#pepperharrow

[sergeantflick]

Reasons why Thaniel Steepleton is really a golden retriever boyfriend:

- he is cute, tall and handsome (and blonde)

-soft Boi, soft spoken, trying hard to be gentle to everyone around him

- friendly and kind and caring

-loves food (by Keita)

-enjoys physical touch (it's his love language)

-bit clumsy, yet smart and witty

- mesmerized by Keita's whimsical and fantastic creations

-really brave and determined if challenged, also super protective (of Petal (Six) but also of Mori)

-happy and jolly

- loves butterflies (wonders if moths have moth friends and if they recognize each other as butterflies)

- can't comprehend Grace Carrow's rational science brain and wants safety and love from and for Mori.

- he is the goodest Boi! Fluff! Give him love!

___________________

I love them so much I can't T.T

Feel free to add to this list!

-------------------

Also:

Mori is a witty, mischievous cat with a soft spot for his best Goldie friend. Nobody would have thought.

[sergeantflick]

This!!! Grace as a foil to Mori, not also on an intellectual but also on an emotional level:

Grace is driven by materialistic needs (lab, etc.) as well as ratio. Mori couldn't care less about class, he doesn't mind sitting in an attic with his wife in spe (Pepperharrow) or that him and Thaniel are of completely different social classes. Of all things, Mori is mainly driven by the need for safety, peace and love - things that he has been deprived of by his family, heritage and even in London due to the racist/ xenophobic attitudes of society.

These are the things which Thaniel provides him with, generously: Love, affection, safety, happiness, peacefulness. It is exactly these parts which Grace misses entirely about Thaniel that make him click like a puzzle to Mori and not her.

Let’s talk about Grace Carrow (again)

I wrote a meta a million years ago about how Grace’s most basic characteristic is being wrong. I lost it when my old tumblr was accidentally deleted, since it was under a Read More tag.  I tried to recreate it! This time, since it won’t be under a read more tag, anything past this sentence can be considered a spoiler for Natasha Pulley’s The Watchmaker of Filigree Street.

Grace isn’t the first thing I think about when I consider Watchmaker. I think about Thaniel and Mori and about how endearing Katsu is and how I hope(d, prior to Pennyharrow) that Six got a better life. But Grace. Grace is a bit of a mystery.

Superficially, Grace Carrow is a character the reader ought to feel connected to. She is a Victorian woman who is also a scientist; her desire to be left alone to focus on physics is her drive for over half the novel. She rebels against society’s standards, not just in her clothes (often masculine to sneak into the Oxford libraries) hair (short, a good thirty-five years before it become even vaguely acceptable) and social habits (hangs out with a male foreigner and spurns female companionship) but in her goals in life. Her mother despairs, her father rages, even Matsumoto is confused about her intense focus on physics. Fanshaw calls her, in a moment of foreshadowing, “the madwoman in the attic full of explosives.” She doesn’t want to marry, but must. All of these are elements we’ve seen in stories before, and they should endear Grace to us, the readers. Perhaps they do, at least initially, but then we land in the insight that Grace is, fundamentally, as a character, wrong. She’s wrong about lumiferous eather, she’s wrong about women’s suffrage, she’s wrong about Mori, and she is wrong about Thaniel. Yet she’s far from stupid; it’s her inability to see the full picture that is the problem. Let’s begin:

Lumiferous either was a real hypothesis in physics at the time Watchmaker is set. Grace can’t prove it because it’s wrong, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. It was first suggested to be entirely mistaken in 1887, and finally disproven in the 1920s, and it was in abandoning lumiferous eather that physics opened the door to Einstein and his theory of general relativity. But Grace is so sure she’s right, so sure that she can prove it. Lumiferous eather fits into what she knows about science, what she knows about the world and she has attached so much of her life on proving it that she couldn’t abandon it if she wanted to.

Women’s suffrage is more interesting. Grace is actively suffering from a lack of legal independence, despite her high social standing, and one would assume she’d be invested in women’s rights. This is not the case, she fails to identify the root of the problem as structural and opts to hop over the metaphorical lawn rather than try to change the rules. Her decision is rooted in disdain for other women, and in anyone not a physicist (Grace isn’t alone in this attitude). Other women and are, in her opinion, stupid and undeserving of respect, nevermind that that they’re in the process of trying to solve her problem. Grace doesn’t want women’s rights, the wants as solution to her own personal lack of access to a house and a physics career, failing to see that they’re one and the same.

