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webnovel-deluxe · 1 year ago

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Isn't Being A Wicked Woman Much Better? Side Story Chapter 17

i also upload this chapter in my YT, feel free to read there to support my effort, click👉Link

***

“I didn't expect you to get your diploma so soon.”

What a summer semester graduation!

The dean of the Academy's Faculty of Magic, my uncle, the Marquis of Wert, puts down his teacup and grinned.

He seems cold and cynical at first glance, but seeing the same face often, he knew he wasn't in a bad mood today.

“To be honest, the picture is strange for a single magician to teach the saint who saved the empire. ”

“But it is true that graduating too early according to the school rules… I thought the dean would be against it.”

“Do I not look so inflexible like your father?”

Addition adds more, but it doesn't look less.

I swallowed the hard words that came to my throat.

“Honestly, I didn't want to make an exception either, but I can't help it. Because of you, my work is almost paralyzed.”

“.....”

“I’m going to see you, and even the graduates come to the undergraduate building from time to time, and I feel like I’m going to die.”

He shakes his head with a rather troubled face.

In fact, when the academy started, it was much more serious than it is now. The formula lectures I was giving were like taking a break.

“I respect you! Lady! Sign it!”

“Call my name just once!”

“Lady! Just say one word that you will pass your graduation thesis!”

“I feel like I will be able to pass the matriculation exam after receiving the saint from afar!”

There were people who didn't listen to lectures telling me to listen, and treated me as a totem of ups and downs.

'Of course, even if you only open your eyes wildly, you close your mouth right away.'

In the past, when I appeared, everyone was busy bowing their heads and politely giving way... .

‘I don’t really want to go back to the days of a villainess, but there were definitely things I was comfortable with.'

Still, it seems that some polarizing fans were in school, It seems that he was finally able to escape from the space called the school thanks to the trouble he made to the dean and president of the Academy.

The long compulsory education period, 5 years of undergraduate life, and hard work at the academy passed like a lantern.

“… It’s too long.”

While relieving, Marquis Berthe suddenly murmured.

“What?”

“I thought you were good at teaching. If possible, I was thinking of making a teaching assistant. Because that's the fastest way to become a professor.”

'Hey, it's not too harsh, oh!'

With the creepy remark that he wanted to pamper me like a grad student, he casually pushed the cake in front of me. with a small box.

“This… .”

When I opened the box, it contained a rose-shaped brooch, and his scar trembled for a moment.

“When I see you, I think of Marien. She was the junior she wore. She was a good lecturer, so she was going to be a teaching assistant, but I don't think my younger brother would run away with her.”

“...?”

Surely, not a love triangle, but a favorite graduate student No. 1?

Having written several chijeong novels in my head, I erased the questions that came to mind. Sometimes it's better to just leave it unaware.

“Your mother was a beautiful bride to match May. Marriage, congratulations.”

“Thank you, dean.”

“What dean when you get your diploma? Call me uncle.”

Uncle...

At the name that came out a little awkwardly, he smiled softly, incomparably with the previous one.

“I’ll see you at the wedding, Deborah.”

***

Upon hearing the news of Isidor's marriage, the Marquis of Jaba Slein hurried up to the capital with her family. It was to help her nephew's wedding preparations.

In the Empire, instead of the bride bringing the dowry, the groom prepared the wedding preparations, so Isidor would have a lot to worry about.

“Originally, this kind of preparation has to be led by an adult in the family… ”

In the mind of the Marquis, the childhood image of Isidore, who was like an angel from the past, was etched in her mind. Perhaps that's why his nephew, who had to carry out all the preparations alone, felt pity for him.

But after a while, instead of sticking her tongue out in pity, she sticks it out in exasperation.

To put it bluntly, perfectionism is a long one... … .'

He is a person with a reputation for being meticulous, but his nephew is a bit more sophisticated.

'I don't think there's a way to skip something.'

Isidor, who visited the wedding venue in advance, not only looked at the seating arrangement, but also the banquet room curtain decorations, candle holders, wine glasses, carpets, and even cutlery used by guests.

“This tableware is a trendy style?”

The vassal quickly responded to Isidor's point.

“Yes. There are a lot of nobles in the capital who prefer this kind of tableware these days, so I prepared it.”

“But it’s a formal place, but you don’t feel too heavy. Also, it’s not a flower pattern that suits the season, is it?”

“I will change it right now.”

The Marquis of Vaslein approached Isidor, watching closely the number placed on the tablecloth.

“May I give you a heartfelt message to the Duke of Visconti?”

Isidor, who had even taken off his gloves and checked the texture of the tablecloth, lifted his head at his aunt's call.

“Speak at ease, Auntie.”

“Yeah, don’t be shy. It would be a headache just to sort out the guest list, but if you look at every little thing like this, your nerves won't be left behind.”

“As soon as this place, which you rented for a dinner party, became known, the empire was turned upside down. If it had been this way, Seymour's first headmaster would have been satisfied.”

“The little things make the best quality. Visconti’s invitation.”

“… The invitation left such a saying?”

“Yes, I remember.”

Seeing his nephew, who said he was only following the laws of the Visconti, to stop nagging, the Duchess of Vaslain shook her head as if she couldn't do it.

“You really remember everything.”

“aunt also has a good memory. I want you to forget about my immature childhood... .”

She often glorified Isidore as a child. Little Isidor, with rosy cheeks, dazzling blonde hair, and big eyes, was as real as her face, like an angel who had just descended from the earth.

“Isidor, when have you been immature? You grew up too early for needlessly because of your rude father.”

“I did the exact opposite because my father didn’t like it, but I look like I’m mature.”

“… Well, on the other hand, he was a perfect guy to be a teacher.”

I say it lightly now, but what the former Visconti owner, Albert Visconti did, was beyond my imagination.

As the only son was a mess, the former family's affection for the genius grandson grew and the conflict between the father and son deepened.

'It was terrible... .'

As she recalled the past, her eyes fell deeply.

***

In the long past, the Visconti Castle was always noisy due to the clamor of Bardo Visconti, the former headmaster. Even the sound of the rough waves crashing into the Alea Strait could not sweep away his shouts of force.

“There are drug dealers in the castle. Albert, are you crazy!?”

“Ah, father… !”

“Aren’t you ashamed to look at Isidor!? While you marred Visconti's impeccable prestige and defiled the stature of a noble bloodline, your son has awakened the talent of a magic swordsman! whopping! At the age of eight when you hid in an underground warehouse and stole alcohol!”

When Bardo Visconti provoked Isidor, Albert Visconti, who was trembling, suddenly bubbled like a mad dog.

“father! Where the hell is my son?”

“What?”

“I know it all. Isidore is actually my younger brother, so I'm wearing it like my own son, right?”

“this… this guy! What nonsense are you talking about now?”

“Also. If you are stabbed, you are revolting.”

Albert rubbed his eyes like a madman and teasing his tongue.

“Anyway, Olga, I’ll have to pull the girl’s hair out and let Chidogon go. I'm playing with my sister-in-law, how dare I take a sip of my behavior on the topic of an affair?! The person who will receive the huge alimony is me!! dare! Dirty bitch!”

Olga, a victim of an arranged marriage, was fed up with Albert's Visconti's chaos and divorced after giving birth to Isidor.

After the divorce, the news that she died of an illness had been heard five years ago, and Bardo Visconti could not overcome his anger and drew a decorative sword, seeing his son tarnishing the honor of the deceased.

“After hanging out with the backstreets, every time I open my mouth, the smell of stinking vibrates! I will rip off your tongue today.”

“Hey, hey!”

Albert, who drank too much and couldn't even use his sword properly, was frozen by the blood of his father, the sword master.

“You poor bastard! The spirit is not as strong as that of a ten-year-old Isidor. I don't know if you are really my son!”

Just as Bardo Visconti was fed up and was about to cut his tongue with a knife, Agat broke in and stopped them.

After staying in the Bar Slaine estate, she stopped by the Visconti Castle after a long time and had no choice but to become a flagship at the sight unfolding before her eyes.

“Agat, go away!”

“father! Isidor is watching!”

Why is it that the father slaps his brother so loudly at the place where the child sees it? Isn't it too harsh to show that young child the cruel sight of his grandfather cutting off Jea's tongue?

“Ugh! Huh”

“Albert, you just owe your sister a tongue.”

The sharp blade that had dug into his shabby lips slowly fell away.

“ugh… uh... ”

Blood cascades from Albert Visconti's long slit lips and chin.

”.....“

“Isidor! Don't stand here and go to your room.“

“Agat, you are the older sister who only looks at that child too young. My grandchildren don't even blink an eye at this. He's a bold guy like a Visconti.”

Little Isidor, who was standing loudly beyond the chaotic door, thought as he watched his father's tears, runny noses, and blood.

it's dirty.

The thick bloody smell and the smell of man's dung pee mixed together, and his nasal passages throbbed. It was tens of times more disgusting than the smell from the barn.

“Ugh...”

When I met my father's hazy eyes, I suddenly felt an insect crawling all over my body. Goosebumps rose from the forearms and the nape of the neck.

No matter how many times I wiped and wiped, the unpleasant sensation never went away. Bardo Visconti sighed briefly as he watched Isidor wiping his hands all day with an expressionless face.

“You are truly a Visconti even in this respect.”

Most of the Visconti's who ran away had a chronic tuberculosis. So Bardo Visconti was rather happy to see the child's fingertips that had been split and had blood on them.

A natural perfectionist temperament, the talent of a magic swordsman, a superhuman memory, and even the habit of raking gold by any means. Even if it was called the reincarnation of the invitation, it was not strange.

Target is 20 Likes and i will upload the next chapter if you all complete the target.

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mayaketu · 4 months ago

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Could Edo Tensei be used in Boruto TBV?

So the anime and manga tend to plant hints that later get expanded on but with a twist! I saw posts theorizing if edo tensei might be used and had some theories of my own about it.

I feel that if they do use it, it would be on people who haven’t already been brought back. Or if a current character dies and they bring them back. It’s possible sasukes novel being turned into a manga & anime arc could hint at it being used in the future. 1, the entire arc depended on edo tensei reviving dead animals. & 2, bc the question Jiji asks; sasuke didn’t respond though Sakura did. The moment was very noticeably tense and lasted several pages, hinting at importance.

I don’t think characters that have already been revived should come back. & I doubt they would for the most part. Everyone revived got conclusions in shippudden. Bringing them back again is kinda overkill and cheapens the emotional value of them finding peace after death in shippudden. (At least imo)

Characters I would like to see return & why it could work:

Fugaku. Naruto got to meet up with his dead parents again so maybe sasuke can? Also we never saw Fugaku’s MS ability and kishi could write something for him that would make him crucial to the situation in boruto; Teach Sarada about her MS. As well as explain the massacre to Sarada & give closure & love to both her & sasuke.

Shisui. Shisui also feels like a good uchiha candidate for revival bc his eyes could be extremely helpful against omnipotence. Also, he could explain things to Sarada about the uchiha, politics & humanize itachi & her family. Bc overall I don’t think we need a literal rehash of all the ins and outs of the massacre, Sarada is not attached to the clan like sasuke was

I think Sarada needs the clan and her family humanized for her, more than she needs to know every detail of what happened the way sasuke did. So she can better understand her dad, her legacy & the politics of Konoha since she wants to be Hokage.

Kushina. Since Himawari hosts Kurama and has such special power/connection with him, I think a kushina reemergence would be perfect. She was never revived before & she could help hima adjust to hosting a tailed beast & hone her powers. Not to mention, her & hima share a special trait, they both had very standout chakra and more affinity to Kurama than most ppl. It would also be nice for revived Kushina to meet Naruto

Kushina would also be a good revival for Boruto. With Boruto being turned into full otutsuki & being called that by ppl + his life being stolen, it would be really powerful for Kushina to tell him what it means being an uzumaki and affirming him.

*the anime likes to sneak in hints at the future but with a twist. Hima was infatuated with Shukaku in the anime, and ppl assumed she could become his jinchuriki. But she wound up being Kuramas host instead. She also played Minato in the anime, & a classmate was Kushina.

Past 9 tailed jinchuriki. Hima is not a jinchuriki & has powers beyond one. She is akin to a tailed beast according to Jura. So I think the door is definitely open to her meeting at least one past jinchuriki of Kurama, kushina or otherwise. Either through their chakra remnants or edo tensei. They could help her master her power, adjust to ‘jinchuriki’ life, and possibly fight alongside her if revived.

**i think sasuke leaving Jiji’s question open ended could hint at someone he cares for possibly being revived. But it’s all hypothetical, don’t take it too serious I just enjoy theorizing!

#edo tensei #boruto #boruto TBV #kushina uzumaki #himawari uzumaki #fugaku uchiha #shisui uchiha #jinchuriki #mine #theory

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flowercrowngods · 9 months ago

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17. What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

hmm i don’t know about reading, but writing i can tell you: a the rest of us just live here-esque wayne munson/scott clarke story of how they find each other through the years of canon events

for context, the rest of us just live here is a beautiful YA novel by patrick ness in which the protagonists live in a city where The Chosen Ones kinda wreak havoc every now and then and they’re really just kids who don’t have special powers and who are just dealing with teenage angst and stuff, essentially shining a light on the lives of those who don’t get to change the world but have to live in a world that’s changed

all the canon events still happen, except we get an outsider pov that’s unaware of everything at best, and ignorant of it at worst.

for the sake of ✨hyper specificity✨ let me paint you a picture

the story would start in a little corner café, early enough in the day for scott to stop and grab a coffee because it’s something he used to do in university and then later as a teacher student and then when he started out, and he can’t shake the habit and at this point he doesn’t want to anymore, appreciating the extra bit of time in the morning taken to read up on the news or latest scientific breakthroughs or work on his children’s book series about a bunch of kids who investigate supernatural phenomena in their rural town and get help from their science teacher (he’s a sillyman and i love him)

wayne frequents the same cafe, either in the morning after he worked the graveyard shift and he just wants some good fucking coffee before going home and passing out just as eddie leaves for school, or in the mornings before he has to work the day shift. he almost always runs into scott, but it’s more of a polite nod situation than anything else because they never really have anything to say to each other and scott is always preoccupied while wayne is just dead to the world and here to enjoy the silence

but then one day will goes missing, and they both hear about it. when hawkins PD organises and mobilises the whole town to comb the forest for any traces of will, scott and wayne end up finding each other, spending the search together, and they get talking about will — whether scott knew him, whether he was a good kid, whether scott thinks the kid just up and left or if something terrible must have happened. they also talk about eddie, after an hour or two, about why wayne is here if he doesn’t even know will.

