#'she has such main character syndrome' SHES THE MAIN CHARACTER. THIS IS HER BOOK.

[estevnys]

slowly picking through crescent city 3 and like. everyone complaining about bryce as always like. OH SORRY its okay dw don't feel the need to dissect why you hate the only two "bitchy" SJM characters (bryce and nesta) but love all of the male characters no matter what they do (re: azriel) pookie. no no. no need to do that. its okay just hate the one SJM FMC who's fat and a bitch

[daisywords]

started rereading a book that I had mixed feelings about but have also thought about a lot since (and I do like to revisit works that had a particular resonance with me to try and figure out what that captivating something was) and anyway I did read this book the first time when I was probably too young for it (I think my mom was reading it for a book club and I saw it on her nightstand and read the blurb and she told me I probably should wait until I was older to read it) and I remember that sneaking into her room to read it in little snatches. Sitting on the floor of her bathroom in secret with that book. But ANYWAY what I'm trying to say is I remembered being vaguely annoyed with the narrator and I was wondering if that would still be the case reading it as an adult. And the answer is yes. I am finding her insufferable, in fact.

[iz-star]

About Dr Zayne and Dawnbreaker's ethics.

Something that kinda irks me a little when ppl talk about Dr Zayne and Dawnbreaker, it's when they make it look like they're totally different people.

"Dr Zayne would never kill someone where Dawnbreaker wouldn't hesitate..."

It's not as simple as that, honestly. Dawnbreaker is just a severe depressed Dr Zayne. His morals aren't some kind of "twisted" ethic bc he kills ppl for the greater good and not out of pleasure.

He has the exact same views than Dr Zayne, actually: "It's better to die with clarity than living as a walking corpse"

Remember that Zayne doesn't stop Tobias from choosing to die instead of looking for a cure for his Protocore syndrome, even tho Zayne is the most desperate person on earth to save people (His medic of the artic anecdote makes it crystal clear). Despite his own beliefs, he will always respect the patient's autonomy over their own body and life.

Actually, Zayne defines his ethics as Doctor as "Respecting life and patient's choices".

Georgie's mom looked for Dawnbreaker to kill her bc she knew she was going to turn into a monster and he could help her. DB Zayne is not a Doctor but still does his best to try to fix the world he lives in the same way Dr Zayne does or tries to lessen the damage at the very least. It is even said in his anecdotes that the police and media try to hide the fact that being exposed to Protocore energy/ Metaflux for long periods of time is what is making ppl to turn into wanderers. Considering that Protocore technology is highly profitable in LADS world, nobody would give up on it the same way we haven't given upon oil.

Dawnbreaker it's literally Zayne living the consecuences of the status quo and capitalism. Something that Dr Zayne does too at rejecting immortality and accepting death as the natural result of living.

I've previously talked about this, but in Master of Fate myth it is mentioned that Zayne's role is of a siming, and according to chinese mythology, it's a deity with more of a bureocratic job than anything else (Just look at the way he dedicated his time to those bamboo books). He decides who gets to have a long life and who gets to have a short span of life in order to keep the balance of destiny and probably the reason he had to get rid off of MC since she was a "variable".

And as Foreseer, he loses the jurisdiction of allocating human life span and fate but still watches over them.

The concept of Zayne's character as a whole is this balance of life and death. I wouldn't be surprised if later on they reference yin and yang through him, in traditional chinese medicine, it is said that sickness comes from the unbalance of ying and yang.

In this case, it's true that Dr Zayne and Dawnbreaker look like opposites -the Guardian Angel and the Grim Reaper. But in reality, they're two sides of the same coin and complement each other. Dr Zayne has the possibility to save lifes bc he's a doctor. Dawnbreaker has the possibility to help people to die bc he's an assasin. There's both light and darkness in both of them.

Dr Zayne wouldn't kill ppl just bc he wanted too. The same goes for Dawnbreaker. And just as William asked Zayne to kill him, DB too, killed Georgie's mom and probably his step father out of mercy. And so the same goes for the rest of people. And just as Dr Zayne saves ppl with his hands, Dawnbreaker does too at avoiding any casualties caused by wanderers (which is his main purpose after all)

Dr Zayne is good, he has no bounty like the other guys and he hasn't committed crimes but that doesn't make him any less attractive at all and most important, it doesn't make him naïve. I would say it's totally the opposite, since it seriously takes strength to remain kind in an unfair world.

[Nedless to say that the other guys are lot older than him bc he was cursed to reincarnate and find MC just to watch her die and sacrifice himself to save her].

I think this rant of mine comes from the fact that lately I've read several ppl saying that Dawnbreaker is far more interesting to them that Dr Zayne. I suppose this opinion comes from all the possibilities of what is like to be with Dawnbreaker who is a gloomy Zayne and someone who also lives in totally different circumstances. And I mean, at the end of the day, it's a valid opinion.

But my point here is: they're actually not that different from one another if you look closely. (Dr Zayne also shares his fair amount of depression before MC).

Foreseer, Master of Fate, Dr Zayne and Dawnbreaker are all Zayne after all and I think it's important to highlight that most of them live their life as a means to an end for the greater good. Astra once said that Zayne was his tool and in all his lifes, Zayne has always worked his ass off for other people.

No wonder why as a doctor he respects ppl's autonomy over their lifes. It's MC the one who makes him being a bit more selfish.

Honestly, I could write an essay about this to explain it more properly but I'm so sleepy rn, I might consider it later but don't really trust it. If you've read all of this, wow. Thank you!!

[humanpurposes]

Sweet Dream

The Sandman AU

Her father means to summon and capture Death, but ends up with the wrong sibling. She becomes fascinated with their prisoner // Main Masterlist

Dream!Aemond x unnamed female character

Warnings: 18+, spells n shit, mild gore, death, lowkey Lima syndrome, smut

Words: 8000

A/n: For my fellow Morpheus and Aemond lovers. Also available to read on AO3.

Roderick Burgess had always been a terrifying man. In grief he has only become more irritable and less predictable. 

The telegram came in the early days of July. She delivered the news to Roderick herself, while he was in his study. Her father did not like to be disturbed and he might have beaten her to remind her of the fact, until those fateful words slipped from her mouth. “Randall’s dead.” Shot down by a German machine gun at the Somme. In the end he had been one of thousands, his body buried in a neat line of tombstones somewhere in France, his name engraved on a plaque in the church at Wych Cross, ultimately unremarkable and indistinguishable from the other men and boys who had lost their lives.

But it was not so for Roderick. He let out a sudden groan and clutched his chest as though his pain was tangible and terrible. He shed no tears– of course he didn’t, but he gritted his teeth, crying out in fury as he dashed his hands over his desk, sending papers, books, fountain pens and empty whisky glasses tumbling to the floor. 

She stood frozen, waiting for his hand to descend on her for being the one to tell him, but it didn’t.

When they held a memorial service for him, Roderick handed her a piece of paper, to read before the crowd of faces she didn’t recognise. 

“Randall was our family’s happiness. He was the bravest, the wisest, and kindest older brother I could possibly dream of having.” Her hands and voice trembled as she read because she knew it was all a lie. In truth, Randall was like their father. They had the same short temper, the same stubbornness and the same cruelty. 

But Randall being dead meant she could reinvent him.

Lately, she dreams of happier memories and looks back on them fondly, knowing they can never be contradicted or disproved. 

While her father has dreamt of Death ever since. 

It’s a brisk afternoon in October when a man in a suit, bow tie and bowler hat arrives at Fawny Rig. He clutches a leather briefcase in front of him and introduces himself as Dr John Hathaway, a curator from the Royal Museum, travelled all the way from London to this quiet corner of East Sussex. She leads him through the panelled halls of the manor, to her father’s study.

Roderick barges in behind them, in a shirt and waistcoat, already smelling faintly of whisky and waving his cane in her general direction. “Tea for our guest,” he orders.

She has the pot ready and strains the dark, reddish liquid into two delicate china cups while her father and Dr Hathaway settle on opposing leather sofas in the centre of the room.

“I take it you have reconsidered?” Roderick says.

“After our meeting at the museum… I know what I said, but–” Dr Hathaway takes an unsure breath. “I received a telegram this morning. My son, Edmund, his destroyer was sunk last week off Jutland.”

It’s a loss Roderick can share, even if he doesn’t really understand how other than a few quick words of condolence. “I lost my son, Randall last year. He was my greatest joy.”

She pauses as she reaches for the sugar bowl. She has never been under the illusion that her own existence has given her father any joy, but then what sort of person would she have to be to earn his respect? She places the sugar on a tray, along with the small jug of milk and the cups, and brings them to the small table between the sofas. The pair don’t spare her a word of thanks or even a brief glance.

Dr Hathaway’s hand lingers on the clasp of his case. “If I give you this, could you truly do it? Could you really–”

“Capture the angel of Death?” Roderick says. “I believe I could.”

She shudders unexpectedly. The old groundskeeper used to say a sudden chill meant someone was walking over your grave.

Dr Hathaway clicks open the clasp and takes out an aged, leather bound book. It has no title on the cover, just gold markings in square, geometric patterns. 

“The Magdalene Grimoire,” her father mutters, his eyes wide in an ominous sort of wonder. “With the spells recorded in the book, we will see our sons returned to us.”

The next night is a full moon. She stands by the door with Sykes, welcoming men and women dressed in midnight blue robes to the manor and directing them towards the door that leads to the cellar. They’re all part of Roderick’s ‘Order of Ancient Mysteries’ which as far as she can tell is a cult of fanatics who still believe in witchcraft. They come to Fawny Rig once a month, to listen to her father read from so-called ‘spell books’ as though he is a preacher.

The fanatics pull hoods over their heads and descend the narrow stone steps into the cellar with lit candles grasped in their hands. Roderick leads the way, the book Dr Hathaway gave him tucked under his arm. 

She shoots Sykes a concerned frown but he just shrugs. He’s paid to organise the household and guard Burgess’ collection of relics, not to ask questions. Questions are a dangerous game with Roderick.

She trails after them and shuts the iron lock on the door behind her.

The cellar is more like a crypt, an expansive room sprawling under the house, held up by pillars and arches. In the low candlelight she makes out a set of markings on the floor in the heart of the room and this is where the Order of Ancient Mysteries gathers.

The shapes and symbols are unfamiliar to her, painted onto the flagstones, twisting and curling over each other to form a circle. Roderick stands at the very edge of it by a brass lectern.

She watches, half hidden behind a pillar as they stand around the circle and Roderick opens the book, his desired page already marked and studied in the hours since it has been in his possession. 

“Tonight,” her father says to his congregation, “we will achieve what no one before us has attempted. We will summon and imprison Death.”

His eyes meet hers through the shadowy space, heavy and sunken with age, grief and months worth of sleepless nights. They glisten slightly too. 

He holds his hands out and looks down at the markings on the floor. “Here, in the darkness.”

The others echo his words, softly and melodically at first. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

And so the ritual begins.

“I give you a coin made from a stone,” Roderick says, presenting the object to the ceiling as though the eyes of God are looking down from the heavens, through the house and the earth, and drops it to the floor, inside the circle of markings.

“I give you a knife from under the hills.” He holds up a thin blade and lifts his other arm so the sleeve of his robe drops to his elbow. “I give you the blood from out of my vein.”

She winces but does not look away as he draws the knife along the skin of his forearm, until dark droplets begin to fall and stain the markings. 

“I give you a song I stole from the dirt and I give you a feather,” he says, raising a white feather that almost seems to glow through the gloom, “pulled from an angel’s wing.”

