#i have lots of complicated feelings about the tam parents that i will write out at some point

[tamsiblings]

fucking get 'im part whatever

[myfairkatiecat]

Thinking about getting into kotlc. What specifically do you like and find recommendable about it?

Keeper of the Lost Cities is my all time favorite book series. It's not the objectively best story I've ever read, but it's my favorite. Here are a few reasons you should ABSOLUTELY read KOTLC:

Fantastic adoption plot. The process of Grady and Edaline adopting Sophie and the complicated way Sophie grows to see them as parental figures, the ups and downs, the way it takes years for her to decide to adress one of them as mom or dad, the way those moments are portrayed as special... it really clicks, especially as someone from a foster family.

The main character is super realistic and well developed. She undergoes a lot of non-linear character development. She has strong beliefs that sometimes conflict with what she's expected to stand for. Her journey from book one to book nine with how she learns to be a leader, stand up for herself, and do what she thinks is right all the time is super well portrayed.

The characters and their relationships are very well developed and complex. Yes, certain things are made very clear through the narration because Shannon is in fact writing for kids, but after books one and two a lot of the kids series feel vanishes almost entirely. I mean, no, it's still charming and silly most of the time, but it doesn't feel as young, especially as the characters grow older and a lot of darker and more complicated issues begin to arise.

The portrayal of the dystopia is fascinating. KOTLC is not in the dystopian genre for a reason. The Lost Cities are not presented as a dystopia at all. That just... comes out slowly. Sophie goes there and is told that everything about the world is perfect, and since everything is sparkling and glittering, it must be, right? She has a few early thoughts about how certain things seem wrong, and those thoughts continue to grow as the problems with the Lost cities become clearer and clearer. Their government and social systems are very messed up, and Sophie only sees the surface of it because she's usually interacting with the nobility, but the reason for both rebellions formed is fixing those exact societal issues.

The good guys and bad guys want a lot of the same things. There's a focus in KOTLC on doing the right thing, not just achieving the right goal. Which sometimes means characters mess that up! (cough keefe sencen cough) But again, all this stuff is explored in a super accessible way, because it's a middle grade series. It feels like reading something deeply interesting with good messages without having to take a lot of time to wrap your head around what those messages are.

The characters are incredibly well-developed. Their backgrounds and history explain most of their personality and actions in amazing ways. I'm thinking specifically of Sophie, Keefe, Tam, Linh, Fitz, and Dex right now, but I'm sure there are more examples (and I hope it gets explored more with Marella in the future, tbh. We know about her childhood--how does that impact her personality?) It makes it very interesting to rotate these elves around in your head.

There are multi-book arcs, many huge reveals are foreshadowed from the beginning. The books open lots and lots of mystery boxes--there are tons of questions being asked ALWAYS--but in the end, they get answered (some more satisfying than others), really portraying just how much can happen even in a short time frame for these kids. Honestly, the whole three-years-over-nine-books thing feels PERFECT to me. Unlike Harry Potter, each book isn't a school year. Unlike Percy Jackson, each book isn't a summer vacation. All of these things happen one after the other, saturating the characters lives, and I think it's very interesting.

The adults have some crazy lore going on. It's pretty fun to try to piece all of that stuff together because Sophie doesn't take a lot of interest in it.

Everything about KOTLC is interesting to me. I'm not going to say there's no issues with it ever (please followers do not come in my ask box and start telling me there are issues with KOTLC idk why it's so controversial to say that Shannon did a really good job with character and plot complexity) but I hugely recommend giving it a read. Let me know if you read it and what you think!

[books-coffee-and-the-woods]

Okay, Tam Lin thoughts/review. Going to structure this one differently because I've seen some other reviewers do this and it seems like a more organized way of posting:

(spoilers under the cut)

Overall: if you want a vibes-based, cosy academic read this is a decent choice, as long as you're okay with the actual magic bits being put off till the end. In my opinion the story drags quite a bit and spends a lot of time on minutiae like classwork and dorm squabbles and not enough on the actual, titular plot (I believe @wearethekat commented on another post and said "this is a story about college that happens to have Tam Lin in it" and that's definitely the vibe). The Tam Lin aspects could've at least been woven into the entire book a bit more seamlessly, as it's frustrating to have your Janet character and your Tam Lin character but not have them really interact beyond friendly conversation for 400 pages.

The Good

Dean's writing style is really nice. It's very personal and conversational, almost. You really get to know the characters and their thoughts and feelings. It's very friendly.

Once we get into the actual Tam Lin part of the story (the last 50 pages or so) I found the lore very interesting. All of the mysterious Classics students turn out to be either fae or humans under their thrall (including some 400 year old Shakespearean actors), led by the mysterious Professor Medeous, the faerie queen.

I like the idea that Tam Lin is not just a ballad but a spell/ritual for rescuing your love from faerie. If you're on the way to being sacrificed, you need to have your lover, who is specifically pregnant with your child, pull you down from the white horse and hang onto you. I'd love to see it applied to other stories, as it adds an interesting bit of complication.

