#tcp theories

[azrielsshadows42]

YOU GUYS!!!!

I've been re-reading the cruel prince and in chapter 1, it mentions three of Judes favorite toys when she was a child. The ones that she couldn't find it in her heart to throw them away

A koala, a black cat and most importantly...

A SNAKE.

This is why you always have to reread a good book at least once

[daddycardan]

Justin Duarte’s bargain with Grimsen

Lowkey we never get an explanation for this, but can we talk about it for a sec?

When Jude meets with Grimsen, he tells her the following:

So Grimsen doesn’t confirm or deny whether Justin actually made the bargain, but we can assume that he did. Because why would Holly Black even bring it up if Justin just declined it? It wouldn’t contribute to the story. So let’s say he accepted.

We can also assume that this wasn’t a straight forward bargain, like most faerie bargains, it must have been vaguely worded and obscure. Poor Justin probably didn’t know what he was gonna lose. And in the end, he lost his wife, then died himself, and his daughters got snatched away.

On the other hand, there’s also an argument for Justin not having accepted the bargain, because while he was an excellent blacksmith, his blades don’t seem to be renowned for being the best in the world. Nightfell is a good sword, but they never emphasise that it’s the best blade ever. So that might indicate that Justin didn’t receive Grimsen’s boon, after all.

[rosenightmares]

Ok so I had an idea. In Tcp there was a girl named Sophie who had been glanored. She was under faerie control, she would believe anything they told her, and Faeries often told them dazzling tales right? What if she was Sophie from Kotlc and the lost cities weren't real they were just a story told to her. I know it isn't really a connection but I thought it would be cool if it was. If her meeting Fitz really was a deal and her memory got glamored.

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

Hi Em, Mary here! <3 I have been pondering over a question, and I was curious to see if you have theories on it, because I live for your theories! So, Faeries and Salt do not mix very well at all - Cardan, Locke, Nicasia and Valerian all spat it out when Jude salted their food in TCP. Tiernan explains that it dulls their magic in Stolen Heir. Yet, Nicasia is from the Undersea, and she is surrounded by very salty sea water all the time. What do you think makes the salt in the sea so different to the salt that is poured over food? How is it that Nicasia can breathe and be surrounded by it, without it dulling her magic at all or hurting her? I would be curious to see what you think! Have a wonderful day <3

ahh Mary!! it's so lovely to see you in my inbox 🥹❤️

this is a really good question and genuinely something i've never thought about before. good eye catching that Nicasia spits out the salted food, too.

my best guess (and it is very much a guess) is that perhaps it's a bit like lead to humans. if you touch lead, it's not really going to effect you much. if you ingest lead, however, it can lead to lead poisoning. presumably, in this scenario, magical creatures from the Undersea have evolved some sort of bio-mechanism that prevents salt from effecting them when breathed in.

it may also have something to do with concentration. on a tea cake or crumpet or whatever Nicasia et. al. were having for lunch that day, a handful of salt is going to be pretty evident. but diluted in water, it might not be so toxic.

additionally, the Labrador Sea, which is ostensibly where (or close to where) the Undersea is located, has "relatively low salinity" levels, according to Wikipedia.

and if none of those answers satisfy your curiosity, perhaps consider some sort of magical explanation. this is the Fae we're talking about, after all. perhaps they have some sort of magical desalination process going on that the books, being mostly set on land, could not cover.

–Em 🖤🗡

more theories and analysis

[curiosity-killed]

✍️ 📑 and 📚 for the writer's ask game if you'd like!!

:D i'd be delighted, in fact

✍️ What’s your writing process?

uh. chaos ??? I feel like this is so project-dependent lol but in all cases it's basically a matter of "get what's in ur head down on paper as fast as possible before you lose focus and it vanishes into Oblivion"

in practice, that tends to mean I have A Single Source of Truth document on my laptop where I compile all the writing I wind up doing on my phone or notebooks (or sketchbooks) roughly in story order. There's no outline or storyboarding or whatever lol And for things that I need to research/develop outside of the actual prose, I either leave comments in the doc with links or have a spreadsheet with organized tabs called '[Story Title] Bible'. Most of what is known about any given story is ultimately just in my head which is a very dangerous place to be.

📑 How many drafts do you write on average?

average story gets 5 revisions factoid actually just statistical error. average story gets 0 revisions. tcp georg, which is 18 years old and has had at least 10 drafts, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

ahem. for fic, usually, the only draft is the draft you see posted. some stories, like whipstitch or sequence the bones, get actual systematic editing but it still doesn't usually manifest as full drafts. for original fic, it's....complicated lmao in part because most of them are old enough they've been marinating for years but have never had a complete draft. tcp, as the above meme indicates, has had so many versions that I stopped referring to them as drafts and started referring to them as drafts of a specific version (i.e., currently, I'm working on draft 2 of version...9 or 10. i am not actually sure.)

