#charming friendly 6'4'' redhead bookworm with wanderlust and a warhammer and i thought i could *RESIST HIM*?!?!?!? more the fool i

[queen-scribbles]

to no one's surprise i'm here to talk about tlbt LMAO but i really do enjoy it!!! xaeryn is an engaging and clever narrator and it is not an exaggeration to say i was losing it over the way you've upped the stakes in the most recent chapter, both with the cliffhanger and with briony's revelations. i adore how you've reinterpreted canon elements as well as incorporating magic into the 20's setting! also the way you write red & the circle crew is incredibly charming and i love seeing new chapters appear on my dash -em <3

Thank you sm Em!!

I love Xaeryn bc she's a bit more... formal and stiff and forthright, a little more serious, than my typical MC in games like this. She does have a warmer/softer side, there's just only a few people Red who can bring it to the forefront, and it makes her such an interesting POV to write for something like this. All the things in canon I've written her have been with Red, so it's really shown more of her more relaxed side. Having her interact with a bunch of different characters in this lets her show of more of who she is and I love it. Poor Shery and her crush tho

It's so fun playing with ways to bring in canon elements and make them fit with a 20's setting. Figuring out which of the cast would lean more heavily into slang, how they'd dress, oh I can nod to Chandry here and put Red's warhammer in the museum since he's not actually using it, and here's a nod to the Equalizers in the Blade/Trouble/Trick/Wen cameo, and here's a way to work in the Faceless Lords when my protag isn't. um. what she is in canon, let's say. (there's at least one, possibly 2-3 more coming >:3)

I've been plotting out/sitting on Briony's revelations for a while now, and I was so excited to finally get to cover that in this chapter. It was supposed to be in the last chapter, before I realized how LONG it would have made what was already a beast of a chapter. And if I'd put that in there things would have gone a different direction and Ryn/Red might not have gotten their Moment while he was patching up her hand. Since I'd been sitting on that scene since I started writing this AU, OBVIOUSLY it had to happen. xD So Briony and Darius got shifted back a chapter and got to have their 4k word conversation/info dump without me wincing too much about the length.

And yeah. That cliffhanger. *cough* I'm equal parts sorry and cackling like a banshee for that. It has pretty much always been the plan. Gotta up those stakes for Ryn, in a couple different ways. I have PLANS for how that's gonna resolve and it's going to be so much fun to write.

I love the whole Circle crew dynamic and the camaraderie and teasing and matchmaking and everything, it's a joy to write. I'm definitely going to write at least Pan and Neon's visit during the gala as a side vignette at some point(Pan POV, I can just tell he'll be fun as a narrator xD), and there's a couple things I'd love to do Red's POV on for this bc he was having Emotions.