#lethal lovers

[explicit-tae]

so 😃 love your stories

what was going thru your mind when you did sweet serial killer/lethal lovers bc that was just so out there 😭

& unusual suspects 🥹 your plot twists are always amazing

thank you 🤣

I havent seen much yandere & member reader so thats where sweet serial killer & lethal lovers came in

Unusual suspects was me watching a true crime tv show of the same name and thinking what i can come up with that would have people not guessing who the catfish was in the fic 😅

[sugarflow]

hop on lethal company 2 babygirl

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

lethal company monster sun/moon au my brainworm i love u <3

couple bonus doodles below the cut

[cracksh0t]

do u think they explored eachothers bodies

[fixated-dark-king]

Sooo, I had the amazing experience of attending a panel C.S. Pacat was part of during the Sydney Writers’ Festival on 25th May 2024. The panel was called “Creating a Monster” (with two other YA authors).

And finally a week later (because adult-ing is hard), I had time to actually go through my notes and write up some of the fascccccinating things Pacat had to say about: monsterous heroes, and villains, and enemies-to-lovers deliciousness, and queer identity!

I didn’t want to forget some of the interesting things said in this panel and thought others might be interested in hearing about them too? Please indulge the splurge. :)

(Please note that all bold headers are just my thematic summary of each section for people to jump to, not the actual question asked.)

WHAT APPEALS ABOUT ‘THE MONSTROUS’ TO PACAT:

From a technical writing standpoint, the ‘Monstrous’ is appealing because a villain will often do an act and the hero reacts to that. It gives unconscious clues to the reader that when the villain turns up, something exciting is going to happen. In that sense, villainous characters have a special sort of ever-present attention given to them (possibly because human nature is to always keep one eye on the dangerous thing that could harm you).

On a personal level: A) When queer characters are awesome but also ‘Monstrous’, Pacat says it can feel really ‘electric’ and empowering to reclaim/allow yourself to embrace the monster role that you’ve been told you fit into by society. Like in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles where queer people are allowed to be beautiful/glittering & powerful & witty & have existential conversations about good and evil while fitting under the Monstrous label. Like heck yeh, that’s cool. And B) as an author, you can feel a ‘minority pressure’ to have characters be Good all the time and be the perfect ambassador for that minority, but sometimes you just want to be a vampire and take over the world, you know?

THE EXISTENCE OF ‘PROTAGONIST-CENTRED MORALITY’ WITHIN THE DARK RISE BOOKS:

When pondering whether it is hard as a writer to convince readers that a Monstrous protagonist is a likeable character, Pacat pointed out that the funny thing is that the question ‘How am I going to make readers like this monster?’ never really ends up being an issue because people actually really like monsters! The thing you might not expect is that the struggle is actually: ‘How am I going to make these readers who are barracking for the protagonist feel that this ‘monster’ is actually monstrous?’

Pacat explained that when a protagonist is also a monster, it brings into play something called ‘Protagonist-Centric Morality’ -- where you bond with that protagonist and want the best for them etc, so much that it can obscure when the protagonist is actually doing something bad. Pacat mentioned that he has found the Protag-Centric Morality fairly striking in the case of the Dark Rise books because people have said to him things like: ‘The Dark King Did Nothing Wrong Ever In His Whole Life’ and Pacat questioned whether the moral centre of the story was landing somewhere different than intended. He was curious whether the other authors had experienced that with their ‘monstrous’ protagonists too.

IF A HERO IS ALSO MONSTROUS, HOW ON EARTH DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE THAT FROM THE VILLIAN? When pondering over the distinction between a Monstrous Hero and a Villain, Pacat shared some thoughts from his lived experience. He said the times when he has felt most threatened by the ‘Monstrous’ is when that person isn’t clearly identifiable to others around you; where there isn’t a shared understanding between everyone that ‘yes, that person is a monster’. Extending from that, the Truly Monstrous is when that person has some kind of control over you and control over the narrative as well; if the monster is the one telling the story but casting you as the monster. Essentially gaslighting via ‘narrative control’.

ENEMIES TO LOVERS TROPE:

This is Pacat’s absolute favourite romantic trope. And he elaborated that he doesn’t mean that in the sense of ‘these characters sort of don’t like each other’, but rather to the point where two characters really hate each other and for a very good reason. He likes when a path between two characters feels IMPOSSIBLE to overcome.