Also liked the setting a lot, and the fact that the buildings all have their own personalities. The ghosts were an interesting touch too, and Janet's fears that she's going to die by suicide because all the pregnant girls in Ericson did before her.

I did like the frank, non-judgmental discussions of birth control and abortion in this book. They're very practical and realistic (except Janet's momentary plan to give herself an abortion with yarrow tea, but she was very much not thinking clearly and she doesn't go through with it). It was great to have a story that treats the subject matter frankly, and an MC who has supportive parents who will help her out no matter what she chooses.

The Okay

Dean clearly took this book as an opportunity to air her own ideas and debates about literature and classics. The characters spend a LOT of time in class, talking about readings for class, or debating books they've read outside of class. The author even makes up three productions of plays (iirc, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and The Revenger's Tragedy) that she has her characters watch and comment on. It's somewhat interesting, even for someone who hasn't read most of the works they discuss, but I did start skimming eventually, because there's only so much Shakespeare debate one person can handle.

The professors. I thought they were all interesting, though it was a bit strange that Melinda Grey didn't feature more in the overall plot, considering she gets way more screentime than Medeous did. I think some of them get too much screentime, and others get the right amount but unfortunately don't actually factor into the plot.

Also the musing over which students/teachers were lesbians was kind of annoying, and I think it was only done to show that the characters we later find out are fae are more morally loose than others. There are lots of mentions of Medeous having affairs with other staff/students but that never really factors into the plot.

The Bad

This book should've been 200 pages shorter. Yes, it's a nice, long, slow read, but imo it's far too slow. The important plot is almost entirely put off until the last 50-100 pages, and most of the stuff between that and the introductory chapters doesn't matter in the end. The book drags at some points, and you're constantly asking "this is called Tam Lin, but where the hell is the Tam Lin??" It almost feels like the author forgot she was contracted to write a novel for a fairy tale-based series until the very end.

The Nick-Janet-Thomas-Tina-Peg-I-Guess love quadrangle is interesting for a short time, but it should've ended more quickly. Nick is a pretentious asshole and treats Janet poorly for most of their relationship (though whether the author considered it poor or if that's my modern standards, idk) and I feel like she shouldn't have put up with that for so long. Janet's character is not wholly emotionally driven, and I think once she started wondering why she didn't feel any sparks after reading the Fry poem, she should've ended it, even if she didn't realize how patronizing he is. Same with Tina and Thomas, they really don't understand each other and Thomas is basically only dating her bc he thinks she'll save him from the faerie queen, but Tina is also not the sort to tolerate being merely tolerated.

Also, a lot of the characters (but mainly Nick and Robin) like to speak cryptically in quotes from Shakespeare and some other works they've read, which is deeply annoying and frustrating and just underscores for me how pretentious they all are. It's not just once or twice, they'll have entire conversations like that, which hey, maybe that is how real college students talk, but I had to start skimming because it got to be a bit too much.

If I was going to rewrite this, I'd set the whole thing in their first & second year, cut a ton of the academic talk and roommate/dorm drama, and focus more on the faerie/Elizabethan-actors-in-college aspect, which would be revealed much sooner. Tina would break up with Thomas over summer, and Janet would dump Nick at the beginning of their second year. Then the Tam Lin plot would happen over those couple of months (but far more than 50 pages).

[tamsong]

pull you from the tide - keefitz

summary: in which fitz tries to hammer it into keefe’s head that he deserves to be loved. 

notes: this is half vent, half fix-it. this my first time writing fic for kotlc since i was like 13, so let me know what you guys think?

warnings: swearing, very vague references to homophobia and bad parents

***

keefe doesn’t come home.

a week passes, then two. a month. three. everything is weirdly silent on the neverseen front, despite sophie’s daring act of burning down the waterfall hideout. it feels like time is standing still- keefe’s absence hangs heavy in the air like ozone in the hour before it rains. 

fitz has barely spoken in those three months. in another world, he might’ve been angry like he usually is. in this world, though, no one’s around to be angry at, and fitz feels like his roots have been ripped out of the ground.

at the next black swan meeting, fitz quietly asks to speak to mr. forkle alone. the black swan leader nods resignedly, like he already knows what fitz is going to ask. sophie raises her eyebrows at him from across the room. i’ll tell you later, he transmits to her, but he doesn’t plan on it. sophie’s been hurt enough, and if she knows about this and it doesn’t work, she’ll be devastated.

mr. forkle walks him down the hall. he doesn’t say anythin

“i want to go look for him,” fitz says, trying to sound confident. but he’s anything but. he doesn’t feel like anything more than the desperate, frightened child that he is.

mr. forkle opens his mouth, but fitz cuts him off. “please,” he adds. “i... i don’t know what else to do. i know he said he doesn’t want to be found, but i- we can’t go on like this. i know the forbidden cities better than almost anyone, so i might as well try. please.”

