#one of the protagonists of the actual book

[fangdokja]

How do you escape a yandere harem? Asking for a very distressed friend (me).

♡ Book. Whispers in the Dark (WITD): Subtle Devotion, Lingering Shadows.

♡ Word Count. 1,128

♡ A/N. Basically me before I got married. lol. Yes. I hated anything romance both fiction and reality. So I like this concept haha. Also, I'm seriously debating on making this an actual novella. Maybe. I still have to finish my requests, but maybe.

You fucking hate romance.

Not in a casual, indifferent way. No, your hatred for romance is the kind that borders on seething disgust. The kind that makes you want to puke when two characters start making heart eyes at each other. The kind that makes you physically cringe when someone dares utter the words ‘soulmate’ or ‘true love’ in your general direction. Romance is a shit genre. A putrid, festering landfill of emotional drivel. You’d rather watch a slow-burn psychological horror where the protagonist’s sanity unravels, or a thriller where the final girl barely survives a slasher massacre, than sit through a single damn love confession.

So naturally, because fate fucking hates you, you get isekai’d into an otome game.

Not just any otome game. A reverse harem, noble court intrigue, “will you find true love?” kind of otome game. You wake up inside the body of some unfortunate, aristocratic protagonist, and your first instinct is to smash your head against the nearest marble pillar in the desperate hope that blunt force trauma will eject you from this nightmare. It doesn’t work.

Worse, you are surrounded by them.

♡ Yandere! Crown Prince who is everything you loathe—tall, broad-shouldered, charismatic. A born leader, they say. His bloodline has ruled for centuries. A tyrant in the making. His voice is deep, his smile a calculated weapon. A future emperor whose touch alone makes noblewomen swoon and fall at his feet like wilting flowers. He looks at you like you’re already his consort. You look at him like you’re about to stab him in the eye.

“Dearest,” he says, rolling the word across his tongue with insufferable arrogance, “what an honor it must be for you, to be chosen by the future ruler of this land.”

You stare at him. “I’d rather be executed for treason.”

His smile doesn’t waver. It only deepens. “How rebellious.”

You realize, with mounting horror, that he finds this amusing. Worse, attractive.

♡ Yandere! Archduke is the kind of man who has never once heard the word ‘no��� and taken it seriously. A bastard-born noble who climbed his way into power with sheer audacity and an overwhelming lack of self-preservation. The type to talk you in circles until you don’t even remember what you were arguing about in the first place. He’s always smirking, always one step ahead, and always so damn annoying.

“You wound me, darling,” he drawls, lounging against the silk cushions of your carriage like he owns it (because he does own it; he bought it specifically for your ‘dates’). “I’m a man of reason. I can be persuaded to let you go.”

You narrow your eyes. “Really?”

His smirk widens. “Of course. All you have to do is admit that you want me.”

Your expression darkens like storm clouds rolling in before a disaster. You exhale slowly. “I hope you contract the plague.”

He laughs. The bastard laughs. “Oh, sweetheart. That sharp tongue of yours only makes me want you more.”

You contemplate drowning yourself in the nearest fountain.

♡ Yandere! Supreme Mage doesn’t need to chase you. You’re already trapped. A cold-blooded intellectual, a prodigy whose intelligence surpasses entire generations of scholars. He is the advisor to the throne, the master of arcane arts, the genius whose apathy is only rivaled by his obsession. And for some unholy reason, he has chosen to dedicate that obsession to you.

“There is no logic in your resistance,” he states, his sharp calculated eyes watching your every move like a scientist dissecting a particularly fascinating specimen. “The probability of you escaping me is exactly zero.”

You glare at him from inside the magic barrier he’s sealed you in. “Fuck you.”

His lips twitch. “Inevitable.”

You scream internally.

♡ Yandere! Demon King is the worst of them all. The nightmare incarnate. The shadow that stretches across the battlefield, that turns the bravest warriors into weeping corpses. Seemingly peaceful, but whatever shred of righteousness he once had is buried beneath millennia of bloodshed. He watches you with an intensity that makes your skin crawl. You feel like prey. You are prey.

“I do not comprehend your reluctance,” he murmurs, tilting his head as though studying a curious, fragile thing. His fingers brush your cheek, and you physically recoil, like his touch might dissolve you from the inside out.

He does not retract his hand.

“You are mine,” he says simply.

“No, I am not,” you snap back, the venom in your voice laced with pure, unfiltered rage.

A pause. He exhales softly. Then he smiles.

“Ah,” he whispers. “A challenge.”

Your entire body locks up with dread. You suddenly understand, with absolute clarity, that you are fucked.

