#raphael tremayne

[heligan]

I have fun thinking about a modern Bedlam au a lot and the only headcanon I am completely sure about is that 21st century Raphael 100% wears flannel shirts. Nothing else matters much.

[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.

[tschulijulesjulie]

I'm reading The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley and why is this so Devils Minion coded? 🥺🥺🥺

[saintlygames]

they fell in love in two weeks this is real

[vanillaflowerstuff]

i know mermay is almost over and i kept forgetting to draw this, but! bedlamstacks mermaid au! merrick is a marine biologist instead of a botanist. no idea what the story is, other than that

[spittinwatches]

Next up uhhh Wait For It x The Bedlam Stacks??

[sesamestreep]

Merrick/Raphael, "instantly"

i keep telling myself I'm going to write an honest-to-god coffee shop AU for these dorks and then I never do, so here's the espresso shot version 🤎

It’s another busy afternoon in the café and this time Inti is out because Aquila brought home a nasty case of strep from school and gave it to her, so Raphael is stuck at the register again and he’s in such an efficient rhythm with taking customers’ orders that, once Merrick gets to the front of the line, he just rings up his usual without even asking. It’s only after Raphael has told him his total that he looks up to find Merrick staring at him with wide eyes and he instantly regrets every choice that has lead him to this moment.

“Sorry, I should have—”

“No, it’s fine,” Merrick says, fumbling to quickly pay with his card. If there’s one thing Raphael has noticed about him (aside from his name and his usual order and…well, quite a few things, now that he thinks about it), it’s how much he hates being in the way. He’s obsessively polite about that in particular.

“You did want your usual, right?” Raphael asks, and he’s not embarrassed that he remembered. He isn’t. It just means he’s good at his job. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about!

“Yes, that’s perfect.”

“Merrick…”

“That’s what I wanted,” he says, firmly, and then gives Raphael a hesitant smile. “I just didn’t know I was so predictable.”

Raphael remembers what Inti’s always scolding him about and tries smiling back. “Not predictable,” he says. “Memorable.”

“Oh,” Merrick replies, looking pinker than he had a moment ago, despite having just come in from the cold. “Well, that’s certainly better.”

“You staying, or…?”

“Yeah, I thought I might.”

“Good. I’ll, uh…”

Merrick nods, even though Raphael hasn’t managed to articulate his thought yet. “Sure. I’ll be around, if you want me.”

With that, he makes way for the next customer in line and Raphael is left to think about what exactly it is that he wants, which is not a subject he allows himself to dwell on very often. He counts it as a minor miracle that he gets anyone's drink order right after that.

[aurorawest]

I love these two

[welcome-to-the-end-of-eras]

Ranking the pulleyverse characters based on how much I like their names

Obviously this list is subjective but like. We all know that some of these are objectively true.

1.) Keita Mori: I personally think this is a top tier name. It flows well together, it fits his personality, there’s a lot of cool symbolism behind/because of it, it’s really a fantastic name for a character. No notes, 10/10.

2.) Raphael: it’s a really cool name, and I think it’s fun that he doesn’t have a set last name; it’s adds a bit of mystery to things. That and calling him Raphael TheBedlamStacks is funny as shit to me. Is it a little dramatic??? Yes, but so is he so it works. 9.5/10.

3.) Valery Kolkhanov: again, I think this name is super fun, and super creative, and it really does fit his personality well. I’m only putting it lower than Raphael because I thought his name was Valerie (English pronunciation) and I got my hopes up for the first proper female pulleyverse mc, but if that weren’t the case his name and Raphael’s would be equal. 9/10.

4.) Joe Tournier: Comparatively a pretty average name, but I have to admit the French last name sounds kinda pretty. If his name had stayed Jem Castlereigh or whatever the fuck, it would be significantly lower on this list. 8/10

5.) Konstantin Shenkov: I like this slightly less than Valery’s name because it’s a little bit clunky comparatively, but it’s definitely not a bad name. Don’t like that Konstantin is spelled like that tho, it looks a bit odd. 7/10.

6.) Aubrey/River Gale: there’s something off about these names that I really can’t put my finger on, but it’s just. Slightly off-putting to me. They’re such an ethereal person that I feel like their name should be a little. More, yknow??? If they were River Sterling that would be a different story, I like that name a lot, but River Gale sounds anticlimactic almost. 5/10.