“i can’t promise you’ll find anything, mr. vacker,” mr. forkle replies. “but if it’s really what you want, i can give you a leaping crystal.”

fitz sighs. “i know. trust me, i know. but if there’s any way i can get him back, i still want to go.”

the black swan leader nods in response. “very well. i’ll meet you at everglen tomorrow morning, and i’ll monitor you to ensure your safety. now, go on and meet your friends, and put this out of your mind for the rest of the day.”

he thanks mr. forkle profusely, then does as he’s told. only a few minutes after he leaves does fitz realize that his request was granted far too easily- mr. forkle, while certainly not a cruel man, expects him to fail. there would be a lot more lecturing and protocol if he didn’t.

fitz doesn’t blame him.

***

the next morning, fitz takes the blue crystal from mr. forkle, his hands trembling. he’s dressed in the same jacket, jeans, and boots from when he first found sophie. he thought the memories would be calming, but the sense of deja vu only unsettles him, really. on that pleasant thought, fitz holds the crystal up to the sunlight and steps into its path, holding his breath.

he arrives in an empty park, hidden between two trees. freezing rain is pouring down from the sky, a sharp contrast from the eternally pleasant weather at everglen. fitz shudders, puts his hands in his pockets, and steps out of his hiding place.

he roams the streets of san diego all afternoon and evening, ducking in and out of stores, cafes, and libraries, all of it to no sign of keefe. finally, when the sky is nearly dark and the rain has slowed to a drizzle, fitz stops in front of a building with sign reading san diego youth services. he shrugs and opens the door. it’s as good as anything, i guess.

“have you seen my friend?” he asks one of the staff in heavily accented english. “he’s tall and skinny, has blond hair and light blue eyes. about my age, doesn’t speak much english.” 

the woman squints and brushes her wet hair out of her eyes. “we had someone like that come in a couple months ago, and he comes here to sleep most nights. fidgety guy, looks sad all the time?” 

fitz pulls his jacket hood further up. “that's probably him, yes,” he answers, trying and failing to keep his voice steady. may i see him?” 

she nods. deep frown lines run down her face, like she’s seen too much tragedy in her short life. “sure. last i saw, he was out back.” 

the staff woman walks fitz through the building out to a secluded area adjacent to an alleyway, protected from the public eye. fitz doesn’t see anyone at first, but on second glance spots a flash of blond from further down the alley. he hurriedly thanks the woman and dashes over, heartbeat picking up. 

he skids to a stop when he sees keefe there, sitting on a step and dripping with rainwater. he looks up, startled, at the sound of fitz’s footsteps, and his mouth opens and closes in shock once he realizes who’s in front of him.

fitz expects a snarky comment, something like well look who we have here! or wow, guess i’m famous, but keefe says nothing. on one level, it’s terrifying, because fitz has rarely ever known his friend to be silent. on the other hand, though, he gets it. even without keefe’s strange new ability that makes speaking a risk, what else is there to be done in a situation like this? two years ago, they both would have laughed if told this would be their future.

they hover there for what feels like hours, neither boy knowing what to do.

finally, fitz breaks the quiet. “hi,” he says lamely, and then slaps himself mentally. really? is that the best you can give him? 

he tries again. “keefe. i...” no. that wouldn’t do either.

“you couldn’t even bother with a goodbye?” he finally bursts out, trying to muster up the anger he doesn’t feel. this isn’t the right way to approach it either, but fitz doesn’t know how else to communicate. “did you think i wouldn’t care? sophie’s not the only one who was fucking sad, you know. biana can barely do anything but cry. dex isn’t talking to anyone, and neither is linh. even tam- i know you guys never got along, but he wants you home just as much as the rest of us.”

he shakes his head. “i know this can’t be easy for you, but we want to help you. even if we can’t, then we can find someone who can.”

“i’m not even mad, really,” fitz continues, looking up at the sky. he can’t bring himself to make eye contact. “if you didn’t care to say goodbye to me, i get it. i haven’t exactly been best friend material lately, and i wouldn’t blame you for never wanting to speak to me. but i read what you wrote to sophie, and it’s the biggest bullshit i’ve ever heard. be happy? forget about you?” he scoffs. “do you even hear yourself? i- she- we could never do that. you’re giving yourself too much credit.”

he turns around, fists clenching so hard his nails cut through his skin. “so this is my goodbye, i guess. i meant to bring you home, but you deserve a choice after everything. stay away, if you must, just know that we- i care for you, keefe. you deserve to be cared about. and if you don’t come home... i’ll miss you. i want you to know that.”

fitz finally exhales. he’s said his piece, laid all his cards out on the table. it’s keefe’s move now, and fitz will respect it, even if it fucking kills him to do it.

“fitz.” keefe speaks for the first time since fitz arrived, his voice hoarse and miserable. fitz whips back around, searching for any sign in his best friend’s face that might signal a change of heart. 

“fitz,” keefe repeats. the expression he wears is downcast and resigned. “i want to come home, more than anything i’ve ever wanted. but i can’t. it’s not safe, not for you or anyone else.”