And all the while the voices persist. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

He drops the feather and it drifts gently down, landing in the very heart of the circle. 

The room is still and she holds her breath.

The feather starts to move. It twists in a circle and floats up, lurching and turning as though it’s being blown about by a breeze she cannot feel or hear.

The voices raise to an urgent chant. Here in the darkness. Here in the darkness.

She clenches her fingertips against the stone of the pillar. She tries to meet her father’s eye again but he is fixated on the feather flying above their heads.

He calls over the chanting, “I summon you with poison,” and the moment he does the feather flickers like the striking of a match. “I summon you with pain! I open the way! I open the gates! I summon you in the name of the old Lords, we summon you together! Come!”

A noise, like a cracking whip splits her ears. The feather bursts into white and golden flames like the flash of a camera. The heat of it rushes over her face and burns her eyes.

And from the flames a body falls to the floor.

It thuds as it hits the ground, silencing the voices save for a few gasps and murmurs. She feels the flagstones rumble under her feet, sees the edges of a black cloak spilling across the floor and a head of long silver hair trailing from its head.

This isn’t an illusion. Roderick Burgess has brought forth a tangible entity, plucked from God-knows-where, lying motionless on the floor. For a moment she wonders if he is dead, until she sees a slight movement in his chest, but even then she fears she could be imagining it.

She takes a few unsure steps to where Roderick stands and the man– he is a man as far as she can tell– is further revealed to her. She can see his face now, his pale skin, the angles of his jaw and cheeks, the curve of his lips, but beyond that she finds herself unable to look away from the jewel that sits where his left eye should be. It is a bright, deep shade of blue and dotted with silver specs, like the vast expanse of twilight when the stars are out but the sky is not quite black. The eye is framed by twisted, red flesh and a scar, slicing from his brow to his cheek. It takes her a moment to realise his other eye, closer to the ground, is closed. 

The only other parts of him she can see are the tips of his fingers, clasped around a small pouch.

“Is this… Death?” she utters.

“That remains to be seen,” Roderick says. He points to the pouch. “Get that for me.”

She stares back at her father. How he can speak so flippantly when a man has been conjured, seemingly from thin air, is beyond her. But he glares back, his dark expression only more formidable with his aged frown.

So she steps forward and begins to lower herself beside the man.

“Careful, girl!” Roderick barks, “don’t break the binding circle.”

She stops and looks down, where her skirt is inches from brushing over the markings on the floor. She shuffles back and, with trembling fingers, reaches for the pouch. It’s not hard to take, the man hardly resists, twitching his fingers to keep it in his grasp. It feels wrong, stealing from someone too weak to hold onto what is his.

She looks into the jewel-like eye. Can he see through it? Perhaps it has something to do with the scar? Did he place it there himself, or was he simply made this way?

Someone snatches the pouch from her. She looks up at her father as he undoes the strings and peers inside. “Sand,” he mutters, and stows it away inside his robes.

“And the jewel,” he says to her.

She means to protest, but finds she cannot.

She avoids the markings as she leans forwards. She presses her fingertips beside the man’s eye. His skin is cold and firm.

She swallows her guilt and the nauseous feeling in her throat, nudging her fingertips into the socket. It takes her a few attempts, but she pries the jewel free, wincing when she feels it come loose. If he feels any pain he hardly shows it. His brow furrows but his other eye remains closed, and he makes no sound.

She stands and offers the jewel to her father.

Roderick holds it to the light of one of the candles, giving a curious hum before he pockets that too.

“Move,” he mutters to her, pushing her out of his way as he stands over the man. He tugs on the black cloak and it falls into fragments that fade away, like dust on a breeze. The man’s body is bare, pale skin running over details of muscle and bone. He shivers and twitches like he has a fever, but still he does not speak, or even let out a breath.

“We’ll let our guest recover,” Roderick says, “and then we shall make our demands.

They leave him there for days. He does not move, or ask for food or water.

She doesn’t dream in the nights since they captured their ‘guest’. In fact she hardly sleeps at all. Each morning she wakes, already exhausted, having felt like she’s only closed her eyes for a few brief moments.

Then come the stories in the newspapers. They call it ‘the sleeping sickness’. People all over the country, and in fact the world, have been plagued, either to not sleep at all or never wake up.

On a cold, drizzly morning, a stranger appears at the door to the manor.

She listens and watches from the top of the stairs, crouching by the bannister to stay out of sight as a man with choppy silver hair and pale skin strides into the entrance hall, with Roderick following closely behind.

“Do I know you?” her father asks, furiously.

“No.” The stranger’s voice is low and almost seductive. “But I know all about you, Roderick Burgess, and the being trapped in your basement.”

“You mean to intimidate me?”

She sees a flash of a grin and a pair of pale purple eyes through the wooden balusters.

“I am here to help you,” the stranger says. “There are benefits to keeping one of the Targaryens in your confinement.”

“Targaryens?” her father echoes.

“Did you think Death was the only one of her kind? Death has family. Destiny, Despair, Desire…”

“And who have I got?”

“Dream,” the stranger says with a smile that bares his teeth.

A shiver runs over her shoulders. She keeps her jaw tight to stop herself from reacting to it.

Roderick scoffs. “What good is a God who governs dreams?”

The stranger's voice darkens. “There was a saying in the ancient times of humanity, that said the Targaryens are closer to Gods than men. But they are not Gods. They are more than Gods. They are Endless.”

He tells Roderick of Dream’s vestments, the pouch of sand and his sapphire, both of which he says Roderick may manipulate for his own influences. He says the binding circle will not be enough to contain their prisoner, that they must construct a sphere of glass within the circle.

Most crucially of all, he says no one must be allowed to fall asleep in Dream’s presence.

“Why are you helping me?” Roderick finally asks.

The stranger runs his tongue over his teeth and smiles to himself. “Little family dispute, I shan’t bore you with the details. But for your sake, and for mine, he must not escape.”

He offers his hand to Roderick, who returns the gesture after a moment of hesitation.

Before he heads for the door, the stranger’s eyes trail up to where she hides. Her heart leaps with a sense of dread, like she’s seen something she wasn’t meant to. 

She doesn’t trust him, not by the look or sound of him, but her father does. He follows the stranger’s instructions, ordering the construction of the glass sphere, to be welded around their prisoner as it is made. Finally, he arranges a rota of guards to keep watch over him, under strict orders to never fall asleep, lest their prisoner escape into their dreams.

The details of his face are etched into her memory, even after months, the angle of his jaw, the curve of his upper lip, the silver falling over his shoulders. If she could dream, she is sure she would dream of him. Instead she holds onto the flashes of images that appear before her waking eyes, the pale skin of his bare body against the floor, the stars in his sapphire eye, now kept locked away in her father’s study.

She knows Roderick has tried to bargain with him, and each time he returns from the cellar more furious than when he entered it. “He will not speak a word!” his voice bellows through the quiet halls of the manor. “He will not even look at me!”

When she dares to ask questions, Roderick glares at her and tightens the grip on his cane.

The stranger with silver hair was right about something, wealth and admiration have come to Roderick Burgess in droves since he acquired the Lord of Dreams. It’s something about the sapphire, or the sand, something she doesn’t understand, but their family comes across good fortunes, which is almost entirely spent on lavish parties to entertain Roderick’s ever expanding crowd of admirers.

She wakes with the sunrise, from a void and dreamless sleep. The manor is littered with empty bottles, full ashtrays, plates of half-eaten food, odd shoes and playing cards. Her father must still be asleep, which is odd. He is usually an early riser, even after a night of drinking.

A rumbling in her stomach has her heading through the entrance hall towards the kitchen, but she stops when she sees two men waiting by the door to the cellar– two of the guards her father has hired to watch the prisoner, dressed in smart suits with service revolvers just poking out of their jackets. They look restless, peering their heads round corners, shifting their weight on their legs, not wanting to step too far from the door.

“We can’t just leave,” one mutters to the other.

“I’m not staying down there with that… thing one second longer than I have to–”

“Good morning,” she calls.

They look at her in unison, and frown.

“Have you seen Noel and Mauirce?” one of the men asks. “They’re nearly half an hour late.”

The rotation of the guards. They take eight hour shifts in pairs.

Her eyes glance to the cellar door, opened only a fraction. “I could watch him until they get here,” she says, “if you want to leave.”

It doesn’t take them long to agree.

They leave through the front door. When she hears it shut, she finally lets herself reach for the handle to the cellar door. The handle is cold, untouched for hours at a time, and a little stiff. She pushes on it slowly, carefully, making as little noise as possible. 

With the cellar door closed, she shuts out the light and warmth of the morning. A silent, icy draft drifts through the narrow stairway. She follows it down, all the way to the dull, eerie light of the main chamber.

The sight takes her breath away, the glass sphere, suspended above the ground, still within the circle of markings that keep his power contained.

He sits in the centre, still bare, his knees tucked into his chest and his hair falling around his face like a veil.

As far she knows, no food or water ever passes the threshold to the cellar, and the cage is never opened. How does he breathe? How does he eat? How does he not wither away? He just sits there, stoic, his face frozen in time like a statue, like the image of a god cut from marble, to be preserved and admired.

A man like that cannot be real, and yet there he is.

“Hello,” she says. 

He does not react to her voice or the sound of her footsteps as she walks further into the chamber.

If he can even hear her. She wonders how thick the glass is, if sound can permeate it, or does he just hear the sound of his own breath echoed back to him, endlessly.

She comes to lean against one of the pillars, tracing her fingertips down the cold, rough surface of the stone.

“Are you really the Lord of dreams?” she says. 

His gaze lifts and turns to her, just enough that she can see his chin, his nose, and a single violet eye. It is not like the stranger’s, it is far more vibrate, burning with with a silent fury that makes her heart flutter and her skin feel tight.

“I have not dreamt since that night.”

She knows it isn’t just her. It’s the sleeping sickness, the war, the cloud of darkness looming over the rest of the world.

“The groundskeeper has a son, he’s only ten years old. He’s been asleep for months now. He can’t even eat. If he doesn’t wake up, he’ll die.”

He does not react, but his eye follows her as she takes a single step away from the pillar, towards the sphere.

“This is my father’s– our doing, yes?”

Her eyes dip to his chest, to the movement of his lungs underneath skin and muscle, a steady rise and fall with a deep, patient breath. 

“My father is a reasonable man, if you could give him something, anything, I am sure he would let you out.”

He tilts his head, until she can just see the point of his scar on his cheek and the edge of his empty eye socket.

He is simultaneously the most terrifying and most beautiful thing she has ever laid eyes upon. The low light only accentuates the harsh angles in his face, the ridges and lines in the muscles and tendons of his neck, torso, arms and legs.

She takes another step closer. “I would let you out, if I could,” she says quietly, like a secret.

He blinks softly, and when her eyes flicker to his lips she sees them curled into something almost like a smile, but not quite. 

“Oh you would, would you?”

Her blood runs cold at the sound of her father’s voice. She whips her head around just in time to see Roderick marching towards her with his hand reaching out. His fist grips at her hair, and when she yelps in pain he hisses at her to be quiet. He drags her back up the steps, away from the cold cellar, to the warmth and the light, to the world without dreams.

She bathes before dinner, wincing as she runs her hands over the fresh bruises that mark her skin. Most of them are red, others are set deep and already turning a greyish purple. 

Her father’s fury still rings in her ears. “Stupid girl! If he escapes he will slaughter us all!”

Leaning on her back is especially painful, it’s where her body took the brunt of his cane. She brings her knees into her chest, hunching over herself.

