#fascinating cultural difference bc I get weirded out by being thanked more than one time

[runawaymarbles]

Skiing yesterday I came across a kid (8ish) who hadn't been able to get off the rope tow where he planned, and was stuck way up in the ungroomed & very steep part of the hill. One ski on, other ski stuck in the snow above him, looked like he had just been crying, and when I got off the rope to help him he said in the most polite British accent,

"I'm in a bit of a pickle."

[sunder-soul]

OK WOWWW

I've been meaning to write again, and I agree with you on your opinion of Tom. Personally, after researching on psychopaths a fair bit (for one of my own OCs), I feel that—at surface level—Tom can be classified as one. But nevermind that now, bc I absolutely LOVE the way you write him.

Which brings me to...

WHITE DOVE O.M.G.

KING YOU ARE A BLOODY GENIUS ISTG. Part 6 was so damn well written. Like hOw?? I can't even properly write while sober, never mind drunk. You are so so talented, and I can't wait for the next fic you post (and maybe(?) a sequel?? )

The imagery of Tom just pleading and breaking down was just... pure fucking perfection (and I mean that in the best way possible lol). Keep writing King! You're amazing at it that's for sure. :)

Two-part super long response discussing Tom Riddle and psychopathy beneath the line!!!!

But also omg thank u for your lovely compliments on white dove, I really really loved writing that series so it's super gratifying to get all the positive feedback!!!! Hell yeah I'm geared for a sequel and it's just absolutely full of my fave fanfic tropes I am ready to self-indulge once more.

Pt. 1. I don't see any issue with headcanoning Tom as having a sociopathy/psychopathy personality disorder, I just really dislike when people don't do what you have done and don't actually research what that actually means. I think general media has been 'fascinated' by 'psychopaths' for the last few decades and have created a really weird cultural conceptualisation of what someone with that disorder looks like/acts like.

People will have Tom committing genuinely horrific acts of violence for his own pleasure, fucking with people for fun, and engaging in lots of different taboo kinks and then explain it by simply being like 'he's a psychopath' and it's like oh... 😬

Idk I find that specific trope lazy in terms of story-telling, shallow in terms of character interpretation, and damaging in terms of real-life consequences for normal ass people with personality disorders.

Pt. 2. All that being said, I (personally) disagree with you in terms of Tom being able to be classified psychopathic!

I'm aware that some people distinguish between 'primary' psychopaths (those with genetic predisposition) and 'secondary' psychopaths (those who develop the disorder from environmental factors, sometimes called sociopaths) though it should be noted that this distinction isn't really agreed upon across the field and is under debate lol. But I feel the need to address both since I'll probs get anons "calling me out" me if I don't haha.

Premeditation before acts of violence, severely diminished emotional responses, and a lack of anxiety are traits characterised to primary psychopathy, and at first glance I can kind of see a case for Tom here. But... some of Tom's/Voldemort's biggest character beats revolve around him being impulsive, hyper-emotional, and extremely reactionary (like just killing an entire room of his own followers and goblins after finding out Harry knows abt the Horcruxes, or freaking out about the prophecy and murdering the Potters for that matter, or even duelling with Dumbledore in the Ministry etc. etc.).

Like I know he can be super calculating and set up long-arching plans and shit, but I've never really read Tom as being that 'premeditated' in what he does. He's ambitious, yeah, but to me I see him setting his eyes on a goal and doing everything he possibly can to reach that goal in a sort of perfectionist-driven, covetous desperation where if he just pushes long enough and hard enough and far enough, he'll prove that he can do fucking anything and everything in spite of everyone else and fuck everyone who said he couldn't - rather than this detached, cool, logical premeditative flow-chart of decisions.

On the other hand, the reasoning behind Tom having secondary psychopathy reads as more logical for the character for me - being an orphan in war-time England and having to essentially self-prioritise to the absolute extreme to survive could all be strong environmental stressors that would result in learned lack of empathy. Crimes committed by those with secondary psychopathy are also (apparently) more emotionally driven, more reactionary, and more impulsive. But.... Tom does still set up these long-arching plans, ya know? He's not acting solely on impulse, and he's also still very emotional outside of his acts of violence. Plus he's also never struck me as particularly anxious (which is a trait often used to distinguish secondary psychopathy). He's both impulsive and premeditated at times, just like how most ppl act both impulsively and premeditated at times.

The point I'm trying to make, lol, is that I think it's a misread of the character to consider him 'unemotional' or detached from others bc I've always thought of him as like the most extremely emotional character in the whole series. Canon demonstrates him to be highly emotional but just very very controlled/performative most of the time. He's shown to have bouts of hugely expressive rage, and he acts very vindictively which suggesting he takes things super personally, but he's mostly able to hide these emotions around people he doesn't trust. This might make him manipulative but it does not make him psychopathic/sociopathic.

In summary, I don't read Tom as having a personality disorder, I read him as being selfish, jealous, emotional, egotistical, covetous, self-aggrandising, suspicious, and manipulative. He's a dick, your honour.

[ectonurites]

for the character headcannons ask game, jason and cass?

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT im putting this one under a cut because it got SUPER long bc i cant shut up ever

lets start w jason

A (realistic headcanon): 

ok using the ‘realistic’ category here loosely but GOD i love the idea of Damian & Jason having interacted while Jason was staying with the League before getting dunked in the Lazarus Pit. like. this obviously would need to be set more in preboot and following the Lost Days & Batman Annual 25 version of Jason’s resurrection, but god the idea of it just makes me scream in a good way. Like... these are things Jason likely doesn’t remember very clearly once he’s brought back to life more fully by the pit because he was uh pretty catatonic, but Damian being a little kid and knowing about the boy that his mother keeps around the base, that she’s trying to help bring back to health. Damian not even knowing that’s his big brother, just that he’s a presence that shares his mother’s attention. Jason again being unresponsive but like, ok god you know that part of lost days where Talia shows the others observing him that he only fights back at those he perceives as genuine threats trying to hurt him, 

Because Jason can perceive that she’s safe, she’s not actually trying to hurt him, he trusts her because she saved him? thinking about lil child Damian who is ya know already being trained in fighting stuff and like the idea of him trying to provoke Jason just to see what happens but Jason not fighting back because on some level be it his connection to Talia or even little baby Damian visually reminding him of Bruce, he knows that Damian is safe too 🥺 

and then when Jason and Damian meet again in Gotham as Red Hood & Robin respectively, Jason not really remembering because there was so much going on back then for him, but Damian realizing that oh... that was Him