📚 Who’s your favorite author (or a few of them)?

SO MANY. A quick, incomplete list:

Arthur Sze

Octavia Butler

Mary Oliver

Margaret Atwood

Shakespeare

Kafka

Neruda

David Sedaris

....I know I'm missing obvious ones

writer asks

[ezziefae]

Cardan's room in TCP VS TPT

(small post about cardan's room development)

The Cruel Prince, chap 12, pg 111

(note: Holly Black confirmed in her Lit joy annotations that Cardan did not choose that headboard panel)

The Prisoner's Throne, pg 16

I find it fascinating that Cardan's room in The Cruel Prince was undecorated, messy, and depressing, whereas his room with Jude in The Prisoner's Throne is decorated with tapestries and brocades. There's a psychological theory that suggests your room reflects your state of mind, and I believe these small details offer insight into the characters. It illustrates the growth and development of Cardan's comfort with himself in many ways as well as his deepening relationship with Jude, especially given that they have shared a living space for 10 years now. I think it's very adorable. In TCP, we know Cardan was going through it. Drinking, while facing abuse by his brother and being unloved by his family. VS in TPT where he's loved by the kingdom has a family and a wife that adore him. Cardan is ultimately one of the most surprising characters that really figured himself out and grew comfortable with himself.

Idk, just cool small detail I noticed. His room VS his room with Jude...I miss Elfhame.

[cromulentreader]

Small theory on Oriana's wings in The Prisoner's Throne. Oriana didn't have them in TCP and expressed longing for them.

In TWK Jude mentioned a trinket made by Grimsen which allows the wearer to summon wings and fly.

Now in TPT Oriana's wings are described as "petallike wings" which doesn't exclude the trinket being the same. Even if it's not the same trinket, it could have still been something Jude had given to Oriana at some point.

[c-cracks]

Infrastructure Recon Script

Hello everyone, it's been a while. :) Just wanted to share something I've been working on with you all.

I've developed a recon script for infrastructure testing which works off a CIDR or a list of IPs. It splits given IPs into groups of 64 (as nmap performs TCP scans on hosts in groups of 64,) launches nmap scans on each group as background processes and then merges the results together once every group has been scanned. The theory behind this is that port scans on over 64 hosts will complete in the time it takes to scan one group of 64 hosts.

From here, it analyses the port scan results and launches service-specific scans. It also creates lists of IPs by service, making any extra checks applicable to all hosts found with a specific service open.

You can find it here. It's still lacking a bit in documentation and usability- there's tools you need to install that I haven't noted down anywhere- but it's 80% tools found on an average Kali Linux build anyway. ^^ I do also want to improve the service scan scripts and see if there's anything I can add to them. Recently got it up and running fully so thought I'd share it.

Otherwise, I am working my way through Burp Suite Academy right now. My plan is to post a review on it here when I've covered what I want to there. Been slacking on it a little since starting work but I'm working on that.

EDIT: Still problems with the analysis section- I had a run through where everything was picked up but there's an issue stopping all hosts and services being picked up. Working on this.

UPDATE: Changed the flow of this and issue seems to have been addressed. :)

[eyepatchdate]

my fics and their relationship to canon

FLED: all my theories are accurate and characters discuss them, unsure of their veracity. the canon lives inside me. i fact check tiny things i forget like which floor an elevator goes to

TD: i adhere to most canon but have critical divergences to illustrate the alternate universe the fic intersects canon homestuck with. i do not use all hs lore because i love myself. i need to reread hs so i can properly convey things

TCP (aka new dc fic): i whimsically use canon and fanon and tweak as needed as my basis is an alternate timeline movie. I will try to stick to canons but sometimes a fanon idea is too fun to ignore. I will read more canon to help me illustrate certain characters or plotlines but i dont plan to overly adhere to canon if it gets in the way of my story/fun.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

pondering a framework of Theme re: deh as like, the tension between having an idea of people that can be whatever you want it (them) to be, vs the realities of people that that idea doesn't cover, whether by conflicting w/the idea or being [more stuff you don't know]....from the aspect that doesn't really get taken up by audiences in how like, via the distance of Social Media you can be dealing w/those Ideas via what people choose to share to present an idea, and not see behind the scenes into the reality (which is like, this whole show could've happened with the [social media] component excised & replaced by other mediums/methods so it's not the most surprising that nobody's going "yeah my takeaway is that this wouldn't have happened if evan had been more offline & faced a book instead of facebook") to like Thee In-Person Relationships he's having