She hasn’t cried over her father’s cruelty in years, not since she was a small child. He’d always call her weak for it. Randall never cried when he was disciplined, because he knew, deep down, it was good for him. Perhaps she is simply not as strong as Randall was.

Her tears are hot and stinging in her eyes. She blinks and lets them fall onto her knees, to become the dew that lingers on her skin.

“Do you want to die, girl? Because it can be easily remedied!”

She doesn’t wear anything special, a white satin dress, with long, billowy sleeves, and applies some rouge to her cheeks, to make her seem more awake, more alive.

She reaches the bottom of the staircase as the clock in the entrance hall starts to chime. Five times. Marking the start of another shift rotation. 

Two men appear from the hall that leads from the cellar, vaguely nodding as they pass her.

She can see into the dining room from the stairs, an enormous table set with silver cutlery and china plates, for just two of them.

The door to her father’s study is closed, obstructing the voices within. He’s arguing with someone. 

Before she can stop herself, she’s walking towards the cellar. She tries the handle to find it unlocked. With one final look to the door to the study, she descends back into the darkness.

Two guards sit on wooden chairs by the entrance from the stairway, and immediately stand to attention as she walks into the chamber.

“Miss,” one of them calls, “you cannot be here.”

And she seems to have caught his attention too. He looks up from where he sits in the sphere, his forearm resting on his knee. His hair is pushed from his face, and his violet eye is wide, curious.

“This is my father’s house, I will go where I please,” she says, shakily, continuing until she comes face to face with the glass.

He stares at her, somewhat furious, but in a way she knows it is not meant for her.

The men behind her are muttering to each other, she doesn’t hear their words, but she hears their panic.

“It isn’t right for him to keep you here,” she says. “It isn’t right for him to think he can play with mortality. And I am as bad as he is for letting this happen.”

The tendons of his hand flex as he clenches his fist, his fingers restless as he stares at her, intently.

“If I let you out,” she whispers, “would you harm me?”

His face softens as his eye moves over her face. 

He’s studying her, she realises. She imagines him noting the curves of her cheeks and chin, the shape of her mouth, perhaps the faint teartracks and the dark circles under her eyes.

What does he make of her, the daughter of his captor, the one who pried the sapphire from his eye? Roderick could be right, he might slaughter her the moment he is free from his cage. 

“I would like to believe that you wouldn’t,” she says.

His expression gives nothing away.

Suddenly he shifts. His muscles tense as he comes to his feet and uncurls his spine to stand before her. Something about his movements are distinctly inhuman.

The guards behind her are shouting now, telling her to step away, calling for Mr Burgess. Their voices are inconsequential to her, muffled as though spoken behind a closed door. Her heart pounds in her ears. All she sees is him, the intense gaze of his eye, a wide palm reaching out and pressing against the glass.

She reaches up slowly, his eye growing wider with every inch she comes closer to touching the glass that separates them, but not quite meeting it.

His brow furrows as if to question her. Why are you hesitating? What are you afraid of?

She won’t be dragged upstairs again. She won’t be thrown to the floor with nowhere else to go. She will not suffer at the hands of Roderick Burgess any longer.

So she presses her hand to the glass.

Her skin is feverishly cold, her arms weightless. She can almost feel the shape of his palm through the glass, but not quite, like she is reaching for something she will never touch, clawing to the memory of a dream.

She can feel herself slipping into numbness, her eyes and her limbs becoming heavy. She presses her fingernails against the glass, silently pleading though she doesn’t know what for. An escape? An end? Anything.

His face is strangely gentle as he pouts his lips, hushing her, lulling her panic. She can feel her breathing and her heartbeat slowing, but it does not frighten her.

The glass shatters, her knees give way. She is awake enough to know she is falling, but too far gone to stop herself.

But she does not need to.

The world around her is silent– no, a gentle breeze drifts over her skin and whispers in her ear. Sunlight beams onto one side of her face and the other rests against bare skin. She feels a weight around her waist, something propping her body upright.

She tries to steady herself but the ground shifts beneath her. The arms around her only tighten their grip when she stumbles.

Finally she lets her eyes flutter open. They are in a desert, a vast expanse of dry sand, reaching as far as the eye can see.

Her head is moving with his breath, against his chest.

She tilts her gaze up, close enough that her lips barely brush over the base of his throat.

His eye is already fixed on her, holding her firmly in his arms, pulling her into him.

Wordlessly, he releases one arm from her waist, and reaches down, keeping his eye on her face. When he brings himself back up, she looks at his closed fist, where sand slips from between his fingers. 

Her confusion must be visible on her face because he smiles softly at her, letting out a low “hmm” as he does.

She means to blink, but when she opens her eyes the world has changed again.

She lies face down against the ground of the cellar, dust and dirt pressing into her cheek, broken glass littering the floor around her.

She blinks again through the haze of sleep still clouding her vision. She makes out a figure in a long black coat with silver hair falling down his back. He stands over two bodies, lying lifeless on the ground, and stalks towards another.

Roderick is at the base of the stairs. He raises his cane and cries out as the prisoner reaches into his coat.

Her father’s voice fades into a spluttering, retching sound. Then he is silent. His body slumps to the floor with a gut-wrenching thud. When the stranger walks away, she sees her father sprawled out on the floor, blood spurting from his throat, seeping into his shirt, pooling on the floor around him.

She pushes herself up, leaning on her hands as her vision is blocked once again by a black coat. He stands over her, blood dripping from a knife he holds in his hand, his eye a brighter shade of violet than it was before.

He kneels beside her, taking her chin in his fingertips.

“Are you hurt?” he says. His voice is a hypnotic blend of soft and harsh, low and light, chilling in a way that sends a wave of warmth through her stomach.

She looks past his shoulder, where Roderick’s skin is turning from white to grey. “What did you do to my father?” she utters.

He jerks her head back to him. His expression is dark, lips upturned into a sneer.

Does he expect her to be grateful?

“My tools,” he says.

“You’re… what?”

“My tools. The sapphire and the pouch.”

The items that were stolen from him, that her father has now paid for with blood.

“Are you going to kill me too?” she says, digging her fingertips into the stone and the shards of glass beneath her.

He tilts his head and his lips twitch in a flicker of movement. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Tell me where they are. I will not harm you.”

Three men lay dead mere feet from them, and yet she finds herself wanting to trust him.

He offers her his arm as she stands, gripping at the thick, leather sleeve. Her palms are covered in small cuts from the glass, droplets of bright red blood pearling at the edges. He takes her wrists in his hands to have a look and tuts to himself.

“Quickly,” he says, moving towards the steps, leading her along with him, past the bodies of the guards, and the body of her father.

She brings him to the study, her hands shaking, bloody and outstretched before her. The door is wide open, a stack of papers thrown carelessly to the floor.

Roderick’s safe sits in a black cabinet in the corner of the room. She uses her fingertips to open it, wincing at the pieces of glass still stuck in her skin, but she swallows down the pain.

She guesses the combination on the first try. 1895– Randall’s birth year.

There, in the centre shelf, above the Grimoire, below a stack of banknotes, is the pouch of sand and the sapphire.

He reaches for the gem first. She turns away as he fixes it back into his socket, remembering the weight of it in her palm when she took it from him. She sees him reach forward again, but not for the pouch. He takes a hold of her wrists.

With no magic words or spells, he waves a hand over her palms. For a moment she sees a glow in his sapphire eye. The pain vanishes, so does the blood, the glass and the dirt. 

She blinks a few effortless tears from her eyes. Tears for her father, tears of relief, she cannot place a cause.

Cold fingertips meet her skin once more, as the Lord of Dreams wipes her tears away, bringing her gaze to meet his.

He leans in closer, until his forehead meets hers. “Sleep,” he whispers.

She falls into him, to find herself wide awake, clinging onto him as she had done in the desert.

But they are somewhere else entirely. The sky above them is a pale yellow, like daybreak, painted with swirling grey clouds. The land here is… dead. Dead trees, barren mountains and hills, and in the distance, beyond a dried lake, is a castle of red brick, decrepit, falling into ruin.

“You see the damage that has been done to my realm?” he says. With her ear pressed against his chest, his voice is cavernous and she feels everything, the way his words drag through his throat. She feels his pain at being confined, the loss of his home and his creations.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“I do not forgive easily, that is why Roderick Burgess had to die. But you…” he pulls away from her so he might look at her properly, cupping the sides of her face and swiping his thumbs over her cheeks. “I do not need an apology from you. We are free of him now.”

“Is that what you think I wanted?” 

He hums with tight lips. “I have seen your dreams, as I see the dreams of every mortal. I see them as clearly as you perceive the waking world. It just so happened that our dreams coincided.”

She had never dreamt of her father’s death and she had certainly never imagined that she might have played a part in it. But she cannot deny the weight now lifted from her shoulders. She will never have to earn his approval, she will never have to endure him again. She is free of him.

“Go now,” he says, “I am sure you have your own business to resolve.”

He releases his hold of her and brings his hands behind his back. As he walks towards the castle the world around her starts to fade. She can smell the musk of the manor, the lingering smoke of her father’s cigars, the distinct scent of a winter evening.

“Wait!” she calls.

The ends of his coat swish around his legs as he turns back to face her. “Yes?” he says, the corners of his mouth curling up into a small smile.

“I want to know your name.”

“I have had many names,” he says.

“And how would you have me know you?”

“Aemond,” he says.

She echoes his name, letting her mouth linger on the final syllable. “Will I see you again?”

He draws the tip of his tongue between his lips. “Perhaps,” he says.

When she wakes she is laid out on one of the leather sofas of her father’s study. She looks down at her hands, traces her fingertips down her face, now free of the dirt and dust. 

She wonders if she might have dreamt all of it, the beautiful man in the sphere, the glass breaking, her father’s blood on the floor…

Her life is never the same after that. With her father dead, his estate passes to her. For the first time, her life is hers to do with as she pleases.

And yet she feels an absence, a hollow longing in her chest.

Her dreams come back to her since she set him free, and each night she dreams of him.

He only appears in brief moments, like lighting, bright and brilliant, but gone in a heartbeat, before she can truly see him. She sees the movement of a leather coat, flashes of silver, violet and sapphire blue. Sometimes she is met with darkness as a pair of lips ghosts over her neck with a contented sigh and a warm breath.

She cannot bear it.

As she lies in the empty manor house, she traces her fingers over her body, her lips, down her neck and her chest, underneath her cotton nightgown, to her navel and the pool of wanting wetness between her legs, trying to imagine they are his. 

She pictures the way his hair fell around his face, the coldness of his skin, the curve of his lips. She imagines them parting in a small sigh, the sound of his breath, the way his chest hummed as she circles over her bundle of nerves. Pleasure sparks at first but it keeps slipping from her grasp.

She circles faster, harder, searching for a spot that will finally give her the release she craves.

She feels heat and a sheen of sweat settling on the surface of her skin, her breathing hitches, her hips twitch under her touches. The pleasure heightens, then fades.

With her eyes tightly shut, she spurs herself on with thoughts of him, breathlessly chanting his name into the empty space and cold air of her bedroom.

“Aemond… Aemond…”

Something changes.

The mattress shifts beneath her and a weight presses against her body, her legs, her stomach, her chest.

A hand clasps around hers, ceasing her movements, and bringing it to rest by her side.

She laments the loss of the friction against her bud, her pleasure pulled away from her, but in its place anticipation blooms within her.

When she opens her eyes he is above her, against her, hovering his face over hers so that all she sees are his eyes, one violet, one sapphire.

“You have my attention,” he says in a soft but unsettling voice.

