#ftakb

[therealslimshady]

@muffinlance baby griffins.....

in fucking Tears thinking about how disgusting a baby griffin would look

[bayofalgecirascranes]

i am rereading the part of Skin Stealer's Son by @muffinlance where the cat that controls dead things is doing a Danse Macabre against Vivaldi's Winter and i just noticed... Aaron instinctually knew what steps he needed to take to cross the dancing circle???? He felt exactly how he would fit into the murder-dance if he'd had his weapons???? He felt compelled to join the circle of dancing corpses?????

I mean, he resisted the compulsion without even trying, so he's definitely alive. But i don't think the dance would have affected him like that at all if he wasn't at least somewhat dead.

Of course, living folks also don't see Deaths unless those folks are cats, and he's literally a fellow who is still walking around long after his Death was supposed to take him, so.

[therealslimshady]

of all the side characters in the skin stealer's son, the weaponsmith is my absolute favorite. She's all caught up in keeping her people safe after they've been enslaved for generations and then in waltzes the world's shadiest boy, about to wreck havoc across the heldlands and expedite all her plans by several decades

[ruinconstellation]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Fox's Tongue and Kirin's Bone - Allison M. Kovacs Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Markus Yin Sung & The Lady | Adelaide Sung Sr. Characters: Markus Yin Sung Additional Tags: markus gets shivved. welp., Canonical Character Death, Wordcount: 100-1.000, Past Tense, POV Third Person Limited, Yes beta we survive like Aaron Summary:

Unlike Aaron, Markus didn't meet his Death whilst still alive; rather, his Death met him, as was the norm.

beta by @eliduremaybe !

[scolop98]

this isn't even foreshadowing it's just spoilers worded as jokes

oh my god, all your ominous john baker-posting from back during book one has finally paid off... that was one hell of a final chapter

I love him Your Honor

-Actual Legal Defense of John Baker

[bayofalgecirascranes]

I feel like if Markus and Aaron had ever properly met they would immediately either make plans to take over the world together or make plans to kill each other, no in-betweens.

[bayofalgecirascranes]

hey @muffinlance

how evilly were you laughing when you wrote this piece of dialogue?

[bayofalgecirascranes]

I have a ftakb theory i thought you might be interested in, regarding what might have happened to the late prince Orin after he and Jeshinkra took their ride in the woods 👀

when i first reread the Skin Stealer's Son I went back to read basically those exact lines three or four times over back-to-back because I agree with your theory absolutely and completely.

I really hope the o'shea siblings will reunite as living breathing people and not ghosts in the third book

[bayofalgecirascranes]

#It's so funny#If he ends up on the throne somehow by the end of the series it will have been entirely accidental#He's just trying to live laugh love over here it's not his fault it keeps putting him in strategically optimal positions#FTaKB tags by @therealslimshady you ever sidestep Death so hard you trip and fall into ruling over all of humanity.

Aaron Fox’sTongueandKirinsBone plots accidentally what certain people he knows could only hope to plot on purpose and I love that for him.

[bayofalgecirascranes]

my latest red-string and thumbtacks tinfoil hat theory about Fox’s tongue and Kirin’s bone is: what if Aaron is a Kirin doppel of Markus Sung? What if Markus got doppeled when he was really young, when nobody was watching him, so nobody knows and neither of them remember?

From the scene at the Late Wake meeting it’s almost confirmed that doppels can also be skin stealers, and I’m pretty sure we know that some doppels don’t know they’re doppels until the first time they transform, and we know there’s also Kirin shenaniganry going on.

I’m fully aware that this theory makes little to no sense and will probably be soundly debunked by canon like my “Markus is not actually dead he’s just possessing Aaron while he’s sleeping and also he’s the one who killed the fox and ate its tongue” theory, I just find making objectively insane ftakb theories and just going full conspiracy-mode about that story to be really fun.

[therealslimshady]

Aaron fox's tongue and kirin's bone is not doomed by the narrative or saved by the narrative but a secret third thing (his existence throws the narrative off it's tracks and several important people are very put off by this)

[therealslimshady]

currently can't stop thinking about how when the-dragon-as-orin rode into town that last time, he forwent tradition and entered first, while Aaron entered last

[bayofalgecirascranes]

I finished rereading the Skin Stealer's Son, and here are my conclusions:

Markus is definitely dead, in the sense that his face has been sketched and his body cremated. Whether or not he's going to show up, however, is unclear. For one, we don't actually know whether or not he doppeled. For another... well, the castle in Twokins is haunted, and we don't yet know what that entails.