B (hilarious): 

alright so if we are looking at comics currently, in modern stuff jason is what, like 22? hes old enough to drink in the US but still definitely early 20s so around my around my age, thats what im using as a basis here. if we adjust timeline and still consider his death having happened when he was 15, that puts it around 2013. and then coming back to like interacting with people about three years later if we still kinda base things off of the preboot timeframe (since we never got a super solid retelling of the timeline of death -> resurrection -> training -> tries to get revenge aside from knowing he went to the all-caste instead of the lost days version of the story) making him reenter the regular world and stuff around age 18 in 2016. meaning a solid three years of pop culture that he was entirely missing, and like im sorry but he really doesn’t strike me as the type to bother looking into what he missed, he’s kinda busy focusing on other stuff. lets take a quick look at some major things from those years. 2013 gave us ‘what does the fox say’ and ‘the harlem shake’ . 2014 had that time U2 just put a fuckin album on everyone’s phones, The Fault In Our Stars movie came out. 2015 introduced the phrase ‘Netflix and Chill’ and the whole blue & black vs gold & white dress debate happened. imagine any of the other batkids (or even arguably roy during rhato stuff) bringing these things up and jason’s ensuing confusion. thank you for your time

C (heart-crushing): 

so. there are two specific instances from rebirth era Jason i want to bring up here and much like a lot of these it’s less a headcanon and more of an inference based on observations, but i wanna take a sec to discuss Jason’s relationship with other people’s death. early in rebirth, Tim ‘dies’ from that whole thing in detective comics. he didn’t actually die, we as readers know, but in-universe they all very much so thought he was dead. frustratingly a lot of the batfam wasn’t really shown mourning him aside from in the Detective Comics Rebirth title itself (which just. when a major character dies even if its temporary- that should have a ripple effect) BUT an exception to that is in RHATO 2016, where we get this offhanded comment in Jason’s internal monologuing

similarly later when Roy, who like, had an incredibly close relationship w Jason that had just gotten mended before Heroes in Crisis, gets fuckin murdered in that whole thing... Jason doesn’t go to his funeral either. He leaves a dramatic voice mail and then visits the grave on his own later, choosing to instead keep working on the mission they’d started rather than going and taking the time to mourn properly.

Jason’s relationship with death is incredibly complicated, obviously. He has died, he has come back, and he now is willing to cross the line most other bats won’t and will kill people when he deems it necessary. I think thats something important though- he doesn’t just like... go around killing for fun (usually, some writers preboot made him a little murder happy but even then usually this still was vaguely followed) he kills people he thinks deserved it. Like, even looking back at the mess of Morrison’s Jason during Batman & Robin 2009, Jason was still trying to bring a sense of justice with who he was killing (”punishment that fits the crime”), it wasn’t killing for the sake of killing. He sees things in this kind of almost black and white ‘people who deserve it’ and ‘people who don’t’ way, and he has no problem dealing with death when it’s with the people he thinks deserve it. 

but when someone who doesn’t in his mind ‘deserve it’ gets killed? i think he just goes into total avoidance mode. throws himself into other things he’s doing, tries not to dwell on it too much no matter how much he still thinks about it (this is especially evident in him consistently telling people “i’m fine!” after what happened to Roy, despite bringing Roy up literally like every few issues for a WHILE after he died and very clearly still struggling with it, Artemis is the only one who gets through to him on it a little bit) 

but yeah, I just think that from Jason’s relatively unique situation of having been murdered, he knows what it’s like and he is perfectly fine wishing that on people he thinks are bad and deserve it, but it crushes him to imagine the people he loves and cares about having to experience something as painful as what he went through. not to mention the whole “I came back, why do I get a second chance at all this when they, who are a much better person than I am, probably won’t” mindset we get some implications of him having 

D (canon is a coward and won’t) 

hello DC i am once again insisting a batfam member is bisexual

CASS TIME

A (realistic headcanon): 

ok so we know cass likes ballet. thats canon. however i think we also should in general explore cass experiencing other types of dance/performance as well, be it herself as a performer or even just watching. like... god imagine her & like my brain just automatically for group activities puts her with tim steph and duke but also for this in particular I feel would be a Jason embraced activity, but like them going to see a broadway show or some other professional theatre or something, and her just being enthralled by the reading of body language of the performers! like again by any point in current stuff cass does have like, the ability to speak fine (reading still hard tho) but even so I think like. okay im a theatre kid if that’s not obvious from the Everything About Me but one thing I always do after seeing a show is ya know spend dinner afterwards discussing it with whoever i saw it with.

I just think that like, bringing those people i just mentioned to the table to discuss seeing a show after would be so FASCINATING because cass would bring this whole perspective of critiquing their acting on a whole different level- not based on how well they delivered lines out loud, but by what their body language was saying as they moved on stage. like im very amused by the idea of cass getting a totally different picture in her mind about what a character’s motivations were because she was paying way more attention to what their physicality was saying vs the words that were written and how they were delivered. i think the debates her and the others would have would be EPIC there. jason defending the text as it was written adamantly and cass being like ‘ok yeah sure but thats not what they did’

B (hilarious): 

cass having no concept of money because why would she bother? is SO funny to me. like it’s not that she couldn’t be reasonable if she wanted to, but like, she knows that the Waynes are well off so it’s not something she actually needs to be concerned about, so she just goes hog wild. takes steph out to fancy dinners and makes steph order for them since cass ya know doesn’t really read the menus, and steph’s like ‘jesus christ this costs-” “don’t worry about it” “but cass-” and she just holds up one of bruce’s credit cards and steph’s still like “but you don’t even know the range-” “it is fine”

bruce does not have the heart to tell her to stop

C (heart-crushing): 

i mean this is pretty much canon but especially now after death metal where she’s remembering, not just being told by a guy using weird alternate timeline technology, that she used to be an adopted member of the Wayne family... like that hurts so bad. To look at these people who have ya know been kind to her, Bruce has still been a father-like figure to her (i mean literally from the moment they met in New 52 canon during the flashback in Batman & Robin Eternal, where he’s telling her that she’s not a monster just because of what people forced her to do.... that she’s a hero... that hug.... dad behavior), and they do to some extent treat her as family... But to then really know, to feel and remember that she was actually adopted! She was a part of their family. To look at how she’s been calling herself Orphan while working with them this whole time... that’s so heartbreaking! I have cried about this idea so much! I want so badly a conversation between her and Bruce now where he offers to officially adopt her again, I need it so bad and if it doesn’t happen at some point in the next year or two I will be so distraught.

D (canon is a coward and won’t) 

i want an in-depth exploration of cass’ relationship to her own gender. being raised without language and you know with so much of her life being independent (remember: CASS RAN AWAY AROUND THE WORLD WITHOUT REALLY KNOWING ANY SPOKEN LANGUAGE) and outside of an organized society impressing too much of gender expectations on her, i feel like the way she experiences it would be very unique! like sure she’s so far been fine with being assigned ‘girl’ (ya know that comes with batgirl, and how people just automatically treated her based on how she looks) but in terms of gender expression and like her actual relationship with ‘traditional femininity’ etc like... because of how she was raised I just think she’d have a really different perspective on it that could be cool to explore, and I think she’d fall outside of the binary after she really thinks about how she identifies.

tldr on that: she/they nb cass is what i’m getting at here

[legacysam]

"#*erases a rant about fandom cas characterization bc god who has the energy*" me. i have the energy. give me the rant.