A thrill ripples through her body.

She whispers his name on an exhale of breath, running her fingertips over his arms, tense and toned as his props himself over her. 

But she is somewhat dazed, her senses numbed by fatigue and the echo of the pleasure she had been chasing.

“Is this real?” she utters.

Aemond leans further into her. She feels a weight between her hips and an unmistakable hardness prodding at her centre as he brings his lips to her neck, pressing a slow, teasing kiss against a sensitive spot of skin that has her body tensing and her fingers digging into his shoulders.

“Does if feel real?” he whispers against her skin.

How much has he truly seen of her dreams, her desires, she wonders? Perhaps she should feel some kind of shame, but she cannot, not when she is on the precipice of something bright, beautiful and damning. She can hardly stand being on the edge of it, having him so close but not close enough.

She wraps her arms around his neck as he teases her with his lips, crosses her legs around his hips, meeting his movements as he torturously grinds his hardening cock against her cunt, dripping with arousal, twitching and clenching around nothing at the anticipation.

“Needy little thing,” he mutters, dragging his nose along her neck as he comes to kiss the hollow of her throat.

His voice sends a shockwave through her body. Her hips buck against his, determined for relief as her fingers thread through the soft strands of his hair, and tug. 

He lets out a quiet growl against her skin. A hand rests upon her thigh and trails up, bunching the hem of her nightgown to her waist and adjusting the other side. 

He sits back, watching her with the same darkness and intensity as when he was trapped inside the cage, intrigued at the least, fascinated if she is presumptive. 

The irony of being laid half bare before him and at his mercy does not escape her.

“I’ve heard you crying out for me, little mortal,” he says. 

“You said you can see my dreams,” she says, “how?”

“Your dreams exist in my realm,” he says, “in The Dreaming. I see your dreams as I see the dreams of every other being. I feel them, as clearly as you perceive the waking world. But you…” he muses, settling his hands on either side of her waist. “You are incessant.”

She shivers and writhes under his touch, a pulsing heat settling within her.

She traces her hands over his, where they grip at her waist, along his smooth skin, the tendons and veins. His fingers are long and lithe. She knows they would feel so perfect, wrapped around her throat, stroking over her skin, pushing inside of her wet heat to coax her pleasure.

Aemond smiles to himself as though he can hear her thoughts.

He grips harder into her flesh and pulls his hips back, only to let his cock slide over her slick folds with teasingly gentle thrusts.

Every stroke pushes her closer and closer to the edge, but not enough to find release. She feels the frustrating want pulsing through her body, the coil getting tighter and tighter, her cunt clenching over nothing.

“Aemond…” she says with a breathless mewl, “please…”

“You really want it, don’t you?” Aemond growls, resting his forehead against hers. “Just feel how wet that empty little cunt is for me.”

Her eyes trail along the angles of his face, the line of his scar, the night sky in his eyes as he stares down at her, the gentle curve of his lips and how they settle into a soft expression. 

Her gaze slips further down, over his throat, his collar, his pale, bare chest, the ridges of the muscles on his abdomen, the slight dip in his waist, the trail of silver hair to his cock, long, hard and flushed with need, transfixed by the way it moves against her.

She holds her breath each time he withdraws, stifling her whines into his mouth when he only keeps teasing her.

“I want it,” she groans, “I want you. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you.”

He lets out a contented hum as he leans down to kiss her. The movements of his mouth are slow and consuming, claiming her with lips, tongue and teeth, wetness and warmth.

She holds him close by the sides of his face. In his violet eye she sees his hunger, his rage, his lust. In his sapphire, she sees oblivion. 

And finally, he eases himself into her. 

He fucks her delicately, dragging his cock through her gently, slowly, deeply. His lips ghost over her skin, her temple, her cheek, back to her mouth with light kisses and strained but soft breaths. 

With a few deft circles over her bud she feels herself come undone around him. Her climax burns through her and she holds him closer for purchase, digging her fingertips into his skin as her resolve melts and her legs tremble around his hips.

Aemond doesn’t stop. He holds her against the mattress with a determined grip, fucking her through her peak until her pleasure settles and simmers once more.

Being kissed by him, held by him, fucked by him feels light a dream, that weightless, numb feeling of being between consciousness and sleep coursing through her limbs. It feels good, it feels deep, it feels perfect.

She cannot be sure how many climaxes he draws from her, she just feels him, his heat, his hands and his skin as he repositions her legs, guides her onto her front, brings her up to her knees, pushes her back down again, until she is a blissful, mindless mess.

He meets his own end when he has her face down on the bed, her face turned to the side against the pillow, his mouth on the underside of her jaw as he pounds into her. 

“You’re doing so well,” she hears him rasp, “you’ve been so good to me… fuck, I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you.”

Her mind is beyond words and coherent thoughts. She utters the only thing she feels, the only thing she can think of, “Aemond… Aemond… Aemond…”

He stills his hips against her rear with a guttural moan, pressing his face against hers, squeezing her waist under his hands. He allows himself a few more shallow thrusts until he is spent. She feels his cock pulse within her, a warmth pooling, his spend dripping from her cunt once he has pulled away.

The weight dissipates from her back and for a moment she lies there, basking in the afterglow, feeling her chest rise and fall against the bed, the softness of her sheets under her fingertips.

She wakes to a gentle breeze running over her skin and slipping down her spine.

She allows her eyes to flutter open and recoils at the pale sunlight beaming through the spaces in the curtains. 

She holds her breath.

She hears no sound or sign of life other than her own pulse. 

She twists herself to sit up, noting that her bedsheets are neat and the hem of her nightgown is where it should be. 

Is it possible that she dreamed it? She remembers it so vividly, but the mind has a way of playing tricks. Perhaps it was only a dream.

“Your dreams exist in my realm,” he had said. “I feel them, as clearly as you perceive the waking world.”

How do we determine what is real? she wonders as she pulls on a robe and goes to open the curtains. The morning floods her bedroom. It brings no warmth, but it brings light and life back into the room. 

To dream is to live beyond ourselves, why should that be any less true than the world around me? 

She seats herself before her vanity, reaching for the drawer for her hairbrush.

But something catches her eye, a glint of colour against mahogany wood, a small gem catching the sunlight.

She takes it between her thumb and index finger and brings it before her eyes; a sapphire, the size of a pearl, a deep and vibrant blue. Its edges are uneven and dull, uncut, as though plucked straight from the earth. 

She turns it about between her fingers. It could be a trick of the light, but there is depth to it, a vastness within. The sapphire seems to capture the night sky, dotted with glimmering stars.

His was the same.

As the dazed state of sleep wears off, she feels the satisfied ache between her legs, the spots on her skin marked by him. She smiles to herself and holds the gem in her palm, this precious gift, this reminder, this promise from the Lord of Dreams.

Tags (comment to be added)

Sweet Dream taglist: @solisarium @sirenangelroyal @sabrinasstar @shygardengalaxy @aemondsfavouritebastard @wintrr13 @thedamewithabook @lexwolfhale @rainyforest777

General taglist: @randomdragonfires @jamespotterismydaddy @theoneeyedprince @tsujifreya @dreamsofoldvalyria

[thesophiewhit]

PHONING FAUST -- A Sapphic Novel of Demonic Contracts, Demisexuality, and Yearning by me! A cool queer author ~

Are you LGBT+ or BIPOC or just REALLY LOVE BOOKS? Interested in being an ARC reader and reading a book and helping a fellow queer indie author out? (Pretty please? -- ARC links all the way at the bottom of this post (beneath the rainbow banner) for those who like Sapphic demon x human angst books ~)

AND LOOK AT THE CHARACTER ART OF MEMPHIS (BADASS DEMON) AND DIAN (HUMAN) BY MY ARTIST FRIEND SNAX

https://linktr.ee/artsnaxk

ABOUT ME

Demisexual?? Queer? Nonbinary? All these were magical words to me until it hit...

Oh-- that's me.

It took me a while to come out as queer, longer to come out as nonbinary, and then some more time to reconcile all this with being a mixed Indonesian kid. A dash of mental health, a sprig of figuring out asexuality and neurodivergence. But atop all that? One thing has been constant.

I've always been a writer.

That's some live footage of me summoning some forces to reign my characters in from being feral.

WHY I WROTE PHONING FAUST

Well, well, well, after years of battling imposter's syndrome, I did it. I wrote another book! It's called PHONING FAUST and it's getting published with queer indie publishing company @ninestarpress-blog because they're all cool and LGBT+ and super talented!

Why did I write PHONING FAUST?

What is... a Faust?

A Faustian bargain is what's popularly known as the devil's bargain. A usually losing situation or a trick where the devil tricks someone out of their soul in exchange for ULTIMATE POWER!

I rewrote Faust to be Sapphic as can be. It stars a mixed Indonesian lesbian named Dian Faust who battles depression tooth and nail and ends up calling a mental health crisis hotline. Bc... she's lonely.

PAUSE-- and this is a horror comedy. Comedy. COMEDY-- you might say?

WHY? HOW? Sounds sad and depressing, right?

WHAT'S FAUST?

Well... in the original retelling version of Goethe's Faust (who retold it from folklore etc etc) the main character of Dr. Faustus accidentally summons the devil or something when he too is about to consider the meaning of life and it gets sad bc he doesn't see one so he makes the devil's bargain FOR ULTIMATE POWER. Or something.

But in my version-- it's based off my experiences as a queer person. Before I had community. Before I understood and accepted myself-- I had a rough time. For a whole bunch of factors outside of that-- I didn't feel like my life was in a good place. And even worse-- I felt isolated.

THE PLOT

I didn't want to bother my friends with my problems. So-- I'd call the Trevor Project or a crisis hotline just to have somebody to talk to. In the same way-- Dian Faust is struggling with depression in the story I write. So she calls a hotline like the Trevor Project just to not be alone.

And guess who she finds?

A super hot genderfluid devil called MEMPHIS, short for Mephistopheles. A pierced and tatted punk rocker who has an interest for telling tall tales and serving Dian Faust's every wish and command! (No, not like that!)

Because Dian Faust, like me, is a mixed Indonesian kid trying to figure out what it means to be queer AND demisexual (finding attraction only after really getting to emotionally connect with someone and feeling, as I explain in the book, a lack of that before then for anyone). And she's figuring plenty out--- including how to save her immortal soul and her feelings for a certain genderfluid demon but if you want to know more-- YOU CAN BUT YOU HAVE TO SCROLL TO THE END OF THIS POST TO FIND OUT !

I wrote this book PHONING FAUST (coming out in 2025 sometime with NineStar Press btw. I have these books CATCH LILI TOO and WAKE THE DEAD also starring Sapphic demiace MCs if it's helpful while you wait!

I WROTE MORE QUEER BOOKS (if interested)! (ARC SIGN UP LINK IS STILL BELOW THIS ONE THO! > FOLLOW THE RAINBOW !!)

MY OTHER QUEER BOOKS: https://sophiawhittemore.com/books/ ) <3 <3 <3

I wrote PHONING FAUST (train of thought, sorry, that's the neurodivergence) because I wanted people to feel less alone.

I was, like Dian Faust and like a lot of people, a queer person who felt like I was on an island unto myself. I didn't know who to turn to-- so I turned to no one. By reaching out to hotlines (no hot devils unfortunately), I managed to get the help I needed to avoid making rash decisions-- to get the help I needed to get better. To take that first step.

PHONING FAUST is a novel that raises the importance of mental health and finding community, and most importantly, not giving up. As Dian Faust says in my upcoming book...

There are stars out there-- I had only to see it.