────────────

Your days are spent avoiding unwanted confessions, sidestepping ambushes disguised as ‘chance encounters,’ and resisting the overwhelming urge to commit arson. Your nights are spent planning elaborate escape routes that never come to fruition because one of the four nightmares always finds you first.

You try everything.

Poisoning the Crown Prince’s wine? He drinks it, licks his lips, and says, “Sweet. Did you make this yourself?”

Framing the Archduke for treason? He fakes his own death and then shows up in your chambers that same night, grinning like a lunatic. “Miss me?”

Teleporting away from the Supreme Mage? He rewinds time. You wake up in the same bed, with his arms around your waist.

Selling your soul to escape the Demon King? He is the one who answers.

You are doomed.

And worst of all?

It’s still a romance game.

You watch, helpless, as the ‘Affection Points’ rise every time you breathe in their general direction.

You don’t want a ‘Happy Ending.’

You want a cease and desist order.

And yet, the game continues.

Your suffering is eternal.

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If you want to be added or removed from the tag list, just comment on the MASTERLIST of Whispers in the Dark (WITD): Subtle Devotion, Lingering Shadows. Thank you.

General TAG LIST of “Whispers In The Dark”: @keisocool , @elvabeth , @elloredef , @mjsjshhd , @lem-hhn , @yuki-istired

❤︎ Fang Dokja's Books.

♡ Book 1. A Heart Devoured (AHD): A Dark Yandere Anthology ♡ Book 2. Forbidden Fruits (FF): Intimate Obsessions, Unhinged Desires. ♡ Book 3. World Ablaze (WA) : For You, I'd Burn the World. ♡ Book 4 [you are here]. Whispers in the Dark (WITD): Subtle Devotion, Lingering Shadows. ♡ Book 5. Ink & Insight (I&I): From Dead Dove to Daydreams.

[eris-abomination]

I would have enjoyed the books I was assigned to read if I wasn’t assigned to read them. It’s not even like I wasn’t a big reader, the educational system just made English classes such a slog to go through.

I’m sure I would have liked The Great Gatsby or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest a LOT more if I wasn’t assigned a hard deadline of three chapters per night (otherwise you won’t pass the quiz on Friday!), told to annotate and color-code my copy (pink highlight for character names, blue for symbolism, yellow for vocab words), and assigned countless quizzes and tests about meaningless trivia like what color the protagonist was wearing in one scene. I find myself more attached to the short stories we had to read (The Yellow Wallpaper, All Summer in a Day, A Modest Proposal, Harrison Bergeron, etc) because the teachers didn’t make them such a chore and I actually had time to digest and enjoy them. Hell, I ended up enjoying Shakespeare a lot more than the novels because we got to “perform” it in class.

I know for a fact I would have appreciated these books a lot more if the act of reading them wasn’t tied up in the obligation of passing a class or the stress of having to scrutinize the dialogue in preparation for a test. I’ve been trying to rediscover my love for reading as something relaxing and fun; the education system almost ruined that shit for me.

I straight up do not trust you if you did not enjoy a single book you had to read for English class. I know they assigned some real stuffy stinkers and the curriculum varies across districts but not one? Not The Outsiders? Not The Picture of Dorian Gray? Not Fahrenheit 451? Not even Frankenstein? Damn. That’s crazy.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

hiii, i am writing my first book/novel. its highlighting d***th, romance, mystery, politics, pretty questionable characters w revenge, thriller and lots of women n power play. its my first book and im not that educated about such themes. but this rough plot i have in my mind is so beautiful that underperforming this excellent trope would be a shame....ive never written before so could you please what to do to actually write this kinda theme to my heart's satisfaction. I've never written a freaking chap before and now im really lost

Writing Ideas: Revenge Tropes

some tropes related to revenge, thriller, women, and power play

Afterlife Avenger: This trope involves the circumstance where a character explicitly still chooses to pursue conflicts against whatever's left of their hated target long after they've passed.

Best Served Cold: Named for the French (or Sicilian, or Klingon, or drow, depending on who you ask) proverb, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." At least in the case of drow, it also means one can have well-planned revenge and drive them mad with fear as a bonus.

Crusading Widow: The death or murder of their significant other motivates the character to seek revenge.

Defeat as Backstory: A protagonist (or some other character's backstory) in a story begins by having been defeated either before the story began, or early on in the story (often in a prologue).

Dying Curse: With his dying breath, a character wishes ill fortune upon his killers, or some other personal enemy.

Pay Evil unto Evil: In real life, the sort of thinking behind this trope is called "retributive justice".