*cracks knuckles* okay let’s see if any of these particular intellectual muscles still work.

I am always pro-cas-being-canonically-dickish posts (even if they are misleading one way or another, more on that later) because dear GOD this fandom loves to infantalize the man. He’s a “baby in a trenchcoat.” He’s dumb about pop culture and clueless about human things isn’t it adorable? SHUT UP!!!! And pls especially shut up if you’re using his ignorance as a way of making another character look cool or smart by comparison. “it’s a shortened version of my name” was 100% Cas fucking with Dean because he is a dick sometimes! and it’s great! Also: Cas’s indifference to pop culture isn’t a weakness just because pop culture knowledge is a major currency on tumblr!!! It’s indicative of the fact that he’s got much bigger and more important things on his mind. (Also. listen. This trait was canonically erased by Metatron and it was literally the only good thing that fucking character ever did so can we please as a fandom just acknowledge that little slice of canon? pls?)

(Can I also just say.....fish out of water stories are only good when they are on the side of the fish and not just using the fish to make jokes. Just. as a note on the trope in general but specifically re: every time this shows up in fanfic with Cas or any other similar character. Thor comes to mind.)

Anyway Cas isn’t a child, he’s ANCIENT and TIRED and CONFLICTED about major moral issues, which is FASCINATING for an angel character and forces us as an audience to consider more deeply the actual differences between heaven and hell, good and evil, destiny and free will. Is this how we expect an angel to behave? What does this tell us about Heaven? If Cas is an aberration, what does that tell us about Heaven and goodness and God? So his expressions of anger and frustration and his impatience with or indifference to human courtesies are a really great part of his character and people should appreciate them more (and not just when it’s funny!)

(Sidenote bc I always think about this when I think about fandom and Cas, the reductive fandom approach to “””crazy!cas””” (what a fun way of saying “deeply affected by horrible trauma and guilt and trying to repress it so he can function.” thanks for that fandom) as comic relief or a woobified victim is. hm. bad. That’s all I’ll say about that one.)

{ANOTHER sidenote, this one for fan artists in particular but fan writers definitely aren’t free from sin: Cas isn’t pale or short and he isn’t a fuckin twink pls stop projecting weird m/f stereotypes onto your queer ships pls and thank}

ANYWAY about these screenshots specifically: Listen I love this post but the context of these scenes is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING than Cas being a dick to Sam. They aren’t really about Sam at all, actually. “Don’t ask stupid questions” is such a painful fucking response to Sam asking if he’s okay, because he’s clearly not okay--he’s still struggling with the knowledge that God has given up and abandoned them--but he can’t be vulnerable about it. So he redirects to ask what Sam needs from him because that’s what he does, it’s what he is, he’s a tool. He’s a solution to problems (except his own). And his unwillingness to confront his pain (while also not being able to hide it) isn’t really about his relationship with Sam, it’s about his relationship with God and with himself and his own failures. The visibility of that struggle while he continues to try to help in this episode is just really fucking moving, okay?

Also there’s absolutely nothing hostile about “Sam, of course, is an abomination” in context. Like. Not a damn thing. There’s a task that needs to be performed by a “servant of heaven,” and Cas is explaining why none of the three of them qualify, and we know he feels shame about the fact that HE doesn’t qualify by how he reacts later, calling himself a poor example of an angel. He’s as much an abomination as Sam is in this moment.

Actually you know what? Literally everything in these screenshots that gets interpreted as “Cas hates Sam” is 100% actually Cas hating himself. He hates Sam’s voice while he’s stuck using a human voice himself to communicate, through technology he’s hostile to because it’s limiting compared to angelic communication. He rejects Sam’s compassion because he doesn’t want to talk about his own weakness. He calls Sam an abomination in the same breath that he acknowledges that he isn’t a servant of heaven anymore, and with much less anger than when he later calls himself a poor example of an angel. He sees himself in Sam but he hates himself too much to use that as a point of connection and pushes away from it instead. (I’m not going to go on a shipper detour here but sastiel shippers....you know)

So Cas is angry and complicated and self-hating and yeah, it’s funny, but if you don’t respect those feelings and their complexity, maybe don’t try to write Cas or write about him. Maybe if you only like Cas when he’s making you laugh you don’t actually like Cas.

And this isn’t to be like...”writing fluffy shippy fic with Cas being sweet is bad” or whatever. That fills a need for some people, I get it. I’ve written fic where he’s sweet! There’s a difference between someone lovingly wrapping a character in a blanket and going “nice things will happen for you now” versus using that character for a reductive joke.

There’s also a difference between people who are actually carefully writing fic and people who are, yknow, tagging posts or circulating meme-like gifsets with this kind of commentary. Which, bc I don’t read fic as often anymore, tends to be the most common way anything like analysis of Cas reaches me. I do NOT recommend this method of engaging with fandom because it’s really the worst, unfunniest, most simplistic takes that get repeated over and over again (I would pay money to never see anyone call Sam “moose” or “sammy” again dear lord), and it obscures the actually really good work some folks are doing when they write these characters.

tl;dr 1. Cas is not a child and he is not stupid. 2. Cas doesn’t hate Sam but he DOES project onto him and it’s fascinating. 3. fandom wants to be transformative but bc of meme culture and the way tumblr works it can be painfully reductive and it’s exhausting

ps nb I haven’t watched a single episode since they killed Charlie off and I don’t know much about what happened after that lol. so don’t come at me “well actuallying” bc honestly I don’t care and bc canon has been a dumpster fire for years and all extended analysis of it including my own is really nonsense just by virtue of the source material being nonsense.

pps the showrunners are ABSOLUTELY complicit in this but I can’t. I just cannot get into that. I am too tired.

[ziracona]

One aspect I find fascinating about your fics is that Meg and a lot of the other characters are pop culture savvy, but also live in a universe where some of the most popular horror characters were real people. So, how do you think they would've reacted to meeting Nancy and Steve, who come from a universe where Michael, Laurie, and Freddy are all horror movie characters?

Ahhh thank you so much! I’m really glad you liked that. Pop culture was a really big element for a lot of the cast, & it is kinda funny I guess that several of them /are/ core horror pop culture.