***

🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

🌈🌈🌈🌈ARC LINK SIGN UPS HERE 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

ARC LINK SIGN UPS IN LINKTREE <3

Want to be an ARC reader for this queer book starring a demisexual Sapphic couple and BIPOC cast?

Sign up here! : https://tr.ee/mWPM8I9Zev

***

Hmmm, demon contracts...now where might young 2010 emo me have heard that before... ? ?

[spaceorphan18]

SO's Guide to the Bridgerton Children so @coffeegleek can tell them apart ;)

Violet Bridgerton

Okay, so first of all this is the mom of all these children. Her husband was Edmund. He got stung by a bee and died, so he is no longer around.

Anthony Bridgerton

Okay, so the oldest son is Anthony. He is the current Viscount (don't ask me about British nobility, I know nothing) and is currently running the Bridgerton estate, though that is not his favorite thing to do. He had very unfortunate sideburns in season one. And he likes to shout things like "you are the bane of my existence" and "LILACS". He does have oldest child syndrome where he acts like he doesn't want to be in charge, but he totally loves being in charge and telling everyone what to do.

His wife is Kate Sharma. She is a delight, and possibly the second best character on this show (obviously after Penelope). So just remember, passionate and loud guy with Kate -- that is Anthony. Oh, and they have one child who is being born in India because Jonathan Bailey is apparently very in demand right now.

Benedict Bridgerton

Benedict is the artsy, bisexual who hangs out on the swings with Eloise. He is an actual delight, but the writers don't seem to really know what to do with him. He makes a good comedic foil to Anthony. Also they cut his hair for seasons 2 and 3 which doesn't help the whole looking the same thing. We're speculating his season is next because of a bunch of hints. In the books he falls in love with a lower class girl.

Colin Bridgerton

Colin is the sweet, sensitive (most likely demisexual) writer and world traveler. He's got some insecurity issues, a massive hero complex, and is a complete simp for his wife.

HOW HAVE YOU FOLLOWED ME FOR THE PAST TWO MONTHS AND NOT KNOW WHO COLIN IS - C'MON GIRL, PAY ATTENTION

He is married to Penelope Featherington, aka Lady Whistledown, aka the best damn character on this whole show. 90% of the time, Colin is hanging off Penelope, so he honestly should be easy to spot. Also, he got her pregnant BEFORE the wedding and little Lord Feathertington was born 8 months into their marriage.

Daphne Bridgerton

She was the main character of Season 1, who looks a lot like Keira Knightly. You don't really need to worry about her, because it's doubtful that she's coming back.

She is married to the Duke - Simon Basset, Lord of Hastings or something. He enjoys licking spoons. Daphne burns for him. Again, he's not coming back so, you know, I wouldn't worry about it.

They do have a child together, a little boy I believe and I think they hinted at a second one? Idk, maybe the kids will come back to hang out with Gregory and Hyacinth at the end of the series.

Eloise Bridgerton

Probably my personal favorite Bridgerton? (Idk, Colin wormed his way up there.) She stands out because Claudia Jessie is just amazing at giving her a lot quirky mannerisms. She doesn't want to get married and is really into women's rights. She is also fucking hilarious. I would love her to be asexual, but the writers insist she's getting a love story at some point, so.... The internet would prefer her to be a lesbian. That's cool, too, but also unlikely to happen.

Eloise spends a lot of her time on swings with Benedict and in is often the third wheel with Pen and Colin (though sometimes Colin is that third wheel).

She and Penelope are BFFs. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!

Francesca Bridgerton

Francesca is SUPER into the piano(forte) and really nothing else. There's really not a whole lot to say about her other than she IS probably going to be the lesbian of the show.

She is currently married to John Stirling. The two are very quiet together and that's exactly how they want it. Don't get too attached to him, he's most likely going to die in the next season. John also has a female cousin named Michaela, whom the internet is mad about because she is a woman -- making Francesca's future love interest a woman instead of a man. I say more power to the lesbians. Calm your tits folks, it'll be fine.

Gregory Bridgerton

OMG, look how adorable this kid is. He's gonna look just like his older brothers when he grows up. They've already given him a tad more to do in Season 3, and he's been an utter delight. I'm sure he'll be great leading Season 8 when we get to it in 2034.

Hyacinth Bridgerton

The youngest Bridgerton! She is excitable and energetic and super excited about all the marriages and also KNOWS who is ending up with who and is totally down for it. She is also a sassy delight and really can't wait until she starts holding her own with Eloise!

THERE YOU GO THAT'S THE WHOLE BRIDGERTON FAMILY - DOES THAT HELP??

[wings-of-fire-confessions]

Hot take. Everyone needs to stop pointing at one character in Jade Winglet and be like “AH! They're THE asshole of the group! That one! That one specifically!” Because everyone is an asshole.

Moonwatcher won't shut the fuck up which causes people to feel bad (Reference; Winter Turning, Pg. 75) because, hypocritically, she only has a censor if it “benefits” (hard quotation because it has always failed her. Reference; Luna and Moonwatchers interaction) her.

Qibli is an ass, like, a HUGE ass. He pressures Turtle and berates the very thing he's self-conscious about. He's got massive main-character syndrome; he wants power, he always wanted power, but he wants COMPLETE control of power without any repercussions. One of the reasons he refused Darkstalker's offer was because he wasn't entirely sure he would slip something in there.

Winter is an ass, he literally attacks other dragons without thinking about it (Reference; Peril), he's quick to strike and like Qibli, berates Turtle for being “a waste of potential” to his tribe.

Kinkajou goes off on everyone's backs and uses the remnants of the magic scroll to control and transform Darkstalkers against his consent or will. She has essentially killed him via poison. The whole book and DS character arc was trying to push through a narrative that you shouldn't control people, that you shouldn't take away their free will, and that you shouldn't transform their being into a form for your desire and comfort. Yet it's completely flipped on its head because Kinkajou wanted to be “a little silly” with her solution in ending the IceWing and NightWing conflict. She does exactly just this and that makes her part of the asshole list.

Turtle is inactive, his inaction causes a lot of problems for the others in a negative way in order to preserve his own self. He uses animus magic on Anemone just to make sure that he doesn't get any attention but this backfires and his sister is left not only being used as a WMD by Queen Coral, additionally, she is also left feeling alone in her magic. Turtle just sat on the sidelines as he actively watched Anemone get used like a tool by her mother and groomed by a disgusting snotball of a power-hungry political obsessed eel bbq dragon. His “neutrality” was incredibly toxic towards the upbringing of his sister. Yet, despite being the one guy everyone likes to pounce on and beat down he's probably the LEAST asshole character out of everyone in Jade Winglet. You can point at Turtle's issue of “not doing anything” and dig deeper to realize he's a child for one (an even younger child when he enchanted Anemone) and for two it's an unhealthy trauma response from his family. He has helped and supported every single Jade Winglet member in their “fall/on their knees” development and all he ever got in return was those to treat him like garbage (with Peril being the only one who wanted to help him and realizing how shitty animus magic is for him and attempted to make a situation better by ripping up the scroll with good intentions in mind).

Peril is probably the most self-explanatory but she tries. I can't really say anything else about the flaming toaster oven w/ the pizza box inside it dragon that not everyone else has said negatively about Peril before. She's uncontrollable and she constantly talks about hurting others, yak yak yak… Brownie points is that she's attempting to become a better person and trying to find her own path in life.

Now that everyone has run away typing furiously in the comments reblogging tags about this and that I want to emphasize that everything I said above is about CANON CONTENT. You can LOVE YOUR ASSHOLES!!! I personally LOVE MY ASSHOLES!!! There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that the protagonists that you read aren't the greatest people in the whole wide world. I know I wouldn't want to be in the same room as Peril if she was an actual person; with that said that doesn't mean she ISN’T my favorite dragon in the whole gosh darn freaking series. Winter is a bastard, I love Winter. Qibli is a bastard, I love Qibli. Moonwatcher… Actually, no. Moonwatcher can not. (this last one is a joke and a personal opinion, if I was to look at her into it retrospectively and have a positive thing to say I would say she's very neurodivergent relatable, and her power is very autism-coded.).

Jade Winglet is full of bastards.

I love my Jade Winglet bastards.

Stop being in denial and using “well I don't like [Insert Jade Winglet Member] because of what they did with [Insert Plot Point Here]” and accept that your favorite is a bastard. Tired of hearing about this rank system on who's more fucked up than the other and debating if they deserve love and respect for that. Ofc they do. They're your favs, y'all don't need to push or morally justify trying to like your favs by putting another Jade Winglet member down. You aren't impressing anyone or going “GOTCHA!” for this thought process.

Now stop fighting you cursed dragon hyperfixated disaster fandom. (/j)

Drops Mic

.

[when-wax-wings-melt]

Keeper of the Lost Cities: A Love-Hate-Love Relationship, And What It Can Do To Your Psyche 

This is the essay you guys wanted to see after this presentation dropped; to be clear, this is the final draft. The presentation was made from the rough draft, so it's rather different.

Also, the essay prompt was to make it personal. So the italicized bits are where I was trying to do that, and they are both separate and a part of the essay. They break up the flow, but are also a response to the normal bits of the essay. You get it. Here we go.

In total, the Keeper of The Lost Cities (KOTLC) series by Shannon Messenger has over 7000 pages, split between nine and a half books (Book 8.5 was, uselessly, a novella) with a planned tenth coming in late 2024. It’s the kind of series that hooks you the same way a fisherman hooks a fish: with a promise of a treat that goes very, very unfulfilled. This is to say: KOTLC is a good series, at least at first. It’s certainly been my core obsession for a good (or bad) five years. It’s a hook because you can’t escape once you’ve begun. It’s my own personal brand of heroine, as Edward Cullen might say if Bella were a too-long book series that doesn’t resolve any plotlines or character arcs and instead piles more information on top of worldbuilding until contradictions are more plentiful than the packed main cast.

KOTLC is a good series, but the idea of recommending it feels like I’d be violating several articles of the Geneva Convention. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and yet the thought of it ending is an impossibility on the scale of the apocalypse and I hope (I’d rather) the world ends before this series does. KOTLC is a minefield of sloppy worldbuilding, deeply compelling characters, and---where am i without it?---bits of myself woven into the many, many words, sinking under my skin and revealing what I think I have to offer. 

Sophie Foster is the protagonist of the series, trudging the long, never-ending path to what hopefully will be a happy ending. Like the author, Sophie has blonde hair and brown eyes, making her unique among her fellow elves, who all have blue eyes, including the rare-among-the-main-cast people of color.

There are so many things that make Sophie weird, strange, unique, attractive to every boy who sees her, and otherwise out of the ordinary: for example, she has five special abilities that allow her to teleport, read minds, inflict pain, speak any language, and enhance the abilities of others---i cannot do what she can, but she breathes and i do too---There are certain things she has very much in common with her fellow elves, such as her slender build and flawless skin, but much more makes her, as her childhood bullies would say, “A Special Sophie-Flake.”