“that kid is someone’s boy. if anything were to happen to my boy, i’d want the whole town on its damn feet looking for him.”

they don’t find will, but with that first instance of talking, the two of them don’t really stop. they gravitate toward each other in the mornings; wayne finding a table with two chairs, inviting scott to take a seat even if they sit in silence as scott reads or writes or grades some tests. they instantly fall into a comfortable dynamic that shouldn’t work but it does.

at some point they like really get talking and sometimes when scott has a free first period wayne will stay as long as he can and they’ll just talk the whole time and scott finds that wayne is super smart but more in a practical way and wayne finds that scott is obviously smart in the hypotheticals and the natural sciences and explains things in a way that doesn’t feel too draining or too much. and sometimes when scott is writing or stuck at a particular scene or plot point, wayne helps him out. because eddie gets his storytelling ways from wayne actually. the man’s an avid storyteller if he wants to be; he just usually has a deadpan way about it now that eddie’s a teen, doesn’t make a big deal of the vivid imagination he has, but scott learns to appreciate it anyway.

and wayne tells stories about mysterious monster dogs living in the junkyard (bc the man sees shit that man is aware that man is nocturnal by trade and this town can’t fool him!!!!) — and it’s fine while it stays like that, but soon they’re talking about will again; about kids and teenagers dying in this town. first the holland girl, then so many others. scott knew them all, is haunted by it, gets oddly quiet and wayne wants to change the topic, but he knows something’s wrong in this town.

he talks about moving, too, wants to take eddie with him and leave, but then he ends up not doing it when things calm down in the summer of ‘85 and the mayor resigns and the police is more present. even though the chief is dead. and that hargrove boy. still he decides he’ll stay, knows eddie wants to try one more time even though wayne doesn’t care about shit like that, knows that eddie’ll fall through the system and still find his way — scott agrees every time, speaks of eddie in the highest praise, adoring the way he thinks and the strategies he has to turn everything he learns into some sort of story setting. scott feels for both eddie and wayne every time he hears that the boy flunked a test again, failed his finals, skipped school for a week. he knows how cruel it is, this system, to boys like eddie munson.

things are fine when eddie starts senior year again, wayne says the boy is determined that this time it’ll work out, this time he’ll make him proud and stick it to the rest of hawkins. scott believes him. believes in eddie. lays his hand on wayne’s and smiles, and wayne smiles back.

and then kids are dying again. one of them in his home. and eddie is gone and people don’t talk to wayne anymore because he’s the Devil’s blood, but scott finds him anyway and holds him and tells him that “i’m here.” and “i’m sorry.” and “let’s go look for your eddie.”

and then eddie is dead but not really, and then there are so many kids in that tiny hospital room who didn’t die but look like they’ve looked death in the eye anyway, and maybe this town is cursed, but eddie is back and he’s alive and scott never left wayne’s side, not even in this claustrophobic hospital room that’s posing a fire hazard — but they’ve learned that a fire hazard is the least of their problems, especially when it’s caused by people caring for his boy.

and when that harrington boy is holding eddie’s hand in the hospital bed and on the living room couch like he’s afraid the boy will disappear if he looks away, wayne reaches for scott’s hand, too, because he doesn’t want the man to disappear either. ever again.

and he keeps holding that hand when his kids disappear again to save the world, leaving him with haunted looks that pull up into teary-eyed smiles and the pale promise to come back. and he keeps holding that hand when they come back, when it’s the harrington boy who needs his hand held in a hospital room with eddie refusing to let go. and he keeps holding that hand when scott joins eddie by steve’s bed and takes over with the storytelling. and he keeps holding that hand when he joins in. and he keeps holding that hand when the kids start crying because it’s scott’s tale that makes them realise that they’ve won. that it’s over.

he pulls scott out of the hospital room into the dark and empty hallway and tells him, “i love you.”

because the man is more than ridiculous sweater vests and wholesome funny quirky stories and an ever sunny disposition and scientific tangents about aliens and their existence over his fifth cup of coffee that afternoon that makes wayne contemplate whether he should consider grabbing decaf the next time he’s out for groceries.

the man also makes him dinner and lunch and breakfast and coffee when his nephew is missing and presumed dead. the man massages his shoulders and scalp when wayne’s been on the brink of tears for too many hours now. the man will talk in quiet hushed tones when the police sirens are too loud, and he will shut up when wayne needs nothing but silence.

they have become attuned to each other over the course of 3 years without realising it.

and they can hold hands about it if they want to because the world ended and children died and the government screwed them all over, so maybe it doesn’t matter if two men in their late forties or early fifties decide that each other is what they want next in life.

scott kisses him for the first time in that dark hallway outside that hospital room, holding wayne to his chest as they wait for the kids to trail out of the room one by one so they can drive them home.

the world ended and then it didn’t, and scott and wayne fell in love along the way.

🤍🌷 come ask me questions for writers

#scott clarke #wayne munson #scott clarke/wayne munson #clarkson #steddie #it’s always background steddie for my clarkson fics what do you meaannnnnn #i think this post is the epitome of ‘hyperspecific au i am the only audience for’ hdhdhd #ask game answered

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roleplaybook · 3 months ago

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BAD RP HABITS: WOULD

WOULD.

Some of you will see this word and immediately know what I’m talking about. If you don’t:

He would take a sip of his drink.

She would look around.

They would enter the building.

What’s wrong with would?

Would implies intention. In the examples above, the “would” implies the characters intend to do something, but there’s an implied “if” or “but.” So:

If she sat next to him, he would take a sip of his drink.

She would have looked around, but she couldn’t move her neck fully in the costume.

If the coast was clear, they would enter the building.

There’s a reason novels don’t make frequent use of these modal verbs. Either something is done or it isn’t. In roleplay, it’s true that you don’t always know. This means it’s fine to use “would” sometimes, but it’s a frequent habit that roleplayers start using it in every sentence. Like many other words, it becomes filler and bogs down sentences. The difference between, “He sipped his drink,” and, “He would take a sip of his drink,” is stark.

How did this happen?

Since the beginning of online text based roleplay, autohitting and controlling other people’s characters has been one of the greatest and most common of faux pas. “Would” is a way to make room for autonomy for the other player. It was especially useful in combat scenes.

“If his punch connected, he would take a step back and prepare to block her counter attack.”

This gives “her” writer a chance to block or dodge the punch. It also leaves room for “her” to take advantage of the miss.

In fast-paced, rapid-fire scenes that are more about the action than the writing itself, this is an effective means to politely carry out a combat scene. However, in multi-para and prose driven roleplay, it’s clunky and awkward.

It also becomes such a deeply ingrained habit in many writers, they use “would” when there is no need to do so. You may have seen posts in which every action is preceded by “would.”

What are the alternatives?

It is always, always, always advised to talk things through with your writing partner(s). Do they prefer to talk things out and agree on the outcome before the post? For example, you can ask, “If she punches him, would he block her?”

If you want it to be a surprise, you can always write, “She slugged him hard in the mouth,” then shoot your partner a message letting them know you’ll edit if that wouldn’t pan out that way.

You can also have a conversation beforehand establishing that any auto-hitting is actually an attempt, and you guys can freely communicate with one another to edit and work around these situations.

Another option is to cut the post off then and there. Many multi-para and novella writers cut their post length down during action scenes for this reason. So, instead of, “She would punch him,” or, “She punched him,” we get, “She swung her fist at his mouth.”

The post ends there, giving “him” a chance to respond accordingly.

At the end of the day, it’s about what you and your writing partner prefer. There’s no wrong way to go about it — unless, of course, you’re using “would” when you don’t need to. :)

#roleplay advice #rp advice #roleplay resource #roleplay tips #roleplaying #rp resources #roleplay resources #roleplay #badrphabits

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canmom · 9 months ago

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The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere: 013-032

Previously: 000-012, spinoff post about entropy [all Flower posts]

Time for more flower...

youtube

...no, not that flower!

Unless...?

Welcome back to my liveblog of sorts for web novel The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere by @lurinatftbn! Shout out to the Flower discord for giving me such a kind welcome. You're making me want to go all out on this liveblog, but, I musn't...! So I'm going to try to just comment on things that jumped out as especially noteworthy rather than write down everything that went down.

Especially since... a lot happened in these chapters. We have a perfect androgyne tree thing! Magical duels! Questionable student/teacher relationships! Steamed hams! Intense political arguments at dinner! Metafictional assurance of fair play! Prosognostic events! Transgender AIs! And of course........

a murder!!!!!

...ok that one was kinda obvious. But the first body has hit the floor! I don't feel like I have nearly enough information yet to start speculating about who might have dunnit.

That's a lie. It was definitely Kinzo Ushiromiya. That bastard.

So, from the top!

We're introduced to a few of the members of the Order, with by far the most screen time going to Su's mentor and ah, kinda-girlfriend? Neferuaten. And like, damn, lot going on there!

Before I get into the meat of that - first the bit where I search a character's name on Wikipedia. Neferuaten's name is most likely a reference to an Egyptian female king/pharaoh (a rank that's apparently distinct, conceptually, from a queen) variously called Ankhkheperure-Merit-Neferkheperure, Waenre, and Aten Neferneferuaten. Most often shortened to just Neferneferuaten.

Her exact historical identity seems to be a little unclear - she may or may not be the same person as Nefertiti for example. Whoever she was, she apparently reigned for a couple of years around 1334–1332 BCE, and was then succeeded by the famous child king Tutankhamun. Or maybe Smenkhkare came in between them? Seems to be a matter of some debate. Girl really needed to leave a few more vast and trunkless legs of stone so we can figure this stuff out.

In any case, this version of Neferuaten goes way back with Su. Her introduction is to launch a magical attack on our poor girl while she's contemplating the 'everblossom'. One of those classic 'master surprise attacks the student to see how much they've learned' deals. This servers as a fine exposition for the exact mechanics of magical duels.

Zettai! Ummei! Mokushiroku!

Let's briefly note how magical duels and magic works here, since it seems like it will be very relevant later.

The more we learn about magic, the more explicit is that this system is not some natural property of the universe, but something that's designed by the mysterious Ironworkers. It seems like it's kind of an API to the Ironworker admin console. The Ironworkers wanted to make it difficult to do magic on human bodies, and therefore they designed a system for detecting what is 'human', based on three heuristics - anatomical, motion and neurological.

Humans, being the freaky little hackers that we are, of course set about figuring out how to bypass this system, and created standardised means, consisting of three spells, termed [x]-beguiling arcana. In a sense the three criteria are something like three 'hitpoints': the primary way to win a duel is to get all three spells off, thus making your opponent vulnerable to magic.

To achieve this, you can either speak the words of a spell or sign them by drawing them with your fingers - i.e. one way or the other express the appropriate string of symbols. This is risky because if you're interrupted at the wrong time, your spell can backfire and blow up, and getting a spell right requires precise pronunciation and also rapid mental maths. So the general 'gameplay' of magical duels involves attempting to disrupt the opponent's focus and aim, while fast-casting the spells that are most familiar to you.

We're introduced to a few spells that could be useful in battle, such as

Matter-Shifting (telekinesis spell with a geometric bent, used to move a cube of dirt to act as a smokescreen),

Matter-Annihilating (deletes stuff),

Entropy-Denying (essentially a shield that freezes objects and fluids in relative motion),

Air-Thrusting (creates a shockwave air blast),

Light-Warping (fucks up the light for visual cover),

World-Deafening (mutes all sound, which can interrupt casts)

Entropy-Accelerating (disrupts coherency, causing rapid aging-like effects - can be used on a 'higher plane' to disrupt all magic in an area)

Entropy-Reversing (rewinds matter along its path of motion - reference to entropy here seems a tad dubious but w/e)

It's clearly a pretty carefully thought out system - I appreciate that it's approached from the point of view of someone trying to exploit the shit out of the system and figure out what the real meta would be. It does kinda seem like if you got the drop on a wizard and shot them with a sniper rifle they'd be toast, but we'll see later that much more powerful weapons than mere chemical firearms exist in this world, and presumably in a combat situation everyone would have entropy-denying (or equivalent) shields up, so maybe that's a moot point.

Anyway, we are later informed by the closest thing to authorial voice that everything we're told here about magic can be assumed to be axiomatically true, similar to the red text in Umineko. Which pretty heavily foreshadows that this is going to be on the test, if you like!

the magical metaphysics

With apologies to Neferuaten, who will get more detailed comments shortly, there are some other big revelations about magic and the nature of this world that I should talk about while we're on the subject of magic!

In the last post I wondered whether casting magic is an innate quality or a 'skill issue' situation. It turns out the answer is sorta 'neither'. In fact, it's something that has to be unlocked, using special equipment and a particular ritual. The cost of this ritual is not yet entirely spelled out, but we definitely get an inkling. It's rather ominously implied by this exchange in chapter 22:

"We're supposed to want to save people, to make the world better. To defend a bunch of people who practically committed murder--" "You're a murderer too, dour girl." I stopped, and blinked. It took me some moments to process the words. They'd come from Lilith, who now seemed to have finished with her dessert. Now she was just slowly swirling her spoon around in the last remnants of the chocolate sludge on the plate and, occasionally, dipping a finger into her cream bowl and licking little bits of it up. Her expression was irritated, but disconnected. "All arcanists are," she said. "It's how it happens. So having fights over moral high ground like this is very stupid and annoying. Please stop."

In the same chapter, Su uses something called an 'acclimation log', in which she records her 'association' with a series of diary entries from her childhood self. It all suggests that Su's present consciousness has somehow taken over the body of another character, who we could maybe call original!Su.