“then tell us how to make it safe,” fitz begs. his hands twitch, desperately wanting to reach out. “anything you ask. hell, we could even hide you in my closet at everglen like the time when we were little and your dad was coming to take you home.” 

keefe’s mouth twitches, and even if it’s not a whole smile, fitz counts it as a victory. “that’s... nice of you to say.”

fitz softens. “of course,” he replies, not hiding how choked up he is. “anytime.”

keefe taps his fingers against his thigh, looking down. after a long moment of silence that seems years long, he lifts his face and speaks again. “you’re not making this easy.” his eyes gleam with unshed tears. “maybe if you make it a little harder...”

fitz’s hands move of their own accord, resting on either side of keefe’s face. the other boy’s cheeks are warm despite the bitter, freezing rain.

fitz... actually has one more card he could play. it’s one he’s kept in his pocket since the middle of level three, never shared with anyone, not even with sophie. 

there’s never been a world in which revealing it would be acceptable, but maybe things are different now. more complicated and painful, yes, but if there’s even the slightest chance that this secret could bring keefe home, then he’s willing to accept that pain.

fitz lays his final card on the table.

he kneels in front of where keefe is sitting on the step, never breaking contact for a second. keefe’s wide eyes follow him as fitz lowers himself down, his expression open and vulnerable. fitz leans in close, but pauses just inches before his friend’s lips, giving keefe time to move, time to reject him and run away.

when keefe makes no effort to resist, fitz closes the distance and kisses him.

it’s a short, soft thing, the connection as fragile and fleeting as a candle flame in a windstorm. but to fitz, this kiss is everything. it’s a representation of his enduring care for keefe, the affection that sprouted when they were children and has only blossomed since. despite everything standing in their way, fitz has loved keefe and always will.

he just hopes it’ll be enough for keefe. 

fitz pulls away, not letting himself linger too long. he resists the urge to look away, instead gazing into keefe’s eyes and smiling gently. he’ll wait as long as it takes for keefe to make his move, and he’ll respect it. he just wants his friend to know the truth.

suddenly, keefe bursts into tears.

he throws himself forward, nearly knocking fitz over. he buries his face between fitz’s neck and shoulders, his body wracked with sobs. fitz hugs him back, running his fingers through his friend’s tangled hair. keefe cries and cries, holding tightly to fitz until his sobs fade to tremors and there’s a wet patch on fitz’s sweatshirt from his tears.

“okay,” keefe finally whispers, sending shivers down fitz’s spine. “i’ll take us home.” 

keefe shifts and moves his hand up between them to fitz’s shirt pocket where fitz always keeps his home crystal. he plucks the crystal out, scans the area, and raises it up to the last dim sunlight trickling through the rainclouds. 

fitz holds keefe close as the two boys dissolve into the light, leaving san diego behind.

[the-resurrection-3d]

so what was ever good about acotar anyway?

For some reason, I’ve been very tempted to reread ACOTAR lately, and so I’m going to just make a quick list of what I remember specifically endearing the book to me back when I first read it in 2016 so we can compare notes later. This will, however, also include some retroactive criticisms now that we’re four years on from ACOWAR ruining everything forever. 

Twigger warnings for discussions of abuse, csa and neglect, as well as me using my complimentary R Slur Pass.

For some context: 

>Be 18yr me in 2016. 

>Be in your first semester at college. 

>Be so fed up with YA romance that you avoid books just for hinting at them in the summary. 

>Be also brainstorming a series with your roommate called The Cuckmaster Saga. 

This is probably going to sound embarrassing, but I’m being completely sincere when I say that part of why this book excited me was simply the novelty of finding a YA romance book that I liked. 

I’d fallen out hard with YA in general by this point in my life, partially because of a string of fairy tale “retellings” that clearly gave zero fucks about the source material beyond using the iconography in its marketing. Folklore had been my special interest for a while, and my excitement for the series and all its little extra niche references coincided with finally getting to study folklore in a true academic setting.

Which leads me to point one:

I love the idea of combining BatB and the Tam Lin ballad. I know some people have complained about this, but honestly, I enjoyed finding a retelling that mimicked the mix-and-match structuring of a lot of folktales. ACOTAR isn’t even the messiest or least coherent mash-up by a huge margin. Unfortunately, this aspect of the series severely lessened as it went along — remember when we all thought ACOWAR was going to be a Snow White retelling and then there was just one scene with poisoned apples? Lmao.

[If anyone wants an author who does YA mash-ups that are actually YA, I’d recommend Rosamund Hodge, whose books are always interesting in their sheer weirdness even when the story itself slightly falters. I mean, I wrote a whole 20-page thesis on her Red Riding Hood/Maiden Without Hands retelling and still didn’t cover everything I had thoughts on. (Tragically, however, I must inform you all that she is a Catholic Reylo. Rest in pepperoni.)]