7.) Thaniel Steepleton: this kills me. This kills me so bad. It’s no secret that he’s my favourite, my babiest of girls, but god almighty pick a different fucking nickname. It sounds so stupid. Nathaniel isn’t a bad name, it’s a bit proper but it’s definitely not a bad name, so why on god’s green earth would you remove the easiest two letters to pronounce and call that a nickname, it’s fucking stupid. And it sounds so British, it’s atrocious. 3/10. And that is ONLY because of how much I love him.

8.) January Sterling: objectively speaking, the reason behind his name is funny as fuck, but literally any other normal person would just. Go and change his name. Or let him go by his middle name. Why he decided to stick with January is beyond me. 1/10.

9.) Merrick Tremayne: it’s so British. Like. Annoyingly British. Love him to death but his name sucks so bad, and it just puts me in mind of the evil stepmother from Cinderella. RIP to the real Merrick Tremayne, you never had to get made fun of in school for how bad your name is. 0/10

10.) Missouri Kite: I cannot STAND this name istg. “Oh it’s translated-” HOW DOES A SPANISH NAME TRANSLATE INTO A WORD IN TWO SEPARATE LANGUAGES??? MISSOURI COMES FROM A NATIVE AMERICAN DIALECT IN THE MIDWEST REGION OF AMERICA, AND KITE IS A RANDOM ASS BRITISH WORD FOR A PIECE OF FLYING CLOTH, HOW THE FUCK DO THOSE COMBINE TO MAKE A NAME??? IT’S SO STUPID. -5/10.

Edit: I didn’t include Flint Kang and that was an oversight on my part, but tbh I don’t have much of an opinion. I’m going to say he’s a step below Shenkov, his name is also a little clunky but also a little nasally so it’s not as nice. 5.5/10.

[loyalhorror]

fun fact: when I first read TBS, I thought Harry didn't come back for him at all. I thought he just sent Jack in his stead. So it painted a picture of Harry as well meaning but incredibly unreliable, and kind of thoughtless ("I cant come but uhh heres my son i guess"), and I had this idea that that was why Raphael didn't believe Merrick would want to come back - because Harry hadn't.

But Harry did, over and over. I wonder why he stopped - he was clearly fit enough to go and get himself shot in India, so it wasn't old age. What, then?

As for Jack - I think either St Thomas or the markayuq in Heligan must have gone with him over the border to find Raphael. Or well, not gone WITH him, but brought him back when they found him instead of killing him.

But back to Raphael. If Harry did come back, and Jack kept coming back after that, and Raphael knows that... it's interesting that we don't really get any insight into how he feels about that, or why it has no effect on his expectation that Merrick wont come back. The closest we get is "I am not a Tremayne family heirloom", but I don't know if I have the words to unpack that.

Something about being seen as an object, maybe... but again: Harry DID come back. So. ???

[thenatashapulleyuniverse]

Hello :) since you talked about it recently, do you have or know of any pulleyverse character playlist?

DO I!!!!

so these are specific character playlists i have collected over the years. im not going to share the ones that are made for the general vibes of the books, or the ship playlists

your science can save a man's life, but imagination makes it worth living

Thaniel Steepleton

Keita Mori

kei

thaniel

Merrick Tremayne - The Bedlam Stacks

Saint Raphael

Raphael - The Bedlam Stacks

Who is called Kite anyway?

missouri business

the kingdoms / missouri kite

if anybody reading this has a character playlist that is not on here, MAKE IT KNOWN TO ME I NEED TO GROW THE COLLECTION

[heligan]

I am thinking, on this fine winter evening, about Raphael’s halfhearted belief in heaven because he thinks it’s a better thing to believe than the alternatives. How does the Catholic idea of having a fixed point of death after which he can go to heaven, hell or purgatory match up with the knowledge that he doesn’t die in the sense that other humans die, because there’s no moment in time at which he becomes dead but rather he slowly becomes less and less alive?

(Cut because it’s a bit long)

There’s clearly a progression from being alive and human in all ways except physically - ‘just the same; his colours all gone but just the same’ to unmoving and unresponsive like the markayuq in the graveyard, to wearing down until they are only distinguishable from normal stones if you know exactly what to look for, but it’s unclear whether there is an instant in which a markayuq becomes definitively dead.