the whole story's focused on evan dealing w/the Ideas more so, putting in most of his effort on trying to offer Thee Idea of [whatever he thinks they want from him] to the murphys, and then to others beyond that via tcp, and then that all inevitably falling apart b/c reality didn't align is most of the runtime....the ending's always just kind of peak baffling b/c it's like, a Resolution sure is difficult when it's maybe more so been like Stuff Happening and then like, what does evan do to deal with The Realities instead of the Ideas....that would potentially be a whole second story from that point lol but he gets the (i guess first part of) resolution needed from like, confronting the supposed reality of himself (but still just an Alternate idea about himself in going like "im the guy who sucks plus i got depression") and this can be handled by his mom, who he also can handle realizing is admittedly not some Ideal of [the concept of The Mother] which is like, okay, except where do we go with that....here where they go from that is "not peacing out from each other's lives" but also like, "being in each other's life at all" is kind of just a peak basic premise of having any relationship, not the highest bar here or in & of itself a guarantee that now this is All He Needs, Really

meanwhile I Guess his second part of his resolution is meeting with zoe, i mean, It Is in that that's what the show offers as finale lol. but where zoe's kind of here to mostly talk about Ideas as still being helpful, including that i guess we can assume her life is fine Enough now just b/c her parents aren't going to divorce? like i think it would be better for everyone if they did, actually lol, but there seems to also be this [assumed shared assumptions w/the audience] aligning with Normality throughout of like, thee truly important, Necessary, Real relationships here are like, parent/child, parent/parent, [your dream soulmateship] as proto-[parent/parent] ideally surely, can i make it any more obvious what more can i say....for example iicth is agonizing to me lol like being hit with the details of evan's like Secret Joke Smile Bandplaying mini monologue is like oh my god lmfao. this is peak An Idea territory, like you're just making shit up about her but clearly in an Idealized way, and the song says nothing abt Why he likes her, personally, while for zoe it's just offering this contrasting idea to Her idea that idk connor hated her like skiing, or what all, and/or the possibility that there could've been a different dynamic....only us(tm) is back at it lol like yeah sure In Theory that evan shouldn't have to be on the defensive waiting to let people down but like, it's all downhill from there, like zoe should also be Able to say anything she likes about evan specifically, isolating yourselves & ignoring everything else = not great, actually. and it Could be examined like, i guess your just being a nervously polite someguy boyfriend who was supposedly separate Enough from all the stuff about connor was a nice enough distraction while it lasted....but i have no idea why zoe is still particularly fond of evan as The Idea Of The Romantic Ideal Of It All in the conclusion like, girl what. what did you guys ever talk about. the most like Interaction is that pre iicth moment, where also zoe's like grilling him about what classes his mom takes & where his dad is & why he doesn't appreciate being poor & is calling him weird & all which is still more interesting than the Non Interactions they will now proceed to have for the rest of the show lol

anyways it's just like, so far as we know All Evan's Needed for the year and a half has been his mom not hating him so much she wants to leave, and he's doing fine....like idk fine sure maybe but it's like, it's sure just like, the most important connections are "we held hands & That Status was magical regardless of like, being able to express the least Specific Thing we liked about each other, or talking about anything" and "at least my parents aren't divorcing, so things are good" and "at least my parent isn't disowning me, so things are good" like, i mean are they lol. maybe, but hardly a guarantee via these facts, and very like "yes you'll encounter conflicts w/your ideas of people that require effort, better focus that effort on the Peak Atomized Normal(tm) Relationships which are so most important that they're required, and so required that they're most important: nuclear family, and monogamous cishet lifelong romance as your path to nuclear family (the next generation)" like yeah man if you talked to zoe once ever maybe everything would be the same. what then? nonrhetorically.

and that also The Idea/ls vs The Realities of people, when it comes to Family, also only goes so far when the authority of Thee Parent is this foregone unalienable fact, so that the "yeah i'm not perfect" Fact of a parent's personhood doesn't have to translate into effort to do things differently (for the child) but rather means the child is supposed to lower expectations and just accept whatever negative experiences imparted by the parent, b/c also They're Your Parent so the child's required to have that Relationship just regardless of what the specifics of the relationship Actually Are. like how i guess dating is amazing & important b/c you sure were dating. cue heidi just cutting through an apparent breakdown of her actual relationship with evan with the aggressive I'm Your Mother, to be revisited when the murphys aren't your Family....and then concluded with kinda a [i'm your mother: nice mode] situation of like, guess you'd better Hope your parent/child relationship exists at all and is good enough, like you'd better hope your eventual romance exists at all and is good enough, both for forever, with these also being the only connections that can Really matter rather than like, what, peers you don't date? friends, acquaintances, strangers? log off & do family game night