Revenge Through Corruption: Instead of inflicting physical harm, the villain attacks the mind and soul.

Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy: When someone goes after not only a crime's perpetrator, but those who supplied the perpetrator or were otherwise marginally connected to it, whether or not the people involved had anything to do with the actual crime.

Woman Scorned: A woman who's been dumped, cheated on, or otherwise done wrong by her significant other (or, in some cases, merely thinks she's been).

Examples

Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, probably the greatest revenge story of all time.

In the original version of Beauty and the Beast, the Prince's widowed mother goes off to fight a war and leaves a wicked fairy to help him rule. When the Prince comes of age, she tries to seduce him and turns him into a Beast when he refuses her advances.

In Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab makes it clear throughout the book that he'll pursue Moby Dick to, into, through, and out of Hell, and even then he still won't be satisfied until the whale suffers forever for its slight against him.

Crime and Punishment: One of the antagonists of the novel, Porfiry, works as a police officer and interrogator, which usually would qualify as a good-aligned job. As you further witness this officer's tactics in catching criminals, you see him commit to bribery, thievery, death-threats, and psychological torture to force an admission. Furthermore, he seems to actually enjoy it, toying with amateur criminals like a cat torturing a wounded mouse. The justification, of course, being that the victim of this was a murderer, and therefore deserves it.

George R. R. Martin's Fire & Blood: After the war, Lady Joanna Lannister has a beef to pick with the Greyjoys, who've taken up raiding the coast, including killing a few Lannisters. She decides the best course of action is go to the Iron Islands and kill every man, woman and child she can find. She just settles for burning a lot of things and abducting one Greyjoy, gelding him and turning him into her fool.

Feyd Rautha Harkonnen receives a Dying Curse in Dune. After killing a combat slave in the arena, his opponent's final words are "One day one of us will get you." Given that this fighter is not just a slave, but one of the soldiers from the army of the Harkonnen's blood enemies, the Atreides, this may be prophetic.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya Stark's conflation of justice and personal vengeance leads her to Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy. While many of people on her death list certainly deserve to be brought to justice, such as the Tickler for torture and Weese for abuse, others were merely acting on orders, such as the Hound, doing their jobs or are just guilty by association. Cersei Lannister is on her death list for being involved in the execution of Ned Stark, but Cersei wasn't complicit in that activity, and even spoke out against it. Same with Ilyn Payne, who was just doing his job as the royal executioner. The real mastermind of Ned's death, Littlefinger, is not on the list. Meryn Trant is on the list for killing Syrio Forel, but there isn't any evidence to confirm the crime. Polliver and Dunsen are on the list for flimsy reasons, like stealing. She has Chiswyck murdered for the crime of not being as funny as he thinks he is (granted, Chiswyck was joking about a gang rape, but that isn't the reason Arya cites as his crime). The conflation of justice and vengeance, and how that conflation leads to this trope, is one of the key themes of the entire story.

Queen Dido in The Aeneid, who prophesies that her and Aeneas's people will meet again in war (the Punic Wars — her future, Virgil's past). Particularly tragic in that it's made fairly obvious that he'd have stayed with her if he'd had the choice.

Sidney Sheldon's The Best Laid Plans: Leslie Stewart plots to ruin the career of Oliver Russell when he leaves her at the altar to marry a woman whose father promises to further his political career.

The Hunger Games: The Pay Evil Unto Evil trope is discussed all the way through Mockingjay, and reaches its culmination when President Coin suggests either executing all Capitol citizens or forcing their children into the Games.

Source ⚜ More: References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

Hi, here are some tropes I found related to the themes you described. You can find more in the source linked above. Study how it is portrayed in different types of media, and in your favourite films/books, to gain inspiration for your own story. You can take the rough idea/plot you already have, and try to incorporate techniques and tropes used by other authors, but then deviate from borrowing those ideas when your story starts to flow naturally. All the best with your writing!

[abrakuxas]

Have been reading Batman/Batfamily books from the 70s up and I'm currently at New 52.

I hate most stuff but that are some gems:

S

- Batman and Robin is great most of the time, I cannot complain. The moments I thought were not very much in character ended up being my mistake and I've managed to understand them as genuinely good moments. The arc of Damian's death and Bruce's reaction to it is great and very consistent with how he reacted to Jason's death so many years ago.

- Gotham Academy is almost perfect. I've read the first 6 issues and all the kids are so much fun for me. I don't really agree with Bruce's writing on this first issues? I feel like he is written colder than he used to be written around children. I feel like the writer is doing it from a place of what Batman/Bruce's vibe is, not really from actual understanding of his character, but that's fine cause the protagonist is biased against him anyway, so I can excuse it as her perspective on him. I'm excited to see Dami in the school, I feel like Robin's school life is probably one of the best ideas ever, it worked for Tim Drake before and gothic academy is a great vibe for Damian.

