#capri asks

[thecapricunt1616]

i love how u made carmy a boy dad <3

EEEE !!! Thank you anon!!! I see most people put him as a girl dad, but I also looooove to see him as a boy dad! He'd be such a good boy dad, it would be SO healing for his inner child to be a boy dad! XOXO glad you enjoyed Celandine anon!!

[dailyhatsune]

this with miku len rin and luka

wheezers

[laur-the-cat-prince]

Oh no your Auguste is kinda—

kinda what? 🤨

(hehe i’m working on some modern capri AU stuff)

[lucent-nargacuga]

chat tell me things that aren't interesting at all

[rosyandraw]

idk if this is redundant on your end but thoughts on Damen needing to talk during sex? in the books it isn’t even dirty talk it’s just endless want for Laurent and how long he’s been waiting for him and how different Laurent feels. Also in canon & in ur own writing

Definitely not redundant! You have just knocked on the Damen Character Study door in my head lmao but it's late and idk how much sense this will make so i'm sorry in advance.

Mini meta on Why Damen Likes to Talk During Sex in Canon

First and foremost words are hugely important to Damen, not just during sex but in general. It is part of the reason that Vere trips him up so badly, why he just doesn’t get it. Because Vere is a veil of word play and innuendo, it’s double speak and flowery bullshit and lies.

That’s not Damen. His word is his bond, it’s tied to his honour and they mean a great deal to him. He never says anything he doesn’t mean. Ever. If it’s coming out of his mouth he is saying that shit with his whole damn chest and doesn't give a fuck.

The few times he is forced to lie or to say something he doesn’t mean he says it as a strategy play but it barely makes it out of his mouth and he hates it.

For a long time by the time they get to Ravenel Damen has been playing a part. Living a half truth and not saying everything he means. Or wants to say.

Likewise, in Akielos, Damen keeps himself held back. We know this because in 3 books, despite being the darling crown prince and heroic military leader, he mentions 1 person by name that he is actually and genuinely close to. One. He’s never been in love with anyone before Laurent, he doesn’t get close, he doesn’t get particularly attached. If he did Jokaste would have been a Princess and not just his mistress.

It speaks of a whole heap of childhood trauma and issues, thanks in large part to his father and Kastor and this picture that is painted of strength in Akielos being The Most Important Thing. (And i have too many thoughts on said implied trauma to write it all out properly here because it's an essay unto itself.)

We also know that Damen does the talking thing with Jokaste too. So we know it's an indicator of intimacy in bed for him. He's certainly not doing it in Vask, for example. Because Damen values words so highly he does wear his heart on his sleeve, but he guards that heart close. Sharing his feelings becomes something then tied to both the value Damen places on words and the lack of emotional intimacy in his life. To Damen, opening up like that especially during sex, is an act of giving unto its self.

Damen is strong, yes. Crazy strong and the perfect warrior. But he also likes the wordy sad poems and has craved approval (and affection) from his father and Kastor seemingly most of his life. For example, Kastor stabbed him and made Damen believe with words that it was a good thing because it meant Kastor respected him enough to fight him like a man.

It’s the perfect anecdote to draw all of those ideas together. Damen being happy about being stabbed at 13 by his brother because Kastor said it was a good thing to be strong enough to fight properly and bear the consequences.

Words matter to Damen, he assumes they do to other people too. It's what nearly gets him killed.

It’s funny really, because Damen values words but he himself is a man of action and Laurent values action but is a man of words.

When it comes to sex we see them swap places from their usual dynamic and therein lies the intimacy.

Laurent acts and Damen talks. It’s a complete role reversal and it was always meant to be. Pacat has said, several times, that Laurent tops Damen with words all the time and it was a purposeful choice to have Laurent bottom because of this. So to follow that through to it's logical conclusion for the sex scenes to really hit we needed to see them swap places completely and Damen needed to talk.

Laurent is a mouthy little shit but when it comes to his important scenes (the building of their intimacy and their sex scenes) it's never his words that he's speaking loudest with. Like when he just hugged Damen after the meeting with Jokaste in KR or when he went to get ice for him in PG, it's an offering in place of words and Laurent does it frequently: letting his actions speak louder than any of his words because to Laurent words don't really matter, lies are too easy. He's been taken in by words before.

Damen gets to Laurent through his actions and it's Laurent's moments of honesty, of saying something unexpected, that make Damen really pay attention. This isn't to say that Laurent's actions don't get to him, they do of course, but only really when Damen comes to realise that's how Laurent is being honest. Likewise in reverse for Laurent.

It's the language the other understands that allows the distance to bridge, but the intimacy comes in the opposite every time.

So when they fall into bed Laurent instigates with action, all three times they are together. And Damen talks. Because it’s the thing that is important to them that they are willingly giving and sharing and that is what makes it intimate.  