anyways it's all like, not expecting or wanting deh to be like "any of this is all good or all bad," and that goes for like the [the actual person, beyond being able to be Known In Full] and [the ideas crafted to make enough sense of things along the way] and how too much Idea can be dehumanizing, but you also can't write everyone off as black boxes of the unknown so as to Never Get It Wrong if you even exist proximately to them....but it's like, if we're going like "hmm why do we feel so isolated" like i have some ideas and it's not "just call your mom" or anything. the deh finale doesn't have a character who gets to be like "what the hell" or suggest anything's still shitty so it's like, yeah great that there's (everyone needed it for / it's) Something, but we could even have some more things

[aktuhub]

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Microprocessors and Interfacing Covers 8085/8086 microprocessors, interfacing, and assembly language programming.

Elective I Allows students to specialize in a subject area based on their interest.

Practical Labs

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Artificial Intelligence Covers foundational AI techniques, knowledge representation, and learning algorithms.

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[emblogicsblog]

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[safetyfirsttrainingg]

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[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

Theory: Eldred is not Cardan's father

Listen. I don’t know if anyone has said this before, but I’ve been mulling this over for a while now, so I’m going to throw it to the void before The Stolen Heir comes out, for posterity.

Buckle up, folks and Folk. I’m monologuing.

(PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE TSH SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS/REBLOGS/TAGS AS I HAVE NOT READ IT, AND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO READ IT UNTIL 8th JAN 2023!)

A big caveat of this theory is that I have basically no solid evidence for this apart from a few faint dots vaguely connected through a strange fog. But I am nothing if not someone who will scrounge around in the dirt for answers. So let’s get some filth under our fingernails.

(I promise it will maybe make sense. Eventually)

I. EPISTOLARY SEMANTICS

Much of this theory centres around the note Jude steals for Dain from Hollow Hall in The Cruel Prince. It reads:

“I know the provenance of the blusher mushroom that you ask after, but what you do with it must not be tied to me. After this, I consider my debt paid. Let my name be stricken from your lips.” (TCP, p.115)

There are so many layers to this note, but I’ll start on the surface level before digging deeper.

When Jude gives the note to Dain, he reads it, then says, “So he’s blackmailing Queen Orlagh” (TCP, p.123). During a first read, one would think Dain is implying that Balekin is blackmailing Orlagh, since Jude stole the note from Balekin’s study, and that Orlagh is the one who wrote the letter to the eldest Greenbriar child.

And no one questions it, because Jude even makes this supposition herself.

But my question is this: Why would Balekin be blackmailing Orlagh? We learn in The Wicked King that they are very much allies, and as far as I’m aware, blackmailing isn’t something you typically do to your allies.

My other question is: Why do we assume that Orlagh is the one that wrote the letter? Because Dain said so? We know him to be unreliable at best, manipulator at worst.

During a second read, one might realise that Dain is in fact being tricky here. He knows exactly who and what this note is referring to. But he’s deliberately trying to lead the Court of Shadows to the wrong conclusion, because the right one would reveal his guilt, as shown in the latter part of The Cruel Prince when Jude figures out Dain poisoned Liriope with blusher mushroom.

The way Dain is able to lead us off track without lying is through implication alone. This is why he’s not specific about who is blackmailing Orlagh. He just says someone is (a likely statement, considering Orlagh’s title) and that someone might be a man (plausible enough).

Thus, the sentence “He’s blackmailing Orlagh” can still be a perceived truth, and we are only ascribing it to the note because it is the closest context.

But we find out later that Dain’s statement has nothing to do with the note, since the note is about Liriope’s poisoning.

After having read TCP [redacted] times, one might begin to think: Is Orlagh even the sender of this correspondence? And if not, who is? And what does the note mean if we’re giving it a different context/sender?

For this, we have to peruse the parts of the sentences written in the note.

A. “Provenance”

For me, this phrase has always seemed a bit strange when referring to blusher mushrooms.

The word “provenance”, as most people recognise it, is used to describe the place from which a particular thing or subset of things comes from (i.e. the provenance of “Champagne” is Champagne, France, and the provenance of “Iranian rugs” is Iran, etc.).

So when we put it in the context of blusher mushrooms, as the note does, it seems to be saying there is a particular place where one can find blusher mushrooms, and the recipient is trying to acquire them for one reason or another.