Sophie was raised by humans, which not only means that the steadily growing pile of unique traits is now tottering dangerously above my head, but also that she’s clumsy and wildly insecure. This insecurity has a purpose and a source, making it one of the most annoyingly (and terrifyingly) accurate depictions of teenage anxiety in middle-grade media (if I were a vampire pulled from normal vampire lore rather than Twilight and I looked at her, I’d be invisible)---so do you get it? do i? 

which one of us is me---Sophie has intense imposter syndrome, never believing she’s worthy of the overwhelming support, approval, and desire heaped upon her throughout her years in the Lost Cities. In Book One, four teenage boys were no less than obsessed with her, possibly because she, presumably, talked to them sometimes. Valin, a “drooly boy” (named due to his constant drooling, as one might expect), is forced to ballroom dance with Sophie in detention, and later gives her a card and a bracelet professing his admiration. Dex Dizznee manages to sustain his crush until he finally makes his move in Book Six, and is rejected in humiliation after she kisses him to make him realize his feelings aren’t actually real---when I know that he was lying to himself, is lying to himself. truth is a phase and it ends once you hit age eight---After Book Six, only two remain: Fitz and Keefe, each of whom has made their crushes very, desperately, embarrassingly clear to someone who very clearly returns both sets of feelings.

“Sooner or later you're going to have to solve the triangle. Or should we get real and call it a square?” (Messenger Neverseen), notes Keefe, with his usual subtle confession of his feelings---only leaving me with questions: did he want her to know at all? is he chasing the person or the change? the girl or the excitement? the wanting or the wanted?---The love polygon of however many vertices is both acknowledged and not by Sophie— she’s aware of her feelings for Fitz from chapter two of Book One, becomes aware of her feelings for Keefe in Book Nine, and mentally friend-zones Dex every other sentence, even when it’s not really relevant to the rest of her inner monologue. Her inability to believe with confidence that she might be worthy of a crush (or any sort of positive acknowledgment) is layered beneath every thought where she considers the possibility of being liked, and then promptly dismisses it.

---she knows that admitting it means being wrong. i will be wrong, unless i guess right and am big-headed, full of myself. who am i---

Sophie’s oblivious nature stems from her human upbringing, directly resulting from the trauma of developing the ability to read minds at age five. She hears her parents wishing she were normal or better at making friends and fitting in, her sister complaining about her presence, and her classmates at school judging everything she does.

She sticks out like a sore thumb in the human world, only to come to the elven world and be called a freak, malfunctioning, a genetic experiment, and a failure, just when she thought she might fit in---when i am a puzzle piece, a corner without the connection---Her alienation in the human world (referred to as the Forbidden Cities in the series) comes from her level of success, skipping five grades due to her elven intelligence and photographic memory, and getting into Harvard at age twelve.

While she hates the combination of jealousy and admiration she’s constantly showered with there---who hates it and loves it at the same time? isolation and contradiction---in the elven world, she’s hated for other reasons: accidentally breaking laws, making mistakes, or simply being a blip on the seemingly perfect streak the elven world has for peace and security. Is there any mystery as to why she would never believe that people actually, genuinely care for her? She’s formed her protective coating of denial that lasts her through every time Fitz gives her a gift and she convinces herself it means nothing, or every time Dex shows his jealousy, or every time Keefe goes to her before anyone else.

Even when she kisses Dex, after he tells her in anything but words that he likes her, she doubts herself—are two sides of the same coin, where heads is insecurity and tails is egotism. question: who is she?---She doesn’t think he actually likes her, appreciates her, admires her. This doubt works its way into everything she does, every relationship she has, platonic, romantic, or otherwise. Yet again, she shows her status as a reflection---answer: she’s a mirror. i know who i am because she exists---reading into everything and still not believing or trusting that it truly exists outside of her imagination.

Any time Sophie sees a girl she perceives as prettier, more elegant, or smarter than she is, she instantly develops a jealousy complex—relating either to how Fitz acts around them, or how they project the confidence and normalcy she wishes she can achieve---to tell me whether or not i am alone---She surrounds herself with people who are described as incredibly stunning even in a world where every elf naturally matches the ideal Western beauty standard.

Yet she refuses to believe that she, too, might be beautiful, and instead considers herself dull and boring next to Biana, Linh, Marella, and Maruca---(and ten books later, i still do not have an answer)---Even Stina, who has committed the number one crime (it’s a federal offense) of having “a mass of frizzy curls” (KOTLC 164), is considered beautiful when her hair is “tamed” and slicked back. This framing of beauty applies to the boys, too, but none of Sophie’s descriptions are quite as detailed, quite as admiring, or quite as wistful as when she’s describing Biana Vacker’s heart-shaped, perfectly glossed lips---so, yes, i look at her and see myself. is that what i’m trying to say? is that what i am?---

But the queer-coding doesn’t stop (or begin, really) with Sophie’s dedicated denial of both her worth as a human being and her desire to kiss her pretty girl friends. A connection called a “Cognate Bond” is often referred to in the text as the closest two elves can become, emotionally and mentally.

Cognates exist when two Telepaths (such as Sophie) have such a deep and unbreakable trust bond that they become more skilled together than they were apart. In creating and maintaining this bond, they have to complete trust exercises and not hold back secrets keeping them from total confidentiality---she thrives on secrets---Sophie’s cognate is her friend (and love interest, and, debatably, ex-boyfriend) Fitz, whose romantic relationship was in a large part focused on their cognate one. Their trust exercises involve staring into each other’s eyes, holding hands, having matching rings, and Fitz telling Sophie that she’s the only person he can truly trust.

Fitz also asks his father at one point if cognates are allowed to date each other— his father affirms the statement. Notably, Alden has the authority to do so since he himself was a cognate, only undergoing a nasty breakup— sorry, only losing the bond, after his cognate, Quinlin, kept too many secrets. It’s implied that two other characters were once almost Cognates, only to grow too far apart when one of them, Prentice, had his sanity forcibly shattered and was locked in prison, leaving his (gay lover) best friend, Tiergan, to raise his son---while cognatedom thrives on truth, and also regret, and also the denial of both---The choice to parallel Fitz/Sophie, Alden/Quinlin, and Tiergan/Prentice was possibly not a conscious one but it still resonates with hundreds of queer teen readers who look at the portrayal of utter devotion and trust between two men and think, Wow. This is what I see in myself---but without the denial, without the regret, what are we left with? what do we see?

we see the truth.

We see ourselves.

There are so, so many other issues that I could easily delve into in this series (such as the strangely Western portrayal of gender roles, the racism concerning the Song family, irresponsible adults and the ethics of genetic experimentation, the girlboss and cardboardification of quite literally every woman, etc) and just as many things that make Keeper of the Lost Cities worth it (Fitz’s anger, the development of villains, Sophie’s trans-coding, Keefe’s trauma, physical ramifications of guilt, Marella and Fintans’ pyrokinesis/queer-coding, whatever Dimitar has going on, etc).

The series tends to skew to the “not good” side, although on occasion it will topple abruptly into the “incredible work of art and exploration of wildly interesting character dynamics” before rising like an angel back to heaven into its original position as “questionable in terms of taste.” Mostly, what defines KOTLC is how it’s interpreted rather than the content itself. Someone far different (and with far worse taste) than I might see Fitz’s quest for vengeance and call him a red flag in elven form, while I call it a ridiculously interesting exploration of what grief, near idol worship, toxic standards, and guilt can do to a teenage boy past his limit.

But I am not the voice of the fandom (even though I definitely should be). I look at Sophie Foster and see myself, but that does not make her me. These characters always feel so painfully real, desperately relatable, as if Messenger cobbled together a main cast from bits of my life, but they are not. In the end, they are just characters. In the end, it’s just a series made for middle schoolers, in the same way the sun is just the sun, and the stars are just there to twinkle merrily and not to be explored.

(where am i without it? I cannot do what she can, but she breathes and I do too so do you get it? do i?  which one of us is me when I know that he was lying to himself, is lying to himself. truth is a phase and it ends once you hit age eight only leaving me with questions: did he want her to know at all? is he chasing the person or the change? the girl or the excitement? the wanting or the wanted? she knows that admitting it means being wrong. i will be wrong, unless i guess right and am big-headed, full of myself. who am i when i am a puzzle piece, a corner without the connection who hates it and loves it at the same time? isolation and contradiction aretwo sides of the same coin, where heads is insecurity and tails is egotism. question: who is she? answer: she’s a mirror. i know who i am because she exists to tell me whether or not i am alone (and ten books later, i still do not have an answer) so, yes, i look at her and see myself. is that what i’m trying to say? is that what i am? she thrives on secrets while cognatedom thrives on truth, and also regret, and also the denial of both but without the denial, without the regret, what are we left with? what do we see? we see the truth. We see ourselves.

[hypogryffin]

ok but like so you know how portable had that one yukiko cameo. so like OBVI the remake is going to have p5 characters appear also <-straight copium. anyway here are my pitches

Image ID:

Three pages of rough sketches with colour blocks. Image 1 has Maruki (coloured blue) standing awkwardly with a seemingly nervous smile on his face, looking younger and wearing Gekkoukan High School's uniform. A smaller drawing next to him shows himself and Rumi (red) smiling and laughing together. The text next to them reads "If Maruki was school-age at the time of P3's story he'd be about 22-25 years old [during P5 canon]". The number 22 has an arrow pointing to it that reads "1st year HS", and 25 has another that says "3rd year HS". The text continues, "Since he's supposed to be older (I think), it wouldn't make sense for him to show up". A wailing emoji with its hands up in the air is added next to the block of text. From there, an arrow with the caption "But!" points to another sketch of Ichinose (green) in Gekkoukan's summer uniform. The message continues next to another drawing of Ichinose, this time in the regular/winter uniform, "I do think Ichinose is probably the right age for it! Definitely not because I've been wanting to draw her recently nope no siree". Further notes continue down, reading "One or two [ear] piercings, none on the face" with a drawing of an earlobe, "Shorter hair" with a dotted line and a sketch of scissors depicting that her hair is about shoulder-length, and finally, "She'd still be in her stoic era so no smiles here, LOL." Additionally, back near the drawings of Maruki, there is another sketch of Rumi in Gekkoukan's uniform, with a note that says, "Were Maruki and Rumi canonically high school sweethearts? Or did I just hallucinate that information"

Image 2: A drawing of Zenkichi (dark blue) in an unbuttoned suit. He has his hair in a ponytail, and his arms folded behind his back. The text next to him reads, "Zenkichi, approximately mid-to-late 30s. / He can't be aware of the Dark Hour for [the sake of] continuity in Strikers, obviously, but he could still be reasonably(?) involved? I.E. assisting Kurosawa with something? Maybe related to a request from Elizabeth, a social link story(???), or main story things like [A block that reads "Spoilers" in all capital letters]'s death or Fuuka's "disappearance". I don't know, man." There are a few asides written next to it, reading "Maybe [he and Kurosawa are] friends" and "Investigating Apathy Syndrome?" respectively. Then the text continues, "Could be [Public Security], or maybe a career police officer (as in pre-promotion or something, I don't know I'm not a pig, myself". An additional doodle has the information "Akane would be about 7 years old" alongside a drawing of Zenkichi blabbering senselessly about his daughter, showing off a set of pictures, to the Persona 3 Protagonist (light blue), who looks awkward and has "Go away" written behind him as his internal thoughts several times.

Also, there is a sketch of Mitsuru (red) in plainclothes, smiling as she holds up two tickets, saying "I have received tickets to a gallery by Madarame Ichiryuusai, I was wondering if you wanted to accompany me there." The next drawing is of Yukari (pink) smiling and looking up from the book she's reading, though visibly apprehensive. She says, "Uh, yeah, sure, that sounds fun!" While her inner monologue yells "That sounds so fucking boring holy shit". It then cuts to her gripping the protagonist's shoulders, saying, "I need you to come with me to this stupid ass art museum I can't say no to Mitsuru-senpai." The protagonist says, "I, like, could not want to do anything less-" but is interrupted by Yukari adding, "I'll buy you dinner after and you can bring Aegis." The protagonist says, "Deal."