It is fucking hilarious in retrospect that SJM clearly knows a bunch of different folktales and folkloric creatures but thinks it’s believable for shadowsinger powers to have no theorized origin “even [in] the rich lore of the warrior-people” (ACOFAS 65). Bro fuck outta here. 

But this leads into point two — Feyre and her family. It’s very obvious that SJM based Nesta and Elain’s dynamic with Feyre off the common folktale trope of having the youngest sibling be the only competent person in the room (and Katniss Everdeen). I thought it was honestly a lot of fun to see this trope done with some interiority; you can practically hear Feyre seethe about what useless hoes her sisters are between every line. I genuinely giggled through these parts on my initial readthrough. 

I’ve seen some people complain that Nesta and Elain’s behaviors aren’t realistic in this situation, but au contraire! Nesta and Elain’s actions in book one are (...almost) perfectly realistic. Without revealing too much, my grandmother grew up in poverty with a few older sisters, and yet my great-grandmother would make her do all the work and constantly force her to give up her possessions (like her car) to the older sisters whenever they wanted them. Even to this day, when they’re all in their 70s and 80s, one of these sisters still relies on my grandma to do basic shit like balancing her checkbooks. I’ve also observed similar dynamics play out plenty of times between an adult child and an overindulgent parent, with people literally ruining their lives and bodies all for the sake of sitting at home all day buying furry porn off the internet. 

Nesta and Elain are basically the psychology of this type of person split in two — Elain the soft, delicate, perpetually victimized front they put on for the world, and Nesta the ice-cold, bitter, and aggressive bitch they truly are. 

Honestly, the only thing I would change about this set-up is either keep Ma Archeron alive or give Papa Archeron more personality than a plank of damp wood. What’s truly missing here is a parental figure enforcing this fucked up dynamic — I don’t remember it being clear that Feyre’s always had this role, just that she took it on after her mom’s death. Making it clear that Feyre’s always been forced to be this way — alongside giving the mom more characterization — would have gone a long way towards making this dynamic feel more realized and less like the narrative using trauma and pity as a shortcut towards reader engagement. 

Then again, that would require SJM to have a female villain in this series who isn’t a rapist, and quotes I’ve seen floating around from ACOSF make it pretty clear SJM doesn’t know same-gender sexual abuse even exists. 

Anyway. 

Point Three (or rather 2B): Feyre realizing she doesn’t have to hang around her family just because she feels obligated to love them was a fucking banger. I loved it so much; having a story, especially a YA story, that showed you aren’t obligated to love a family that treats you like shit was so special to me. Especially since I was also leaving my family for the first time, and going home to visit them every other weekend felt like being hit point-blank with a Psyduck blast. 

Thankfully, my relationship with my family has gotten a lot better, but I’m still really disappointed that Nesta and Elain were forced back into the story, rather than them reaching out to Feyre and making amends because they wanted to do better.  The closest we got to this was the revelation that Nesta almost made it to the Border by herself after Feyre was taken, which was definitely badass, but also unfortunately the only Nesta scene I’ve liked in this entire fucking series. If SJM was going to force Feyre to regress into being Nesta and Elain’s tardwrangler again, then she should have followed up on Amren’s line in ACOWAR that Feyre treats Nesta and Elain the way Tamlin treated her. 

“I asked them to help once—and look what happened. I won’t risk them again.”

Amren snorted. “You sound exactly like Tamlin.”

[. . .] and I said, “She’s right.”  (169-170). 

But I’m sure everyone who’s read ACOSF knows how well that’s going. 

Point Four: the femindhjdfhfdh I can’t even write that with a straight face. I mean let’s be real, I too enjoy seeing female characters I like become queens and all that other stuff, but it was clear to me even on my initial reading of ACOMAF that it was all shallow and designed to help delineate good guys from bad guys without much in the way of nuance. It certainly took me out of the experience a little, but at least it ties into the books’ themes of recovering from abuse and shacking up with a Certified Women Respecter. 

My actual point four: Truthfully I only bought this series for the meme of having the first shitty love interest getting cucked in the second book. ACOWAR gave me some complicated feelings on Tamlin, and I honestly think he should have just stopped appearing in the series after that — BUT, having him be dragged back in once per book just to call him a cuck and cockslap him around a little bit is fucking hilarious. Pointless! But hilarious.

I also think that this kind of arc is a great critique of the standard “happily ever after,” acknowledging that in real life, you’re much more likely to just pass from one abusive household to another because you don’t know what healthy love, communication, and boundaries are. (Arguably many folktales are the fantasies of women who are well aware of this reality but want to imagine a world that’s otherwise). I definitely have a lot of problems with SJM’s claims of “sex positivity,” but acknowledging that Feylin used sex as a means of avoiding communication was another great touch.

I wish that this whole King of Hybern shit was completely cut just to focus on these themes more; it’s very clear SJM only included it because fantasy series = BIG EPIC WORLD-ENDING STAKES!! I've read maybe ten pages of Throne of Glass, so I can't speak for how she handles epic fantasy there, but I know for me and a lot of other stans, the Hybern plot had licherally nothing to do with what we liked and connected to in these books. 

