I just read Vyre's interlude in RoW and this meme is all I could think about

Don’t worry about your relationship woes all you lonely Windrunners! Remember, first base is killing them!

the more that i think about it, the more i feel like the undersiders are a really good litmus test for ability to understand/be sympathetic towards neurodivergency w/o reacting w/ hatred when it’s unpalatable. like, yes. they do in fact do a lot of violent and terrible things. but they’re from “trauma viscerally literalized as superpowers which are taken to extreme usages to better represent how devastating and emotionally total being traumatized feels” the book–it makes sense that every character is messy, it makes sense that every character does and thinks shit that extremely fucking sucks. trauma extremely fucking sucks! bitch literally tearing a man’s arm off because she’s been taught her entire life that people will always mock and hurt her for who she is and has learned to use aggression as pre-emptive defense feels significantly more relatable to what i was like when i was an autistic teenager than any quirky-funny representation of autism out there, and she’s not even explicitly autistic. 

like, yeah, taylor has a paranoid and irrational worldview. lisa is hypervigilant and secretive and manipulative. brian can barely function & still refuses to be vulnerable. aisha acts out and it being for attention doesn’t make the behavior any less grating. rachel is aggressive and stubborn and violent. alec doesn’t understand ethical or social boundaries. those are all things i’ve seen people complaining about, saying they hated those characters for it, saying that it was fucking irritating to read about. which is like…Yeah, That’s How Traumatized Teenagers Act! 

taylor had any ability to be “rational” about social interactions eroded from the years of irrational cruelty she faced. lisa micromanages her loved ones’ wellbeing because the last time she didn’t, her brother died. brian genuinely doesn’t know how to function at all if he’s not trying to be strong because it’s the only coping mechanism he’s been taught. aisha, chronically abused and neglected, is trying to assert autonomy & gain attention in the only way she knows how. rachel has learned that the only way she’ll be afforded any respect is if she takes it by force. alec says & does wildly inappropriate things because 13 years of grooming taught him it was normal. 

& yeah, all of those things suck to deal with, but that is in fact because trauma sucks to deal with. litmus test for ability to realize that and be reasonably generous about the fact instead of shitting on the involved teenagers for having a hard time being perfect people after experiencing things built to make them feel less than human.

Breakthrough, from a work in progress. The faces here are about . . . 60% painted? Stay tuned for full outfits. Eventually.

Also, I have unilaterally decided that Ashley has a wolfcut now.

hehehe tiktok funny