A few chapters later, we find out what's the deal with prosognostic events. In fact we get a pretty extensive exposition. It turns out that iron is magical in this universe, providing access to higher dimensions, FTL and all sorts of shit. However, because the Mimikos and other worlds are running on a 'substrate' of iron - sort of like a simulation - we are told this is why they can't recursively include iron within. And since the human body includes a certain amount of iron (most notably, in the haemoglobin protein in red blood cells), it is not possible to fully realise the human body inside these artificial worlds.

a self-referential quibble

Here's how Su puts it:

A substrate cannot exist within itself. That sounds awkward when I put it so directly, but it's not too hard to understand if you think about it in abstract-- A foundation obviously can't support another foundation of equal weight and nature, because… Well, it would make nonsense of the whole premise. A book is a device for storing information, but it cannot contain within its letters everything about itself and what it contains, because that is already more than it contains. A box cannot hold another box of equal size, unless it is bent or otherwise changed. A mind cannot hold another mind…

On the face of it, this seems on the face of it... not entirely true, at least in some domains? You can run a virtual machine program on a computer, representing any particular combination of hardware and software, which is from the perspective of software 'on the inside', essentially indistinguishable from a computer running on 'bare metal' hardware. The only real difference is that operating the virtual machine has some computational overhead, so it will be slower. The more virtual machines you nest, the slower it gets.

But 'from the inside', the only way to tell which layer of virtual machine you're on would be to refer to some kind of external clock signal (which can trivially be spoofed) and notice that it's running slower than it should!

We could also mention here the subject of quines, which are programs which print their own source code.

Let's consider Su's examples. The book that completely describes its contents might be able to get around this problem in a similar fashion to a quine, by exploiting redundancy and self-reference.

For example, let's try creating a string that completely describes its own content, using a quine-style technique.

This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: "This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: " wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

In fact the '100 letter ws' could literally be the entire string that follows. Suppose the length of the 'real content' of the book is S, and the length of the rest of the 'metadata sentence' describing properties of the book is M; then the total length of the book is 2M+3S.

You can add as much additional information to the 'metadata' string as you like, provided you quote it again afterwards. If you don't like having a book be three times the length it needs to be, you could compress the 'real content' string using an algorithm like DEFLATE, and include instructions in the 'metadata' on how to decompress it. (Text tends to compress really well.) This is where we run up into notions probably all too familiar to rats, or indeed anyone who recently read Seth Dickinson's new novel Exordia, such as Kolmogorov complexity.

But... I think this might well be intentional. Given how common notions like 'stacks of simulations' and 'self-reference' are in rat space, I suspect we may be being misled! The 'rules' of the game - more on that in a moment - say that Su won't deliberately lie to us, and won't withold information without saying so, but her perceptions could be mistaken. Maybe she's been given a false explanation of why the world works the way it does.

It's also totally possible that while the general point (you can't contain a thing in itself) may have some edge cases, the specific instance - you can't build a universe on a giant higher-dimensional iron spike and still have that universe contain iron - may still be true. We don't know the first thing about building universes using magic iron after all.

anyway... the Deal with Prosognisia!

The Ironworkers had a hacky workaround to the 'no iron' rule: they had a few tens of thousands of preserved human bodies on board their Tower of Asphodel. Asphodel, incidentally, is a genus of flower, said to carpet the Asphodel Meadows, one of the three divisions of the realm of Hades. (In their game, Supergiant decided to convert it into a lava zone.) It looks rather pretty actually!

So, they were able to instantiate these bodies in their rebuilt worlds by sort of making them into a reference to one of these stored human bodies. Here's Su again, chapter 26:

Some human bodies, or at least the impression of them and the iron within, had been preserved as part of the Tower, frozen in a timeless place. And because of that, it was eventually discovered it was possible for them to exist in the artificed planes as a sort of stable paradox. After all, while a book can't exist within itself, it can still reference other stuff it does contain internally, even if it makes for somewhat awkward reading. A few tweaks and workarounds solved the problem of the iron associated with that human body staying a part of it, and just like that, human beings were walking something at least akin to the earth once again. However, this only permitted replicas of those bodies within the Tower to exist. The creation of new ones remained impossible, and births not incubated by anima taken by the same mechanism would inevitably fail. And there were far fewer preserved bodies than minds; scarcely more than ten thousand or so for each party.

So every human born in the Mimikos is forked from one of these human bodies. For... mysterious reasons, if you recognise that someone nearby is forked from the same body as you, you both straight up die. If you touch such a person (a 'contact paradox') it's even worse, and all the iron in your body disappears, leaving behind a 'greenish sludge', which seems to be a severe enough disaster to cause deaths of nearby people as well.

(This is a little surprising given that the iron in the human body is only about 60 parts per million by mass, but it would kinda destroy your blood's ability to carry oxygen, so it would definitely be pretty fatal.)

The 'distinction treatment' we heard about is able to mitigate the risks somewhat - with quick medical intervention and time magic, it's possible to allow the people involved to make a full recovery. An interesting wrinkle is that it's implied either Ophelia or new character Balthazar is trans, because normally people of the same gender can't share an upstream body.

That definitely leads to a very fascinating fucked up medical emergency scene, but the reason I'm discussing it now is because it's got bearing on this big-deal question of 'what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway'...

so what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway?

Having finally answered one of the major questions, we can start zeroing in on another. In a flashback scene in chapter 30, we learn that the 'original' bodies have innate access to the magic API, but when you're given a distinct identity at birth you quickly lose it. To have your sv_cheats 1 restored, you have to go through a process that, it would seem, downloads a new mind into your head from one of those original bodies...

The man sat back a little in his chair, crossing his legs idly. "It's intimidating in concept, but please do understand that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, there are no observable effects whatsoever. Around half of the individuals who go through it don't even lose consciousness, and of the other, four out of five don't report any abnormalities when they reawaken. And even of the remaining 10%, the symptoms are negligible for nine out of ten-- Fleeting false memories, minor alterations in temperament that self correct, usually in under a day..." "And the others?" I inquired. "The remaining one percent." He considered this question for a few moments, obviously choosing his words carefully. "The technical term for the rare cases where confusion persists in the longer term is pneumaic assimilation failure. We have a program for treatment, using a combination of various phychological and medical means. It's time-tested. It brings people back to themselves quickly, usually within only only a few months at most." 'Confusion.' 'Brings people back to themselves.' I wasn't feeling fond of the way he couched everything in euphemism. It wasn't helping. "What do you mean by 'it brings people back to themselves'..?" I furrowed my brow. "They just... Forget everything?" "Not immediately," he said. "But they lose a sense of association with... Well, with anything that shouldn't be there, and that leads those memories and feelings to fade over time." He smiled. "The human mind is very adept at excising anything it judges to be out of place. All it needs is a push in the right direction."

The new mind tends to rapidly adjust to its new context, connecting to the memories stored in the body and assuming continuity of identity. But in rare cases it fails! Nuts! And we can infer poor Su appears to be one such case.

Presumably this is what Lilith is referring to when she says that all arcanists are murderers. It's not clear if there is continuity of consciousness when you get /mode +o'd - since you (usually) inherit the memories it is perhaps hard to say whether such a thing is meaningful.

In any case, Su's mega-guilt complex, the reason she seems to want to visit the mysterious egomancer Samium, seems to be at least partly that she's evicted the previous consciousness to inhabit this body. I don't think that's the whole story though! Her grandad seems to be involved somehow too. I don't think Su is literally the reincarnation of her grandad, because it seems unlikely that he'd be motivated to carry out ego suicide like this.

introducing teacher mommy

All those major revelations aside, let's get back to the subject of Neferuaten, aka 'Grandmaster', Su's old mentor in entropic thanatomancy. She quickly establishes herself as one of the most likeable of the inner circle of the Order - she's funny, understanding, generally affable and a little self-effacing. Su definitely puts her on a massive pedestal - though other characters such as Ran find her a little more sussy.

I gotta say, the author is really good at writing old academics. Each one of them comes across as strongly believable, distinctive, motivated and flawed characters. I'll talk a bit about the others in a bit but first let's talk age gap yuri! lmao

Anyway, at the end of chapter 20 we get this:

Then she leaned over and, in an impulsive, almost casual gesture, kissed me on the lips. Before turning, heading to the exit.

'Huh!' thinks the reader. 'That sure is an unusual thing for someone's teacher to do.'

It is quite a few chapters later before Su gets round to telling us a bit more about what's going on...

After that, we met outside of the university more and more often, her becoming sort of a source of emotional support. At some point, I became aware that what was happening was probably quite inappropriate. It's not like I was underage, having turned 25 two years prior, but she was my professor. But I'd been bad at making friends in both of... Well, in both my past contexts, and I'd felt so lonely living in Tem-Aphat, away from Ran and any reminders of the resolutions we'd made. And it all somehow felt so natural. Things got out of hand. One day, I'd had a fight with my father over the logic bridge, and had got a little drunk when I was due to see her. I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I did something uncharacteristic of me. Inappropriate. But she didn't respond in the way I'd expected. To my shock, she didn't act like it was inappropriate at all. It wasn't as if we ended up dating. That would never have worked, and I was pretty sure she was past wanting that sort of thing anyway. On some levels, she always kept her distance. But it became something we did together, an avenue of private expression that became part of her support for me - and mine, eventually for her.

Su then expresses a bunch of guilt over the whole thing. (Not least because it's a 'selfish' thing she's doing in a body that, implicitly, she doesn't think of as hers.)

The issue of age here is interesting lol. Definitely my gut reaction, and probably the one the story is aiming to elicit, is to be a bit 'wuh oh' by all this, maybe think of Makima wrapping Denji round her finger. That said, by vastly expanding the range of human ages, it's definitely poking pretty hard at our intuitions about what's 'appropriate'. The vibes are like... the students are constantly referred to as 'the kids' by the hundreds-year-old wizards. I don't think we're told Su's current age, but if she was 27 in this flashback, and in the present she says a 29 year old computer is close in age to her, so I would guess currently early 30s. Neferuaten's age is not stated at this point but given her position she's def a few hundred years up there.

The vibe though is that Su is infatuated with someone who has vastly more emotional maturity and experience of the world, not to mention social power over her, and that person is all too happy to encourage it.

The way Su tells it, it sounds like this fling went pretty ok for them? But I definitely feel like things are probably not gonna stay ok, given how clearly the 'inappropriate' nature of this relationship has been foregrounded!

Dark yuri is literally one of the things I'm here for, so I'm looking forward to the fireworks lmao.

Anyway, besides that, we get a bit of a sense of Neferuaten's ideology. She actually shares a lot of Su's skepticism about the viability of the whole immortality project. She makes a big point of making sure the gang get a sense of the order's culture and rituals, apparently viewing this as a chance for their project to be judged by outsiders for the first time. On a personal level, she raises the issue of if the project might be able to save only the young - whether they might be the last humans to not become immortal. Nef's attitude seems to be that she'd be good with that - something she clashes with Kam over.

Otherwise, she's kinda... world-weary, I suppose you could say. She seems to look at the firey youngsters with an attitude along the lines of 'wish I still had that'. She does love to perform to an audience, asking leading questions to set up some lesson or another.

She's a fun character, I enjoy reading her a lot.

Also she seems to have made a sapient AI in the basement! Only everyone says it's definitely not sapient - it is in some sense not agentic, it can't change its motivation, allegedly. Still, it definitely has a 'passing the Turing test' sorta vibe.

don't mention the war

Besides Nef, we get introduced to a few of the remaining members of the class, and also the masters of the Order. Of note is Bardiya, the former revolutionary. He's a very 'speak his mind without preamble' sort of character, which can land him in hot water.

So, returning to Chapter 22, we have a really juicy scene in which a dinner conversation gets very heated after Bardiya mentions his role in the war, provoking a political row with Durvasa, a member of the order. It's a really well observed social dynamics scene - the characters dancing around the topic and the way a row is almost avoided, and then it isn't - Bard's determination, Kam's brown-nosing, Su getting drawn in against her better judgement in a deeply relatable way.

Thanks to this convo, we get a sense of the events of the revolution! So, as @nightpool helpfully informed me, I actually got things a bit mixed up in my rough timeline last time. The 'gerontocrats' were not a feature of the distant-past imperial era - rather it's a figure identified as an oppressor class by a very recent movement, still within living memory for even the youngsters.

The events broadly seem to reflect something like the Paris Commune. There was a famine under the hand of a 'Meritist' city council, killing thousands, which led to a popular uprising let by a 'paritist' movement. The paritists executed a handful of people and redistributed property based primarily on age, intending to break the power of the 'gerontocrats' who had neglected the 'younger generations' by hoarding resources. The Administration overseeing the whole world alliance then cracked down hard - deploying a poison gas that, though it was intended to be nonlethal, turned out to have unexpected lethal side effects.

In the aftermath of the revolution, it seems many reforms were made - besides relaxing the rules on what magic is banned, they changed the equation of scarcity so that food could be replicated more readily? Little unclear on this part. Su mentions that the situation is different now than it was when the Alliance was built, with the material scarcity mostly gone, but clearly there was a famine in recent memory.

Anyway, there is naturally a big generational divide over this. The older generations lived through some pretty fucked-up sounding wars, called things like the 'Great Interplanar War', and in the aftermath built a political system that was supposed to secure peace. (c.f. League of Nations, UN). Although she broadly sympathises with the revolutionaries, Su seems to extends the older generation a fair bit of understanding for having built this system and fearing what would happen if it were destroyed. Though the most relativist view comes from the mouth of Neferuaten:

"I think a common problem with inter-generational communication is an inability to really convey context and scope," Neferuaten said. I noted she didn't actually convey if Kam's understanding of what her point had been was correct or not. "Someone who lived through the Interluminary Strife might tell a young person from the modern day that they have no understanding of hunger, only for the latter to stubbornly retort that they lived through that Ikaryonic famine that preluded the civil dispute… Except that one was a catastrophe that lasted decades and killed tens of millions, while the other slew less than a thousand." She sighed. "People try to relate the experiences of others to their own lives in order to contextualize their understanding of the world and how it might be bettered, but those second-hand experiences inevitably become caricatures, conveying no useful truths. It makes me wonder if human beings, both young and old, are capable of learning from history at all."