But I must soften here, because I totally empathize with feeling like big stakes are “necessary” for a fantasy story and that no one would want to read your books without them. YA fantasy is the reason why TV Tropes coined the term “romantic plot tumor,” after all. (Source: I’m making shit up.) 

What else… what else… uhhhhh. I think that might be it, at least for substantial things I don’t have to qualify too much. I of course have plenty of little things I used to like but have now been tainted because ACOWAR ruined everything forever and ACOFAS danced on the graves (such as how I liked Lucien but everyone in the books shits on him now to the point it’s stopped being funny). But this post is too long anyway.

[charlotteu]

⟨ SON CHAEYOUNG. CIS FEMALE. SHE/HER. ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, CHARLOTTE TAM is actually a descendent of H E P H A E S T U S it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY TWO year old CIVIL ENGINEERING/BUSINESS MAJOR from SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite PRECISE & TENSE.

heyheyhey girls gays & they’s. my og’s remember charlotte and how deeply i love her also the looming promise that i’d bring her back. and here are we so ✌️ if any of you don’t know, i’m dakota, i’m nineteen (19), i live in cst, and i’m a part time barista along with a full time political science major. i’ll have some vague wanted connections at the bottom of this but my dm’s are always open both on here and on discord @ wet ass politics#6969

trigger warnings: death

full name & nicknames :

charlotte chunhwa tam / lottie & lola

major :

civil engineering & business

sexuality :

lesbian

gender idenitity / pronouns :

cis - female / she/her

age / birthday :

twenty - three, december tenth, nineteen - ninety - eight

zodiac :

sagittarius

personality :

charlotte is known to find literal scraps of anything and manage to make something gorgeous from it - whether it’s food, metal scraps, or a nearly - ruined picnic table - it’s a skill that she takes great pride in. she constantly tries to bring her loved ones together in one form or another, which results in quite a lot of last - minute plans and “family dinners.” because of these two traits, if someone just happened to forget to plan a birthday party or a baby shower and needed it thrown together within a day or two (maybe that is on her bucket list, maybe not,) charlotte is your perfect person. regardless of this, charlotte is still considered that friend that never has their life together and has an extensional crises every few weeks. family wise, their relationship with their siblings is something that they take very seriously. even the ones that give her stress acne are still very much able to feel the affection and love she’s has for her family. she constantly checks in on all of her siblings and regularly makes an effort to be as involved in their lives as possible.

when it comes to school work, charlotte is perfectly organized. a well - planned and well - filled out academic calendar is always in her backpack and she has a few dozen notifications on both her phone and her laptop to remind her of class assignments. she is well - known at the tutoring center for her near constant sessions to ensure to that she is totally, a hundred percent getting the assignment. her math classes is where she thrives, and she has a record of taking several math classes during the summertime to further her knowledge. charlotte’s known for the immense pride that she takes in her work along with the very long academia career that they wish to have.

myers - briggs, vice, & virtue :

entp, temperance, & distrusting

hobbies :

welding, drawing, sculpting/general crafting, trivia games, meditation, going into nature & finding animals, 

powers :

sensing faults in metal ores, technokenesis, and pyrokinesis. charlotte considers her technokenesis powers to be the stronger of her abilities now that she’s taken the time to work on it since her break. she uses it to help both students and professors on campus deal with their I.T issues and to make small devices to help her friends in their way to help with their daily life. she plans to use her sensing abilities to help with her career choice later on in life, so she continues to work on improving them to help later on. with honesty, she doesn’t use pyrokinesis beyond helping her forge things or as a cute party trick. they have very few plans to ever venture beyond the walls of a protected area ever again so her ability to control whatever flames she makes under pressure is virtually nonexistent.

backstory :

         tam chaewon, aged thirty, had just finished her blacksmith apprenticeship abroad in the netherlands when she decides to go to a bar to celebrate with some friends before trying to find a job when she’s approached by a man claiming to overhear her accomplishment. eager to talk about her future, the two of them end up talking for three hours about it along with the various paths open for her to take. maybe it’s the willingness to sit and listen to her or maybe it’s the legitimacy in his interest that drew her in, but the two ended up spending the night together; they spend only two days together before he leaves with an address for chaewon to write to him if it’s needed. and she does, approximately two months later when she learns she’s pregnant with a baby girl. he writes back nothing but an apology, money to help with the expenses, along with a separate letter to give to the child when she turned ten. 