Quite simply, Damen holds himself back emotionally so talking during sex like that is a way for Damen to let go and to let his partner know that's it not just sex. Laurent, in reverse, shows his want through the instigation and by the time it happens they both know what it means: Laurent never does that and Damen knows it. Laurent knows Damen says what he fucking means.

It's such an intimate sex scene because of that awareness.

In my writing I kind of try to take that and run with it. Damen says what he means and what he wants Laurent to hear, because words of affirmation are important to him personally so he makes sure to share that.

Plus, it’s just sexy, you know? Got to love a man who talks in bed, that sex rough voice when he’s so far gone you know what his saying is just the shit flying through his head?

Hot.

Loved this ask so much. I could literally write a thesis on Damen lmao

[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!

[half-a-life-left]

🍽️ V1 Ultrakill

lil sippy.......

[strawdool]

Hi so your modern narilamb au has a vice grip on me and i needed to project the brainrot so pls take this as an offering ur very swag 🫶

WAAAAAA THATS SO CUTEEEEE <33333 TYTYTYTYTY <333

[moonchild-in-blue]

You know what? I really wanna eat a sandwich with Vessel. We don't even have to talk or anything like.

I just want to sit at a table across him, get a few Capri Suns, a bag of crisps torn open between us, a nice sandwich each, and just eat in silence.

🧃😐🥪 🍟 🧃😐🥪 <- like this

[iamthepulta]

*stares at 30 reblogs of "deep down you want to bite someone with 100% power just once"*

*writes: "m00t is reincarnated crocodile (beloved)" on notepad*

[weaverpop]

Azure: *high as the heavens* "Rats are the Capri-Suns of the vampire world!"

Wukong: "Care to elaborate on that?"

Azure: "No 🙃"

Best part is azure is a CAT, you know, a notorious rat hunter!

He wouldn’t do it while sober, that’s undignified! But under Blue Danube…

Jing: “azuRE NO THOSE THINGS ARE NASTY-!“

Azure: “SnAcK!“

Nezha: “Does thag nake him a vampire-!“

Jing: “NOT HELPING!“

[thecapricunt1616]

I LOVEEEE the idea of a meet cute, but have a hard time picturing how that would even ensue? He seems like the type of person that would be oblivious to those kind of advances. Like “they’re just being polite” type beat🤷‍♀️

My darling anon! You are next on the roster, I have an idea I think you will like 🙂‍↕️ I hope you’re all having an amazing day!!! Xoxox

[laur-the-cat-prince]

Totally random question, how are you doing after going from Captive Prince, to Dark Heir to Lies of P, three medias that can be heart-wrenching? :')

I love how you just came in here, looked at my art, and asked, 'Are you okay, bro?'

I've been seen, I've been perceived! I wasn't sure what the connecting thread was between these for the longest time, but I think you nailed it. I love to feel things deeply. Everything that Damen and Laurent go through, the trauma that they have to overcome before they can be happy together. EVERYTHING that is going on in Dark Heir. (That ending! Pacat hates me personally, I swear.) Lies of P had me so introspective, the way it tackles humanity and loss... P is very special to me.

To answer your question, 'Yes, I'm doing well.' I'm feeling inspired constantly; I wish I had more time to get all the ideas in my head out onto paper.

(Here is a little Damen doodle but in a slightly different style.)

[livingasaghost]

i bought into the :/ vibes of captive prince as well because for a long time i didn't care to look beyond what everyone else was saying about it and frankly i wasn't interested in reading the books but when i see readers saying we shouldn't read captive prince because it glorifies slavery and non-con while the same readers praise colleen hoover and fourth wing and the after series and every shitty dark romance mafia book... i am not saying captive prince is the greatest book series ever and i definitely was uncomfortable with parts of it (because i am definitely not as intellectual as others who read and analysed it) but there's so much worse books out there that get praised A Lot (and especially on booktok) and yeah idk where i am going with this sorry atsjdkf

SAY THAT!!!! like listen i get it, if you're into dark problematic shit kudos, because i looooove me some fucked up books but if you are pointing fingers while ALSO reading a different brand of problematic shit....maybe you're the problem! i feel like people who read books like captive prince or aftg are usually the first ones to analyze how fucked up they are, to think critically and engage with the darker parts of those series whereas a lot of colleen hoover stans on booktok just gloss over the abuse and toxicity because it's all about romance? (or supposedly about romance) like sure captive prince is a love story in the end, and aftg is kind of about a love story in its own way, but i think both of those stories are first and foremost about overcoming abuse and healing from trauma and learning how to trust other people in the wake of all that. the romance is just a wonderful addition to some complex series that allow you the space to exist in the gray areas of human nature.

[lucent-nargacuga]

ough so cutes

[disbnad]

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