So, this is kind of a hard one for me to answer, because I didn’t do ILM canon like DbD official canon. I do explicitly reference Stranger Things as fiction in Nearly Departed, but that was because I had not the foggiest clue DbD would /add/ a Stranger Things chapter—both because it’s super new and ongoing unlike their other horror “classic” staples, & because I wouldn’t even really call Stranger Things horror. I had been so damn careful 😂—I think the only horror film I name is Friday the 13th, which felt safe at the time because it’s got its own similar game & thus seemed unlikely to give DbD rights. If I had included Nancy & Steve, I would have gone back and replaced that segment with something similar, and just had ST exist in the same world as Halloween, NOES 2010, and Saw/all of the ILM cast. It’s the best solution, and you really don’t have to change any of the stories to do it. All that would have to change is that in this version of ST, Max wore a different Halloween costume, & three lines of dialogue are different. Fundamentally it’s exactly the same world. I know that’s maybe not the most exciting answer TuT, but it’s what I’d have done for a few reasons. Ima drop the rest under a read more bc I go way into writing & a little w horror meta tho: 💙

For one, it’s just kinda sad. It lowers the storytelling stakes because even a best-case scenario would be kind of a letdown for everyone. Not as much to gain: Not as much to lose. So, sad emotionally & kinda less motivating story-wise. Like, if any version of a happy ending even hypothetically would always mean these people who have bonded through years of self sacrifice and friendship and trauma and growth either /never/ see each other again, or go to one world together where only maybe one person would ever get to see their OG family again, and might also have to suffer with seeing their life as a film on that planet? Joked about, critiques, not taken seriously, no privacy? That’s just. It’s not a happy ending, or a satisfying one, even for the characters to /fight/ for, regardless of if they can win it or not. 

I’m aware that official DbD is multiverse, and there’s no assurance for even say Claudette and Meg being from the same world, let alone the world Halloween happens in, and was when I started writing. I just elected to ignore it. The devs even also explain a lot of the cosmetics as “alternate world versions” of the characters, instead of just fun costumes. I personally think that’s silly? And I’ve really never liked the multiverse decision. I got nothing at all against multiverse stories—they can be amazing—but you’ve got to have a reason if you do, and as far as I can tell, the only reason DbD is multiverse was so the Devs could release a bunch of classic horror characters into their game without worrying about continuity, which is lazy & not a great reason to pick multiverse. It can be great for stories, but in DbD, it would if anything just detract from the reality of the situation & the storytelling? Like, if I showed up in a hell pocket universe, and Michael Myers was there, it would be hard to take that situation entirely seriously, and it would fundamentally change how I interacted with others & they with me. If I knew his history, I’d use that to try to get through to him (what’s the worst that’ll happen? I’ll die like I do every day anyway?), but it would also be just weird & hard for people to relate. Like, if Steve Harrington has had conversations with a buddy about Laurie Strode being careless for not double-tapping her dead assailant & thinks of her as Jamie Lee Curtis & in some ways knows more about her life & family & universe than she does, but knows it all as an element of fiction? And at the same time, Kate’s seen Steve’s actor do interviews & play other roles and caught continuity errors in his /life/ while watching ST??? Hypothetically, someone /could/ unpack all that to tell a story, & maybe a fan has, but the Devs/game really, really haven’t, and in most instances, it’ll just mess up the characters’ abilities to relate to each other as human beings, as well as being miserable for the ones told they’re just characters from horror films in other people’s worlds.

The way DbD is set up really doesn’t lend itself to the kind of meta character vs humanity, role relationships between fiction & life narrative of, say, The Final Girls. Really all it does is make the world less real feeling. Less whole, more artificial. Less to be taken seriously, less belief willing to be suspended. Why are Laurie & Quentin fake in someone’s world? Does Meg not being in a story in Quentin’s universe mean she’s more real? It’s just messy. Multiverse is fine, but if you pick multiverse solely to make your job easier, at the cost of a more coherent, real, and engagable story (@ Devs >.>) that’s lazy/bad writing. I’ve read & enjoyed multiverse stories, but I’d never write DbD that way, bc I’d need a reason to, and I don’t have one. There was really no need for the devs to feel like they had to either, except pure ease w no work at all thinking about how or needing to explain anything, and I wish they hadn’t. : /

Like. Technically, Halloween & Scream shouldn’t be in the same canon—Halloween H20 plays a chunk of Scream 2 on TV, Scream 1 they’re watching Halloween 1978 & Scream 4 Sidney is asked “Who are you? Michael fucking Myers?” When she survives a murder attempt. But that’s not a big deal. It’s not a pivotal piece of world building and canon for either franchise. Scream is not fundamentally different if Randy is watching Friday the 13th or even some made up film, instead of Halloween. On top of that, a lot of horror references each other for fun and as tribute and I’m a huge nerd who adores this tradition. 😂 Scream & Halloween are so tight as franchises by the time Halloween H20 was released, that it actually uses chunks of Scream’s OST. It’s much better narratively for DbD if they’re all from one world, and in a way, it’s just a cool next step to the preexisting horror friendship metas between a lot of films. It’s really fun to figure out how they’d function together in one universe.

Anyway, that was long but I have so many thoughts on DbD & writing thank you for giving me an excuse to gush!! And thank you again for the compliment. I’m really happy you like my writing. It means a lot. 💙

[jonsalways]

There’s something weird about Dany and Sansa’s looks this season

 The costumes in Game of Thrones have many deeper meanings. They are used to show how a character relates or differ from another. The costumes tell the history of the characters.

But when we look at season 7, something pretty odd happened: Sansa and Daenerys appearance look very alike. To be more specific, Dany’s wardrobe changes entirely after she meets Jon and the more the show try to look her more pleasant to Jon’s eyes, more she looks like Sansa (!).

This is going to be long and full of pictures so brace yourselves.

Sansa and Dany have similar pasts, it’s true. But their personalities are so different, they differ in philosophy, goals in life, their care for family and what they believe to be important. So there’s no explanation to what happened in Daenerys’s look this season. Since the beginning of the show Dany’s style is very unique. She wear boots, trousers, and short dresses with no sleeves. Her colors always were blue and white mainly. Within the Dothraki culture she wears green and brown mostly. Her clothing have a lot of texture to simulate dragon scales, and long  wing sleeves.

At the end of season 6 however she embraces the nature of her family and decided to sail to conquer Westeros, and for the very first time we see her wearing black. At the beginning of season 7 she wears black and red. We see her first “winter” outfit with long sleeves that actually protect her from cold. This is very much her style with a touch of winter.

But at 7x3 after she meets with Jon, her clothing changes to something else entirely. Instead of black and red, she begins to wear grey, her costumes are way more soft with no more textures to resemble dragons. As her love interest for Jon grows she goes from a dreadful look to subjugate the lords of Westeros, to a kind and friendly look around him, and she spend most of her scenes wearing this outfit.

And here is where things get tricky and strange. Dany wears grey which is already pretty odd since the characters usually do not wear colors of the Houses they don’t belong to, but she does to be more pleasant to Jon’s view even though Dany has never used grey before. Grey is the color of house Stark but the fascinating thing about it is the fact that none of the Starks wear full grey. None but Sansa. 

If we go back to season 1 even Ned didn’t wear grey. The Starks always wear black and brown, with only a few touches of grey. Jon does that, Bran does that too, even Arya wears black and brown clothing.  Only Sansa uses to wear grey tones, and she does it since season 1, her palette of colors were always greyish through the seasons.

At season 7 each and everyone of her outfits are grey, with a touch of brown and black as all the Starks do, but the color that  defines her this season is grey. And it suits her well since she is Lady Stark, she used to wear grey before and that’s the color of her house. But make Daenerys wear a color she never dressed before just to make sure we get she’s into Jon  seems like a very strange choice to me, mainly bc grey is a trademark Sansa color.