In chapter twenty-seven Raphael does refer to the markayuq in the house and graveyard as ‘nearly dead’ but there’s a few reasons why I think this might not be an accurate description. Raphael has spent his entire working life thinking about and dealing with death from a Catholic perspective, having not had a chance to interact with anyone from his home since childhood. There’s also the fact that there is only one markayuq in a generation at most, so although he seems to be an expert on them from Merrick’s perspective (not that the bar for that is high), there was nobody to teach him properly so it’s quite possible he doesn’t know as much about the markayuq as he should. In the same chapter he finds out for the first time that markayuq talk to each other and that St Thomas used to know Atahualpa, the last Incan king. Even if he is aware that the end of a markayuq’s life is more complicated than just dying, he’s speaking to Merrick and therefore could be referring to the decay markayuq undergo as death for simplicity, which certainly aligns with his own attitudes towards inter-cultural translation.

Incan attitudes towards death, however, make a lot more sense in conjunction with the idea of markayuq not having a fixed moment of death. Markayuq used to guard the Incan kings both while they were alive and after death at their tombs, and so the view of them decaying over time matches the view the Incas had of death, also not as a fixed moment but as a linear progression beginning with the decay of the mind and body in old age and ending with ‘social death’ - when one is forgotten by the last living person who remembers them. A person’s heart stopping, or consciousness leaving them, are just one step along the way - and even these two often occur at different times. Incan kings especially were viewed as still being active in society after their physical death and therefore still alive in other ways; their bodies were mummified to preserve them and their panaca (some particular relatives) would make social and political decisions on their behalf which would be taken into account as if the king was still alive [1].

It makes much more sense to have kings who slowly became less alive as they become older, new kings reign and their influence in the courts wane, guarded by markayuq who also become less alive as they spend longer and longer asleep and their stone bodies are worn down by the elements than it does to have markayuq who die and go to heaven. Raphael is, however, as Merrick puts it, one of a ‘new generation of hispanicised markayuq’, and the only one who holds a belief of the afterlife which is not only different to every one of his peers but also is at odds with the very nature of his existence.

Raphael thinks of his own belief in heaven: ‘it wasn’t belief of the mathematical, reasoned kind, only the sort that arises when the alternative would mean becoming one of those men who worked like machines and never spoke to anyone, old at forty.’ but that’s an understatement! His alternative is slowly losing his ability to move and think after watching everyone around him be buried, accompanied only by people who consider him an outsider in his own culture, no more kings to guard on their own paths to being forgotten until his body eventually becomes building material for the Spanish, yet never truly dying.

No wonder he wants to believe in heaven.

[1] Rostworowski Tovar de Diez Canseco, M. 1988, Historia del Tahuantinsuyu

[gealach-in-a-misty-world]

In 1859, ex–East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall with an injury that almost cost him his leg. When the India Office recruits him for an expedition to fetch quinine--essential for the treatment of malaria--from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea; nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is eager to escape the strange events plaguing his family's crumbling estate, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for the edge of the Amazon. There he meets Raphael, a priest around whom the villagers spin unsettling stories of impossible disappearances, cursed woods, and living stone. Merrick must separate truth from fairy tale, and gradually he realizes that Raphael is the key to a legacy left by generations of Tremayne explorers before him, one which will prove more valuable than quinine, and far more dangerous.

"He wasn't crude work but the ruin of something fine."

Natasha Pulley's The Bedlam Stacks is an atmospheric story set in Chile and filled with magical realism, full of wonder. We follow Merrick, a disabled character, as he has to join an expedition he would have rather abandoned because of his new disability. In the liminal space of a town his grandfather used to visit once, he will find Raphael, a mysterious man who seems to be ailed by a strange condition.

The prose as always with Pulley, was spectacular, so very simple and yet complex and magical. It's a slow reveal of a novel, a quiet treasure that one should savor. The magical elements come together slowly, revealing the magic behind the ordinary and beyond the objective European mind, unveiling a wholly different way of thinking.

I appreciated how Merrick was written, exploring his disability and his struggles in a very believable way, and I loved what we got to see of Raphael. Their feelings are never made explicit, but this is undoubtedly a love story, one that has a bittersweet ending. Like other Pulley characters, they are flawed and sometimes nasty, but always so very human. And fans of the Watchmaker of Filigree Street will find an incredible cameo and appreciate even more a beloved character.

The magical realism aspects were very intriguing, especially once the veil is lifted and things are revealed to be much more than they seem at first glance. The other characters feel a bit empty, with only the physician having a little depth.

The Bedlam Stacks is a quiet marvel.

✨ 4 stars

[You can find more of my reviews about queer speculative fiction on my blog MISTY WORLD]

[tschulijulesjulie]

begging them to kiss just once

[saintlygames]

modern merrick and raphael...who are they gossiping about?? sketch by the incredible, the iconic, the absolutely godly @spittinwatches <3

[vanillaflowerstuff]

there are many benefits to being a marine biologist--