_________________________

A

- Batwoman is also very nice. I think I could've put it in S tier but I've occasionally found myself a little bored by it or skipping something cause it wasn't very interesting to me. Mostly I think Kate Kane is a great character as she had been pre flashpoint and her book did not suffer much from this terrible change in direction. That said I don't care for Maggie Sawyer, I miss Montoya's Question and her dynamic with Kate. I wish Nocturna was better developed as a character as well, as I feel like conceptually she is a great foil for Kate. Alice and Red Alice were not to my taste. The idea and vibes are good but it sometimes feels like a Harley Quinn ripoff that's trying not to be that? Not a very consistent character and having read Alice in Wonderland I feel like this character deserved far better.

- Batman Inc. is... Complicated. I'll just come out here and say it: I do not enjoy Morrison's writing of Batman. I feel like their writing is sometimes TOO meta to a point where they are talking more about the real world IP Batman™ and not so much about Bruce as an actual character. Everything is a big metaphor to what every character represents in our world and not so much what they feel and think, which makes it feel like everything happens in a dreamlike world of concepts and commentary on comics. It's comics about comics and that's boring to me. It's not badly written, just not my cup of tea. That said, this second volume of Batman Inc. was so much fun and at the time it made me FEEL things, even if they were occasionally bad things. I do not like Morrison's treatment of Thalia at all, but overall I rather read a bold yet controversial book than any of the other VERY boring and safey books that make up Batfamily books up until now.

___________________________

B

- the Batman title was not as bad as it could've been. The New 52 is overall a terrible idea and I've seen lots of people say Batman comics got the better treatment out of it and oh boy, I'm so sad for the rest of DC cause most Batman comics S U C K... The Batman title though is mostly fine. Scott Snyder is a good writer. Am I fan of everything he did with this run? Not at all, but he was bold enough to create things, lots of concepts from his run are very very fun and deserve to be core concepts of Batman. It means a lot that the Court of Owls is that popular when the last big villain we got was probably what, Hush? And Court of Owls for all it's flaws is such a better story than Hush anyway. I enjoy a lot of the relationships and character writing here too.

That said, unfortunately, A LOT of the stories are kinda too similar to other stories and feel repetitive if you've read a lot of comics. I've SEEN "Batman disappeared and we're worried about him" just before Flashpoint, I don't need Bruce to be away in a maze (even though it's far better written than Batman RIP to my taste), same thing with Endgame... I've read Contagion and we don't really need ANOTHER pandemic in Gotham. But anyway, maybe that's a me problem more than it is the books problem. Snyder is very competent and his stories can be very very fun and even though not every idea works for me, at least he treats characters with respect and care.

_______________

C

Nightwing is the reason I started reading comics back when I met him in the Starfire goes to the future episode of Teen Titans cartoons and he was THE COOLEST GUY EVER. That said WHY is it that everytime they decide to give him a solo book he is 100% solo? Dick Grayson's best traits comes from his relationship. His weird older-brother-turned-father relationship with Bruce, his guilt towards Jason's death, his situationship with Barbara, his brotherly relationship with Tim and Damian, ALL of his Titans relationships. That's Dick Grayson. So WHY is he solo dealing with "the circus you grew up with is actually EEEEEVILLL and your childhood besties (WHO???????) want to kill you"? It's not just bad and boring, it's a weird trend that has started back with Chuck Dixon's run on him. That's a celebrated run that I don't understand, it's kinda fun at best but alienating at worst, which is sad cause Dixon's Batman run is quite good for Batfamily and Dick Grayson in my opinion. Anyway, this book sucks, what's next?

- Grayson. It's not necessarily badly written but who are this people? Give him back his suit, give Helena Bertinelli her suit and put them back in Gotham. Fuck Spyral and all cops are bastards, moving on.

- Batwing: I don't care for David Zavimbe, but Luke Fox had very fun writing and high stakes, I really enjoy this character, I wish he had more time and a better name. I like the idea of rich family boy finds out the reason all this Bat kids work is that they have absolutely no one except other super heroes and doing this with an actual, functional family is so fucking harder. This is not in C cause it's boring, it just had no time to cook better stuff, but I had lots of fun.