But Jude, when first dabbling in mithridatism, describes picking blusher mushroom in the palace gardens (p.148-150, TCP). So if Balekin was planning on acquiring the poison, he needn’t look farther than the palace itself.

Which says, to me, that acquiring blusher mushroom for his own purposes wasn’t the subject of Balekin’s original inquiry, since it is common enough for a seventeen-year-old girl to find on her walk to school.

Additionally, the sender says “the provenance of the blusher mushroom”, when “the provenance of blusher mushroom” would be more grammatically correct if the sender was indeed informing Balekin about where he could get the poison.

Implying that they are referring to a single specific blusher mushroom. Perhaps, the very one which poisoned Liriope.

Which means, “provenance”, as it is used in the note, could be referring to the less common definition: “record of ownership”.

My guess is, Balekin asked the sender of the note if they knew who killed Liriope with blusher mushroom. The sender, wanting to remain cryptic in case the message was intercepted, phrased their confirmation so only the person who knew the full context of the message would be able to understand it.

Leading me to believe the sender may be saying, “I know who owned/used the blusher mushroom that you’re asking about”.

B. “It”

Here’s another tricky thing about English grammar: sometimes the subject that “it” refers to can be a group of things.

We might assume right off the bat that “What you do with it” means “What you do with the blusher mushroom”. But, given the previous specification, our sender might actually just mean “What you do with this information must not be tied back to me.”

Essentially, “Don’t tell anyone I told you this but I know who Liriope’s murderer is.”

C. “Let my name be stricken from your lips.”

To me, this last sentence of the note wreaks of faerie bargain.

The sender mentioned they had a debt to pay Balekin, and after divulging who poisoned Liriope, they would consider that debt paid.

But why not just leave the message at that? They already basically said, “Don’t tell anyone I told you this”, so this sentence seems redundant if not included for an ulterior purpose.

It could be a dramatic sign off. More likely, though, it’s a final clause of some bargain made previous to this message. Such as, “You owe me. Tell me who poisoned Liriope and I’ll never speak your name again.”

Either way, it sounds like the sender does not want to be tied to Balekin in any way (understandable tbh).