Image 3: A drawing of the lobby of the dorms. The protagonist (blue) sits on one of the couches with Koromaru (grey) sleeping with his head in his lap. The TV is on, showing a picture of someone standing at a podium with microphones pointed at them, and blares "Diet member Shido Masayoshi makes bold new proposal on foreign policy..." The protagonist watches, seeming disinterested. The next drawing is of the Big Bang Burger logo, with someone saying, "'Big Bang Burger'?", getting the reply, "Yeah, they just opened a shop last week. Wild Duck's got competition now, I guess." The next panel is of Ryoji Mochizuki (teal) and the protagonist standing together, revealing Ryoji to have been the first one to speak, now continuing, "Eeh, wow, that name is so lame!" as he smiles genially. He then turns to the protagonist, pointing to himself as he says, "Hey, you wanna try it? I'll pay!" The protagonist shrugs and says, "Sure."

End ID.

[cripplecharacters]

Hi, I'm writing a book with a lot of characters who have facial differences for various reasons, and there are two I was hoping to ask you about because I'm afraid they may be too trope-y due to how they are when the reader meets them.

One is a girl who had a traumatic injury as a baby that caused the forced removal of around half of her face, including the skull, meaning she's missing one eye, around a third of her jaw, one cheekbone- the scar goes from right next to her nose back to just in front of her right ear, up to just a touch above her hairline (where her face meets the crown of her head) to halfway down her neck, as if someone took a upward swing at her head with some kind of blade. This girl has a magical healing ability, which is how she survived the injury, and has received a few surgeries years after the fact to try and give her face a more normal shape, but cosmetics aren't something she's extremely interested in. It's her face and she's pretty used to it, she likes it, and if people want to freak out at the sight of her scar then that's on them and she'll laugh. Still, when the reader first meets her, she is covering her face, though not because of her facial difference. She has a noticeably nonhuman skin tone, indigo, that marks her as someone with strong magic and thus puts her in a lot of danger, so she covers her skin to keep people from trying to kill her. This mask also includes a kind of plastic face shield under the cloth part that gives her face a slightly more normal shape. She ditches both pretty quickly once she's in a safe situation where she won't be killed over her skin colour, but I'm still really worried she falls into the mask trope.

The other character has Williams Syndrome, a scar from a clef lip, a major scar that covers around 70% of her body, including part of her face, and her pupils are kind of foggy from her glaucoma, eyes not usually focusing which makes it kind of obvious she's nearly completely blind (retinopathy of prematurity and recurring glaucoma.) The thing about her is that, when she reader first meets her, she's used her shapeshifting to hide most of her facial difference (all except the features from her Williams Syndrome) because there's an emergency going on and she would rather not be interrogated about her face while trying to save someone's life. She loses control of her shapeshifting and goes back to her normal form, with her scars and all of that, while extremely angry at someone, which does shock the two people in the room who don't see her day-to-day and who don't know that this is what she usually looks like. As far as this character is concerned, her scars are something she takes pride in. Her Williams Syndrome is a fact of her life, as is her blindness, her cleft lip scar has been there for as long as she can remember, it's as unremarkable to her as her eyebrows, and the big scar is from the time she fought what was basically a god a few years back and won, and she takes pride in that one. She usually doesn't shapeshift this stuff away (other than changing her eyes just a bit, just enough to make it so that she isn't obviously blind because that puts a target on her back,) because she doesn't see a point in it.

There are several other characters with facial differences, both congenital and from injuries, including the main character who has Williams Syndrome, I just want to know if there's anything I need to change about these two. Thank you

Hi!

First things first - great to see you have multiple characters with FD! That makes a lot of difference for tropes. Even better to hear that they're diverse among themselves! Love to see that.

For the first character, it sounds fine! She doesn't use it for her scarring - I enjoy that you make it clear - and doesn't wear it all the time, or even the majority of it. If you want to be very safe, you can have a character who is also indigo and hides it, but without a facial difference - could be referenced only in passing, or even just a mention that it was a some other, FD-less character in the same situation as her that gave her the idea on how to hide it. But again, it sounds good - I think of it in the same way as a character with FD who is a knight or a surgeon who covers their face when necessary because that's what needed at the moment.

The second one is a bit more complicated but it's okay as well! First thing I thought of is to make sure what type (open, closed, congenital, etc.) of glaucoma she has, as not all of them change the outward appearance of the eye! Just something to keep in mind to not accidentally mix the congenital appearance with open-angle onset. But back to the question. It's nice that when she transforms she still keeps some of her disability's features! As for the "hiding" I think it can be okay if done occasionally/not constantly, and especially if it's actually somewhat addressed in the story - with how, for example, people pay way too much attention to people with FDs and that can be awkward and uncomfortable. Of course it doesn't have to be said like that, but the sentiment is real for a ton of visibly disabled people - sometimes you just want others to stop staring and mind their business. That's real. Just pay attention to not make it seem like it's the disability's fault, but it doesn't seem like you need that remainder. For the "reveal", this is the slightly complicated part. It's not bad, but I would just advise you to use words carefully. I would consider it an interesting scenario that could be possibly written in a pejorative way. Make sure to put the shock on the change in her appearance, not the fact that it's a scar (or, if that is what the other characters focus on, narrate it in a way that shows it's a reaction that this specific person has, not a reasonable reaction to that information). Having someone you know shape-shift into someone else in front of you is the horrifying part, not the fact that they have a scar! Last thing, in regard to her shapeshifting her eyes' appearance - most people are extremely bad at telling when someone is blind. I suppose that it depends on the culture and knowledge of the environment she's in, but just something to keep in mind.

I will admit that I was rather nitpicky in this answer because I still wanted to give some suggestions and input, and there just isn't anything major to critique. In most questions I get about FD there are usually many glaring issues that I try to help with, but your story... doesn't really have those. You seem to be careful and cautious in your writing of characters with facial differences and I appreciate this a lot! Consider my answer a suggestion on how to expand on your characters or story, not "fix" them.

I'm very pleasantly surprised and I hope I get to read more things like this! :) (smile emoji)

Mod Sasza

[burnsopale]

A Scarlet Pimpernel conundrum that lives rent free in my brain:

According to Sally Dugan, Orczy continued to write Pimpernel books mostly because her publishers kept asking for them and they were paying her bills (I call it Conan Doyle syndrome)

Dugan says that Orczy couldn't keep using Marguerite as the protagonist because convention demanded that she stay at home as a good little wife (boo!)

In her search for other potential POV characters, Orczy usually used one of the innocents that Percy is going to rescue, but matching them all in frequency is, unusually, recurring villain Chauvelin

(Quick aside to mention that the members of the League are usually out as POV characters because they know too much, note that when they are given the POV, they tend to be chafing against Percy refusing to share the details of his current plan with them. Percy is almost entirely out as a POV character because he's a trickster type hero and having access to his thoughts would kill the tension. That's also the reason why having the villain as a main POV character works; the question is never IF Percy will win, but HOW, so we must know all the difficulties in his way but not how he intends to overcome them.)

Once Chauvelin becomes a POV character he is immediately written much more sympathetically, from his very first scene in Elusive where he is shown to be vulnerable (threatened by Robespierre), cool (doesn't care about the threat) and admirable (his motivation is contrasted positively with Robespierre's). From this book onward, he has stopped taking snuff (trauma lol), stopped cackling evilly, and the hand-rubbing has gone from a diabolical gesture to a sign of his excessive nerves. He is shown to be increasingly traumatized by Percy's almost superhuman luck and skill, he is constantly exhausted and almost hysterical with nerve-strain, and he is continually contrasted as a true believer in the cause against his power-hungry, selfish, stupid colleagues. In Elusive especially he is heavily paralleling Marguerite. What I'm asking is, did Orczy miss her female protagonist so much she started writing Chauvelin the same way???

[noodle-made-a-mistake]

A short list of things that bother me about the Magisterium canon:

Forgive me in advance for rambling, I have to get these thoughts out of my brain lmao (also it's been a couple years so correct me if I'm wrong! (I really hope I’m wrong on some of these :’) )) Spoilers ahead obviously!

● The lack of Calron :(

● Not taking the opportunity to develop Tamara's character and keeping her static until she's randomly just different. Strong female characters aren't just skilled and perfect until their one flaw (usually it's having feelings like any other human being) is revealed shockingly (that's just sloppy characterization), they should be crucial to the plot and not overlooked in favor of developing other characters (from what I remember she literally was my favorite while reading the series until she just got annoying (??) after a while, of course that could just be because the story is told through Call's perspective but still)

● The entire school system that I need more info on bc it sounds so unthought out and not like something that has existed for hundreds of years

● The forceful nature of making people serve as masters?? That makes no sense? Like, “Congratulations on not dying during your schooling or in the war(s), your prize is forced labor 👍.”

● Also THE COLLEGIUM WAS MENTIONED AND NEVER ELABORATED UPON

● TGT. Least favorite book. Get out. Tgt truthers how do you do it??

● The Maugris plot twist. It destroys the meaning behind the past four books. It's just so uncalled for and frankly just sloppy ig? I love the idea in a way, but only if it's foreshadowed from the beginning. Also I'm too attached to the complicated dynamic of Alastair raising his possible ex-bestie for it to end up like that

● The fact that the iron trio is out of school for half the series, I'd like to know what's normal, y'know??

● THE LACK OF ELABORATION ABOUT THE FIRST GEN I WANT TO KNOW MORE I HAVE TO KNOW MORE

● They did my man Constantine especially wrong, give him some ✨️character✨️ aside from E V I L and problematic (trademark) and charming (???)

● AND ALASTAIR GOD TELL ME MORE?? He's characterized as distant and obviously traumatized with his hate of his magic involved past but I just need to know what that past was like. Like who was he before his dead wife syndrome?? Idk but I'd of liked any excuse to know more about it just so I can understand him more??

● Please give me a single character trait of Declan's?? Like he was mentioned a handful of times and that's all we got. He was just some guy and I am hating it !!

● And Sarah. Like. She was a mom and liked peace as a concept but she also made a cool ass knife. That's a lot of things left up for interpretation. And I know Call wasn’t allowed to ask questions for plot reasons but god i wish he had more information about his own dead mother for Christ's sake

● Also other than a victim, who was Jericho? I need to know who this kid who drew scribbles in the margins of his very important journal while writing about how he was slowly being killed was. What was his relationship really like with his brother if he was so scared to say that he was dying or what gave him the impression that he didn't care?? It's fascinating and I need him under a microscope immediately

● Also the lack of queer representation until the last two books. AND THEN IT WASN'T EVEN ANY OF OUR MAIN CAST. Literally the saddest L ever :(

● AND AARON WAS NEVER CONFIRMED QUEER LIKE WHAT THE FUCK JUST L O O K AT HIS CHARACTER AND INFACT ALL OF OUR CORE CAST IS AT LEAST BI LIKE C O M E O N (ik they're like kids but even I knew I was not straight when I was like 11 and i lived in the most conservative non-LGBTQ-friendly town known to man)

● Low key, callmara was so bad, like I love them but not the way it happened, horrible set up. Tamara deserved so much better and to not have her entire character destroyed by becoming a love interest. I wish they thought about her as an independent character instead of the means to implement a romantic subplot in tgt, they did so good in the first books with that

● Also there's no elaboration on what chaos is. It's the mystical 5th element. Wow! Let's go girl, give us nothing! You'd think that if Makaris were so exceptionally rare and special that we'd get some explanation on how they come to be and what it is exactly that they can control but we're just left to assume it's the special "chosen one" type of thing. Idk it bothers me for some reason :/

That's just off the top of my head and it's been years since I read the series all the way through (I should do a reread soon). For the most part I adore this funky series and I hate to bash it but I felt the need to ramble about it's shortcomings because I'm not crazy, right?? It had so much potential! Anyway, I'm sort of glad for the blanks in the story despite complaining about them because it leaves room for fics and fan interpretations that I always love to see, but on the other hand, I'd like for the story to feel finished and not like a last minute science fair project.