______

D

Detective Comics, Batman Eternal and Batman TDK have the same problem: they are not actual stories about actual characters they are excuses to keep an IP. It lacks personality, it lacks anything of interest, it's Batman living through an eternal hell of generic stories that take him nothing to nowhere, you lose nothing by skipping this, this is what people that don't read comics think comics are: nothing happens and every week Batman just fights a guy again.

Batgirl: Gail Simone can write the hell out of Barbara Gordon... As an adult woman.... In a wheelchair.... With the Birds of Prey.... Why is this 35 year old calling herself Batgirl again? Disgusting, ableist and very boring. And the ableism isn't JUST on Barbara, her Brother's treatment is honestly horrendous. And Batgirl of Burnside is not much better with her Oracle persona turning into an evil algorithm that she needs to talk down and destroy??? Fuck you, DC comics. I will not get into the weirdly transphobic story of a guy doing drag as Batgirl being treated as a monster and ridiculous. I will add though: if you really needed a college age Batgirl, you HAD Stephanie Brown AND Cassandra Cain. Oh wait, NO YOU DIDN'T, CAUSE YOU DISAPPEARED WITH THEM, RIGHT YOU MORONS???? I cannot believe how much better this could've been if we got roommate Cass and Steph as Batgirls attending college together and how their different personalities work off each other and in class. Also Barbara Gordon being 21 is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever read.

Red Hood and the Outlaws: absolutely nothing of worth here except a couple of Jason x Bruce scenes, but barely. Lobdell can't write a villain to save his life and all the characters are just either thrown into the trash or we have Jason who is not necessarily thrown into the thrash but for some fucking reason has random mystic powers and training....? I don't know, I feel like it's the most convoluted type of story I've ever read, he was raised from the dead by the League of Assassins, WHY does he have to go away from them and then train with ANOTHER also league of also assassins? Lobdell is AI Writing before AI writing existed, it's insane.

I've also read Teen Titans and I uh... Rather not talk about.

[wordswithkittywitch]

I have a YA novel plot kicking around with a very similar theme to that, actually.

Basically, we're in the generic YA nearly-apocalyptic future with a more fucked up government, and the "why would you have that law? Oh, because this is a YA novel, carry on" law is that once every ten years, the richest person in the country and their entire immediate family is killed, their assets stripped, and the wealth distributed across the country. However, if the five richest families are all under a certain threshold of wealth, no one is killed and everything carries on. This usually results in whoever's the richest families at the designated culling time donating just enough to get under the threshold to causes they would support anyway. No one is culled.

This has been going on for about fifty years, when the richest family in the country decides, "Fuck it, we're rich. We're going to hire a private army to protect us so they don't kill us and not donate our money to anyone." The protagonist, the teenage daughter in said family, thinks, "Oh, this is going to end fucking poorly. I'm leaving before I'm murdered."

She talks one of the gardening staff, a cute boy her age because of course he is, into helping her run away. She thinks, "This'll be easy. My parents are always talking about how their taxes and the money they've been donating to charity so they don't get culled are supporting all these lazy entitled jobless people, so I can just walk into any homeless shelter in the country and continue living an admittedly slightly less cushy life with my new identity, "just barely old enough to be a legal adult don't worry about it"-woman.

The actual plot is our heroine learning it actually sucks to be homeless, the charities are still not doing as much as is needed and it's hard to survive in her new identity, her "star-crossed YA romance" is not going as planned because suddenly he's treating her like an equal and not his boss and no one's done that to her before, and her family is being even stupider than she thought they'd be because not only are they holed up in a bunker trying to kill everyone trying to kill them, they've hired someone to hunt down the gardener who "kidnapped" her.

However, I have not started writing this because I have other books I do have an ending for to write first. Even this one is probably more marketable, sadly.

If elected as President, what changes would you make to labour laws?

Mandatory annual billionaire hunger games

[tls12lessthan3]

kim dokja [side character] [self imposed]: protagonists like yoo sangah really are a different type, haha................and me? im just your average salary worker.....well, maybe slightly less than average.........

(is stuck in a self-perception of eternal bystander to his own life. this keeps him rooted in place, unable or unwilling to either desire more for himself or take active steps to achieve it. he avoids forming relationships, putting unnecessary effort in or generally doing anything that could draw attention to himself due to this self-perception as doing so may violate it. a coping strategy from when his mother's book got popular and he became an unwilling main character who desperately wanted to once again be relegated to the background. this is obviously bad for him and both causes an absolutely miserable stasis and prevents him from connecting with others. however, because it forms a core part of his self identity, it will not easily be shaken off)

han sooyoung [villain] [self-imposed]: nyehehehe i love doing evil and murdering puppies #girlboss #villainsontop!!!!..........what, what do you mean how do i feel about almost killing lee gilyoung and shin yoosoung back at the beginning of the scenarios........well, it was what a villain would do, so.......

