encrucijada

[encrucijada]

[encrucijada]

IN SECRET (2013) dir. Charlie Stratton

[encrucijada]

i pulled the sword from the stone but got shy and put it back. hope nobody minds 

[encrucijada]

settings I would love to see more in fantasy:

Deserts, but like, positive. Deserts portrayed as beautiful places full of life and wonder. Desert as homeland, desert as a place of beauty and intrinsic value.

Mountains. Andean-style settings where the world is mountainous and the land is organized into altitude zones, where uphill/downhill are more meaningful than east/west

Island archipelagos. We’ve gotten a few in fantasy recently but 1) I want More 2) I want someone to do a Fantasy Kula Ring

Something inspired by Tiwanaku or Chavín de Huántar

Independent city-states. They all are unified by basically the same culture but they are all also politically independent variously at war, making alliances, happily trading, in a trade war, conquered and subordinate to other city-states, founding new city-states, travelling to the central temples of other city-states’ patron gods, etc.

Full of prehistoric animals that never coexisted with humans but they do in this fantasy world because they’re Cool

[encrucijada]

ngl I think I should get grabbed by the waist and kissed gently and then cuddled for several hours and talk about nerd things.

[encrucijada]

anyone else grieving & mourning & lamenting & kicked apart by nostalgia & going silently about their lives?

[encrucijada]

I love themes of repression in horror

[encrucijada]

Dearest Creature,

13 August, 1929 The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf (1924-1941)

[encrucijada]

sometimes I think I'm putting too many sex scenes into something . and then I look at what's happening in the world and I'm like oh yeah there's a massive puritan shift and censorship wave happening. why on earth am I feeling guilty for writing self indulgent fanfic lmao. I think I will make the characters do it sloppy AGAIN !!!!!

[encrucijada]

can I ask about your high priestess character? I have a similar one, I'm a sucker for them :]

omg hi this is so unexpected

the high priestess is an antagonistic character in let sleepers lie one of the books i am co-writing with @teddywriting. and by co-writing i mean we have done barely any proper writing and instead scream character interactions at each other on discord. the setting is post-apocalyptic ish, with a cataclysm caused by the "old gods" having happened around thirty to fifty years ago or so

zaccai and ismene, the pov characters, are born into this world. ismene is a newly made god in the shape of a person, something that has never happened before. she was born from a human woman. the details are unclear atm but what matters is that this woman's mother is the high priestess. or was, as her daughter dies around a year or two into ismene's life, her body never truly recovered from birthing her.

the high priestess is one of the few left of the religious order. in this world the old gods, giant beings, were kept inside (caged) their temples and when they caused the cataclysm they killed a lot of their faithful and priests as they were inside the temple at the time. she likes to believe this uniqueness is why her daughter was chosen to birth the godling. the gods whose temple she served, that of the white one and the black one, is the last one still standing. the twin gods hadn't destroyed their home, they'd just chased everyone out, and in one of the priestess' many visits to the temple steps (she did not wish to anger her gods by going inside after they expressed their displeasure though she sought to appease them) they told her a new god would be born from her people.

she took to her priestly duties again like muscle memory when she, her daughter, and a few aids were allowed to move into the last temple. ismene was born. she was given an "old" name by the gods, but the priestess' daughter named her ismene and while she would never try and disobey the old ones... she also loved her daughter. and so she called the child ismene. this is probably the first and arguably last true kindness she extends towards her granddaughter. as she also allowed everyone at the temple to call her ismene. only the twin gods used her old name. (the old name, as of yet undecided, is meant to basically mean something like luminous.)

when ismene was a teenager the old gods asked for messengers to be sent far and wide in the search for male volunteers who could be turned into a sword to protect ismene. they had made their little human-sized goddess quite fragile. she wasn't larger than life as they were (though the twin gods are actually on the smaller size because they were originally one god that was cut in two). and because they were literally cleaved into two the twin gods can only see things in pairs so they really wanted to give their tiny goddess an eternal companion

enter zaccai. he survived the culling of volunteers and received the eternal sentence honour of giving his life for ismene should it come to it. the high priestess saw no problem with this. she does love ismene... though this love is distorted from seeing ismene as the last remnant of her dead daughter and as a goddess to be adored like a statue. she loves ismene more like an object. a doll. even if she wants her happy within the set parameters of her duty, well fed, comfortable. ismene is a god and gods are not human. gods are to be knelt for. gods do not seek small comforts like a hug or reassurance.

and so the problems arise when this new little goddess and her sword start displaying... basic human feelings. let sleepers lie is a love story. it's teddy and i writing a story of god x worshipper, of guard dog x object of affection. zaccai follows ismene everywhere. there isn't a moment in the day where he isn't at her side, with a few rare exceptions. he sleeps on her bed at her request (and because it is literally safest)

the high priestess hates all of this. she spends every waking moment reminding zaccai to keep his distance. to not touch ismene, ever. she is not meant to be touched. she asks him if he's trained today at all. if she could she would physically punish him for every minor transgression but he is technically ismene's property and not the temple's, and ismene is the only being left who outranks the priestess after the twin gods leave like all the other gods. she can only verbally remind them of their duties and enact psychological warfare

but even with this, the high priestess does respect his job. it was given to him by the gods, after all. she just wishes he would not have these pesky emotions that get in the way of it. the book actually starts a few days after zaccai killed one of the temple aids for posing a threat to ismene and the high priestess does not question it at all. if he thought this aid was going to in some way harm ismene, then they needed to go and she trusts zaccai judgement of the godling's safety utmost

and, like with her using ismene's name instead of luminous, she actually does zaccai a kindness by calling him zaccai. he does not remember the man he was before being remade into zaccai by the twin gods and he feels like zaccai more than the man he was before. part of his conflict throughout the book is actually him trying to convince everyone that that previous man is a stranger to him and he is zaccai, no one else. the priestess never calls him something other than zaccai. (except when she pulls rank and calls him sword or something)

woah that's a lot. um. there's still more but that goes into spoiler territory for act 2 of the book so <3 leaving it there. thank you so much for asking!!! i love any excuse to talk about let sleepers lie

[encrucijada]

"oh she started a cult" is it her fault she's so inspirational and influential?? that people flock to her and believe everything she says? that she has shiny hair and soulful eyes you could get lost into??? be so fucking for real rn

[encrucijada]

being the resident Mythology Guy when worlbuilding with your friends is crazy because you can come up with a bunch of stuff and you'll be your own worst critic going "no actually i don't think this would be feasible given the cultural context :/ sorry if it doesn't make sense i'm still trying to figure out how these gods would be worshipped and what festivals are held in their honour :/"

and literally it only doesn't make sense to me

[encrucijada]

[encrucijada]

trees are very 🥺 because sometimes i’ll stand under the shade of a tree and look up at it and it’ll sway its branches about in the wind and i’m like oh my God i’m alive and YOU’RE alive. we are alive together and made up of the same starry stuff and standing right next to each other in this moment on this earth. do u feel it when i reach out and press my hand to your trunk? can you hear me? i think you’re so neat. and then the sunlight filters through its leaves just so and that lovely green color leaves me dazzled. it’s just very nice to be an alive thing next to a different sort of alive thing

[encrucijada]

“weird and unhealthy relationship that cant be categorized neatly as sexual or romantic or platonic but has a defining air of devotion and obsession to it” wins sound of the summer for the 13th year in a row

[encrucijada]

I’m a deadbeat friend and daughter and sister I need to get a grip

[encrucijada]

bigs my eyes