Thanks for sticking around for my late night rambling lmao

[panlight]

So I saw that you had issues with main characters not just with twilight but Harry Potter and Katniss as well. Could you elaborate because to me Bella loses nothing, literally nothing and while I refuse to start the Harry Potter books and I can’t say for sure about him, to me Katniss is the complete opposite. She loses everything, it takes years of work to get Peeta and her back to a normalcy of what they had.

Im curious what main character syndrome you were referring to for both characters because while Bella magically (through SM) handles everything and suffers no consequences like the characters around her should, the other main characters aren’t like that at all. This is not an attack at all by the way but I’m curious as to how you compare and differentiate between different main characters

I didn't mean to imply that they had the same main character syndrome, rather I meant that I just tend to not like main character regardless! There's something about my own psychology that lowkey resents main characters for getting all the attention when, obviously, they have to get it as the main character or they wouldn't be the main character. That's why I prefer ensembles where no one is the 'main' character, because then I don't get annoyed by all the extra attention paid to the main.

Katniss does suffer consequences and in a lot of ways she has less agency than Bella does. Her persona as this symbol of resistance is largely crafted by other people and sometimes she's only reluctantly going along with it. That said, there's a scene in Mockingjay where they are all hiding out in Tigress' basement (I think? Been awhile since I read these) and Katniss is pretending to be asleep and Gale and Peeta are talking about her and I distinctly remember thinking "this is the Tent Scene all over again, UGH."

Harry Potter, at least, is not a first person narrator so while all the attention and specialness of him (the boy who lived! he's a mistreated orphan! but famous in the secret magic world! and rich!) is not my favorite, it comes off slightly less obnoxious to me than a main character having to relay how much everyone else thinks they're amazing in their own voice. Bella relaying Renesmee saying "Momma, you're special" feels, idk, annoying to me in a way that reading a third person narrator describing the magic baby telling her mother she's special wouldn't. Likewise with Bella describing how amazed the Cullens are by her being the best newborn of all time. Same with Katniss relaying how Peeta and Gale love her or how everyone is inspired by her. It's a pitfall of first person narration unfortunately. It comes off kind of feeling like bragging, but there's no other way to convey the information from a first person POV like that.

tl;dr I just tend to not like the main character, no matter who it is. Some part of me doesn't like them because they are singled out as the main character, which is generally why I prefer books/movies/shows with ensembles or multiple POV characters. Also I think part of it might be that because we get less information about the supporting characters they are inherently more interesting to me, because there's more room for my imagination to run wild.

[insufferableprotagonistpoll]

Round 2

Propaganda why Clary Frey/Fairchild is insufferable:

"Here we go again: She found out she was part of a race that opresses pretty much every magical being ever and immediately jumped onto being as racist as people that were raised in that cultist lifestyle. She calls a man ""Warlock"" the way people say slurs.

Terrible friend. Poor Simon never gets a break. And she's an even worse girlfriend to him. He is understandably upset when he finds out the person she most wants to kiss isn't him and asks for some space, but no, not on her fucking watch. She won't stay away from his place all of a sudden. Despite never really having time for him prior.

Goes up to a closeted gay man and tells him all smugly she knows about his sexuality and acts like he's the problem for not owning it. He lives in a homophobic society where violent punishment and exile is normal.

Speaking of exile, almost gets a woman that was nice to her exiled so she can break the law.

Demands aforementioned warlock do necromancy and when he tells her about his trauma, she throws a tantrum. She never apologises. That and, she and her friend always go to him for their problems, and are never grateful when he helps.

Has the ability to wish for one thing only once ever, wishes for a shitty man to come back to life.

The incest thing. She wanted to fuck a man while thinking they were fully biologically related. Yeah. And technically they're still adoptive siblings. True love.

Her cringe evil arc.

Apparently she's worse in the books. Great to hear."

"I don’t remember much from the books but she was kind of annoying"

"She finds out about a magical world she's been unaware of her whole life and it takes her five seconds to jump onto the fantasy racism train. Constantly demands people do dangerous stuff for her. Causes so many problems and when someone points out that she's going to hurt someone they're treated like they're an asshole. Walks up to a closeted man like "I know what you are". Is a terrible friend to her childhood 'bestie'. Falls in love with her brother, one the worst men alive."

"Worst case of Main Character Syndrome you'll ever see."

Propagande why Kirito is insufferable:

"Edgy boy, but also very bland personality"

""Yeah, i was a beta tester. Yeah im better than you. This is something that is normal to assume because of the first fact” theres more but that shit is so wild to me it instantly made me hate his ass"

"Absolute nothing of a protagonist. Just plain annoying and unlike most shounens there never seems to be any challenge for him. He's just always the best at everything."

"He’s Kirito"

[writingwithcolor]

Black woman with shockingly dark eyes and impossible features - is this exotification?

@pretend-this-username-is-funny asked:

Okay so I'm writing a superhero story and one of my main characters is from Ethiopia. I know it's really frowned upon to give black characters "exotic" features, especially things like light eyes and perfectly straight natural hair. My character is described as having very dark skin but she also has some features that are meant to show her powers. For instance, her eyes are very dark but they're described as being like oil in that they're very shiny and reflect a lot of color, and she has specks of shiny green and blue on her cheeks which are described as freckles. 

She also has really long bright green hair but I want to make it clear that it's really thick and not at all straight. It's not really curly though either, but I don't know any words for hair like that. Are there any adjectives I can use to describe the texture? 

These features are supposed to reflect her powers which are basically colorful blasts of energy but I don't know if they could come off as trying to make the character exotic. I have a bunch of white characters who also have unusual or otherwise impossible features (one is a girl with white hair and unnaturally pale skin and there's also a boy with cat like pupils and fangs). Having unusual physical traits is normal for superpowered people in this world but I don't know if this could be potentially harmful.

"Exotic" features on Black people

I know it's really frowned upon to give black characters "exotic" features, especially things like light eyes and perfectly straight natural hair.

I wouldn't say it's frowned upon to give Black people light eyes and straight, natural hair in itself. It’s when creators choose these features for Black people time and time again over those with darker features and those more commonly associated to their heritage. 

It's also a problem when characters with these "special" traits are exalted, either by the narrative, fate, or other characters, while the other "non-special" Black people aren't given favorable treatment, if they even exist in the story at all. Books tend to represent Black people with light skin or stand-out features first, especially Black women (Black men are more often allowed to be dark and still be seen as attractive, although not always).

When you do have characters with these extra-special traits, it's nice to avoid the pitfalls mentioned above. Also, adding important Black characters without these traits helps to balance out the special snowflake syndrome.

This applies to your character as well. The oil-dark eyes doesn't read as exotifying to me. The shiny green and blue freckles are adding some more "main character syndrome" to the mix, but i'm not too concerned. You have characters of other races with unusual and impossible features. This helps to avoid implications of her only deserving to be there because she's not like the others.

As for her hair Thick, not quite curly, but not straight at all? I think you're looking for the word wavy. Check out our hair guide for more words that may help with texture words, but I think wavy works fine.

~Mod Colette

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Hello! Any advice about writing Lily? I’m hopefully writing the co-writing summer challenge with her as one of the main characters, so any advice would be appreciated!

You mean Lily Evans?

Well, the thing is, @therealvinelle and I have... pretty much made that character up. I'll fully admit to it because what we're given in canon is hilariously small in comparison to James (given a lot more screentime and defining traits)

We're told that Lily was a favorite of Slughorn's (which per a post that has yet to be written was a... alarming scene in HBP, let me tell you) and that she was talented in Potions. She had a good wand for Charms. Those who talk about her say she was nice, perhaps had a bit of a temper, and then quickly pivot to James.

This was the invisible woman.

What this means is that you can pretty much do whatever you want and no one will cry foul at you. So long as you're consistent and have an idea of who you think she is, you should be good.

But I can tell you how @therealvinelle and I characterize her.

She's Scarily Intelligent and Ingenious

What we do know about her canonically is that she was the driving force of the protections surrounding not only Harry and the Dursleys. We're never told what she did, exactly, but we're told it's her handiwork and we see its effects.

No one can attack the Dursley's home or presumably cause harm to its inhabitants while there. Voldemort is unable to even touch Harry's skin without melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

These protections cannot be replicated on any other safehouse including Grimmauld Place, the Burrow, or any other place the Order has an interest in protecting.

To get around the protections, Voldemort has to create a homunculus using Harry's own blood (note this was not his first choice which was the Philosopher's Stone and had he not had this issue he may have tried a different 'enemy')

This is someone who managed this at 21 with no education after Hogwarts, who is locked in a house with very few books, and presumably does so under the nose of Dumbledore as well as her husband.

Depending where you lean headcanon wise/explanation wise, Lily also is responsible for deflecting the killing curse for Harry: something no one else had ever done beforehand or after (Harry resurrecting continually for unexplained reasons).

As a result, we tend to write her as an intensely thoughtful and innovative person who spends a long time thinking things through and searching for solutions to problems. We also write her as a very pragmatic person, the kind who would consider the solution of sacrificing herself for the protection of her son and family and then go through with it.

No One Realizes She's Brilliant

Lily is noted as being good at Potions in the same breath as James being good at Transfiguration. Now, James did become an animagi at thirteen, that's nothing to sneeze at and per canon is impressive, however it's not the protections placed on Harry.

The most credit Lily is given is from Dumbledore who... praises her as a woman who sacrificed herself for her child and nothing else. She's not noted as the greatest witch of her generation the way Hermione is or talked about much at all.

What we're looking at is someone who did well enough in school, probably better grades than Harry, but no one really recognized her for what she was (probably because she wasn't a memorizer/rote learner the way Hogwarts encourages).

As a result, @therealvinelle and I tend to see her as suffering intense imposter syndrome. She assumes everyone knows what she knows or that, when dismissed or contradicted (particularly by someone like Dumbledore), that there must be something she didn't consider that they must know of.

She's Well Liked But No One's Close to Her

Given the canonical reactions and the fact that she's cited as having no close friends beyond Severus (who she severed ties with), it seems that she was very amiable and well liked but that she put up walls and was a very difficult person to get to know without anyone realizing as much.

She's one of those people you meet who you think is charming but then realize later after you've walked away that you don't know a single personal thing about them. (If, of course, they realize this at all, which the entire world does not).

This is likely to hide vulnerabilities and perhaps in reaction to being Muggleborn in a wizard's world.

As a result, she's also an intensely lonely person for all she doesn't admit as much even to herself. James ends up her closest connection but their relationship is strained by being in hiding and ultimately having conflicting personalities.

The Snape Thing

This is where uh... there are opinions from other parts of fandom. This one you're on your own for in explaining why Lily left Snape and then dated James and how it makes sense for her as a person (whether you like it or not is a different story, but if you want a consistent character there should be a reason both of these things happen).

I won't get into this here as it's not really the post for it but it's something you'll have to understand if you want to write her consistently as a character (even if it's an AU where that event doesn't happen)

TL;DR

The best advice I can give is to read @therealvinelle or my fics featuring her as a character.

You got anything, @therealvinelle?