(views the world as a story almost as much as kim dokja does and adapted her role from 'heroine of a trashy power fantasy novel' to 'villain of an extremely different trashy power fantasy novel' when the world changed in order to cope. genuinely likes being a bit chunni and cackling about her evil schemes but neutral-to-negative on the actual murdering that comes with them, so uses this self-perception to prop herself up and justify her behaviour. invested in keeping it up because it prevents her from having to reflect on her past actions or how she might feel about them - all she has to care about is staying alive and grabbing power wherever necessary. bad for her as it prevents her from any self-reflection and causes guilt to build up without any outlet)

yoo joonghyuk [hero] [externally imposed]:.............................hm.

(stuck in a protagonist role and absolutely despises it. cannot shake it off entirely at any point because it is quite literally what he was made for but constantly yearns to drop the hero worship and just be seen as he is. his protagonist status is tied to his captive nature in the star stream and something he must transcend to finally escape the novel. metaphor for genderisms (subtle))

yoo sangah [heroine] [externally imposed]: i think people are little too kind to me sometimes........but i do try my best to do my best where i can!

(shoved into a heroine role against her will by society around her, a role which coincides with the uncomfortable expectations her parents have put on her as Their Daughter and one that often leaves her feeling isolated. she's aware of how people see her and the issues it causes for her, leaving her frustrated with this role. even when she thinks she's escaped it, she often finds herself shoved back in without warning (e.g. her entire relationship with dokja) and so she dedicates much of her time to tearing down that wall. metaphor for genderisms (overt))

[wc-confessions]

i miss the days when there were competent and interesting characters in warriors books aside from the 1-3 protagonists. when side characters actually had stuff going on that even affected the plot and protagonists. our main characters had friends, enemies, rivals, crushes and relationships that weren't the sole focus of their arc, meaningful relationships with their mentors, parents and siblings, etc etc. think of sorreltail, berrynose, poppyfrost, heathertail, breezepelt, ashfur, tigerheart, hawkfrost, literally any first arc cat that lives past book 1

to be fair they usually had the bare minimum of interaction to count for anything more than acquaintances but at least it was something. i couldn't tell you who frostdawn or nightheart's friends are if my life depended on it

nightheart doesn't have a single friend other than his immediate family i'm pretty sure. his mom, his sister, his adoptive mom, his adoptive mother, his grandma and grandpa... who else does he talk to more than once? mandatory protagonist bonding with sunbeam and frostdawn doesn't count. he almost had something going on with his mentor slash grandma lilyheart but it was forgotten pretty quick. i can only think of wafflepaw. wafflepaw is nightheart's best friend

frostdawn talked to her siblings like twice and had a decently interesting relationship with mothwing. her mom, by far her most compelling connection, died immediately. she had some fun scenes with whistlebreeze and mandatory nightheart time but other than that...? harelight? i liked harelight. splashtail was her friend i guess but like. you know. she also gets randomly attached to icewing after she has a prophetic dream about her but don't let the erins fool you into thinking they had any sort of relationship before that! they did not. frostdawn's best friend is harelight who is dead so i guess it's mothwing or whistlebreeze! work friends woooo

sunbeam had lightleap and blazefire for at least a book or two which is a modern era warriors friendship RECORD. two cats completely unrelated to her! normal clanmates she got to hang out with regularly and not only in life or death situations!! one was even a romantic interest that wasn't her sole motivation and contribution to the plot!!! not to mention the interesting and consistent dynamics with her entire family and then her thunderclan in-laws, which i personally don't count as family relations in warriors. so that's more friends! sunbeam's best friend can be anyone she wants she's killing it. i vote finchlight

conclusion? sunbeam is the only modern warrior cat to have friends. congrats!

ฅ^>⩊<^ ฅ

[warrioreowynofrohan]

Really good comment from @erynalasse :

I realized something else while scrolling back through this post. It is so, so fascinating to me that Fingolfin gets the death that Fëanor’s character arc seemed to lead to. I think we can agree that an elf isn’t gonna kill a Valar, especially not the most powerful of them all. But Fingolfin did the next best thing—going toe-to-toe with Morgoth for seven blows before crippling him.

And yet it’s Fëanor who swears vengeance, Fëanor who lost his priceless jewels, Fëanor who has the arc building towards a dramatic death in battle against his greatest enemy. But no. Fëanor bites the dust on, like, day three in the most embarrassing and pointless way possible. And Fingolfin is the one to claim the honorable, fulfilling death. I’m not really sure what that thematically says about the brothers’ relationship yet, but I’m so here for it.

