#also love love love dark rise

[razberried]

Hi 🙀🙀🙀 how's ur summer been etc etc do u have book recs I've been bedrotting so bad

hey!!! my summer's been alright! not much has happened, saw a friend i havent seen in like 2 years and the like

books though,,,

i think youd like the poppy war by rf kuang, its a little hard to read but idk it seems like something youd like (especially at the end)

DARK RISE BY CS PACAT, i loved that book and the sequel

all for the game by nora sakavic (i will never stop recommending these i love them so much)

[cracklewink]

My Mane 6 Redesigns all together! I was going to post them separately but ended up finishing them all before I got around to it lol

[laurents-secret-diary]

oh damen we're really in it now.mp4

[sergle]

I always think it's funny when I see one of those posts from someone going I can't BELIEVE people talk about Ghibli films as aesthetic comfort sweet soft movies, these movies are about DARK FUCKED UP subject matter and heavy topics like DEATH and WAR and then you can scroll a little further and you can see reblogged clips from Ghibli movies of slow pans across sprawling meadows and beautifully rendered alien fauna or cozy villages with the most beautiful piano score played over it, sandwiched between moments of genuine human compassion and connection, quiet sequences of people performing mundane tasks, and I'm like yeah man that's crazy, definitely people are crazy if they associate these things w their corresponding movies. personally, I sit down to watch Kiki's Delivery Service stone-faced as I meditate on the Loss Of Innocence and I don't experience any other parts of the movie. only the serious bits. I don't reblog a single aesthetic gifset from the movie because then that means I would be Missing The Point

[lilithofpenandbook]

Something about Dumbledore being so hard on Snape

Dumbledore being scornful of Snape even when Snape was on his knees

Dumbledore emphasising that Snape made a mistake and must pay for it

Dumbledore who kept reminding Snape of his mistake even when he was grieving Lily

Dumbledore who didn't just let Snape change sides, he needed Snape to change his heart

Dumbledore who made the same mistakes as Snape and has been living in guilt ever since

Dumbledore who realised Snape was following in his footsteps

Dumbledore who may have started out thinking of Snape as cowardly or selfish but soon grew to trust him

Dumbledore who gave Snape half truths because if worst came to worst then Voldemort would have all the information right on his arm

Dumbledore who trusted Snape enough to not lie to him about the fact that he wasn't telling him everything even though he knew Snape resented it

Dumbledore who trusted Snape so much he knew that even if Snape resented him he would not betray him

Dumbledore who left everything he worked for in Snape's hands knowing it would be safe

Dumbledore who asked Snape to be the one to kill him, not just to save Draco's soul but for his own sake

Dumbledore who chose to die but only at the hands of someone he had grown to love

Dumbledore who once saw Snape as a desperate selfish boy that disgusted him

Dumbledore who made Snape his heir

Dumbledore who made Snape his.

[fixated-dark-king]

Sooo, I had the amazing experience of attending a panel C.S. Pacat was part of during the Sydney Writers’ Festival on 25th May 2024. The panel was called “Creating a Monster” (with two other YA authors).

And finally a week later (because adult-ing is hard), I had time to actually go through my notes and write up some of the fascccccinating things Pacat had to say about: monsterous heroes, and villains, and enemies-to-lovers deliciousness, and queer identity!

I didn’t want to forget some of the interesting things said in this panel and thought others might be interested in hearing about them too? Please indulge the splurge. :)

(Please note that all bold headers are just my thematic summary of each section for people to jump to, not the actual question asked.)

WHAT APPEALS ABOUT ‘THE MONSTROUS’ TO PACAT:

From a technical writing standpoint, the ‘Monstrous’ is appealing because a villain will often do an act and the hero reacts to that. It gives unconscious clues to the reader that when the villain turns up, something exciting is going to happen. In that sense, villainous characters have a special sort of ever-present attention given to them (possibly because human nature is to always keep one eye on the dangerous thing that could harm you).

On a personal level: A) When queer characters are awesome but also ‘Monstrous’, Pacat says it can feel really ‘electric’ and empowering to reclaim/allow yourself to embrace the monster role that you’ve been told you fit into by society. Like in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles where queer people are allowed to be beautiful/glittering & powerful & witty & have existential conversations about good and evil while fitting under the Monstrous label. Like heck yeh, that’s cool. And B) as an author, you can feel a ‘minority pressure’ to have characters be Good all the time and be the perfect ambassador for that minority, but sometimes you just want to be a vampire and take over the world, you know?