(trigger warning in the paragraph: death specifically during child birth.)         fast forward through a tornado of eight months and chaewon is visiting her parents when charlotte was born prematurely in seoul, south korea in chaewon’s childhood bathroom. there’s a complication with both chaewon and charlotte shortly the birth and the paramedics sped through the streets to pick up the two, doing their best to keep the two of them alive during the ride. the woman’s family races behind them in the family car, barely able to find the room the two are in to see the nurses rush ahead of them. (no one can tell charlotte what the complication is, but her mom stays alive for an gruesome day and a half, straddling the border between life and death. she’s declared dead on december eleventh at 12:18 pm, 1998.) legend has it that silence ran through the waiting room that the family was in, an unearthly wail leaving charlotte’s grandmother as she realizes what she had to pay to receive her granddaughter. no one wants to touch the child, let alone raise her. their family is faced with a choice when they’re handed the death certificate of their daughter, the birth certificate of their granddaughter, and their granddaughter herself.

           her uncle is the one that ends up taking her in that day. the oldest sibling to her mother by six years, he had been an entrepreneur bachelor his entire life up until that point. so it’s whiplash, to say the least, to completely upheave his life in seoul and move to the small town of parga, greece to raise charlotte. the transition period between being a bachelor to a single father is hard, but he does his best to not give up on it. along side the lack of support from his family, it makes it all such a draining process. when she turns six, her uncle hires the first person to help the family: a highly recommended local nanny by the name of phoebe who would stay with the tam family until charlotte turned eighteen. it’s around this time that her uncle begins to drift away more, trying to keep his business on track, but he always comes back with an elaborate apology and an equally elaborate gift for charlotte to make up for the digression. 

          when she turns twelve, she starts to develop ... slightly unusual powers that always came as a shock but were immediately chalked up to scarily accurate guesses. it’s a fun party trick she uses at classroom gatherings, guessing where faults where in desks, trying to figure out what was wrong with technology, etc. and it didn’t go much beyond that for a very long time. it’s a rainy summer day when her uncle sits her down with a strange man who explains to the both of them that she’s a ... demigod. it takes a whole afternoon to convince charlotte of this fact while her uncle looks at her like a monster. she promptly declines any move to go to a camp (much to her uncle’s dismay) and the next six years of her life is promptly laid out. a life lived in a private plane, tucked away from the world to live out of a few suitcases and bought time from others.

          this quiet life sealed away from the outside world leaves her doing whatever she can to keep busy. building whatever she can, trying to stay as occupied as much as she can. it results in a suitcase full of little trinkets by the time she’s six months into home schooling. the next few years of her life pass her by in a terrible haze as she does everything she can to catch up to the life that has been set out for her. her life begins to slow down when she gets into college at the age of nineteen, where she finally finds a safe haven amongst people like her. however, at the beginning of 2020, charlotte finds herself catching deep feelings for one EILILDH GALBRAITH. a fiery, vibrant, and resistant spirit immediately draws charlotte into deep feelings for her. the relationship happens for several months before the relationship comes to an abrupt halt in the end of october. unable to come to terms with her first major breakup, charlotte cites a personal, family matter to switch to online classes before coming back to in person at the end of finals shortly before the evacuation. 

wanted connections :

DREAMLAND / a v simple plot with room for extreme nuance! someone that charlotte can help bounce ideas off of and vise versa. enable each other’s terrible ideas but do it with much love and a camera on hand at all times. ( 0/2 spots taken )

HIT DIFFERENT / some type of fun flirtatious relationship. maybe they’re just friends, maybe they’re party buddies (for the rare parties that she goes to,) or maybe they just happen to keep meeting. hopefully it’s very relaxed on both ends. ( 0/1 spots taken, must be afab )

ALWAYS GOLDEN / best friends, ride or die type shit. can we get some friend group for it tho because i always love a good group dynamic ( 0/5 spots taken )

I DIDN’T FALL / some kind of missed love, like those missed connections on craiglist. maybe the two of them grew close during charlotte’s time away from university or maybe they almost dated before charlotte was out, either way there’s still some mixed feelings of resentment for not making a move, the deathly “what if’s?”, and mayhaps some feelings that still linger. ( 0/1 spots taken, must be afab )

SPORTS / someone who helped navigate charlotte through her own experience of coming out and how that fits into her cultural identity along and her career field. i have a decent idea of her coming out process but i’m definitely flexible with it ( 0/1 spots taken )

[oh-mother-of-darkness]

asks (12)

Anonymous said: When I first came to this comic book fandom I was just a batman fan, didn't even know there was more than 1 robin (I feel so ashamed now oh my god), thought batman was the coolest superhero etc. But then I found your blog and started to pay more attention to batfamily. And now can't watch any batman-oriented movies (screw you, Nolan) or cartoons if there's no batfam member except Alfred. So, yeah, I blame you for this, thanks a lot (I'm serious, thank you so much, I love you)

:’) It’s my absolute pleasure

@macko-99 said: Do you think Duke has begun to acept the weird-ass crap that goes on in Wayne Manor or is he still getting used to it?

Is anyone ever truly used to it?

I like to think he know to expect something, but the day to day reveal of what exactly that something is can still be shocking. Just walk away, honestly. Don’t question it. This is probably normal.

Anonymous said: which comics do you recommend?