Around here is raised the question of a person's political development - the arc from a young person's anger at the state of the world and determination to tear it aside for something better, against the resignation of an older person who fears losing what is already there, however flawed. (We might note of course that there exist young conservatives and old radicals. Circumstances have a lot to do with it.)

Of course, with this whole 'gerontocrat' business at stake already, the mission of the Order hoping to achieve immortality is naturally cast in a dubious light. Fun conflict. On the one hand we have 'can immortality be achieved, and what will it cost', on the other 'who will benefit from it, if it is'! So much narrative force is obtained by politicising this, attaching it to characters with personal motivations and histories, instead of leaving it up to an abstract 'living forever good/bad'.

But it's not all political debates and shagging your teacher...

Over the course of these chapters we get a sense of what the order's been up to!

Let's talk flowers. Just prior to the meeting with Nef, Su comes across an enormous freaky plantlike thing. This turns out to be an experiment to create a being that can survive in even the most extreme environments, like the bottom of the ocean - an attempt to demonstrate that immortality is possible at least in principle. This lifeform is termed the Nittaimalaru or 'Everblossom'. It seems like a pretty good candidate for being the story's eponymous Flower - symbolically, the underwater immortality-granting plant that appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

It's worth noting here that 'indefinite lifespan' is actually not entirely impossible in our natural world. I was talking about this with a friend who raised some interesting points:

reading the first post i wanna bring up that while the concept of cancer is fundamental to any multicellular organism the presence of cancer as a problem is actually pretty niche. same with telomere degradation, which is a purposeful anti-cancer measurement. like pretty much all perennial plant life is capable of absolute immortality. while the lobster grows forever until it can no longer use its legs to push its great weight along the sand towards food, if a tree overshoots its growth it's more than happy to break off its unnecessaries, though with both of them at a certain point it's always good to have help after a while. as mammals we're very obsessed with the concept of like ending death as this sort of ultimate goal, prime directive, whatever, when that shit was deliberately turned on in the first place (assigning intent to evolution sue me), because in terms of cost benefit it gave us something in return that we as students of medicine or biology are still not fully grasping.

After a little more discussion:

@play-now-my-lord wrote:

even if humans weren't causing climate change, climactic fluctuations over centuries upend a lot of what is normal in specific areas. if the people on a farmstead in bronze age sweden lived 500 years, the methods and habits they internalized when they were young would habitually be incorrect for the conditions as they existed, the weather, the soil

other friend:

that's how most trees die in the end the root system operates as a weak parallel to the tree's neurons, with a more physiological bent than say our chemical one. patterns around balance, nutrient access, hydrology, and wind are ingrained and learned over centuries and the more regular/consistent that cycle is the more a root will grow. if a tree's roots are built around buttressing from a wind tunnel due to forest conditions and the trees around it fall for whatever reason, it has to relearn what used to be a hundred year old certainty that it needs to lean against the westerly gale every winter, etc. - this is generally a pretty brittle process altogether when it comes to the base of the plant n stuff

some caveats:

should be noted i overlooked a lot of nuance about perennial mortality, like, some plants are more used to investing into survival than others i'm thinking of like how beech bark disease doesn't affect the roots of the beech, so the trunk dies but new shoots continue to grow out and eventually catch the disease and repeat, so the plant is essentially still immortal but forced into a perpetual state of adolescence. but i think for a great number of trees if the tree falls it just goes "eh the rot consumes us all " and dies

Among mammals, we could also note the cancer resistance of the naked mole rat, which loves to defy all sorts of generalisations (also one of the only non-arthropod eusocial animals). They're not exactly immortal, living around 37 years on average, but their chance of dying at any given year is pretty much flat rather than increasing with age.

Of course, longevity and resilience are different things. Nef mentions the resilience of tardigrades as an inspiration. As far as their experiment goes, the 'everblossom' is not an entirely successful experiment, requiring twice-yearly maintenance to address an imbalance.

Given how prominently it features, and the invocation of Gilgamesh, it seems pretty damn likely that the everblossom will in fact be a key to immortality, or something like it.

Religion exists after all!

Other parts of the facility are also pretty funky. We learn that it was patterned after the old headquarters of the Order, which was destroyed when they got found out; that headquarters was built in an old church compound. What sort of thing does a church worship in this world? Actually it's kinda goffic as fuck. Makes Catholicism look downright tame. It's a polytheistic religion and the deities involved are figures like this...

In the center of the circle was a statue, about 8 feet high, and of the kind of ornate-but-formulaic design that characterized art from the Second Resurrection. It depicted a tall, skinny woman, though her two sides, left and right, were very different in nature. The left was beautiful and youthful in a generic, almost ethnicity-less way, dressed in the most delicate of silk peploi, with long and unrealistically tidy curls falling elegantly over her shoulders. Her lip was curled into a gentle half-smile, kind but slightly mysterious, teasing. Her right... Well, her right, to say the least, was very different. On that side, she appeared to be skinless, although it was hard to tell with a statue; I recalled it being a matter of hot debate among the boys in my class back in secondary school. It was possible she was simply incredibly emaciated, or that there were supposed to be growths - like scales - erupting from her flesh. Her hair was made up of hateful, eyeless wyrms, biting and hissing at each other, and her flesh, which was naked save for a tasteful rag covering one area in particular, was covered in numerous stab wounds, bleeding openly. As for her face, it was grim and wide eyed. Mournful and contemptful both. I recognized the figure depicted at once; I passed one of her temples whenever I went to the distribution hall to pick up groceries. This was Phui, Dying Goddess of Love Given Way To Anguish, one of the eleven deities of the now largely defunct Ysaran-Inotian Pantheon.

In the stories, Phui was the third-to-last of the gods to fall during the end of the world, who attempted to take her own life after the death of her lover. But the breaking of the heavens had left her unable to die, meaning that no matter how she much she cut into her flesh, how much she starved herself of food and drink, reprieve would never come. Only relentless, unceasing pain, and grief for that which she had lost.

Metal album cover ass-religion, I'm into it.

The mysterious Ironworkers seem to have really drummed into the population of their new Mimikos that there was a very nice world once, and they'd better be damn sad about what happened to it. However, religion has waned in the present day, and it seems most characters are atheists of some sort.

What did happen to it, anyway? It's referred to as 'the collapse' with a lowercase c; I noticed an author's comment where the author says it's not a case of just a name for the apocalypse. A few people in the comments started speculating about false vacuum collapse. This is a physics thing. Basically, a remote possibility exists in the standard model of particle physics that the existence of matter in our universe could be in a kind of local energy minimum, but it would be possible for it to locally fall into a true minimum, creating a kind of bubble that expands at the speed of light and just deletes everything. We're pretty sure that isn't true though. If it did happen we literally would not be able to do anything... at least in a universe without FTL.

(Curiously, Su mentions special relativity at one point. With all the funky cosmology stuff I kinda wondered if special relativity is still real, but apparently it is! Electromagnetism has been mentioned as still being a thing a couple of times now, so rather than being totally absent it seems like the physics is a bit different, with an electric shock being sufficient to cause radiation poisoning.)

The fair play interlude

In between chapters 22 and 24 we get a curious little interlude called Intermission ∞ 1. The introduction presents it as something that is happening on one of the 'higher planes', translated into terms we can understand, which is grounds for it to get metafictional.

Two entities, calling themselves the Playwright and the Director, discuss the direction of the story so far before laying out the version of fair-play mystery rules this story will be operating under. They are as follows:

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE PROTAGONIST IS ALWAYS TRUTHFUL

ALL EVENTS FOLLOW THE RULES OF CONVENTIONAL REALITY, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

ALL SYSTEMS INTRODUCED CANNOT BREAK THEIR OWN RULES AS DEFINED WITHIN THE NARRATIVE, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

I made them red because it feels like they would be red in Umineko.

Further clarifications and caveats allow that Su can withold information (for dramatic tension or whatever I guess) but she'll always tell us when she does, and an example of 'system introduced' is the magic duel sequence: the characters know accurately how magic duels work.

The two entities are performing this story for some sort of audience, and during their double-act credit themselves with control over the direction of the scenario, sometimes disagreeing. (Another one, the chorus, enters at the end.) Probably best not to think too hard about what that implies for our characters on the 'main' level of the story being 'real', it's probably just a cute bit to take the audience aside without completely breaking the fourth wall. Then again... who knows!

What this means is that my concerns about professed liar Su being an unreliable narrator are unfounded. It's still a limited POV, so Su could fail to notice things or be deceived, but she's not trying to pull one over on us.

I bring this up because...

There's been a mordah!

So, in the last chapter I read - strictly the beginning of a new arc - we find someone dead!

Well, this was kinda foreshadowed earlier. The chef disappeared, the assistant chef was knocked out by magic, and some kinda crazy time magic happened in the pantry - with the heavy implication that someone was trapped in some kinda hyperbolic time pantry for many years. At least they'd have plenty to eat..? The characters don't pick up on the implication of the tally marks and write it off as a stasis field malfunction.

So, it was natural to suspect the cook is dead. Indeed they are: Su finds a mysterious note in the book given to her by an academic at the school as a parting gift, warning her not to trust the inner council - inexplicably written two years prior and warning her to check the archive in a certain position. Investigating this, she and Kam find a secret armoury room. In there is a tunnel, and at the bottom, the cook appears to have committed suicide, leaving a suicide note vaguely implying the Order is up to some seriously sussy shit.

Of course, Kam and Su immediately suspect foul play. But they also both have ulterior motives for coming to this conference, so they agree to keep it hush-hush. This is definitely a great idea that won't get everyone killed by Beatrice... I mean uh. Whoever the murderer is.

The obvious question is, who dunnit? And why? Unfortunately, we don't really have alibis for most of the characters. Many of the inner circle haven't even shown up on screen yet. So there's a lot of people who it might have been.

More suspects! More suspects!

I haven't even mentioned several of the characters. We also have Sacnicte, steward of the house - she's an arcanist, and Su is kinda insanely horny for her aesthetically appreciative, in a way that the other characters notice and are literally like 'I don't see it'... which makes me wonder if we have a situation where someone has fucked with her perceptions. She's very down to earth and casual.

Her name is probably a reference to the Maya princess Sac Nicté, meaning 'white flower', who according to legend was involved in the migration of the Itza people from the Chichen Itza. Mind you the article I'm getting this from is kinda horrendous; the sole source is in Spanish and appears to be some random website from 2004.

Among the older generation, we have Theo's dad, Linos. He is a generally affable chap, kinda socially awkward (he's responsible for prolonging the political discussion by a botched apology) but otherwise not particularly standing out among the Order members.

Linos or Linus is another Greek name with a few referents.

The Order member who really does stand out is Anna, or in full, Amtu-hedu-anna. She's the one who's properly old, having dodged many of the 'kills people around 500' bullets of this setting, and not especially inclined to make nice. Very 'straight to the point' kinda lady. We meet her fairly briefly - Ran seems to have landed in her good books.

This one really took some digging! It seems to be based on Enheduanna, who was a Sumerian high priestess of Nanna and the oldest named author in history, credited for tablets like The Exaltation of Inanna, although it seems there's some debate over whether she definitely wrote them. Her rank in Sumerian was Entu, and I could fully believe 'amtu hedu anna' is a different transliteration of 'Entu Hedu Anna'.

As mentioned above, we're introduced to two logic engines, Sekhmet and Eshmun, built respectively by Neferuaten and (the as yet unseen) Hamilcar. Sekhmet has more biological components and wants to be a human. She wants to be human, and she's also expressed a distinct pronoun preference and gender id, which I suppose makes her trans. Eshmun is a more traditional logic engine with a lot of cogs; Sekhmet calls him 'big brother', so I guess he gets he pronouns from that.

Sekhmet is of course named for the Egyptian lion-headed warrior/medicine goddess. Eshmun is a Phoenician god of healing. Hamilcar was a name used by a number of Carthaginians, mostly generals.

Ezekiel is another one of the student gang. We haven't seen much of him yet, so I don't have a lot to say about him. Abrahamic prophet.

Balthazar is a student from another school - another thanatomancer in fact. He's something like the protégé of Zeno, and his presence is Zeno's condition for having this whole affair go ahead. He's got the same eyes as Ophelia, and Zeno failing to do his paperwork and allowing to happen is a big deal. But Zeno's kind of a bigshot so it might not come to anything. Anyway, Su is kind of suspicious towards Balthazar, but he takes it all in good humour.

Balthazar was one of the three magi in Christian mythology. There were a few Zenos, but the best known is surely Zeno of Elea, who came up with his famous "we need to invent calculus to solve this" paradoxes around infinite sums.

Yantho is a member of the Order staff, who was cooking when whoever did shenanigans in the kitchen... did shenanigans in the kitchen. His roast was ruined, but sadly he was too unconscious to order fast food and pass it off as his cooking. He can't speak and communicates by writing on his tablet.

The name crops up as an obscure Maya deity, part of a trio of brothers with Usukun and Uyitzin, but I can't find any source that seems particularly definitive.

Samium is an old egomancer, whose presence is a secret that only Su and Ran are in on. Su wants to speak to him, for reasons that are probably to do with finding out if he can restore 'original!Su' into her body, or maybe resurrecting her grandfather, or something?

...is that everyone? I think that's everyone. At some point I probably need to make an Umineko-style character screen lol.

can we solve anything yet?

Since this chapter is the beginning of the arc, I suspect there's more info to divulge before we can think about trying to solve this one. And, given the Umineko inspo, the problem to solve probably isn't simply 'whodunnit' but something more fundamental to the nature of this world.