THE EXISTENCE OF ‘PROTAGONIST-CENTRED MORALITY’ WITHIN THE DARK RISE BOOKS:

When pondering whether it is hard as a writer to convince readers that a Monstrous protagonist is a likeable character, Pacat pointed out that the funny thing is that the question ‘How am I going to make readers like this monster?’ never really ends up being an issue because people actually really like monsters! The thing you might not expect is that the struggle is actually: ‘How am I going to make these readers who are barracking for the protagonist feel that this ‘monster’ is actually monstrous?’

Pacat explained that when a protagonist is also a monster, it brings into play something called ‘Protagonist-Centric Morality’ -- where you bond with that protagonist and want the best for them etc, so much that it can obscure when the protagonist is actually doing something bad. Pacat mentioned that he has found the Protag-Centric Morality fairly striking in the case of the Dark Rise books because people have said to him things like: ‘The Dark King Did Nothing Wrong Ever In His Whole Life’ and Pacat questioned whether the moral centre of the story was landing somewhere different than intended. He was curious whether the other authors had experienced that with their ‘monstrous’ protagonists too.

IF A HERO IS ALSO MONSTROUS, HOW ON EARTH DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE THAT FROM THE VILLIAN? When pondering over the distinction between a Monstrous Hero and a Villain, Pacat shared some thoughts from his lived experience. He said the times when he has felt most threatened by the ‘Monstrous’ is when that person isn’t clearly identifiable to others around you; where there isn’t a shared understanding between everyone that ‘yes, that person is a monster’. Extending from that, the Truly Monstrous is when that person has some kind of control over you and control over the narrative as well; if the monster is the one telling the story but casting you as the monster. Essentially gaslighting via ‘narrative control’.

ENEMIES TO LOVERS TROPE:

This is Pacat’s absolute favourite romantic trope. And he elaborated that he doesn’t mean that in the sense of ‘these characters sort of don’t like each other’, but rather to the point where two characters really hate each other and for a very good reason. He likes when a path between two characters feels IMPOSSIBLE to overcome.

This trope was first explored in the Captive Prince trilogy and Pacat loved it so much he just had to use it again for the Dark Rise trilogy. The planning behind it for CaPri was brainstorming: ‘What is the worst thing I could think to use?’ (Answer: Killing a character’s brother, which lands the bereaved character into a set of hellish circumstances.) But that meant when Pacat decided to use it again for DR, he had to extend that to: ‘Now I need to think of something EVEN WORSE THAN THAT (CaPri)’ in order to separate the main characters. So Pacat had to spend ages thinking about what could be the absolute worst thing to use this time -- and he hopes that he came up with something that is ‘truly, truly way worse.’ Which essentially had everyone, including the moderator, laughing loudly in fear. XD

WILL KEMPEN: FOUND FAMILY & THE LONELINESS OF INAUTHENTICITY:

Pacat spent a lot of time trying to develop a really meaningful platonic friendship between Will and Violet. It meant a lot to see a friendship like that reflected on page for Pacat because some of the most important friendships of his life were across gender lines. The reception to Will and Violet has been so pleasantly surprising, so Pacat supposed he wasn’t the only one with a hunger for that kind of friendship within the romantasy genre.

Pacat also reflected on Will’s complex relationship with his Found Family -- that having the support of a Found Family can be so essential, but in Will’s case that lifeline is undermined by secrecy, turning that Found Family into a different kind of loneliness. Because the thing is: if something so immense happens to you that you feel you can’t talk about, or you feel some way about yourself but think you can’t share that with others, it means you can’t really be your authentic self. But if you’re not being you’re authentic self, who are your friends friends with? They can’t be friends with the true You; they can only be friends with a facade/with a performance. So as long as Will is scared to show his true self and remains hiding himself away from even his friends, he will be alone. It’s a hard step to take. (Note from me: so heavvvvy but poignant.)

NOT DR-RELATED, BUT PACAT’S FAV MONSTERS FROM POPULAR FICTION: Pacat was so excited to namedrop his favourite monsters from popular fiction, he volunteered to go first LOL. The answers: 'The Brat Prince' Lestat (Lestat has been on his mind a lot recently because the AMC TV portrayal captures Lestat so well & has completely rejuvenated Pacat’s 12 year-old love of vampires. Total mood); serial killers such as in the Ripley series; and simply: American Psycho.