It is instrumental to the entire plot of Watchmaker that Grace is wrong about Thaniel. She calls him a telegraphist, “an ordinary man who works in an office and sometimes plays the piano,” and misses his depth and nuance, dismisses his artistry, his uniqueness, really his whole personhood beyond what his presence does to her life on a purely mechanistic level; being married - to anyone - allows her to inherit a house. The fact that this dooms Thaniel to shrinking his personality to fit into her life isn’t something that bothers her, because she never sees him as he is. He is just a telegraphist to her, “clerk written all over him”, to borrow Matsumoto’s words from the banquet. She doesn’t love Thaniel, at least not yet, but she is still possessive enough of him to make some very bad decisions (that are rooted in being wrong about Mori.)

Yes, finally, Grace is wrong about Mori. One of my favourite aspects of the book: if Grace could have just left things well enough alone, not picked a fight over her experiments and the proceeded to cut down the pear trees, and especially if she hadn’t blown up a building, she could have had what she wanted; Thaniel would have stayed with her, slowly abandoning Mori. But seeing that would require her to understand Mori’s motivation, and it’s obvious, both from her narration and actions that she never sees him as anything other than a manipulator, someone who meddles in the world solely because he enjoys it. We can’t entirely fault her; Thaniel, too, fails to make the full connection before Mori tells him. But the truth is that when it comes to Thaniel, Mori acts out of love. Thaniel gets a better job, a better wage, weekends off, tea and company. He gets to play the piano again, not because Mori needs someone to stop Yuki at the Mikado performance, but because Thaniel loves playing the piano. But because Grace sees Thaniel as nothing but a toy, she fails to see that Mori values him for himself. Grace doesn’t love, she desires, at most, to possess. She is habituated to being catered to.

Mori, of course, is always, definitionally, right. He can know every outcome except the truly random ones, and as such is forced to constantly consider the whole picture. He lacks a single area of study throughout his life, having been a soldier and a government aid prior to being a watchmaker. (Although clockwork is a choice he’s made for himself contrary to his background just like Grace’s physics.) He’s intelligent but mainly effective due to his clairvoyance, and not otherwise a genius. Grace, on the other hand, is very intelligent, clever enough to outwit a clairvoyant, to  “have two big numbers to multiply, and [she] could do it in [her] own head if [she] made the effort, but [she’s] feeling lazy and [she] hold[s] them still until [she] can reach an abacus”, but lacking the necessary insight to see that she doesn’t need to do any of those things. Whether she is blinded by class, the inherent racism of her time period, lack of experience, or just personal arrogance (remember what her father is like), she makes a very interesting foil for Mori.

[thenatashapulleyuniverse]

please send this to your non-pulleyverse oomfs i made this for fun lmao

MC = main character

LI = love interest

[yourgoodfriendjh]

'kill them with kindness' WRONG begin rearranging the future years before they are even born and commit countless atrocities so that a cure for tuberculosis emerges decades before its supposed to and pretend you don't know that they love you the whole time.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries below:

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a sweeping, atmospheric narrative that takes the reader on an unexpected journey through Victorian London, Japan as its civil war crumbles long-standing traditions, and beyond. Blending historical events with dazzling flights of fancy, it opens doors to a strange and magical past.

Fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, science fiction, adult

The Burning Kingdoms series (The Jasmine Throne, The Oleander Sword, The Lotus Empire) by Tasha Suri

Author of Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess’s traitor brother.

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.

But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.

Fantasy, epic fantasy, politics, secondary world, series, adult

[elkleggs]

I’ve been trying to draw this bloody little watchmaker for years. For anyone who’s read Natasha Pulley’s Watchmaker of Filigree Street, I hope you recognise this as the precise moment Thaniel decides what to do on his wedding night✨

I can’t recommend these novels enough. They’re fucking magic.

[spittinwatches]

hello chat. i am back with another banger.

mlp art collab with @vanillaflowerstuff

[saintlygames]

1883.

They haven't left my brain for years and I don't think they're going to anytime soon.

[lennyjamin]

i'm a big fan of scifi/fantasy romance novels and it's really tickling me how many of the ones i've read over the past year have involved Confessing To The Murder(s) as a major relationship development milestone

[careysattheonsenagain]

The way it takes these two over 6 years and 800 pages to confess to a love so strong it saves hundreds of thousands of lives.

[sergeantflick]

Thaniel Steepleton against toxic masculinity™

[dohrnaira]

New linocut posting!

For context, this print is inspired by the onsen scene in The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, where Katsu the clockwork octopus has a Kraken moment with a paper boat.

Figured it would do well for Pulleyverse inktober day 15 - Embrace

(I'm not really doing Inktober but I am still obsessed with printmaking, and octopi.)