Still, it seems all but spelled out explicitly that current!Su failed to properly assimilate into her body after she became an arcanist. Her grandfather's final 'kindness' is less clear. Her intentions with Samium... I've mentioned the obvious theories about already. She's mega guilty about overwriting this poor girl and has decided the only course of action is to try and restore the mind that inhabited her body originally. But I don't think we have the whole picture just yet, because I still can't figure out what her granddad did.

Given her discussion of 'dragon' vs 'phoenix' resurrection, and of how her meeting with Samium might change the order, I also theorised - before I really twigged the arcanist thing - that she was here to resurrect her grandfather in her own body. Body-hopping is like, the classic immortality strat after all. But... I'm less convinced of that one now? It doesn't seem like Su particularly liked the old man, she definitely doesn't want to follow in his footsteps, and 'saw him die unexpectedly during the revolution' does not seem like it would inspire the same sort of guilt.

Still, he surely did something to her, she's definitely cryptically alluded to that enough times.

Besides that?

Obviously really digging this story! Honestly, this one rules. It helps that the author is clearly into a lot of the same shit I am. All the long discussions and beat by beat narration could potentially feel a little dry, but honestly, I'm pretty hooked, it's definitely pulling me forwards. It's a fascinating, conflict-rich setting, that raises all sorts of interesting concepts. It's confident in knowing what it wants to be. Umineko is a hell of a tough act to follow, but this one has a distinct identity of its own. Can't wait to see what happens now the mystery seems to be about to kick off for real.

With that in mind, I'm sure it won't be long until the next one of these. I may have to dial back the detail a bit, this is kinda having a bad effect on my work right now. There's just so many fascinating corners to follow up ^^'

Anyway, I realise these posts are kinda massive for tumblr, so I'm gonna start copying them over to canmom.art soon. <See you next time>.

#the flower that bloomed nowhere #tftbn #sff #novels #fiction

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perseidlion · 2 days ago

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Whenever a fanfic writer laments about dropping engagement and says they wish people left comments like they used to, inevitably someone chimes in to say "just write for yourself!"

That advice has gotten twisted around. It is excellent advice when you're learning how to write because it helps you find your voice and expand your skills. Plus when you write from your heart, you'll tell stories worth telling.

That advice is NOT meant to tell writers they should write with no expectations of getting anything from readers, ever. It just means don't write trying to please someone else, because the story won't be as strong. It's also much harder to get the motivation and gain the discipline to write when you're not writing a story you love. If you don't care about the story, why should your readers?

That is craft advice, not fandom behaviour advice. They're very separate things. There would frankly, be no fanfic community if people didn't write for engagement. The stories would sit forever in documents and not shared if its only purpose was for the writer's own edification.

It isn't an either-or thing. When I choose what to write, I try to find the venn diagram overlap of what I want to write and what I think the fandom will enjoy. If I write something outside of that, then I don't expect the same kind of engagement. I never fully write for myself (then I wouldn't post it) and I never fully write for fandom (because it would probably be a bad story.) There's ground between those two things, and that's where the best stories can often be found.

Writing with an awareness of the audience is a skill worth developing if you are doing more than just chucking out stories for fun (which is also TOTALLY valid and fine.) It's also fair if you don't care about engagement. But it's also not wrong to care about it, either.

Social media and influencer culture has ruined the gift culture of fandom. On Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc...the big creators are part of a monetization program and/or they get brand deals. So you just consuming their content does in fact benefit them. Published writers get sales stats and royalties from people reading their work. That is NOT true for fanfic and for Ao3. The only "payment" we can hope to get is that if someone likes our story, they tell us.

When people say they wish readers dropped a comment, we're not necessarily saying we wished more people read our work (that is sort of a given, really. What writer doesn't want to be read more?) What we're saying is that we wish the people who we know are reading our work would take a moment to say thank you. I would never want someone to read my story out of a sense of charity. I want people to read it because they like the concept and my writing.

We're saying that IF you read and enjoyed the story, please tell us. That's all. It doesn't have to be long or involved (and for god's sake, don't leave unsolicited criticism.) Even a 'loved this!' or a string of emojis is welcome.

To put it bluntly, telling writers they should write for themselves when they ask for a thank you if someone read their work is very entitled. It's also a cop-out because it absolves the reader of a small amount of effort and allows them to just consume silently with no guilt. We're not asking for a novel of a comment (though those are very much appreciated!) just a sign that a real human liked it.

This is especially important on long multichapters where you can only leave kudos once. It can get very lonely as a writer when you're 2/3 of the way through and there are few new kudos and few comments. It leaves you wondering if anyone still cares, and it comes at the most challenging part of the fic. I would venture to guess this is when most longfics get abandoned. An easy way to prevent that is just to drop an occasional comment so we know we're not shouting into the void.

A fic is a present a writer gives the community. If you loved the present, it's polite to say thank you. It's 10 seconds of effort on your part for hours of effort on the writer's. That really isn't a lot to ask.

#fanfic #ao3 fanfic #fanfic discourse #fandom #fic #fic discourse #fandom commentary #ao3 comments #archive of our own #writing #fanfic writing #on writing #writing life #creative writing #fanfiction writing

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eccentric-nucleus · 2 months ago

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the only story in the progression fantasy/litrpg/etc space that i've really enjoyed and kept up with has been super supportive, tho that's with the caveat that the first sixty chapters are basically a self-contained novel that is pretty good, and then the next uh hundred and thirty chapters spend a lot of time defusing a lot of the setup. it's not just the slice-of-life stuff that predominates, it's the part where the story slowly picks away at the setup

like so, this is gonna have spoilers for the first chunk of super supportive. i've already made a post about this before i think but this will be post #2 i guess.

so super supportive introduces the state of the world: it's like 2040, and aliens contacted earth in the 1960s and brought with them all sorts of cool technology, intergalactic communication, and also the system. magic is real and aliens can do it and now with the system some people will get selected to have superpowers and get to go on quests to alien planets and get fabulous quest rewards (further superhero powers!) for doing so! wow everybody wants to be a superhero because it's so cool!

oh yeah so the technical term for the system is 'the interdimensional warriors contract', and earth is tithed to submit people to it. the aliens get to choose who. and if they choose you, you can't refuse. you also can't really refuse a summons. one of the most popular, to the aliens, classes is the one where you're just a personal assistant. classes with actual superpowers also sometimes get summoned away on some quest and are never heard from again. sometimes they get death notifications, months or years later, but sometimes not. you don't get to pick your class either; those get assigned to you, though you can swap classes with somebody else during a brief provisional period after you've been selected but before your superpowers come due. also, humans have no clue how to really use the system; the aliens make a big point of not telling anybody anything about how it's put together or even things like "these skills are good and these other skills suck". part of the 'appeal' stat involves mental changes to make you more sociable and agreeable.

they do pay superheroes for their work. but they can't really say no to a job, or control what they do. one early example of 'tasks superheroes get summoned to do' is 'help evacuate a dangerous research station' 'but only our contracted employees; explicitly do not allow the other staff who have not contracted to our corporation to leave'.

also, a major character early on is: literally an imprisoned slave who's chained to his desk and has a geas over him such that he's not able to do things like 'express preferences'. some alien wizard just dropped him down at the embassy and he's been stuck working there for decades now. i'm sure it's fine.

so as it goes through the early chapters and these things get revealed there's a lot of tension between how everybody in-universe thinks about this ("superheroes cool") and the out-of-universe information, in which it's clear this is something more like indentured labor. there's a lot of ominous weight about the power differential there. this is a world where magic is real, the universe runs on magic, aliens can use magic, but humans can't. and the magical system aliens have put in place on earth is one that is explicitly gamified with pretty tokens and prebuilt skills and nothing even approaching, like, information on how it works.

so that's interesting! and then the first 'book' ends and the main character gets back to earth and it seems like there's a lot of backing-off of those implications. all the aliens we meet are super cool and nice and honorable. despite some gesturing at various factions of aliens, there hasn't really been a lot of followthrough on, like, the alien politics involved or how they're set up. so i'm still reading because i think it definitely still has promise, & it's written in a fairly engaging fashion, but all of this is basically contingent on it actually having a good payoff for all the buildup, & i'm not really sure that the author really cares about that stuff specifically.

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whump-me · 11 months ago

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Conquest, Chapter 28: Perfectly Defeated

Chapter 28 of Conquest, a novel-length fantasy whump story about a timid royal clerk captured by the disgraced prince who needs their help to rule their newly conquered country. This series is best read in order. Masterpost here.

Contains: fantasy setting, nonbinary whumpee, male whumper, broken whumpee, royal whumper, reluctant whumper, emotional whump, fantasy politics

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Miranelis

When Kezul brought Miranelis back to the stable that night, Miranelis sank onto the straw with their legs folded messily under them. They sat slumped against the wall like a discarded toy. They didn’t bother wondering why Kezul had brought them back to the stable himself, instead of assigning the task to one of his Wolves. Or why he stood in silence and watched them for a long moment before leaving. Maybe, if they had looked into Kezul’s face, they might have been able to gather some kind of clue. But why would they bother? It didn’t matter. And they weren’t supposed to look Kezul in the eye anyway.

They knew these things now. There were a lot of things they understood now that they hadn’t before. Like how all their fear had been pointless in the end. Whether they lived or died, there was no real difference. Either way, their life had ended the day the Wolves had invaded. The day they had been defeated.

They sat in the straw, not thinking, not feeling. Finally, their control was perfect. They weren’t able to show any emotions—they wouldn’t have been able to if they had wanted to. Because they finally felt none.

They knew they should be angry at the thought of Kezul. Or maybe they should have been afraid. But they felt neither one. They certainly didn’t feel any hope.

They might have slept. They weren’t sure. There no longer seemed to be any difference between sleeping and waking. There was darkness, and then there was light. There were periods of more awareness, and periods of less. But there were no real thoughts in their mind, nothing that went beyond a vague consciousness of their surroundings. There were no feelings. Not even when heavy footsteps echoed outside the stall. Not even when the rusted stall door squealed open and Kezul stood on the other side.

Kezul was talking. Miranelis shook their head and tried to focus. They didn’t know how long Kezul had been speaking, or why he was addressing Miranelis in the first place.

“It will have to be all the noble houses at once,” Kezul was saying. “That will make as big a spectacle as possible, and that way, none of them will have any advance warning. I’ll have them all brought here, under some pretext or other. For the ones who are on my side, or think they are, it will be easier. I can get them here with the prospect of… oh, I don’t know, some kind of negotiations. That would work, wouldn’t it? Do you think they would believe it?”

When Miranelis didn’t answer, Kezul went on. “The ones who are already planning to rebel, I’ll have to arrest out right,” Kezul continued. “Of course, the problem there is that it could spark the rebellion all on its own. That’s not what I want.”

But killing them all will spark the rebellion anyway, Miranelis thought, and wondered why some corner of their mind was bothering to engage at all. Better to sit quietly and think of nothing.

“But killing them all will spark the rebellion anyway,” said Kezul, and Miranelis’s head jerked up with a start. Kezul looked at them sharply, a question in his eyes.

Miranelis’s head slumped back down again. They didn’t say anything.

After a moment, Kezul spoke again. “It’s not what I want,” he sighed. “But it’s necessary. The rebellion will come one way or another. This way, it will happen on my terms. I’ll strike the first blow. I’ll control when the war begins. I’ll be ready.”

It’s not what’s necessary. Miranelis’s mind echoed with the words some part of them wanted to speak aloud, even though they knew there was no point. What you mean is that it’s what your father wants.

They half-expected Kezul to echo their thoughts again. But this time he didn’t. “I’ll need another pretext to get them here,” he said instead. “Something more subtle.” He looked at Miranelis.

That distant part of Miranelis’s mind, the part that still cared about all this for some reason, wanted to laugh in Kezul’s face. Did Kezul really think Miranelis would help him with this? If so, he should have asked for that help before he had shoved Miranelis into that pit and burned all the fear out of them.

“You’re good at subtle,” Kezul pressed. “Better than I am, at least.”

There was no resentment in his voice at having to ask a prisoner for something, no shame at admitting a prisoner might be better than him at anything. He certainly had come a long way. Under other circumstances, Miranelis might have found it funny.

Under other circumstances, Miranelis might have been proud of him.

“Well?” Kezul prompted. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

Miranelis stared down at the straw. They didn’t answer. It should have been obvious that they didn’t have anything to say, so they didn’t know why Kezul was still here, demanding advice. Whatever they said, it would make no difference; Kezul had made that clear.

If they didn’t give Kezul what he wanted, maybe he would beat them. Maybe he would force them to fight him again, place a knife in their hand and make them stand there while he went through the motions, until he claimed his inevitable victory. Maybe he would kill them. What did it matter? Miranelis knew the truth now—there was nothing to be afraid of. They were already dead.

Kezul took a step closer. He leaned down into Miranelis’s face. “Aren’t you going to call me a coward for not standing up to him?” He crossed the rest of the distance between them and tilted Miranelis’s chin up to meet his eyes.

For an instant, Miranelis was reminded of the first time they had ever stared into those eyes. As had happened that day, he seemed to fall forward into their black depths as they stretched to fill the entirety of their vision. But this time, there was no fear. This time, they welcomed it. They wished those eyes would yawn wider and swallow them whole.

“Well?” Kezul’s voice rose, filling their hearing the way his eyes filled their vision. “Say something.” Maybe Kezul was shouting. Maybe he was whispering. Miranelis couldn’t tell the difference. The sound was all-consuming either way.

If they gave Kezul what he wanted, maybe he would leave them to their silence.

“As the ruler of Danelor, you know what is best,” Miranelis said, in a voice of perfect neutrality, perfect control.

Kezul made a furious noise deep in his throat. “Don’t give me that. Tell me what you think. You were honest with my father the other day—you can’t be honest with me?”

“I have no advice to offer you,” said Miranelis. It was true. Once, they might have tried to figure out how to dig Kezul out of this hole and salvage what the two of them had built together. But there was no chance of that anymore. Maybe they had never had a chance. Maybe, like Miranelis, all of Danelor had been dead from the time the Wolves had marched over the mountains.

“If you have no advice, then what about your opinions?” Kezul demanded. “You certainly had enough of them before. Don’t you have anything to say about me doing exactly what my father wants?”