Great panel, right? Now it’s Europe’s turn!

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - The World That Never Was

[domokunrainbowkinz]

You’re wasting all your faith on me

[mamawasatesttube]

Apologies for sending in so many asks but how did you come up with Supernova as hero name for Kon?

oh, i definitely didn't originate it!! but as for how i got there myself, there's a couple of reasons.

a) in 52, there's a new hero on the scene called supernova that cassie thinks for a hot second is kon, back from the dead. it turns out to have been booster gold all along but it did make me go OwO. (and multiple heroes having the same name doesn't really bother me because, like, chris kent and dick grayson were both nightwing at the same time, and it didn't cause any problems. you could easily find a way to have kon and booster talk in-universe if you wanted, or you could just do the double nightwing combo thing and simply keep em from crossing paths.)

b) obviously, it's fun to give kon a name that still has "super" in it. because that's his family :)

c) liz phair has a song called "supernova". kon is a canonical liz phair fan. the song fits. im connecting the dots.

d) but. the real kicker to me. is that a supernova is the extraordinarily luminous, violent, explosive death of a large star. of course kon, who has thought of heroism as his mechanism of suicide since day one, would think that that name resonates. to go out with a bang, not a whimper. to be something big, bold, and beautiful in the face of one's inevitable death. of course he'd think that feels right, like home, like himself. of course he would.

[trinityprocessing]

I've read "Dark Heir"

Atleast the fucking horse loves him, right?

[kingsofakielosandvere]

MY FAVOURITE TYPE OF CHARACTER IS #INSUFFERABLE BLONDE BOY WITH VERY BIG PAST TRAUMAS AND ABUSES AND SOME HIMBO WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH HIM

[tennessoui]

Firstly, I need you to you know that don’t let me lose you to the rising tide has me weeping over the concept of unconditional love. Like it’s so interesting to me because I was rereading weeding out wildfires, and you really tease at this idea of “obiwan would forgive anakin anything” and in the context of that fic that felt so dark…like Anakin would murder his lover and he’d still forgive him, Obiwan has a massive blind spot, etc.

But the tone in this…idk, it’s just immaculate. Because I don’t know if I would say that Obiwan has forgiven him necessarily, but he still loves him. I went to catholic school for years, was raised Christian, and it’s always this concept that God loves unconditionally. (And then it get complicated in Catholicism because of moral sins and hell and purgatory existing etc etc) but you’ve just— you single handedly, in the space of that last chapter, brought me back to being 5 years old and believing in unconditional love and it’s just beautiful. (Complicated bc Vader, but beautiful.) reading this fic was truly a religious experience

Aw this is great because it is also one of my favorite flavors of Obikin at the moment: where obi-wan would forgive anakin for anything that he could do, wrong or right, on purpose or accidental, and anakin Has Feelings About That (Mostly Love In Return)

by the end of rising tide, obi-wan hasn’t really gotten around to addressing or coming to terms with any of the stuff that has happened in the fic, post-waking up. all he is sure of is that anakin is Vader and Vader is anakin which means that he is already forgiven—or if not forgiven, then not abandoned. still loved, still treasured, still missed.

Obi-Wan is going to bend his moral code for that boy and feel guilt and feel anger when he has the time to really process everything (and importantly, process it with anakin next to him) like everything anakin did as Vader, what happened on meyset, the war, what Obi-wan did by killing that soldier, etc etc

so I agree the forgiveness bit is a bit more complicated because these are very real crimes and choices anakin made and committed and that would need reckoning. But I think this Obi-wan would look at that as a side quest to the main undertaking which is Take Care of Him, and for the both of them their loneliest nights are behind them now

[assasinationbycarscoveredinhamrs]

I love seeing artwork of Klavier having conflict with his appearence regarding how similar he is to his brother, Kristoph, and the fear he has about commiting his same mistakes (Shoutout to this art by @rentonotnerd).

I wish capcom would have the balls to explore this aspect of his character instead of keeping him in the basement capcom please...

(Continuing my rant in the tags)

[isasunbee]

I have deep complicated feelings about Devon

[mothpaww]

i just finished Dark Rise and I'm like

ASDFGHJKL INSANE

I WAS READY TO HATE JAMES BUT HE'S JUST???????

Also this

I know my ass will be destroyed once James realize WHO Will really is and I'm not ready

[starlight---starbrights]

Undertale yellow flowey embroidery

This took about 40 hours, give or take a few