I feel like this is something of key importance to the book. Fëanor is the driving force of the Noldor’s return to Middle-earth, he’s the one with the vendetta against Morgoth, but everything of importance done by the Noldor in the actual war against Morgoth is done by the children and grandchildren of Indis, whom Fëanor hates and resents and thinks should never have been born.

So Fëanor dies pointlessly shortly after getting to Middle-earth, and it’s Fingolfin who has the dramatic climactic duel and dies injuring Morgoth. And it’s Finarfin who ultimately is the leader of the Noldor among the armies who defeat Morgoth.

And it continues to the second generation – among the Noldor it’s the grandchildren of Indis, not the sons of Fëanor, who strike the major blows against Morgoth. Fingon has a massive price on his head. (Beren, a Man, the race Fëanor fears and despises, later gets an equally big price on his head from his victories fighting entirely alone.) Morgoth fears Finrod in Nargothronds and especially Turgon in Gondolin, and both are crucial to his defeat – Finrod from his role in the Quest of the Silmaril, Turgon via Eärendil. Fingon saves Maedhros, and thereby probably saves the House of Fëanor given that Maedhros is the only member of that house with a demonstrable ability to negotiate. And with Maedhros accepting that secondary role to the House of Fingolfin, it’s not just the kingship that passes from the House of Fëanor – it’s the protagonist energy. They’re secondary to the story after that, and the one time Maedhros tries to take on the protagonist role – the Nirnaeth Arnoediad – it fails disastrously. From that point, and in stark contrast to Morgoth’s fear of Nargothrond and Gondolin, the Sons of Fëanor are basically Morgoth’s patsies – he regards their oath not as threatening or dangerous, but as convenient and useful, as they take out Doriath and Sirion for him.

Fëanor is right about the Elves not belonging in Valinor and about the need to fight Morgoth, but he’s wrong about this being his story. And because he’s wrong about that, because he centres everything on himself, his story and legacy is one of failure, while the people he was unwilling to share the spotlight with, and those he never even thought about, become the heroes.

It never ceases to amuse me that Feanor’s narrative arc ends like THAT.

like this guy is built up to be a genius in 2384739847 different ways, charismatic as fuck, insanely spiritually powerful, made the magical artifacts the book is named after, he’s got Sexy Protagonist Energy for days, you’re only like a few chapters into the actual story of the Silmarillion, so you’re like “yeah, alright, this guy’s our guy, i can’t wait to see what crazy shit he gets up to in Middle-earth, what kind of character development he has–”

and then he gets to Beleriand, tries to fight Satan, and IMMEDIATELY dies. like. Battle #1. he beefs it. literally spontaneously combusts.

AND YOU STILL HAVE MOST OF THE REST OF THE BOOK LEFT. absolutely ICONIC of tolkien to kill his main character in the first third of the story, and then despite elves being able to return from the dead, he literally never does, not even post-canon. NO ONE ELSE CAN PULL THAT OFF. this is SUCH a power move.

….on a more serious note, Feanor’s decisions and motivations leave a huge impact on every other character, almost every other plot point in the entire story can be traced back to what he did, and killing him off not only increases his narrative importance to those he left behind but also makes it impossible for any character to actually confront him or reconcile with him. he’s a ghost throughout the whole rest of the story, but he’s haunting everyone in myriad ways, through the Oath, through the Silmarils, through his sons, through the repercussions of the First Kinslaying, through the unrest of the Noldor and the rebellion against the Valar, through everything.

So like. Feanor might die as soon as he sets foot in Beleriand, which is hilarious from a narrative standpoint - but only at first glance. Because he’s still there for the rest of the story. You can’t escape him, no matter how hard you try.

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

And remember kids, the next time someone tells you, "George R. R. Martin wouldn't make Jon Snow the typical fantasy hero because that's cliche".....

Oh yes he would!

One viewer wants to know what character would you play (on the show)? GRRM: If I could magically clap my hands and become a different person, it would be cool to play Jon Snow who's much more of the classic hero. Everybody wants to be the classic hero! ABC Interview, 2014

GRRM: And the character I’d want to be? Well who wouldn’t want to be Jon Snow — the brooding, Byronic, romantic hero whom all the girls love. Meduza Interview, 2017

In fact he already has ☺️

[aethersea]

it is funny though how kids' shows are so so so careful about death, no one's ever killed except MAYYYYBE the big bad, all those random side characters are fine, here have a quick shot of them before we leave just so you know they really did survive that 50-foot drop into a stormy sea,

and meanwhile kids' books nearly all agree that it's not an adventure until it has a body count.

