mia san champions

Somebody get Garrus a fish gun, stat.

was gonna do a thing of all the companions dancing but james fucking vega steals the show every time

Liara: "...Javik, the book has been out for months.."

Javik: "Yes."

Liara "WE'VE SOLD MILLIONS OF COPIES."

Javik: "Ye. ::)"

part 3 of the 2023 version of this post: adult books!

part 1: middle grade books | part 2: young adult books

this is a very incomplete list, as these are only books I've read and enjoyed. not all books are going to be for all readers, so I'd recommend looking up synopses and content warnings. feel free to message me with any questions about specific representation!

list of books under the cut ⬇️

In case you didn't know Mordin gives advice for specific romances in Mass Effect 2.

Mordin’s Advice:

Garrus- you might die

Jack- you might die

Tali- she might die

Miranda- you might get probed

Thane- you might get high

Exactly 20 years ago (give or take a few days) like most French schoolchildren I was given a piggy bank to collect yellow coins (small change). It was a charity campaign called Opération Pièces Jaunes, to help hospitalised children, but my classmates & I were quite indifferent to the charity aspect because all we cared about was the fact that our teacher started giving us a candle in the shape of President Jacques Chirac every time we returned our little box filled with coins. 

We were completely enraptured by those candles and the way the president’s face would start melting hideously if we let them burn long enough. Without any kind of deliberation among ourselves we turned it into a class-wide contest—it was obvious to everyone that the point of the Yellow Coins charity campaign was to win many little Chiracs and melt them to make the face of our president as freakishly deformed as possible. We exchanged them for pogs and marbles. We had recently learnt about the Plague in history class, with great relish, hence one lucky girl who managed to obtain a particularly monstrous half-melted face with a big wax bubble reminiscent of a bubo sold it way above the going rate, for 12 galaxy marbles—a fortune. (I was among the losers of this auction, and commented in my diary, with deep regret, “It’s just what it would look like if the President had the bubonic plague!”) Every day after school we went round town begging passersby for coins with something akin to mania in order to get more Chiracs to burn into ever ghastlier shapes. An old lady we ambushed in front of the church praised us warmly for our charitable spirit.

Eventually our teacher ran out of candles and this odd chapter of my childhood ended as abruptly as it had started. Our class was congratulated in front of the whole school for being by far the most ardently devoted to the cause (we got ~15kg of coins.) I wonder if the principal asked our teacher what her secret was to make us collect a truly astonishing amount of coins compared to the other classes, and how he reacted when she replied that she motivated us with busts of the President. One teacher gave a Carambar for a full box of coins, another believed that helping sick children should be incentive enough, but our teacher, an expert in child psychology, was alone in her conviction that the best way to go about this was to hand out human wax effigies for her students to burn.

This post is now one year old and my favourite thing about it is that no French person in the notes has ever seen a Chirac candle before, which strengthens my theory that my primary school teacher was making them herself, at home, as a hobby, and with this exact purpose in mind.

Believe it or not but a few months after I made this addition, the origin story of the Chirac candles was brought to light in the French press… In this interview from late 2021, our former President of the Constitutional Council was photographed in his study with a little Chirac candle on a shelf behind him! When asked about it he explained that a member of Chirac’s party made one or two thousand of these candles back in the day, and he (who was also Minister of the Interior and President of the National Assembly) has kept his Chirac candle in his study for the past 20+ years because he finds it hilarious.

Little does he know that a few dozens of these 2,000 candles ended up in the hands of a bunch of feral children somewhere in France who obsessed over them, disfigured them with diabolical glee and went into galaxy marble debt trying to buy the most grotesque Chiracs at auction.

I’m glad that at least one aspect of this mystery has been lifted. It’s still unclear how my teacher came to own so many of these limited-edition candles (I don’t think she was a fan of Chirac or a member of his party…), and of course the thought process that led her to connect the concepts of charity drive and letting kids burn the President in effigy will remain a mystery.

— Table of contents from Jean-Michel Maulpoix’s A Matter of Blue: Poems (Une histoire de bleu)

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I don't know if different muncipalities having their own coat of arms is a thing outside of Finland, but I rather like many of them. Like, the only way to go wrong in a coat of arms is to make it boring, the best ones are the most memorable ones. Have a collection of the few that I consider the least aesthetic, most boring coats of arms of all finnish muncipalities. If you see your own hometown coat on this list, do not come at me - fix your own problems first and move somewhere else.

Bland, generic, tells no story. Unfuckable. The kind of shit you'd see on the shield of an enemy that's getting their ass kicked by the Cool Sexy Woman Knight in the first round of a jousting event in a corny but riveting fantasy movie. Now, let's look at some of the cool ones:

Striking. Distinct. Tells you a story, gives you some clue about what this place is and what is the story of the people who live here. Can occasionally afford more than two colours per coat. Now that's sexy. These, these are good. I had a hard time choosing only nine that I liked best, so I decided to divide the examples of Sexy Coats of Arms into non-animal and animal cathegories. These are examples of the cool ones with animals on them:

And as a final special mention we have Kouvola. The city of Kouvola largely doesn't deserve the bad rep it has - the crime rate isn't that high, the title of "the ugliest city in Finland" is a bit harsh since it does have some vaguely soviet/dystopian grunge brutalist aesthetic if you're into that sort of thing, and in my experience the friendliest crackheads in Finland. But all those things said, their coat of arms does kinda feature this thing eerily similar to the symbol of Chaos

I wish I was kidding when I say this is my hometown’s coat of arms.

My condolences. That is the ugliest goddamn that I have ever seen.

Do ya'll ever think about how every character in MDZS is living in a radically different genre of story?

Cause yeah, sure Wei Wuxian is living in a danmei fantasy novel with strong romantic comedy elements, but if you slide over a bit Lan Wangji is living a serious and heady drama about regret, loss, yearning, the passage of time, and ultimately atonement.

Scooch on over to Xichen and your in a straight up Greek tragedy, right down to the parable about hubris and trust. Jin Guangyao is living meanwhile in a political dark fantasy al'la Game of Thrones, Nie Huaisang is in a Gothic moody Monte Cristo-esque reflection on revenge and deception, and while Lan Sizhuhi and Jin Ling are living in two VERY different YA fantasy books ('magic boarding school/secret orphan of destiny' and 'Steven Universe style coming of age/discovering all your family are some flavor of evil and magic' respectively).

Everyone connected to Yi City is living inside a dark psychological thriller/horror flick, except for Xue Yang who is in a Found Family/Enemies to Lover fic right up until he isn't.

Jiang Cheng's entire life has been one long soap opera, and it is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.

THE RIDDLER??

i love that stupid double fisted overhead punch they always do on star trek

fuck your life

best part of it is that the person doing it almost always is the one who wins the fight

how could you not include this part

take this! heres ASS

First class rendition of Baba Yaga’s house for Lisa’s chickens. (Look at the bronze chicken feet!)

Keep reading

I love the specific ways in which AI is terrible

great job everyone lets hit the showers

Not again

gentle reminder that you can’t get this kind of nonsense from any other site

it always comes back to skyrim somehow.

this is so fucking funny i don't even care if it's real