And the more you look, more strange it seems. Every lead female character has her own style, even for pieces that are supposedly the same they have very distinct versions to show how different they are, but if you take a look at Daenerys “battle/business outfits” you will notice it’s very similar to Sansa’s outfits.

They have the very same basic shape, with a V collar that ends on a frontal piece that stands out and prominent shoulder pieces.  They only differ in details, but they clearly have the same inspiration.Daenerys winter coat have this shape too.  Only characters who share same similarities or are in the same side wear similar clothes. I see no motives to make Sansa and Daenerys’s dresses alike since they are such distinct characters that have never met.

Another strange change in Daenerys appearance is her hair. The show changed her wig this season and added a lot more braids than she used to wear.

Her hair is pretty much the same since season 3 when the show had budged enough to create better quality wigs. Daenerys’s trademark is to wear wavy frontal pieces that frame her hair and helps to hide Emilia real hair. She wears it since season 3, and for 44 episodes no matter the scene, the frontal pieces were there covering Emilia’s ears a little bit.

But after she meets Jons her hair looks very different in some scenes. For the very first time since the finale of season 1,  Dany wears a single braid that pulls all her hair back. That’s so unlike her, that she even looks a bit strange without the frontal pieces. There’s no rational reason to style her hair like this now and break her trademark hair just for some scenes.

There’s only one character that I recall to use a single braid like this in many occasions in the show, and this character is Sansa. Braids like this are almost part of her character, in a very northerner way. Her Lady mother used to wear a  braid like this during the War of the Five Kings, and after Catelyn’s murder, Sansa wears it almost like she could draw strength from it during moments of need.

Sansa’s hair is a very special part of her character. She never had a “trademark” hair like Daenerys had, but she has some very known styles. Sansa almost never wear loose frontal hair like Dany is used to. Sansa hair is almost always pull entirely back, and since Sophie used her own hair in the previews season, Sansa’s hair was very different from Melisandre’s wig, even if they used to wear almost the same hairstyle. Now Sophie is wearing a wig, they kept this style and added some details that Sophie’s hair couldn’t bare, to make it more elaborated and slightly different from Melisandre’s.

So if we had to choose a “trademark hair for Sansa” it would be this one. That’s way she spend 5 of 7 episodes from season 7 wearing it. At 7x6 Daenerys wears a very similar hairstyle  to this one when she’s talking to Jon on the boat scene, where she’s again wearing a grey outfit. Strangely that was the very first time I actually felt there was a “romantic feeling” between them, with them holding hands and that “ Thank you, Dany” disaster coming out of nowhere from Jon.

Dany looked younger, pretty and way more vulnerable with this hairstyle. That’s exactly why this is such a common hair for Sansa. The stranger thing about it, it’s that Dany is wearing a completely different  hairstyle in the scene before and in the one that follows this moment. Dany wears this hairstyle only in this scene, which is the only truly romantic scene they share this season, since the boatbang scaleted very quickly from a non verbal “Hi there” to a “we’re naked in bed having sex”. The only scene Dany wears Sansa’s hairstyle and color it’s the very first time we see Jon responding to her romantic interest. That’s pretty odd no matter how you see it.

The show never make mistakes about appearance. The colors, the hairstyles,  the textures, everything means something. Michele Clapton tell the history through costumes, she shows the emotions and connections between characters through their appearances. All the details are carefully thought and mean something important. 

“everything about [Dany’s outfits] has symbolism and that’s what I find so interesting in designing the costumes. You should be able to look at each character and almost mentally know what they’re trying to say. […]

Michele Clapton, Game of Thrones Costume Designer

I don’t believe it’s a mistake or coincidence that Dany resembles Sansa after she met Jon. It’s almost like the show wanted us to look at Dany interacting with Jon and see a shadow of Sansa there. And the most disturbing part of it, it’s the fact that Jon would indeed notice this sutilities. We know from season 6 he does notices Sansa’s looks, doesn’t he?

Michele Clapton said the costumes tell the story.  If you’d ask me, I’d say the costumes are telling a very strange story where Jon had sex with a girl that dresses like Sansa.

I maybe crazy, but I’ve been making costumes for 9 years now. I do look at a character’s outfit and understand its meaning. The more I look, more obvious it seems to me what the show is doing. We all do metas about how racional Jonsa being endgame is, but now the costumes seem to be telling this too.Sansa’s costumes this season have sutilities about her connection to Jon as well.

The way I see it there are two possibilities: 1 - Jonsa IS endgame or 2 - Michele Clapton belong to the Jonsa Fam too and it’s confusing us all giving the costumes meanings they aren’t supposed to have.. And I don’t think the show would allow her to do such a thing if Jonsa wasn’t meant to be.

[extemporaneousmusings]

There’s this page from a manuscript that’s in LACMA’s collections I’ve been thinking about for a good year. I discovered it when watching a GettyTalks livestream last summer by the GoT costume designer. I kind of forget the context in which she discussed it, but it totally captivated me and isn’t really relevant to the rest of her talk, as she moved on to discuss the more psychological and emotional underpinnings of costuming, rather than original source materials. I was so intrigued that I messaged the Getty tumblr that day to ask for the citation when I couldn’t find the image myself, and it’s just been floating around on my computer for the past year.

15th century Islamic manuscripts are worlds away from my wheelhouse, obviously, but there was something here that clung to the edges of an already fringe concept I had been toying with, that over the past year has become more and more relevant and pervasive.

The idea is hinged upon two major foci. The first is the development of the attribute through time, which is much more central to what I do...The basic synopsis of what I’d like to ultimately accomplish with my PhD is to try and connect grounded, known archaeological assemblages to contextualize and examine them within a more robust and experimental theoretical framework. The discussion of images is often divorced from their context, especially when it comes to more ephemeral objects like vases. (Note, this is the first time I’ve ever really used the word ephemeral in connection with vases, I need to think about this more!) The second is of the extended lifespan of Alexander the Great, both in images and texts, which persisted for thousands of years after his death, and was incorporated into many different cultural narratives.

An attribute, within iconography (which is at its very simplest, the study/interpretation of images and symbols) is an object or a shorthand that gives further information linked to the central character. Dionysos is one of the most attribute-laden lads in Greek art. To name a few, he has a kantharos, which is a specific type of drinking cup, leaves, wine, satyrs, maenads, which all in and of themselves, have nested attributes. 

Attic black-figure vase depicting Dionysos and a few of his typical attributes. (Musée de Louvre, MNE 938)

Athena has her owl, and gorgon head on her shield. Zeus has thunderbolts. All of these are small visually represented objects, yet convey a great amount of culturally loaded information. I’m just speaking from the Greek tradition at the moment, but iconography and attributes exist across time and space. Thor has his hammer, which is an extremely potent symbol that conveys a lot more than just his favorite accessory. The Statue of Liberty has a torch and books. You get the point.