Hm my favorite series are Red Robin, Batgirl (2009), both Batman and Robins, and Robin: Son of Batman. Some of my favorite story lines are Under the Red Hood and The Black Mirror. For a better list, you’d have to be a little more specific about what you were looking for.

Anonymous said: hey what do u think of the dc's new Powerless show that coming out?

I’m really looking forward to it! It sounds like they’ve switched up their premise a little bit-- it used to be an insurance company, and now it’s R&D-- but I’m pretty happy with it either way, and I’m especially excited because the last trailer had them working for Wayne Enterprises. I wouldn’t necessarily expect any bats to show up in the show, but I can always pretend they’re there, and they might make references

Anonymous said: Can i request a fluffy damian acting his age™ hc's with cherry on top?

Hm I already did that one (here), so unless I come up with something else, I reckon that’s all there’s gonna be

@arabian-batboy said: Can write something where Bruce come across Jason in an alley after his resurrection but before Talia took him in & since he couldn't talk at that time (& because he's supposed to be dead) Bruce thinks it's just a hallucination and just leaves him?

Just for the record I am planning on writing this for you, Ive just been kinda busy lately. Sorry about the wait!

@lowbloodkiwi said: I've been on a completely unhealthy Jason Todd Binge and your blog is now victim to this search as well. (Aka nerdsobsessedwithheroes is me and Jason Todd beat my love for Dick Grayson oh no)

Lmao no problem :) My favorite list switches up all the time. Not the top spot, you know, but everyone else.....

Anonymous said: Would Jason have been better off never meeting Bruce or being adopted by him?

Hmmmmm that’s kind of hard to call, I reckon. I guess.... probably?

I think my answer would depend pretty heavily on whether Jason’s life gets any better or not-- specifically his mental health-- and I don’t know if that’s going to be the case. It would happen if I was in charge of things, but regrettably I am not.

Things as they are, Jason’s association with Bruce has been pretty terrible for him. The death/resurrection thing was traumatic on both ends, and then you got his estrangement from his family, all of the stuff with the League of Assassins, and now he’s killed a lot of people.

If Bruce hadn’t found him, we don’t know what would have happened, but I would assume four years in the foster care system and then... who knows.

The problem is that Jason was pretty messed up before Bruce got ahold of him, so I can’t say with any certainty that things would have worked out for him if he hadn’t gone with Bruce. I can pretty definitely say that it wouldn’t have involved dying and coming back to life, but I can’t say it would be fun. 

And even though Jason is doing really badly now, he’s very young in the grand scheme of things. If he can get to a better place that still involves Bruce, we potentially could be looking at decades of good stuff that ends up outweighing the bad. 

But for now, he personally probably would have been better off without Bruce. Of course, if that was the case, a lot of other people would be dead and/or worse off, but that’s not really the question here.

Anonymous said: What's your analysis of Jason and Bruce's relationship?

Okay I got 500 words into this and then my motivation suddenly disappeared, so I’m just gonna... come back to this question next round, if that’s okay

Anonymous said: Got any Jason Todd whump angst fic recs?

Ah I don’t actually read any fanfiction except my own, so if you’re looking for outside stuff, I’m afraid I can’t help you :///

My Jason angst is here: 1 2 3 4

I think the first one is probably the closest to what you’re looking for?

Anonymous said: how would you characterize tim? if you were writing the comics or describing his character to someone I mean

Oh boy that’s a complicated question

As a kid, I think Tim was highly idealistic and very eager to help. He was (and is) super smart, compassionate, and self-sacrificing... the problem being that if you continually sacrifice yourself, bad things tend to happen.

Tim volunteered to become Robin because he thought that Bruce needed him. Since that point, Tim has lost a whole lot of people: his birth parents, several of his siblings, and a lot of his closest friends (Bruce and Dick were fake-dead, Damian died, Cass died twice but both times very briefly, Bart, Stephanie, Kon).

All of that death (plus the trauma of 18086403658 near-death experiences and witnessing crime up close on a daily basis) has made Tim into a different person now than he was at the beginning. To quote Tam Fox, “Tim Drake is the saddest person I’ve eve met.” To quote Tim, “I grew up.”

Most of those people came back, but that doesn’t really fix things.

Grief is a big part of it-- so is this sort of exhaustion that makes Tim a little bit more likely to break rules than the others. His gray area is bigger. He’s a lot like Bruce in that he can be pretty calculating, and sometimes he isolates himself.

Even so, Tim has a lot of meaningful relationships (see above), and he never completely lost his nerdy-ass sense of humor or his empathy. Losing his birth parents was bad, but he did gain a new family, and that’s been good for him. His biggest motivation is still to help other people, and he’s great at it.

Anonymous said: I don't know why but I'm craving some of your exquisite angsty hc's with a hopeful or good ending or outcome or whatever,if you have any I'm all eyes bruh.Hmm maybe dami?Just go wild!may the angst guide you "if don't feel like it ignore me darling<3"

Oh shoot I forgot to mention you in that Tim angst. Sorry bout that, but it was for you