This trope was first explored in the Captive Prince trilogy and Pacat loved it so much he just had to use it again for the Dark Rise trilogy. The planning behind it for CaPri was brainstorming: ‘What is the worst thing I could think to use?’ (Answer: Killing a character’s brother, which lands the bereaved character into a set of hellish circumstances.) But that meant when Pacat decided to use it again for DR, he had to extend that to: ‘Now I need to think of something EVEN WORSE THAN THAT (CaPri)’ in order to separate the main characters. So Pacat had to spend ages thinking about what could be the absolute worst thing to use this time -- and he hopes that he came up with something that is ‘truly, truly way worse.’ Which essentially had everyone, including the moderator, laughing loudly in fear. XD

WILL KEMPEN: FOUND FAMILY & THE LONELINESS OF INAUTHENTICITY:

Pacat spent a lot of time trying to develop a really meaningful platonic friendship between Will and Violet. It meant a lot to see a friendship like that reflected on page for Pacat because some of the most important friendships of his life were across gender lines. The reception to Will and Violet has been so pleasantly surprising, so Pacat supposed he wasn’t the only one with a hunger for that kind of friendship within the romantasy genre.

Pacat also reflected on Will’s complex relationship with his Found Family -- that having the support of a Found Family can be so essential, but in Will’s case that lifeline is undermined by secrecy, turning that Found Family into a different kind of loneliness. Because the thing is: if something so immense happens to you that you feel you can’t talk about, or you feel some way about yourself but think you can’t share that with others, it means you can’t really be your authentic self. But if you’re not being you’re authentic self, who are your friends friends with? They can’t be friends with the true You; they can only be friends with a facade/with a performance. So as long as Will is scared to show his true self and remains hiding himself away from even his friends, he will be alone. It’s a hard step to take. (Note from me: so heavvvvy but poignant.)

NOT DR-RELATED, BUT PACAT’S FAV MONSTERS FROM POPULAR FICTION: Pacat was so excited to namedrop his favourite monsters from popular fiction, he volunteered to go first LOL. The answers: 'The Brat Prince' Lestat (Lestat has been on his mind a lot recently because the AMC TV portrayal captures Lestat so well & has completely rejuvenated Pacat’s 12 year-old love of vampires. Total mood); serial killers such as in the Ripley series; and simply: American Psycho.

Great panel, right? Now it’s Europe’s turn!

[lord-prey]

Lethal company doodles, love all the interpretations on brackens I see so I wanna make my own :)

[koiada]

Company pt.1

[bitchfitch]

first @yeehawgust prompt was 'gather the posse' and since I'm using this challenge as a way to explore new characters I just took that to mean "design the fuckers"

anyways, Whiskey and Tago. Tbh this pose was meant to be more a metaphor thing than literal, but it's making me strongly consider changing Whiskey to being a they/them(plural) instead of a they/them(singular).

[meanyart]

to get a better look at you

[hidingoutbackstage]

Loved your female slasher moodboard @bloodcoveredgf I drew a lil fake poster for it

[cosmicwitchgod]

The monster lover version of Delicious in Dungeon: Devious in Dungeon.

Instead of every monster being edible, every monster is fuckable.

No, I won't take notes.

[nox-sunset]

I made this for my boyfriend since it was your meeting anniversary.

[yummybahh]

Rarepair Ship

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

had the absolute stupidest idea for an au and now it's y'alls problem. im lazy so im gonna steal the explanation i put in discord instead of explaining it in a brief, succinct way:

ok so. monster in lethal company, the maneater(???) thing, the one that looks like a harmless lil baby bug creature at first and cries a lot and when u don't b nice to it it turns into a monster and gets ur ass. so monster sun/moon that start off in a very vulnerable tiny baby state but r actually just like healing or smthn and Reader is the only one of a team of ppl thats nice and protects them and then later one of the ppl tries to/maybe accidentally almost gets Reader hurt and sun/moon go full angy and yeet a mf and then reader is like 'oh my god i have been letting those monster things sleep in my BED what if they have been planning to EAT ME' and sun/moon are like 👁️👁️💕💕 hi we love u

[ru5t1npeac3]

Hello friends

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I am asking for a small donation of 25€ from each person. 35€ will save my family from death and help me cover expenses and rebuild.

Through the link (please see bio)

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check it out chat

[totallynotgayforyou]

Your scared playing lethal company, I'm flirting with the shadow tentacle man. We are not the same