“You will do what is best,” Miranelis said, and closed their eyes. What they meant was that Kezul would do what he wanted, and nothing else mattered. Not Miranelis’s advice. Not what would help Danelor. Not even what Vorhullin the Unmaker demanded.

For Danelor now, there was no best. There was only what Kezul wanted. His will had scoured Miranelis clean, and soon it would scour Danelor, leaving it a ruin of famine and fire. Miranelis knew, now, that there had never been any point in fighting for themselves. Maybe there had never been any point in fighting for Danelor, either.

Kezul stood. He paced restlessly back and forth across the filthy straw. “I have to do it,” he said. He wasn’t looking at Miranelis. Miranelis didn’t know if he was talking to them anymore. “I have to do it, because otherwise they’ll rebel.”

He paced back and forth, back and forth. “They’ll rebel no matter what I do.”

Back and forth. “But this way, it will be my choice. It’s the only thing I can control. I can’t put things back the way they were. I can’t go on ruling the way we started off—it would never have worked.” He stopped in front of Miranelis. “Do you understand? We never had a chance.”

Miranelis said nothing. They hoped Kezul wouldn’t insist on an answer this time.

He didn’t. He resumed his pacing. “They never really respected me. The noble houses, Danelor—it was never real. They were afraid of me, that was all. I saw it in the eyes of that man at the Poets’ Academy, before it burned.”

Who had he spoken to before the academy had burned, and what words have been exchanged? And what had become of that man afterward? Miranelis knew the answer to that last question—he had burned like all the rest. But what did it matter? Like the rest of Danelor, the man had been dead already—he just hadn’t known it.

Miranelis took a breath and tried to smother the faint spark that flared to life inside them. There was no point. Like the fire that had destroyed the academy, the fire in them was long dead. There was nothing left but cold ash.

“They feared me,” said Kezul. “They hated me. And why shouldn’t they?” Back and forth. Back and forth. “And that was when I was helping them! Why did we ever think they would trust me enough to help me rebuild their country? That idea of ours, that we could do all this peacefully… it was always an illusion.”

Kezul’s restless footsteps paused. Their feet stopped in front of Miranelis. Miranelis didn’t look up, but they felt Kezul’s eyes on them.

Miranelis didn’t react. They didn’t even know what Kezul wanted from them. Agreement? Argument? Absolution?

Miranelis had nothing to give. They had left it all behind in the pit of bodies.

“I have to do it,” Kezul repeated. “If I don’t, my father will. And when I fail his test, there will be no more second chances. I’ll be dead, and you’ll be worse than dead. Do you understand?”

Miranelis said nothing.

Kezul leaned down and grasped Miranelis’s chin between his fingers. “If you think I’m bad, you don’t know what he would do to you. You’re lucky you’re with me. You’re lucky I broke you before he could. You know that, right?” He shook Miranelis’s head back and forth once, sharply, as if in emphasis.

“I understand,” said Miranelis in the same perfectly controlled voice, before Kezul could decide to shake them again.

Kezul’s fingers dug in tighter. They growled. “Don’t fawn at my feet like them. You don’t fear me like they do—not anymore. Isn’t that right?”

“I don’t fear you,” Miranelis echoed. It was the truth. What did they have to fear now?

“You’re smart enough to understand why I have to do this.” The fingers dug in still tighter, Kezul’s nails pressing painfully into Miranelis’s skin. “Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” Miranelis repeated obediently.

Abruptly, Kezul let go. Miranelis didn’t look up, but out of the corner of their eye, they saw Kezul shake his head, his brows drawn furiously down. “You’re just telling me what I want to hear. You’re not afraid, so stop acting like you’re afraid. Stop acting like all the rest!”

What did Kezul want? Miranelis had no fear left in them because they had nothing much of anything left in them. What was Kezul looking for, then, if not the echo that was all they had to give?

Miranelis glanced up, just long enough to get a look into Kezul’s eyes. Kezul’s eyes shone with fury, but there was something else buried deeply there. Not the hidden fear Miranelis had grown used to seeing. This was shame.

It was easy enough for Miranelis to recognize. They had felt enough of it themselves in the days since the conquest. Every time they proved themselves once again to be a coward.

Forgiveness, Miranelis realized with a sharp shock that briefly brought a flicker of fire back to life inside them. It hit them like the first prickles of a limb coming back to life after having fallen asleep. Like hunger pangs after a long illness. Like the first painful rays of sunlight interrupting a long sleep.

It was anger, Miranelis realized.

Kezul wanted forgiveness from them? After all this?

They didn’t want to be angry. They wanted to stay numb and empty. It was easier that way. It was easier to be dead, to be cold ashes. Anger would bring their inner fire back to life, and fire meant pain. Fire meant dying all over again.

“Tell me you understand,” Kezul was saying. “Tell me you know why I have to do this. Don’t pretend. Don’t act afraid. Tell me the truth, the way you used to. Give me your advice. Tell me I have to do this.”

Miranelis couldn’t give him what he wanted. Not if he wanted it to be real. If they succeeded in killing the fire inside them, they would have nothing to give. If they didn’t succeed, all they would have was anger. Either way, it wasn’t what Kezul wanted.

So they said nothing.

Kezul crouched down and leaned in toward Miranelis. He grabbed the side of Miranelis’s head and forced Miranelis’s eyes to him. “Tell me I have to do this!”

At the touch of Kezul’s hot breath on their face, their anger flared again. It felt like fire on bare skin, burning and bubbling until the flesh was gone. They didn’t want it. They tried to push it away. But like that day with the torch held against their arm, they were helpless to pull away. The burning grew, and it grew, and it grew.

They didn’t even know if they were angrier at Kezul or at themselves.

They had trusted Kezul when they shouldn’t have. They had trusted him despite all evidence. They had helped the man who had stolen the murdered queen’s throne.

They were worse than a coward. They were a traitor.

And then, in the end, Kezul had done what Miranelis should have always known he would do. He had rolled over for his father. He had done what Kyollen Naskor always did—he had destroyed in the name of Vorhullin the Unmaker.

Unexpectedly, Kezul sat down heavily in the straw. He heaved a sigh and leaned sideways against the wall. Miranelis found enough life within themselves to shrink back—not in fear, not this time, but in revulsion. Why was Kezul sitting with them like they were friends? They would have preferred it if he had screamed in their face.

“I wish we could have made it work,” Kezul said with a sigh. His voice took on a sharper edge again; so did his eyes. “But it was never possible.”

Miranelis’s revulsion turned to anger. Their hands clenched around the spiky bits of straw, driving it painfully into their palms. It was the least of their pains. They wanted to shove Kezul away as hard as they could. For one dizzying second, they thought they actually might.

What was Kezul doing? Did he actually think Miranelis would offer him reassurance? The way he was looking at Miranelis, the weariness in the set of his shoulders that he never would have dared showed one of his Wolves… it was like he thought Miranelis was his friend. No, not even that—it was like Miranelis wasn’t real, wasn’t a person to him. Like they were a dog whose head he stroked when he felt sad, someone to lick his hand and curl up at his feet. Not one of the conquered people whose countrymen he was feeling bad about murdering.

Their time of conspiring together was officially gone. Now Miranelis wasn’t even human to him.

The feel of him so close, the heat of his body, the smell of his breath and his furs… it was sickening. The look on his face, even more so.

He was less than an arm’s length away. Close enough to kill. Just the thought made Miranelis’s face flush and their heart speed up. They were too much of a coward to do that, and they knew it. That had the chance before, and they…

They had taken it, in the end. And it hadn’t worked. But Kezul had been prepared for a fight then. Right now, he didn’t look prepared for anything. He had finally let his guard down, showing vulnerability he would never have shown to someone he considered human.

And what did Miranelis have to fear? They knew the secret now: they were already dead.

But they didn’t have a weapon. No matter how little fear they had left in them, they knew better than to think they could strangle the life from Kezul with their own spindly hands.

Kezul was wearing a knife, though. And it was close enough to grab. Miranelis knew where the knife was. In those early days, they had often watched the spot midway up Kezul’s side where the knife lay hidden, strapped to his side. He had been afraid to look away, afraid the knife would come out at any moment to rest at their throat again. Those days felt like so long ago.

Kezul wasn’t expecting a threat. And Miranelis’s hands weren’t bound. They could—

Kezul stood. Inwardly, Miranelis cursed. They had waited too long.

It was just as well. They would have been too slow again, no match for Kezul’s combat-honed instincts. They would have failed, and then Kezul would have…

Would have what? Killed them? They were already dead.

Even as Kezul resumed his pacing, the thought wouldn’t leave Miranelis. Every time they imagined the knife slicing across Kezul’s throat or sinking into his heart, their blood heated more. The fire within them was painful. Unwanted life surged back into their limbs, into their empty heart. They didn’t want it. They wanted to go back to being numb. They didn’t want to think about something they could never pull off.

They didn’t want to have hope.

Once, they would have found it unbearably sad that the only thing they could think to hope for anymore was the chance to kill Kezul and die in the attempt. Now they just longed for the return of despair.

But hadn’t they wished they could do something for Danelor? Hadn’t they tried to find an answer when Kezul had begged them, even after Kezul had burned the academy? They had wanted to help Danelor badly enough to put Kezul’s sins behind them.

Maybe this was the answer. Maybe this was the one thing they could still do for Danelor.

They eyed the place where they knew Kezul’s knife hid. They imagined surging to their feet, lunging for it, fumbling with their clumsy fingers. No—they couldn’t move fast enough, not with their injuries, and their muscles that ached from sitting in the same position for hours on end. Kezul would have to get closer.

Could they coax him closer?

They opened their mouth to speak, unsure of what they planned to say.

But Kezul was already turning away, reaching for the stall door. “My fears were right the first time I saw you,” he said. “You’re useless. Even for this.”

He stalked out of the stall, locking the door behind him with a heavy clang.

With that, Miranelis was alone—alone with the idea that wouldn’t leave them be.

They had tried to help Danelor. They had failed. But perhaps they could still do this one last thing.

And they had Kezul to thank for it. Kezul had shown them they had nothing left to fear. Because of Kezul, they were no longer a coward.

---

Tagged: @suspicious-whumping-egg @halloiambored @whump-in-the-closet @whump-cravings @sunshiline-writes @annablogsposts @whither-wander-whump @seaweed-is-cool @bloodinkandashes @sonder35 @cakeinthevoid @looptheloup

Ask to be added or removed from taglist.

#whump #whump writing #whump story #whump novel #my writing #my writing: Conquest #fantasy whump #royal whump #nonbinary whumpee #reluctant whumper #emotional whump

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waltwhitmansbeard · 1 year ago

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oh my god, you're covered in blood. In Vamp Machina? ^_^

oh my god, you're covered in blood. this is the au. based on this ask.

Keyleth doesn't normally make deliveries, but Zahra is worth the exception. She's become quite the loyal customer since her move to Emon, and she enjoys her dry sense of humor. It's worth the twenty minute detour on her walk home to deliver her usual dried aconite and Keyleth's signature calming tea blend of chamomile, peppermint, and rosehips.

She follows someone into his building, then take the stairs to the second floor, where she knocks on the door labeled 2D. "Delivery!"

There's some shuffling inside, a chaotic fumbling, and then a familiar, "Uh, not a great time!"

She frowns. That's Kash's voice, she's sure of it. He's come in with Zahra a handful of times, and he's peppered Keyleth with quite a few questions about her work. "Kash, it's Keyleth! From the herbalist's? Zahra didn't pick up her order today, so I just thought I'd drop it off for her."

There's a pregnant pause, followed by a strained, "Leave it at the door, please."

Something's not right. He's an odd one, Kash, but he's not usually this...cagey. She bends down to set the paper bag just up against the door, but she knows this nagging feeling isn't ever going to leave her alone, so she tries the doorknob. "Kash?"

It's unlocked, which is weird in and of itself, so she pushes inside, hoping to help a friend in distress.

At this point, slipping in through Keyleth's bedroom window is old hat for Vax. He'd prefer to walk in through the front door—it's degrading, sneaking around like he's a teenager and not well into his second century—but an encounter with her bitchy vampire hunter roommate is not what he needs right now. He stretches out on her bed, thumbing through a trashy romance novel she checked out from the library as he waits for her to get home.

He's so engrossed in the surprisingly complex political plot line of this bodice ripper that he almost doesn't hear her enter the room. It's the soft snick of the door shutting behind her that pulls his attention away from the book. "Hey, this is actually pretty good once you get past—holy fucking shit."

Her face scrunches up as her hands start to flap in his direction. "Quiet! I don't want Percy to hear."

Vax launches himself to to his feet. "You're worried about Percy? Keyleth, you're covered in blood."

She sighs, as if his pointing it out is an inconvenience for her. "Yes, I am." She shuffles over to her closet and begins rummaging around.

He feels like the back of his head is going to explode. It's all over her, caked onto her arms, splashed up into her hair. He can smell it, rich and warm and sweet and hers. He swallows thickly. "Do you care to share why?"

She pauses, her back to him. "No." She continues to pull out a change of clothes.

Well into his second century, and he's never met someone as inscrutable as her. "Keyleth, fuck, are you hurt?"

He knows the quiet no is a lie before she says it. There's a stiffness to her movements, a tenderness clearly borne of pain. He comes up behind her, put his hands over hers to stop their movement. "Keyleth." She looks at him, exhaustion seeping into every corner of her face. "Please, talk to me."

He can see them now, a few slash marks through the sleeves of her denim jacket, the source of all of the blood. His heart hasn't beat in many decades but he swears he can feel it racing now, feel its roaring fury in his chest. "Who did this to you?" He tries to keep the trembling rage from his voice, but he knows he fails.

"It was an accident."

"That's not an answer."

"Look, it looks a lot worse than it is, okay? I promise." She puts her hands on either side of his face, and for a moment, he must hold his breath to keep out the delicious aroma of her blood on her skin. "You trust me to keep your secret, yeah?" He nods; he trusts her with every dead bone in his body. "Then trust that other secrets are just as worth keeping."