[gwandas]

The thing is I have no issue admitting Nesta verbally abused her sister in the beginning of the books. My issue is y’all acting like Feyre hasn’t gotten her sister back like 10x over by now. Any claim that Nesta the war refugee is abusive towards Feyre the monarch is sooo unserious like I have to laugh.

Idk why people ignore that the second her sisters turn fae, Feyre over here is talking about exercising her power as High Lady on them as if they ever agreed to be one of her subjects. Even before they turn fae, she's willing to try using mind powers on them and you want me to feel bad for Feyre because Nesta is mean? Feyre who is actually physically violent while Nesta is not?

Getting mad at Nesta stans for "coddling" Nesta while you're coddling Feyre is so asdfghjkl I'm sorry but I actually respect Feyre as a character which means acknowledging the imbalance of power. She won in the end! Nesta is doomed to serve her sister and her brother-in-law who hates her for all eternity. And she's going to do it too so she can atone for the endless guilt she feels! Congrats, take a victory lap instead of writing endless essays on chapter one of a book that came out in 2015.

[essie007]

#no but why can't the hero be Eastern European Jew who has to fight British aristocratic vampires!?#you wanted an exploration on how Western society are whack well make the protagonist a minority#enough of making Dracula the good guy#make Jonathan Jewish! Yes! You get it! Although I was also thinking a Dracula is the good guy narrative. This thought brought to you by the anti-semitic prosthetics on Bill Skarsgard in Nosferatu (based on the anti-semtic prosthetics in the original movie, based on the anti-semitic themes in the book - no shade to the movie, I did really love it) reminding me what the whole Eastern European man who drinks the blood of children, is afraid of the cross and carries plauge is actually about.

So I was thinking along the lines of Yaakov a nice Transylvanian man from a long line of bankers is an Anglofile who wants to emigrate to cool global power England. He invites a solicitor to his home to help teach him about English culture and finalize the contracts on his new home. They get along great! But there are some awkward cultural mishaps. The Englishman seems weirded out when Yaakov makes his bed, but it is Shabbat? Of course the staff do not work and the solicitor is a guest? The English sure do have strict rules about what tasks people with money can perform. Later he has to "save" his reserved English friend from his three sisters who are loud and familiar and talk over each other. Etc etc.

Meanwhile in England, one of Lucy Westenra's suitors is definitely a vampire.

But your thing sounds awesome as well. Honestly I think this should be a whole genre with a bunch of variations.

Reverse Dracula story where a Jewish Eastern European man immigrates to England in the 1890s only to discover the English aristocracy are vampires.

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[mrs-theirin]

so tired of genuine complaints being thrown under the bus with "they will complain just because they want to complain" that's actually not how any of this works!

[quatregats]

I've been thinking about how to push Hornblower to his breaking point recently and I think the best way to do it would be to put his compassion and his duty in conflict in a way where he could either be a good person and put his naval career in jeopardy, or be a tyrant but maintain his position. I think that these often come into conflict in the narrative, but he always finds some sort of loophole and manages to worm through without having to sacrifice either ideal. I think that it would be really fun to push him into a corner and make him choose, though. I can see both scenarios leading to interesting results.

[tropicalcontinental]

I just wanna say I really like your collinlock16/andrewgaming67 crossover art ^_^

Gah, thank youuu 💥💥💥 (this is all a little bit jarring lol, not in a bad way of course, just kinda crazy people like my silly little blog) Have a rando snippet of a fic I'm working on as a bonus (can you guess what crossover it is :P?):

“Let's just go to the house. May have something more useful than that.” He clears his throat, groaning. It doesn't alleviate the soreness. Then promptly remembers he's recording, because that was needlessly loud,

“Sorry. I'll just cut that if I…”

He trails off, mouse flicking towards spruce planks on the ground. Another sign that says condemned in all caps. Cool,

“Okay, another useless sign--! Why is this even here? And there's fences around this place but they don't even connect to a gate. Like,”

Andrew runs up to the small area illuminated by torches, and mines a fence repeatedly, “what's the point of this if it's open over there? At least there’s torches to prevent mob spawning-- but still!”

He doesn’t consider himself a good Minecraft player, but at least he finished his little cobblestone wall perimeter around his house,

“It's like that one Adventure Time episode where the Ice King is-is trapped in that cell but it only has two bars! What are these fences going to keep out? Like oooh! Look at me, I'm waltzing right in this half-assed property line!”

He then stops his stride, mouth clipping closed because what's his problem?