***This line is important for later, so remember this.***

~~~

So, after these specifications have been made, the note reads:

“I know who owned/used the blusher mushroom to poison Liriope, but what you do with this information must not be traced back to me. After this, I consider my debt paid. As per our bargain, you’re not to speak of me again.”

II. THE SENDER OF THE LETTER

There are many people who could’ve sent this letter. So let’s narrow it down.

Since the letter is in Balekin’s study, we could surmise that it is something Balekin has written and plans on sending. But Jude describes it as being written in “an elegant, feminine hand” (TCP, p.115).

Which doesn’t necessarily rule Balekin out as the sender, but I’m thinking it is much more likely he is the recipient, and that the sender is a woman.

The sender also knows who killed Liriope, so they probably know why Liriope was poisoned, as well. Meaning, they would have had to have ties to her—whether in proximity or in intimacy.

Oriana mentions in TCP that she and Liriope were close friends. She also tells Jude that she knew about Liriope and Dain’s affair.

However, in this same conversation, Jude asks Oriana if she knew Dain was the one who poisoned Liriope, and this is her response:

“Oriana shakes her head. ‘Not for a long time. It could have been another of Eldred’s lovers. Or Balekin—there were rumours he was the one responsible. I even wondered if it could have been Eldred, if he had poisoned her for dallying with his son. But then Madoc discovered Dain had obtained the blusher mushroom. He insisted I never let Oak be anywhere near the prince.’ ”(TCP, pp. 294-295)

Since faeries cannot lie, the truth must be that Oriana is not the one that knew who poisoned Liriope.

And since the letter is left unsigned, Dain attributes its origins to the Queen of the Undersea.

Here’s why I don’t think Orlagh sent this message:

Orlagh is seen in cahoots with Balekin plenty throughout the series. Yet, the sender of this message implies they want nothing to do with the eldest prince, and furthermore explicitly tells Balekin to never speak their name again. If Orlagh were the sender of this note, we would not have much of the scenes which take place in the Undersea during Jude’s kidnapping in The Wicked King.

Orlagh is the Queen of the Undersea. Why would she know or care about the details of a murder of one of the High King of Elfhame’s lovers?

Orlagh also has no ties to Liriope, or Dain for that matter, so why would Balekin go to Orlagh for information regarding Liriope’s murder?

But do you know who does have ties to Liriope, who might also have reason not to want Balekin to speak their name ever again?

Lady Asha.

So how exactly does Lady Asha have ties to Liriope?

It is common knowledge that they were both lovers of the High King. Asha could’ve known of Liriope’s affair with Dain because of their proximity at court. She was also known for being a lover of gossip and secrets. It’s not too surprising that she might know of Liriope’s secret.

But how does Lady Asha know that Dain specifically poisoned Liriope? And why might she want to sever her ties with Balekin?

Let me back track for a moment.

III. EMERALDS FOR HEIRS?

In the prologue of The Queen of Nothing, Lady Asha receives a heavy necklace of emeralds for her “contribution to the Greenbriar line”.

In The Cruel Prince, when Jude is dressing in Liriope’s clothes for the party at Locke’s estate, Locke offers her his mother’s jewels, specifically a heavy necklace made of emeralds (TCP, p. 168).

At first, when I noticed this connection, I thought emeralds must be Eldred’s standard gift given to any mother who births a Greenbriar heir.

But if you recall, Locke wasn’t born to Eldred, and Liriope would have had to receive the necklace while she was still alive, meaning Oak had not yet been born.

It is significant that both of these women have necklaces of emeralds, for the meaning of emeralds—amongst loyalty, love, and strength—is truth.

“A revealer of truths, emerald reputedly could cut through all illusions and spells, including the truth or falsity of a lover’s oath.” (International Gem Society)

Indeed, it’s curious that the only other person known to possess a string of emeralds similar to the one Lady Asha receives in QON, is Liriope.

Liriope, who, to common knowledge, never had a royal child with the High King. Liriope, who, through the events of TCP, we know to have been having an affair with Dain while still in the High King’s favour.

Liriope, who, like Lady Asha, met an unfortunate fate.

If emeralds represent the falsity of a lover’s oath, and Liriope possessed such a necklace before her passing, it could be that the emeralds Asha received were less a gift as much as they were a warning.

One that Asha was either too arrogant or too oblivious to figure out when she first received them, but that she might've pieces together after Liriope's death.

IV. PUNISHMENT BY PROXY

In the prologue of Queen of Nothing, the narrator informs us that Cardan’s punishment for “killing” a mortal man was that his mother was locked in the Tower of Forgetting.

It’s unsurprising that a mother should shoulder the blame for the crimes of her royal son, but this seems like a steep price to pay for the death of someone only tangentially related to the High King’s concerns.

It wasn’t even a lover of Eldred’s own who was killed. It was the lover of his lover/seneschal.

Incarcerating Asha because her son allegedly killed the lover of the High King’s lover feels like an overreaction. Why not simply cast Asha from the court? Or send her to the mortal lands?

Unless…

The High King suspected (or knew) that Lady Asha had committed some other serious offense against him, but had no sufficient evidence to lock her away. Or perhaps he did not want to risk the humiliation that would ensue if everyone at court found out that Lady Asha had been dallying with his son at the same time as she was his own lover.

And, to give her what he thought she deserved without inciting speculation from the court, used the excuse of Cardan killing the mortal to finally serve justice.

Furthermore, we know Cardan and his mother were not close. We know Asha did not raise Cardan as normal mothers do. Why is sending Cardan’s mother to prison a punishment to him?