Aaron is definitely alive, in the sense that his mind and memories are his own and he still needs to eat and sleep and all those other things a fellow needs to keep his heart beating. This does not, however, preclude him from being dead in some way, shape, or form. Rather the opposite, given the situation.

Orin may or may not be alive. The dragon wearing Orin's face said over Kirin's bone that the dragon wearing Jess's face killed her. But Jess didn't say it over Kirin's Bone But there was a newly-transformed dragon with the same coloring as Dragon-Orin bumbling about in the Enclaves, and we know that doppels when injured automatically transform into a form that's more likely to survive, and how well did those two dragons ensure that Humanish-Orin actually died? Who knows, maybe Dragon-Jess retained some of the feelings that Template-Jess had for the young King, and lied to Dragon-Orin's face. Or maybe I'm just completely grasping at straws.

Lord Adelaide Sung is dead. No ifs ands or buts about it. She was in the room when the That happened in the last chapter and she was not one of the two people who got out. She would have fought until either she was dead or the dragons were and i am under no illusions as to which option is the more likely of the two. It doesn't matter that Aaron didn't see her Death, when Aaron left, there were no deaths in the room at all (this makes me believe that those deaths were perhaps not of the most expected sort).

Connor is about to have a Very Bad Time. For... obvious reasons. Really hoping he survives this. Rose will likely have a better time, given that she's actually got support.

The Lady is going to do her very best to kill Aaron for Revenge reasons. These reasons are misplaced, and we know that Aaron is not above throwing his friends under the bus for his own survival. What we don't know is whether or not Aaron will even try, given that he wants to be on the weaponsmith's good side, and The Lady likely wouldn't believe him anyway.

We may or may not see John or any of the other enclavers again, depending on how things go down in Twokins.

[bayofalgecirascranes]

now I’m starting to imagine a Fox’s tongue-Towards The Sun AU and how would that even work

the enclavers could be secret airbenders easily enough, and the sky bison could take the place of Griffins in that sense, but other than that…

Maybe Aaron could be pretending to be Long Feng’s protege-who-is-also-his-wife’s-illegitimate-son or something and be shipped to the Fire nation to guard Azula with the rest of the Dai Li (this is of course assuming that he allows the takeover of BSS to happen which he might considering the different Royal Situation there)

More likely, and for simplicity’s sake, the switcheroo happened when the dai li were serving Azula in the Fire Nation. And instead of fleeing the palace with the rest of the dai li agents when Zuko was crowned, Aaron decided to get a job sewing clothes as a humble Fire nation peasant.

or maybe Aaron doesn’t need to be in it at all and it’s just Jahnalistrin working in the kitchens of the Fire nation palace what will he do

Jahnalistrin working in the Fire palace kitchens in Towards the Sun what will he do

[muffinlance]

If you have the time, I have a few questions about ftakb, if there's any you wouldn't mind answering! (some for curiosity sake, some maaaaaaaybe for potential fanart purposes.... ;)

-what is aaron’s hairstyle like? (i forgot :( )

-how do people in onekin/ twokins dress, in terms of cultural inspiration and styles? same with architecture!

-about how large, relative to our world, is lastrin? like the size of japan or so approximately?

-can you telepathically hear when your readers are screaming into pillows?

-do you giggle and kick your feet when it happens?

Hairstyle: straight black hair, currently in a short ponytail as he lets it grow out

Cultural inspiration: Ireland had the greatest influence on the capital (...not that Ireland ever existed in their world but ssh), with various southern Asian cultures also being prevalent fashion-wise, though that architecture would mostly be in the south of the isle

Size: TINY. Ireland-ish-sized in terms of land, with lower population density; Onekin is their biggest city, and its population is ~20k. Woo the slow slip into extinction!

Reader screams: are transmitted and absorbed similarly to cosmic radiation, but on a frequency tuned specifically to writers

Giggling and kicking of feet: is an excellent way to bleed excess screamenergy when the screampacitors are full, yes

[muffinlance]

every recent update for ftakb has left me shaking in my boots, but this one??? AHHH. Everyone's schemes are about to come to a head and I for one CANT WAIT

[REPLY REDACTED]

[reassuring smile not]