Attributes have not remained the same, in terms of what they represent or how they are interpreted, throughout history. Narrowing back down to the Greek world, the Hellenistic period brought about enormous cultural shifts in nearly every arena, and art was one of them. It hasn’t really been explored through such a lens yet, to my knowledge, but the very power and intent behind attributes shifted dramatically. I am super intrigued in trying to find a way to trace the development of the attribute, and see how and when its use began to change.

Here we get to the point of contact between the two ideas. The Hellenistic period is a broad, uneven, inelegant term to discuss a period of time directly impacted by the death of Alexander the Great and the aftermath of his political and military campaigns, but before the Roman Empire became the main cultural and political power. This is, of course, impossible to define, but in reductive academic short-hand refers to the years 323 BC- 31 AD. The Hellenistic period also considers a much broader geographic scope than is usually incorporated into classical scholarship in earlier periods, because Alexander conquered so much land, and Greek ideas were then transmitted in very different ways to a broader swath of people and cultures.

I’ve now reached the point where this gets beyond me, for the moment. I’m not an Hellenistic historian, and the political and military narrative of history during these years is a fucking quagmire. The art produced during this time-period in many ways reflects this time of upheaval and constant change, because it’s experimental, bizarre, and all over the place.

Alexander was a brilliant commander and political thinker. He curated his image and controlled its dissemination. The dude had a whole host of personally commissioned artists at his command who produced sculptures/coins/jewels depicting him that were somehow regulated and presented a unified front, despite the geographical breadth across which they worked and he travelled. (This is precisely why you can always identify sculptures of him, even hundreds of years after his death, because they were all produced using cookie-cutter templates.) He used attributes and his own image to influence politics in a way that hadn’t been done before, and this continues long after his death.* This is picked up and totally incorporated into Roman imperial politics and art further down the road. 

At the moment, this is my (utterly unsubstantiated) half-baked axis: I think that the attribute had been developing and shifting in use somewhat, but that Alexander radicalized what it was, and how it was used. THEREFORE, not only can one continue to trace how the attribute continues through and beyond Alexander in Greek&Roman art, but Alexander himself through time and cultures makes a fascinating case study of the attribute. (Maybe??? Or maybe this is just two separate things just barely linked??? I’m gonna try to explain the second branch more.)

Alexander was, obviously, a big fucking deal. He went a bunch of places and did a bunch of shit. As such, he was remembered and mythologized broadly, for many different reasons, in many different ways. His actions were incorporated into the narrative fabric of many cultures and societies. Before I watched this Getty talk I had NO IDEA that Alexander appears in the Quran. Fascinating!!

He appears in the Quran as Dhul-Qarnayn which means “The Two-Horned One” in English. Scholars don’t know exactly why, but have tentatively suggested that perhaps it is because Alexander was sometimes depicted on coins as having curling rams horns. This is super dope, and I totally wanna buy it and argue for it BECAUSE, his use of the rams horns on coinage was a direct attempt to assimilate himself within a blended Eastern/Egyptian mythology. The rams horns were an attribute of Ammon, an Egyptian deity who is often considered alongside/culturally synonymous to Zeus. So, it is possible that his name in the Quran and further Islamic tradition is a direct reference to the way he, and then his followers, manipulated attributes to accomplish political goals.

Tetradrachm of Lysimachus depicting Alexander with the horns of Ammon. British Museum 1919,0820.1

Along with being incorporated into the textual history of these diffuse cultures, he is also depicted visually in a whole host of new and evolving forms. I haven’t looked into the artistic depictions of Alexander once he becomes Dhul-Qarnayn, or Iskander (his Persian name), but I think that’s probably what I should do next. By the time it gets to the way-aforementioned manuscript page he is completely transformed iconographically speaking. In this illumination Alexander/Iskander is depicted (the solo figure on the right) as an official from the Chinese court, visiting the Kaaba. He is, therefore, culturally reborn, depicted as someone from China, interacting with one of the most sacred monuments of Islam. This is so far removed from his original context, and yet one can trace the path of his transmission through time and media to this point.

Iskander at the Kaaba. LACMA M.73.5.462

As I’ve said. I’m not sure how these two concepts (the attribute and ~Alexander through time~) necessarily link up, or if they even productively can. It’s possible they should both be pursued as separate, though theoretically related trains of thought. I was hoping, through the course of writing this, try and figure out some more/gain further clarity, but unfortunately I don’t think any of the resources I’ll need to really dig down on this are readily available online, as I have discovered a rather scanty digital trail, even about Alexander in his extended legendary life.

*27/4/19 this is pretty bold and I'm not sure I'm currently equipped to defend the statement against a critical attack but it still feels right. 

If you read all of this, hey thanks! This was an attempt to try and mitigate the fact that I’ve just been crawling up the walls of my own mind and it’s been getting pretty bad the past couple of days. Injuries are really difficult for everyone, but coming directly from a summer of mobility and hiking and freedom in the place I love most, despite the fact that I wasn’t even in the field very much, and being utterly and completely grounded has been a devastating and crippling (pun intended) adjustment. Sitting in one place has never been something I’ve been good at, and I am really only just coming back into my own mind as I ease off the pain meds. SO, this was an attempt, inspired muchly by @post--grad’s fucking brilliant and captivating newsletter to just try and muse and think without any pressure or connected to anything that has any current relevance to my scholarly production. 

Let me know what you think, really! Even if you’re someone for whom this is all totally new, bc let’s be real, most people don’t spend their lives thinking about objects and images and The Past. I wanna know what you think! Does it make sense? Is it weird? What was the most interesting thing about this, if at all?

[pickcpodcast]

10 Show Notes - Which dynastic restoration most deserves an epic movie/miniseries?

Look....we’re all thinking it....

Before going on to the show notes, don’t forget to listen to the episode! 

Dynastic restorations have always been a very appealing fantasy--in tumultuous times like these, who doesn’t want a righteous leader to show up and set all things right in the world? Preferably one with mystical powers that enable them to accomplish the impossible, as well as a nice patina of grandeur inherited from some illustrious royal ancestor. 

(Side note: in the episode, we promised to link the weird story of King Arthur’s conception and birth, because that’s a whole thing and he definitely qualifies as a dynastic restoration. Here you go.) 

Of course, people like these are pretty thin on the ground, and even when they do get around to a glorious dynastic restoration, things don’t always go as planned. (See above.) But sometimes they’ve turned out better than expected, so we thought we’d take a look at some of the times in history where heirs have emerged to restore their families to power and glory.

Our answer choices for this week are: 

the Eastern Han dynasty

the Umayyad dynasty

the Borjigin clan AKA Northern Yuan dynasty

the House of Stuart

Option A: Eastern Han Dynasty

Restored 25, China

Gentlemen in conversation, Eastern Han dynasty [source]

The main source we used for the Han dynasty was Jonathan Fenby’s The Dragon Throne: China’s Emperors from the Qin to the Manchu, with some help from help from Mark Edward Lewis’s The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. 