His teeth long to tear into something, to rend someone's flesh for this. "Are you saying another vampire did this?"

She snorts. "Definitely not." She presses her lips to his, and fuck, she tastes divine. "I'm going to get cleaned up, put some of my healing poultice on this. I'll be fine by morning, I promise." She gathers up her clothes and disappears into her bathroom, leaving Vax stunned and seething. He may not yet know who harmed her, who spilled her blood and left her to limp home, but when he does, he will become every bit the ruthless monster the man in the other room of this apartment knows him to be.

#ask #ravendruid #vamp machina au #critical role au #cr au #tlovm au #vox machina au #critical role #critical role fic #cr fic #my fic #vox machina #vox machina fic #vaxleth fic #vaxleth #vaxleth au

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bedofthistles · 1 year ago

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The Little White Horse: A Complete Summary

So! I finally read TLWH, and man do I have thoughts and opinions! So many... so... many....

However, before I get into those opinions, I wanted to share my summary of TLWH, since I don't think a lot of people have read the book who enjoyed the movie.

Unfortunately, my thots and opinions are too wide and vast, resulting in what is more or less a 16 page dissertation, which may grow depending on if I think I covered all the topics I wanted to cover. So, to makes things a bit easier, I'm going to be splitting them up into more readable sections.

So, if you haven't read the book, if it's been a while since you've read the book, here is a summary of the novel.

Alright friends, the time has come.

After undertaking the laborious task of consuming all Moonacre content possible (movie, minie-series and novel) I have come to some unfortunate conclusions. The book sucks. But before you go too far, especially the weird amount of you who like the book, I would like to preface that each person is allotted their opinions. I am not aiming to dis the book, it’s a classic, but it’s not perfect, no book or work of art is. No one should get so offended by another’s opinion to the point where it sparks a deep, roiling anger inside of them.

(Rachel Zeglar may be wrong about the Snow White movie from the 1930s, but I took her side, everyone got real upset about a girl having opinions, not that’s her opinion and she’s allowed it.)

I want to start out by saying there are some issues in regards to race, incest, pedophilia, grooming and sexism in the novel, if that surprises and shocks you, I’m sorry but its in there, and just because you didn’t notice it doesn’t erase the fact that it was there. I also don’t want this to be about me comparing the book to the movie, because one that would just be a rant, and as much as I love that, that wouldn’t be fair to either works, and honestly? Besides the names and setting, the book and movie could almost fully be divorced from one another.

In case you don’t know the plot to the book, I will try to surmise it as best I can:

Maria Merryweather is a recently orphaned girl, she leaves London with her governess (Miss Heliotrope) and her dog (Wiggins) arriving to live with her first cousin once removed, Sir Benjamin, lord over Moonacre Valley (and if you’re not up to snuff about what that means, he’s a landlord, more or less). While driving, Maria occupies herself by staring at her small feet, her one attribute and attractive characteristic.

While en route, Maria sees the beautiful valley lit up like silver in the moonlight, and between the trees she spots a luminescent white horse. When she tries to tell her governess this, Ms. Heliotrope tells her to stop her overactive imagination, she has always had an overactive imagination, especially back in London, when she made up a playmate named Robin (yes, that one).

When they arrive, they learn that no woman has stepped foot inside of the house in 20 years - yes, Sir Benjamin is proud of this - and, very importantly, there is no pink within the house. While there, Sir Benjamin is a very happy, polite gentleman, who calls Maria your highness, and refers to Moonacre Valley as her dominion. There are also this weird thing about Sun Merryweathers and Moon Merryweathers.

“The brave soul and the pure spirit shall with a merry and a loving heart inherit the kingdom together," quoted Sir Benjamin. “That's our family motto, my dear. It's been our motto since the days of the first Sir Wrolf. It refers, I think, to the two sorts of Merryweathers, the sun and the moon Merryweathers, who are always merry when they love each other. It is also, perhaps, a device for linking together those four qualities that go to make up perfection --courage, purity, love, and joy."

While giving her a tour of the manor, he shows her a well (this will be important later) and Maria thinks to herself if I were a medieval lady, this is where I would hide my jewels in time of war.

Weird, but okay.

The one place Maria is not shown, is the kitchen.

They go to church, while the Parson is preaching, Maria brushes her skirt to smooth out some wrinkles, and there’s a noise that captures her attention for a bit. Then, once the service is over, everyone lines up and goes up to the Parson to get absolutely read to shreds. He literally tells them their sins of the week, and when it’s Maria’s turn, despite only being there for a day, she’s scolded for her vanity and curiosity.

One of the things Sir Benjamin gets scolded for is allowing the (and I’m so sorry for this) “Black Men” to stop hunting in Merryweather park. And that’s kind of all they do, and from here on out I will be referring to them as the De Noirs because that is technically their name, but Elizabeth Goudge just keeps calling them “the Black Men”.

And yes, that is as bad as it sounds, but more on that later.

Let’s just speed run some facts.

Every morning, Maria wakes up to cookies, milk, a stroked fire, and an outfit placed out for her. Maria feels so loved by these small acts, and feels as if she loves whoever is putting out these clothes.

“[Maria] had a queer feeling, as she fastened the coat of the habit and pinned the bunch of snowdrops to the front of it, that L.M. - whoever she was - put loving arms around her; almost as her mother might have done, had she not died.”

When she is out in the forest with Periwinkle and Wrolf, she hears the shrill, shrieking rabbit, and goes to save it. As she does, she realizes that the De Noirs have come for the rabbit as well. She and Robin save the rabbit from the De Noirs and bring her to safety. Robin tells her it's actually a moonacre hare, and then upon her asking too many questions, leaves.

“Maria choked down her curiosity, for Robin had always hated being asked questions, and if she asked too many would disappear, and she did not want him to disappear just yet.”

“There was no answer, and looking up she saw that Robin had disappeared, even though as far as she knew she had not asked a single question.”

She knows this because she would dream about Robin in London, and when she asked him questions, he would just leave the dream.

Maria learns about Sir Wrolf (who was arrogant, rude, and planned on marrying the Moon Princess to steal Black William’s land), the Moon Princess (who was just pale, and kind, I think?) with her dowry of pearls, and Monsieur Cocque De noir, otherwise known as Coeur De Noir because his heart was so black (it’s a common french last name, not to mention the black cock that rides on the current De Noir’s shoulder).

“[Sir Wrolf had] got Paradise Hill but there remained the pine woods behind his manor house, that run right down to the sea, to what is now called Merryweather Bay, which were the property of Sir William Cocq de Noir, called Black William because of the black cock that was his family crest, and because of his lashing dark eyes, black hair and beard and sallow French skin. And also because of his black heart. Coeur de Noir, men sometimes called him, instead of Cocq de Noir. For he was a bad man, was Black William, cruel to wild creatures, domineering with his servants, morose and ungenerous.”

Black William remarries, has a son, and that son becomes his heir. Because of this, Sir Wrolf can’t inherit the whole of the Valley through his wife, and gets super angry. Because of his rage, the De Noir’s think Sir Wrolf killed Black William, the Moon Princess ran away, and Black William’s son, who was believed to have died from sickness, returned twenty years later with his band of men who would become the wicked, evil, ‘Black Men’ who plague the valley. Sir Wrolf is described to have died heartbroken (good) and damned to ride around Paradise Hill in a sort of purgatory for his ill-deeds.

The Parson also tells Maria that every Moon Princess is destined to leave the Valley after fighting with her love. That it won’t be until the Moon Princess humbles herself and marries a poor man she will never be allowed to stay.

“She always has gone away," said Old Parson. “Not necessarily from the valley, but from the manor. Yet the old folks in the village vow and declare that one day there will come a Moon Princess who will have the courage to deliver the valley from the wickedness of the Black Men. But like the princesses in all the nicest fairy tales she will have to humble her pride to love not a prince but a poor man, a shepherd or ploughman or some such country lad, and to effect the deliverance with his help, and that's a thing which no Moon Princess has yet done, so proud are they.”

At this point, Maria meets Loveday Minette, the lady who had been leaving her clothes, she is kind and beautiful, and cleans the Parson’s house.

Then again, while out with her animals and Ms. Heliotrope, Maria goes to Paradise Hill, which is the monastery Sir Wrolf stole from the monks because he was covetous. While there she meets the shepherd and guess who it is? That’s right, Robin, no surprise there. While the two are there, the De Noirs attempt to steal the sheep.

Robin, Maria, and the Ghost of Sir Wrolf -

“And then, through the noise of the thunder and the rain, she distinctly heard the hoofs of a galloping horse pounding upon the turf. As the horseman was behind her she could not herself see anything, but whoever he was the Black Men seemed to see him, for with faces blanched by terror they turned and fled.”

they manage to scare them off.

Maria and Robin have a fight, but they deal with it, because Maria knows if she doesn’t forgive him, she’ll have to leave the Valley. This will be handled in more depth later. Likewise, Loveday and Sir Benjamin had a fight twenty years ago, Loveday leaves the Valley, marries a lawyer, sires Robin, and then comes back after her husband dies. Because of their stubborness, neither would return to the other and apologize. More detail on this later.

After dealing with the De Noirs, however. Maria decides that she must save the valley from their wickedness.

She, Robin, and the Parson return Paradise Hill to god, Sir Benjamin no longer profits off the sheep, and that’s it. It was a really long boring chapter about all the children of Silverydew cleaning it up and decorating it again with the statue of their Lady. They sing, and I think Sir Wrolf’s soul is released from the hell that is Moonacre Valley.

Once this is done, Maria and Robin sneak into the Castle in the pine woods, ask Mr. Cock to pretty please stop stealing and he says: not until you give me back the pearls, and also your ancestor murdered my ancestor.

Robin and Maria are chased, they find the tree hollow, with evidence that someone once lived there including a knife with a carved cock as the handle-

“Once upon a time this cave had been lived in. A hollow place in the wall was blackened, as though a fire had been lit there, and standing on a flat rock beside it was an iron pot that must have been used to cook stew in. And lying on the rock beside the pot was a huntsman's knife in a metal sheath, and a tarnished silver mug. Maria and Robin picked them up and looked at them, holding them close to their eyes in the dim light, and lo and behold, the sheath that held the knife was beautifully made in the shape of a cock, and upon the silver mug also there was traced the outline of a cock."

They also run through the tunnels that go through Moonacre Valley until they reach Merryweather Bay, where Maria finds a boat that belonged to Sir William.

For Maria, this is enough evidence that Black William left on his own accord, and the magical sea unicorns brought the boat back to Merryweather Bay as proof.

Once they’re home safe, Marmaduke asks Maria for butter kept in the well, because it's cold in there, and while Maria is more or less rifling through the Merryweather fridge, she finds an old box that has the pearls in them.

Maria decides that she doesn’t want to give the pearls to the De Noirs, because they are wicked, and will just give them to the moon instead. Then, through a gold medal mental gymnastic routine, decides that she will give them over.

“And yet Maria did not want to give those pearls away. She loved them far too much. She did not want to give them even to the moon, and as for giving them to the Black Men--well--she just couldn't do it. And yet she had to do it. Monsieur Cocq de Noir had promised that they would stop being wicked if she could give him proof that Black William had not been murdered by Sir Wrolf, but had withdrawn to a hermit's life by his own choice, and if she would give him the pearls. “That first condition was already fulfilled, for when he was pursuing her and Robin he would have seen Black William's hermitage with his own eyes, and the pearls he would have too if she could bring herself to give them to him. And then he would not be wicked any more and complete happiness would come to the Moonacre Valley. Somehow Maria did not doubt that if she kept her part of the bargain Monsieur Cocq de Noir would keep his. The wickedest of men have good in them somewhere, and remembering the direct look in his eyes she felt quite sure that he was not a man who would break his word. Yet she felt she could not give him these pearls, that she had found herself and that seemed already a part of her. “And then it struck her suddenly that if she gave her pearls to Monsieur Cocq de Noir she would, in a way, be giving them to the moon. For the moon belongs to the night, and what was more like night than Monsieur Cocq de Noir and his black pine forest? And the first Moon Princess had come out of the night-dark pine wood, bringing the pearls with her. The pearls belonged far more to the Black Men than they did to the Merryweathers.”

However, when she goes to the Castle, Mr. Cock takes the pearls, but doesn’t believe her about the boat. Then she hits him with the old “magic unicorns brought him into shore”, and he doesn’t believe that, but Maria is able to convince him to come out with her to the forest where she is sure the Little White Horse will appear, despite being rather elusive this whole time. They go out together, they see not only the Little White Horse, but a whole tidal wave of Sea Unicorn, and he’s like oh! You were telling the truth.

But! That’s not the end!

Maria still has to get Loveday and Sir Benjamin back together, and that is a whole other thing that deserves its own post and I will go into full detail on later. As well as some issues that I have with Robin Minette.

The story ends with Loveday and Benjamin getting married, Robin and Maria getting married A YEAR LATER, and going on to have ten kids. While the book does not tell us Robin’s age, we know Maria is thirteen, meaning she is at least fourteen when she gets married, and who knows when they start having kids. Again, I will talk about this more later. However, despite common belief, this getting married at 12-14 was not common.

The book ends, however, with one of the most lovely quotes.

“For sometimes in her dreams at night she stood beneath the branches of a mysterious wood, and looked down a moonlit glade, her eyes straining after something that she could not see. And when she woke up there would be tears on her cheeks because her longing had been unsatisfied. “Yet she was not unhappy because of this dream. “She knew that one day, when she was a very old woman, she would dream this dream for the last time, and in this last dream of all she would see the little white horse and he would not go away from her. He would come towards her, and she would run towards him, and he would carry her upon his back away and away, she did not quite know where, but to a good place, a place where she wanted to be.”

To keep things brief (too late) I will be making other posts to complete my analysis of book, movie, and small mentions of the miniseries.

And if you were thinking about reading the book: don’t.