[msunitedstatesjames]

Every Natasha Pulley book ever:

Bulky Man is unintentionally bulky, he's just sort of stronger than everyone because that's the nature of his life. Everyone assumes Bulky Man is violent because of his girth, but he actually hates violence and is really just the nicest little dude inside.

Fragile Dude is little and/or easily breakable. Fragile Dude is brilliant and/or powerful. He too is pretty nice, but he's probably had to use his intellect and/or power to commit some kind of atrocity in the past that he will be attempting to keep secret over the course of the story. This will be revealed 3/4 of the way through the book, but the circumstances surrounding the atrocity will be so horrible that everyone will agree it was probably justified.

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude are both dissatisfied with their lives to some extent.

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude meet through a series of unlikely and often unfortunate events.

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude are forced to work together in some capacity.

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude are both a little bit afraid of the other, but there's also some quality that they really like or respect in the other nonetheless.

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude continue to work together, but now they're starting to reluctantly take a liking to the other. Neither of them realize that the other actually likes them though.

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude have had to help each other out of some sticky situations by now. They're clearly head over heels in love these days, but circumstance and/or society is keeping them from acknowledging it. People have started to hint to Bulky Man that Fragile Dude is actually super shady, so you better watch your back. Bulky Man doesn't really care that much at this point, but he's like, I guess I better look into these accusations.

(Some kind of cute but unusually intelligent animal is usually involved with the plot and/or their relationship by this point. Also, there's at least one loveable child character that usually helps the characters bond.)

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude have a nice, cheerful break from all of the traumatic events they've been experiencing, which inevitably ends in a romantic encounter.

Because of communication issues or societal issues, both chraracters still don't actually believe the other character loves them, and they both act like it was just a one off thing and an accident and that everything is totally fine.

Things are awkward between Bulky Man and Fragile Dude, but the traumatic events have really fired up again so they still have to work together. Plus, they're both just that desperate to be together, even though they think the other character hates them now.

Bulky Man finds out Fragile Dude's secret, but usually he doesn't get it quite right or he's missing some essential information. Bulky Man is temporarily horrified of Fragile Dude. Bulky Man chides himself for being so desperate for affection that he fell in love with some kind of psycho.

At this point, either Bulky Man makes a stupid mistake while being horrified or circumstances just happen to suddenly get a lot worse or both. Bulky Man and Fragile Dude are physically separated, often by force and some kind of authority. At some point in here, Bulky Man realizes he was wrong about Fragile Dude.

A slapdash plot is hatched to save the stolen love interest. Usually Bulky Man has to save Fragile Dude, but occassionally the script is flipped.

Ultimately, the stolen love interest is rescued, though it was a real close thing at some point. The Day is saved, usually through murder/s, caused by a combination of Bulky Man reluctantly bashing some heads in and Fragile Dude using his wits and/or power to get the right people killed. Often, our protagonists are then forced to straight up run away from the Bad Times, leaving their lives and families behind. (The loveable child from earlier will either be tragically left behind or adopted by the now happy couple.)

Bulky Man and Fragile Dude are a little bit sad at the things they've lost along the way, but mostly they're going to live happily ever after.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fantasy Books Bracket: Round 4

Book summaries below:

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (The Sword of Summer, The Hammer of Thor, The Ship of the Dead) by Rick Riordan

Magnus Chase has seen his share of trouble. Ever since that terrible night two years ago when his mother told him to run, he has lived alone on the streets of Boston, surviving by his wits, staying one step ahead of the police and the truant officers. One day, Magnus learns that someone else is trying to track him down—his uncle Randolph, a man his mother had always warned him about. When Magnus tries to outmaneuver his uncle, he falls right into his clutches. Randolph starts rambling about Norse history and Magnus's birthright: a weapon that has been lost for thousands of years. The more Randolph talks, the more puzzle pieces fall into place. Stories about the gods of Asgard, wolves, and Doomsday bubble up from Magnus's memory. But he doesn't have time to consider it all before a fire giant attacks the city, forcing him to choose between his own safety and the lives of hundreds of innocents. . . . Sometimes, the only way to start a new life is to die. Fantasy, middle grade, young adult, mythology, adventure, urban fantasy

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a sweeping, atmospheric narrative that takes the reader on an unexpected journey through Victorian London, Japan as its civil war crumbles long-standing traditions, and beyond. Blending historical events with dazzling flights of fancy, it opens doors to a strange and magical past. Fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, science fiction, adult

[ace-artemis-fanartist]

"The stories are all remarkably similar. They all seem to describe a person, and not an actual god. They're all tricksters - you never get what you expect from them. And, they are always attended by owls."― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

Recently reread this and annotated it, which was a lot of fun. Keita Mori is still such a fun character to read about, I had to do a mock cover.