Fenby’s book, which mostly covers the different dynasties in wide swaths, has great details about Wang Mang’s rise and downfall since he technically qualifies as a dynasty in his own right, the Hsin. Meanwhile Lewis’s book does discuss the dynastic histories of this period, but he’s much more interested in what we can learn about daily life in Qin/Han China. I really recommend it for anyone who’s planning on doing historical fiction in this period. 

If you prefer primary sources (and can read Chinese), here’s Liu Xiu’s biography in the Hou Han Shu, the official dynastic history of the Later (Eastern) Han dynasty: https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%BE%8C%E6%BC%A2%E6%9B%B8/%E5%8D%B711

I also loved Overly Sarcastic Productions’ video on the same historical era--they’re always concise and to-the-point while being massively entertaining, so if you prefer videos to books, go check them out! 

Other sources: [1] [2] [3]  Option B: Umayyad Dynasty

Restored 756, al-Andalus (present-day Spain) 

Please have an aesthetic photo of the Alhambra, Granada, Spain, by yours truly. The name “Alhambra” comes from the Arabic al-hamra’ meaning “the red,” referring to the red tiles and stones used to build the palace.

(Yes, in the episode I say 1756 the first time the year is brought up. My bad :[] --Sophie) 

Our main source on the Umayyads and the fascinating culture of al-Andalus was The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal, which traces Andalusian history from before its founding through the final defeat of Granada in 1492 and also covers the enduring cultural legacy of Islamic Spain. 

If you want to know more about the Abbasid coup that sent Abd al-Rahman to North Africa and Spain in the first place, as well as the early history of Islam, there are pretty solid accounts in both Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary and The House of Wisdom by Jim al-Khalili. Interestingly, both books include an account of the Umayyads being wiped out in a murder dinner--something of a theme in this episode. It wasn’t just that they were killed at their summer home of Rusafa, as we discuss in the episode--the story goes that the new Abbasid caliph invited the Umayyads who’d survived his uprising to a banquet, to demonstrate that there were no hard feelings. There he had them all slaughtered, Red Wedding style, locked doors and all. We’re still not sure what to believe about how Abd al-Rahman survived, but that’s to be expected--tall tales abound in times like those. 

Also: al-Andalus is a place Sophie has actually been to, so: pictures! The Great Mosque of Cordoba: 

And the Alhambra, viewed from the Summer Palace nearby: 

Borjigin Clan / Northern Yuan Dynasty

Restored 1479, Mongolia

For the history of the Borjigin clan and especially its many amazing women, the seminal book is The Secret History of the Mongol Queens by Jack Weatherford. It’s in this book that you will find the fascinating story of Manduhai the Wise, the woman who partnered with Dayan Khan to restore the Borjigin and the Mongol nation. You will also find the full gamut of harrowing stories about Batu Mongke/Dayan Khan’s father, Bayan Mongke, who survived several attempted murders by his own grandfather Esen Taishi, thanks to the craftiness of the women in his family. 

The tidbit about the IRL Order of the White Lotus comes from The Imperial Capitals of China by Arthur Cotterell. 

Other sources for the Borjigin Clan: [1] [2]

House of Stuart

Restored 1660, England

Not super much to say on this one, our token European answer choice. If you want to learn more about the Declaration of Breda AKA the four promises Charles made which we touched on in the episode, you can go to these articles: [1] [2] 

For more on the House of Stuart in general and where it fits into the tangle of English royal houses and lineages, historian Lucy Worsley has a fantastic docuseries called Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History. In addition to talking about royal health, she also talks about politics, including the English Civil War. She covers the House of Stuart in the first episode, here. 

Other sources for Charles II and the restoration of the House of Stuart: [1] [2] [3]

Thanks again for listening, and we’ll see you again in two weeks! 

[chimepunk]

What novels or book series would you recommend?

oh fuckin boy dude so many. 90% of what i read is either gay or scifi/fantasy or both, and some are technically for a younger audience but still great, so thats what most of this is which hopefully you’re cool with here goes

this got super long so i’m putting it under a cut. bolded titles are the ones that i’m super recommending, though i love them all

novels

the coldest girl in coldtown by holly black - vampires! a trans character! a bi character! one of the most novel approaches to vampires in fiction that i’ve seen! 10/10 would recommend

the darkest part of the forest by holly black - again, holly black is one of my favorite authors. this one’s got faeries (the proper vaguely unsettling kind that i’m all about) magical music, girls embracing their sexuality, girls being knights, interesting sibling dynamics, and a super cute m/m pairing

les miserables by victor hugo - ok yeah, it’s like 1400 pages long and historical fiction, but i love les mis a lot ok. it’s gotta be on this list just because it owns my ass. it’s like a old drunk french man trying to tell you about the june rebellion but he keeps getting distracted by things like people’s personal lives, the intricacies of the parisian underworld, and how much he wants to fuck the sewers. it’s wonderful

the night circus by erin morgenstern - magical circus that mysteriously appears for days at a time and then vanishes? a competition between young magicians drawn out for years? a wide variety of fascinating side characters? (i will say that the synopsis available for the book is somewhat misleading, as it’s actually less about our two protags and more about the circus itself. but that’s what makes it so enchanting)

the song of achilles by madeleine miller - retelling of patroclus and achilles story to be explicitly romantic. will make you feel like you’re floating on clouds and then rapidly crush your soul. sort of a happy ending? but it’s still a tragedy. their ending is the same as it was in the illiad so if you’re not prepared for that then maybe don’t read

good omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett - a demon who’s not very good at being a demon and an angel who just wants to collect his books in peace thank you very much try to sabotage the end of times. absolutely hilarious

fairy and folktales of the irish peasantry by w.b. yeats - the best collection of irish faerie stories by one of my favorite poets. if you like creepy and tricky faeries i would def recommend checking these out

rootabaga stories by carl sandburg - another collection of folktales, this time inspired by the american midwest. kinda weird, kinda zany, very neat

the poison eaters by holly black - a short story collection of faery stories that are sometimes creepy, sometimes touching, sometimes gay. my personal favorite is about a library science student who finds a book collection where the characters come out at night and interact, but they’re all really great

series:

alex rider adventures by anthony horowitz - teenager gets recruited by MI6 as a spy, has incredibly high success rate, gets pretty fucked up along the way but damn those one liners tho, maybe have some self preservation alex? just a thought

all for the game by nora sakavic - about a fake sport called exy that’s kind of like indoor lacrosse but more violent. contains: crime families, found families, an aspec protag, girls kicking ass, unhealthy levels of sass, wonderful slowburn m/m that you can’t even see coming for a long while, and a happy ending for everyone!! i came for the gays and ended up reading all three books in two days. also you can get the whole series for less than five bucks on kindle! (note: tw for rape, physical abuse, torture, ptsd, child abuse, drug use, alcoholism, some use of slurs, mentions of past self harm, mental illness)