Other than a small blot on his reputation (upon which, there are many, much larger blots), Asha’s punishment by proxy largely shouldn’t effect Cardan.

It seems as if Cardan’s true punishment was being virtually disowned by his father, and banished from living in the Palace of Elfhame.

Meaning, Asha’s punishment wasn’t really Cardan’s, but her own.

V. THE DEBT

In the letter Jude stole from Balekin’s desk, a “debt”, which has been paid through the information provided, is mentioned. If Asha sent this letter, what debt could she possibly owe Balekin?

Well, for starters, he did raise her son when no one else would.

Though, it’s unclear to me when in the timeline Asha wrote the letter and when she was imprisoned, if this is the aforementioned debt, Asha would’ve had to have written the letter after she’d been sent to the Tower of Forgetting. Because her being sent to the Tower was the catalyst for Balekin raising Cardan.

This debt also begs the question: Why would Balekin offer to raise Cardan?

Surely having Lady Asha, an incarcerated ex-lover of the High King, in his debt isn’t so valuable as the immense responsibility of raising a child he has no obligation to.

Which points to a motive that indicates perhaps Balekin does have an obligation to this child.

When Madoc kills Eva and Justin in the prologue of TCP, he takes Jude and Taryn in, claiming it as his “duty” after he rendered them parentless. We know the fae value their honour, and so even someone as opprobrius as Balekin might be subject to upholding duty in the face of a faerie child’s mother being sent to prison.

But as we know, he did not cause Lady Asha’s detainment (Dain did). So where is this sudden sense of duty coming from? None of the other Greenbriar siblings seemed to have the same moral inclination.

Balekin taking Cardan in could be purely out of selfish motives. Such as, being able to shape Cardan to his will, which he might then use in a potential coup.

But it could be that, through everything, Balekin has an inkling of an idea that Cardan might not be his brother, but his son.

There is another debt which is possible in relation to the letter if it was sent prior to Lady Asha’s imprisonment. But for this, we must consider why Lady Asha would want her name to be stricken from Balekin’s lips in the first place.

The most obvious answer to this which I could think of is that Lady Asha knows she has committed treason by sleeping with Balekin, the High King’s son, and claiming their child as one of the High King’s own, staking her place at court as higher than is deserved, while also playing the High King for a fool.

So the debt could simply be that Lady Asha, seeing what happened to Liriope and knowing what happens to lovers of the High King after being found adulterous, wanted Balekin to never be able to speak of their affair ever again.

Balekin, not being of the sort to do things for other people without a price, might have said that he’d agree to this if she offered him information that he wanted. After she gave it to him, their bargain would be complete, and Balekin would henceforth never be able to speak Lady Asha’s name.

Regardless of which debt is the truth, indeed, I do believe we do not hear Balekin utter Asha’s name once throughout the course of the series. Despite the fact that it is almost certain they knew each other before.

VI. PRIOR ENTANGLEMENT

How do we know that Asha and Balekin knew each other well enough to be sending letters like this back and forth to each other, if we are not yet certain that they had an affair?

In the prologue of TCP, Madoc states that he didn’t believe it when Balekin told him his wife and child were not dead, but living in the mortal world. This indicates that Balekin had knowledge of how Eva faked her death.

Now, we could owe this to the presence of spies at court. It’s likely that Balekin has his own hoard of spies, as do most of the prominent figures in Eflhame.

Or we could consider that perhaps Lady Asha, who is the other person confirmed to have known that Eva faked her death (TWK, p.129), was Balekin’s informant on this matter.

After receiving this information, he was then able to pass it on to Madoc in order to gain his trust (with the ulterior motive that Madoc might trust him enough to help him with his coup).

But then, we must also consider why Lady Asha would tell the eldest prince of her friend’s plan in the first place.

One thought I had was that perhaps Balekin, having a slew of mortal servants under his roof, was the person who offered Eva the unidentifiable mortals left in Madoc’s house as “proof” of their death.

He’d have to have motive to do this, however. Which indicates he either had some sort of attachment to Asha, who was trying to help her friend escape Faerie, or Balekin valued the knowledge of their plan enough to help them carry it out.

Another less complicated motive for Lady Asha telling Balekin of Eva’s escape would be that Asha and Balekin had a history of being in cahoots with one another, which would point to a connection deeper than a passing acquaintanceship due to proximity at court.

VII. AN UNCANNY LIKENESS

It is a truth in The Folk of the Air series that children look very much like their biological parents.

Oak, biological son of Dain, looks an awful lot like Dain:

Oak is described as having deer legs, little horns on his head, and brown hair with streaks of gold.

Dain, in turn, is described as having deer legs, little horns, and golden curls.

This striking resemblance is what initially got me thinking on Cardan’s parentage. And it is further backed by the many other child-parent resemblances in the series:

Vivi is described as having inherited her father’s golden cat eyes and fur-tipped ears.

Locke has obviously inherited his mother’s “sunrise hair”.

And it could be argued that Oak inherited Liriope’s “starlit eyes”, as his are an amber-gold colour that might resemble an old star.

Lady Asha even states that Jude resembles both Eva and Justin greatly (TCP, p.129).

And in kind, Jude thinks that Lady Asha and Cardan look very alike, though she does not admit to this out loud.

These likenesses do not necessarily indicate anything other than a pattern, which could be total coincidence. But it does mean that we could reasonably conclude that faeries, as with humans, often take on characteristics of their parents.