First | Next

#the secret of moonacre #the little white horse #TLWH dissertation #I'll figure out how to link the parts #i know you can #thots and opinions #i know I'm gonna make someone mad

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orelsemystery · 5 months ago

Text

Me & Academia & Publishing & Pittsburgh

I’ve just posted the first three chapters of Or Else. I wrote this yesterday in anticipation.

I’m sitting in Mellon Park, in the shade of a big tree, drafting a blog post for tomorrow. Off to my right, I can see the bell tower of East Liberty Presbyterian and the white dome that I’ve always assumed is an athletic facility that either belongs to the park on the other side of Fifth or to the Ellis School for Girls, I’ve never been sure which. In some summer in the late 2000s or early 2010s, I used to cross this park on my way back from Shadyside to the house in Point Breeze where I was staying with family friends. I would stop and sit on a bench and read that week’s edition of City Paper. Some other summer, I lay on the hill in the sun and read P.N. Furbank’s biography of E.M. Forster. Now I am here, again, in 2024, because I chose to be.

Academia insists that you move wherever the job takes you, and since traditional tenure-track (i.e., stable and well-paying) jobs are so horribly hard to get these days, you feel guilty if you’re not grateful for whatever you get, no matter how bad a fit the location is. Or so my friends say. I didn’t get a tenure-track job after getting my PhD in English. I don’t have any real idea how much that was my own fault: whether it was because I stubbornly chose to do an unconventional project; whether I didn’t try hard enough to legitimize my project in my job documents; whether I hadn’t published enough. Maybe I hadn’t worked hard enough. Maybe I wasn’t that strong of a scholar. Or maybe there were just so few jobs to begin with that the academic job market is in large part simply a crapshoot, and I didn’t win.

It’s possible I just didn’t stick it out long enough. I don’t know. But I suspect that when all is said and done, the underlying reasons I am here and not there can be boiled down to two things: (1) I want to make my own choices about what my work looks like and (2) I want to be happy in my own life.

So after I finished my Ph.D., I moved back to Pittsburgh. I love the city—it’s where I went to college, and I’ve missed it ever since leaving—and there are enough schools here I figured I could at least adjunct somewhere. I’m actually getting to teach literature right now, which I love doing and am very grateful for. But I am on no ladders to academic glory.

For the last couple years, however, I’ve been clinging to another possible means of professional success: I could publish the novel I wrote as part of my dissertation. Then I’d be impressive in another way. I queried a number of literary agents, at an inadvisably slow pace, shooting off emails when I could stand the accompanying anxiety. It felt clear, though, that what I was going to need to do to get anywhere serious was network, some of which (workshops, conferences) costs money. And I hate networking and I hate paying money for someone to give my work a chance. I am so cognizant of how many people can’t afford that, and how unfair the whole system can be.

And anyway…I didn’t really want to make my work more marketable. Which is inevitable if you’re going to try and market it.

So I made a different choice, again. To put the novel, the project, on a website of my own. I’m lucky and I am privileged to be able to make this choice—I have a job, for now, that pays enough. I have a safety net in my family and friends. I have a cat but not kids; I have rent but not a mortgage. I have an advanced degree. I can afford to not pin any financial hopes on writing.

Yet it’s hard not to feel like a whole litany of well-meaning teachers and colleagues from over the years are going to be disappointed in me for doing it this way. Or just…disinterested. People who would perk up their ears at a commercially published novel will simply pass by one posted online for free—even if they have good politics generally around capitalism and professionalization. There was only one right answer to the head of my undergraduate drama school’s question, “What are you working on?” and it always involved something that would look good on your resume (and the school’s promotional materials).

Oh well! Here I am! Sorry, everyone: I love amateurism. I love art and writing that people do because they want to. I love fanfiction. I love community theatre. I love zines, I love high school marching bands, I love queer craft fairs. I love adults who rediscover Shrinky-Dinks and polymer clay and make potholders for their friends. I love local book clubs and writing communities on Discord. I love Pittsburgh—I think Pittsburgh’s whole vibe is slightly wonky DIY: faded old signs painted on brick buildings, tree roots pushing up through sidewalks, folding chairs saving parking spots, memories of the Beehive and Garfield’s Nightmare and whatever happened to that one ice cream place that became an illegal banking cooperative or something? Or Else is set in Pittsburgh, at a made-up university I’ve shoved next to Pitt and Carnegie Mellon (who says there’s not room in Oakland), and it’s about people who sort of…make their own worlds, for better or worse, who live one foot in the kind of scrappy imaginary I find so possible in this city. And I am glad to be here, in Mellon Park, writing this, watching a dog with the spindliest legs I have ever seen in my life walking past (sorry Juno), preparing to launch my big little project into the world.

Later update: After I finished writing this post, I walked around the garden in Mellon Park. I was appreciating the Pittsburgh hallmarks I’d just been writing about—bumpy bricks, crumbling walls, etc., and then I tripped on an uneven sidewalk and skinned my knee. I will take this as a reminder that choosing one’s own road comes with obstacles of its own. I am sticking some metaphorical antiseptic into my metaphorical knapsack as I venture down the mysterious path through the woods.

<3 Miranda

#or else blog post #queer lit #queer author #writeblr #writers on tumblr #mystery novel #academia #dark academia #indie novel #or else #or else mystery

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cosmicgrapevine · 1 year ago

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A Not-So-Brief Summary of my Novel's Worldbuilding, Characters, Plot, and Themes

@tototavros was asking for a more comprehensive summary of this project at some point, so here goes. This is a rather 'organic' project and some of the details have changed over time and will continue to change, but I'm pretty solid on most of it at this point.

This sideblog is for my posting pieces from and other content related to my WIP manuscript Through the Grapevine, an urban fantasy novel set in the late 1990s that straddles the YA/New Adult border in tone and content. While the first novel is a fairly self-contained narrative, I am writing and marketing it as a 3-4 book series.

Metaphysics: While this mostly isn't relevant in the first book, if you pan out wide enough it turns out that our universe is only one of an uncountably high (but not infinite: something something maximum number of vertices in an n-dimensional something something) number connected by a structure known as the Viabract or Great Vine. The number of universes able to support life at all, let alone a civilization of intelligent beings, is much smaller--many universes are tiny, half-formed, or incomplete 'junk dimensions'. "Our" universe has a reputation for being unusually safe, stable, and predictable, in part because our stricter physical laws make magic more difficult to perform, and magic is ultimately a force that borrows against metaphysical stability, especially on the large scale.

The Viabract is the ultimate source of all magic, although that magic manifests locally in different ways, and skilled supernaturalists can use it to travel between dimensions. The interior is a series of interconnected tunnels to which normal notions of size and distance don't really apply. The only (arguably) living beings native to it are agglomerations of pure magic called Mires, which in their natural state look something like overgrown amoebae but can possess other beings to give themselves 'real bodies' and grant significant power to their hosts. (A non-sapient possessed animal is called a Halfmire, while a sapient possessed animal is a Fullmire)

Main Characters: My two POV characters are Melanie Kitz and Tabby Jelenski, high school juniors at a Catholic school in Chicago who have been friends since childhood. Melanie's parents, Fred and Janet, are a Chicago PD detective and a social worker for Child Services, and thus she's led a fairly privileged life. She is ambitious, hoping to get into a good college and start a career in politics or activism, and prefers to follow the rules and keep her head down.

Tabby's parents, Steve and Rita, are divorced and estranged: her paternal uncle went to jail for laundering mob money through his pawn shop, which ruined her parents' already tenuous relationship. She lives with her abusive mother, her father moved to the suburbs to live with said brother once he got out of jail, and while she deeply despises her mom she's not on great terms with her dad either. She is adventurous and reckless, planning on running away to anywhere-but-here as soon as she's done with school. She rebels against her mother through petty crimes and sleeping around with neighborhood boys.

While he's not a POV character, Lynd's arc is nearly as important as the other two. He shows up one night at Melanie's house, looking for her paternal grandfather Florentino, a man she thought had been dead for decades. He claims to be a representative of an ancient order of demon-hunters called Marksteppers who live in the wilderness and forsake human civilization, and his 'clan' seeks help from Florentino, who is the most powerful living Warden, a different school of magic (broadly speaking: Wardens are rules-magic engineers, Marksteppers are spirit-magic shamans, and they do not work well together). It is soon revealed that Lynd has ostensibly arrived in search of some information, but really wants to leave his old life behind and see what life in the 'normal world' is like.

Lynd is of the Ash Clan of Marksteppers, one of nine 'Great Clans' that rule the others and whose members are significantly more powerful. While 'normal' Marksteppers are basically human, Great Clan members are closer to demigods: they don't age, can't reproduce, and the (more or less) only way to join a clan is to kill a current member and inherit their powers, thus taking their place.

Setting: All three wind up in Kahoti, Florida, a private suburb north of Tampa built, funded, and operated by Florentino. Wardens' chief magical tool is Wards, a form of defensive magic which borrows energy from the Viabract and uses it to create barriers. Historically, Wards could only be applied to single structures, as they relied on a physical anchoring point and their power could not be transmitted through empty space. Florentino is a pioneer in Warding larger areas: his first big breakthrough was (ironically) magic-proofing Walt Disney World, using the rides, monorails and the like as vectors for Wards. By the '80s, he had mastered his craft enough to build an entire community with enough space for 30,000 people, all fully Warded and protected (real life inspirations include private and/or planned Florida communities Seaside, Celebration, and Golden Oak).

Plot: Once they settle down in Kahoti, the trio joins the Lost Kids, the in-training demon-hunting group at Kahoti High (this is, at its core, a Wake Up Go to School Save the World story). The central enemy in the story is Blackmires--Mires which seem to be created artificially, hijack hosts instead of symbiotically bonding with them, and can be transferred from one person to another with the old memories intact, none of which normal Mires are supposed to be able to do.

The mastermind behind their creation is Gerald Scutaro, aka The Centipede, a former mafioso who found a way into the world of magic and used it to benefit his organization, until he got too powerful for his own good and his fellow mobsters tricked him into a Vegas trip in the early 1990s where they gave him the Rasputin treatment and left him for dead. He survived, however, to meet Anna McCarthy, current Lord of the Sumac Clan of Marksteppers. Along with another Sumac, they invent Blackmires by combining normal Mires with the Sumac Clan's signature Black Water, a substance that in small doses makes people uninhibited and hedonistic, and in large ones mutates them into monsters that the Clan Lord can control.

McCarthy and Scutaro's ultimate plan is to gain possession of two bractoscopes, items that superficially look like mirrors but are actually portals into Warded areas that they couldn't access otherwise, use them to funnel their troops into Kahoti and take it over from the inside. And that is not just for its own sake, but to secure possession of a valuable territory for the coming actions of all nine Great Clans: an attempt to summon their creator goddess back to life and turn Earth into a fortress against their extradimensional enemies. (This is not an 'Evil Plan' necessarily: some Marksteppers and humans alike think that it will lead to a new golden age for Earth as a center of interdimensional travel, and Marksteppers in general are fond of humanity and see themselves as its protectors.)

On the more interpersonal level, Melanie was already an ambitious young woman, and learning that she's the heir to her grandfather's vast empire and a prodigal (grand)daughter to this new community only heightens that aspect of her. She learns how to use this power to the benefit of all while still keeping her morals intact. She struggles in understanding her grandfather and his work; he is at turns capricious, downright cruel, and deeply merciful. Tabby and Lynd, meanwhile, quickly find themselves falling in love with each other, their shared outsider status and being targets of suspicion deepening their bond. With Tabby's help, Lynd assimilates quickly to this new world, to the point where she fears he'll lose the spark that brought them together in the first place.

Other Characters: Florentino Cervantes himself is my flashy, sun-soaked spin on the mentor character, a wizard and business baron whose two trades mutually support each other, and who mostly farms out the mentoring to his subordinates. Travis Barrett, an aggressive and vicious hunter, is his second in command, and is secretly Melanie's older brother: Florentino forced Fred and Janet to give up their firstborn to him in return for leaving their lives entirely. Since the Lost Kids meet primarily at school, most of their adult support doubles as school staff, including Gary Hansen (dean of students), Amanda Vernon (physics), and Lou Bonifacio (driver's ed and assistant baseball coach).

Gary's daughter Fawn and Lou's nephew Jordy are both 'lifers', with Fawn specializing in infosec and cover-ups and Jordy being more of a front-liner with a magic-infused baseball bat that can turn into a massive magic-fueled sledge. Kenny Boyd and Anthony Nicks began their training in middle school. Anthony is the team nerd of sorts: tech whiz and loremaster with perception-altering powers, while Kenny is a cynical metalhead and skateboarder with the ability to control metals. Finally, the 'Pool Crew' consists of Drew, Jevon, Conrad, and Corey, who answer directly to Travis and whose preferred magic is the gun kind. Jordy's girlfriend Shanti Khatri had a spot on the team for a minute, but was kicked out and memory-wiped for targeting her classmates with mind-altering magic.

Of the bad guys: Ernest Brunswick is a 200-year-old English aristocrat who gained Markstepper-immortality at age 30 or so, and the chief chemist in the creation of Blackmires. He is estranged from Scutaro and McCarthy when the story begins and seeks to undermine them. Other agents include Dale Patterson, the first Blackmire who could successfully travel from body to body, but given he was a white supremacist before being transformed, insists on possessing only white men, and Rachel Bosart, a one-hit-wonder pop singer from the '70s who is looking to ride Scutaro's magic into a younger body. While none of the students start out demonic (in the non-mundane sense at least), the bad guys do get their claws into Shanti and star pitcher Ryan Hyde as well.

Themes: The most central theme to this story is freedom vs. safety, exemplified by Tabby and Melanie respectively. Wards provide safe havens from demons, but must be carefully controlled and are not open to everyone. Personal choice is also a major factor: destiny and chosen ones do not really feature here (although some characters think otherwise), and emphasis is repeatedly placed on how all three tritagonists choose to learn more or go deeper. While I'm trying to avoid going all Ernest Cline, 90's/y2k nostalgia is a factor as well, playing up the pre-9/11, pre-Columbine sense of freedom and optimism, as well as one of the last eras where having a social life didn't require being constantly plugged into the internet.

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