artemis fowl by eoin colfer - more faeries, but this time they live underground and are way more technologically advanced than humans. the first book focuses on our anti-hero trying to catch one and steal their gold, and they quickly become allies and solve faerie related cases together!! one of my favorite series growing up, and i cried in the middle of the hallway at school when i finished the last book

camp half-blood series by rick riordan - does rick riordan write a lot of mythology books? yes. do i love them all? yes. neurodivergent kids! kids from a huge range of racial and ethnic backgrounds! queer kids! collect them all! ft. greco-roman mythology and a lot of stupid jokes

emelan series by tamora pierce - ok this is easily one of my favorite series of all time. non-western high fantasy setting (picture greece/turkey, china, tibet, mongolia, scandinavia, etc type settings), following four young mages who have unique kinds of magic as they train and grow their skills and become powerful in their own right. only one of the kids is definitely white (jury’s still out on sandry), one is a lesbian, one is ace, one is pan, all four are raised by a loving f/f couple, body diversity, one of the best found families i’ve ever read, feminism, discussion of racism, classism, cultural identity, war, and so much more. it’s so so good and so under-appreciated please read all of the emelan books 

the dark is rising sequence by susan cooper - full disclosure i have not finished this series yet but i’ve re-read the first book a million times. it’s a neat take on arthurian mythology, with dark forces trying to take over and kids getting shit done

diviners by libba bray - psychic teenagers in 1920s new york! i’m a slut for prohibition, but these are also super fun and have likable and real characters, and doesn’t only focus on wealthy white people having parties which is nice. the occult! government conspiracies! historical references! genuinely scary situations! it’s rad!

the enchanted forest chronicles by patricia c. wrede - i adore this series so so much. it’s about a princess who’s father keeps telling her that she can’t have hobbies like fencing or cooking or conjugating latin verbs because they’re unladylike and insists that she marry this doofus prince that she couldn’t care less about. so she runs away and volunteers to work for a dragon and proceeds to send away all the princes that try to rescue her. it’s genuinely funny, has a really neat magic system in the later books, great female friendships, cats, dragons who have no time for your gender roles, and wizards who are the most ridiculous group of antagonists you will ever see

the infernal devices by cassandra clare - i really really do not like the author of this series but it also broke me so it must go on the list. if you’re familiar with the mortal instruments or shadowhunters on freeform, it’s set in that universe in the 1870s in london and it’s very steampunk and very angsty and it made me cry a lot

the kane chronicles by rick riordan - see: camp half-blood series but egyptian

fablehaven by brandon mull - oooooh fuck me up i love this series. this is another one meant for slightly younger readers but all of brandon mull’s series are so wildly imaginative and i’m a slut for world building so. the premise is basically that there are secret preserves all over the world that house magical creatures, and five of these preserves have vaults with artifacts that when brought together make a key to this massive demon prison. an evil society called the society of the evening star is trying to get the artifacts to open the prison, and a different group who is allied with the preserves called the knights of the dawn is trying to get to them first to prevent this from happening. there are dragons, light and dark powers, crazy convoluted vaults to get through, and some really cool creatures and characters

beyonders by brandon mull - this guy again! this one’s about a parallel world called lyrian that people on earth can only get to through small liminal windows, and usually can’t get back through. the story follows two kids, jason and rachel, who get stuck in lyrian and end up becoming major members of the resistance against the evil emperor maldor. just like fablehaven, the world building is insane and you’ll fall in love with all the characters. this is yet another series that made me cry in the middle of class when i finished it

the kingkiller chronicle by patrick rothfuss - this is series is long as all fuck and the last book isn’t out yet but it’s my #1 favorite series of all time. i found out about it bc a cashier at a local grocery store held up the line to write it down for me and i never went back. parts of it are achingly, hauntingly beautiful, other parts are hilarious enough to leave you in stitches, others make you want to pull your hair out. there’s sass, recklessness, beautiful and deadly girls, an overwhelming love and emphasis on the importance of music and storytelling, magic that’s more like science, ethnic adversity, student loans, a thing that might be a cow or might be a dragon depending on who you ask, and more quotable lines than you could dream of. the audiobook by nick podehl is also fabulous, and lin manuel miranda is producing and adapting it for the screen and maybe stage at some point in the future!

a modern faerie tale by holly black - guys. i love holly black. almost everything she’s ever written is on this list. this one is fairly self explanatory by the title, but it’s gritty and dark and has those lovely creepy faeries that she’s so great at writing. also a surprising m/m couple in the last book, both of whom are characters in the other two installments. (tw for drug use/addiction, brief sexual assault, and probably other things that i can’t remember right now)

the raven cycle by maggie stiefvater - also in my top 3 favorite series of all time, i cannot begin to describe this series. i first read it while up in the nc mountains which improved the experience to a surprising degree, but it’s stuck with me for the last several years. basically 5 teenagers go in search of a dead welsh king, but along the way there is magic, psychics, ghosts, a sentient forest, dreams becoming reality, curses, teenage shenanigans, classic cars, swearing, church, kisses and not kisses, illict hand holding, a baby crow, bisexuality, a death list, hitmen, and nicknames and it will consume your heart before you know what’s happening to you (tw child abuse, implied sexual assault, substance abuse, dissociation, mentions of past suicide attempts, body horror, gore, and disturbing scenes esp. in the last book)

six of crows by leigh bardugo - a team of criminals band together to break into an impossible fortress, fall in love, con an entire city, and get rich. set in the same universe as the grisha trilogy (which is also good but not as good as soc), this is basically a heist followed by a con, but pulled off by ruthless teenagers and with the help of magic

curseworker trilogy by holly black - crime families, magic that can only done through touch so everyone wears gloves, moral ambiguity, and a twisted romance. one of holly black’s best and most underrated series

baccano! by ryohgo narita - this is a japanese light novel series which has been adapted into an anime, but is much more extensive in print. the plot is extremely convoluted, but an absolute ride spanning several centuries, although the bulk of it is in the 1930s in nyc and chicago. there’s an elixir of immortality, crime families, trains, a solipsistic assassin and his mute assassin gf, serial killers, a demon with a catch phrase, murder, explosions, adorable couples, gambling, a gang leader named jacuzzi who is always terrified, killer corporations, and much much more

no.6 by asuka asano - another japanse series, this time focusing on two boys, one who grew up in a utopian city, the other who grew up outside the walls after the city destroyed his life. they meet when they’re 12 years old, and several years later, they’re reunited when the outsider rescues the city boy from arrest. they, along with a pimp and a nonbinary dog hotel owner, try to expose and overthrow the government. also ft. drag performances, mice who like shakespeare, killer bees, and boys falling in love.

the merlin saga by t.a. barron - my favorite take on arthurian mythology, chronicling merlin as he comes into his power. there’s a vividly magical island, giants, amulets, talking trees, stones that will try to swallow you, a swamp witch, celtic deities, huge wicker hats, poetry, new kinds of fruit, people that are also deer, and human’s long lost wings.