Balekin is described as having black hair, pale skin, and silver eyes.

Cardan’s description in the series is quite similar:

He is said to have black curls, pale skin, and metallic-rimmed black irises.

When we compare that to Eldred’s description—golden hair and bronze owl-like eyes—it doesn’t seem like Cardan inherited many traits from the High King at all.

Now, this could be because Lady Asha’s characteristics were more dominant in Cardan’s inherited genes.

She is described as being pale, with raven hair, and black eyes. She also clearly passed her tail on to her son.

But the similarities between Cardan and Balekin go beyond the obvious. When Jude is hiding under a chair in Balekin’s study, she notices the following:

“In two strides, Balekin is in front of his brother. They look so alike standing close. Same inky hair, matching sneers, devouring eyes.” (TCP, p.119)

Indeed, this resemblance is echoed across the series. In The Wicked King, when Jude goes to visit Balekin in the Tower of Forgetting, she states:

“As I ascend, I glance back at Balekin’s face, severe in the green torchlight. He resembles Cardan too much for my comfort.” (TWK, p. 26)

And again, in the Undersea, when Balekin comes to interrogate her, Jude thinks:

“They have the same black hair. The same cheekbones.” (TWK, p. 240)

There is also the matter of Cardan’s name, which bears resemblance to Balekin’s physicality.

Balekin is described as having thorns on his forearms. Cardan is a name which is derived from Cardon, which means thistle. Thistles are a prickly flower that grow from stems of thorns.

We know Holly Black is very intentional with her descriptions and words. My question is, why would she go out of her way to draw these physical comparisons, to echo the sentiment that the two are strikingly similar, if Cardan and Balekin were merely brothers?

She could have said that Cardan, being raised in Balekin's household for much of his formative years, was moulded to adopt his brother's mannerisms and propensity for cruelty. She could have said the way that they talk, walk, carry themselves, etc. were extremely reminiscent of one another, and we as readers would've gotten the point: that Jude thinks Cardan and Balekin are alike in many ways.

But this isn't what Holly Black does. Which leads me to believe there is something else to the constant parallels she chooses to include.

VIII. IN CONCLUSION

I’m aware this entire post reads like a conspiracy theory. So to those of you who stuck it out this far, congratulations and welcome to the circus.

I’ll be the first to admit that it is a big reach to say that this is fact rather than the speculation that it is. There are a lot of holes, which I can only hope might be filled in the coming duology.

That being said, this theory brings many questions to light.

How would Balekin know of Eva’s escape without having a more intimate relationship with her friend than previously thought?

Why would Lady Asha want her name stricken from Balekin’s lips so desperately as to make a bargain with him?

How could Lady Asha possibly be indebted to Balekin?

Why would Liriope and Asha be the only two characters with heavy necklaces of emeralds on their person if it didn’t mean they shared a similar history with the High King?

Why would Holly Black continuously compare Balekin and Cardan, indirectly pointing out that neither look much like their father or other siblings, but look undeniably like each other, if not to draw a deeper connection between the two?

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, if Lady Asha’s dalliance with Eldred was so brief—as is confirmed by Oriana in chapter 12 of QON— how did she come to be pregnant by him? We know faerie menstrual cycles don’t happen as often as mortals’.

Is this as simple as good luck, or does it speak to an affair no one knew was happening?

–Em 🖤🗡

more theories & analysis

[cromulentreader]

The parallels between the relationships between Jude and Madoc vs Cardan and Balekin in TFOTA are so interesting to read (over and over again).

Jude is a human who is nurtured by a redcap. She feels insulted by the idea of not being believable as an assassin - thinks about this as often as about Cardan's long fingers in the first part of TCP. This makes me believe Madoc was nurturing something in her nature. It's not like Madoc was aiming to make her into a killing machine. Neither it was the easiest way to live as a mortal in Faerie.

I didn't think much of this one the first time I read TCP, but it's so telling that Cardan's morals do not come from Balekin. No one was raising Cardan - I wonder how this came to be. In Valiant, set in the same world, there's a reference to folk not liking being reminded of death. Perhaps this is not an unusual view, and it's not noticeable from Jude's POV, either because she's raised in Madoc's household or because she's normalizing murder regularly. Or Cardan might have set his morals more on the theory since he didn't truly have a family growing up.

[leashade]

about internet censorship

Speaking of internet censorship and such (this post was originally written in ru, september 2023)

Not so long ago (well, at this point it happened multiple times already...) there were test blocks of some VPN protocols (...and some of them are alredy blocked for good). It was clear that even though there was no announcement (and no official laws/acts passed, and it's actually illegal to block full protocols like that, but anyway), after some test runs they will start blocking VPN protocols as a whole (and they actually do that now). A lot depends on iternet providers of course: cellular operators are, as always, first to implement any blocks, then goes RosTelecom, but some smaller providers might not have the means to implement the blocks or sometimes even "forget" about the need to block anything.

But VPN as a technology wasn't really about bypassing intenet censorship, it was about virtual networks. And it seems like VPNs working fully inside of Ru and on Ru servers are not blocked. But if the node is located outside of the country, then connections will be broken: e.g. TCP OpenVPN connections will be failing after the first couple of packages sent, UDP OpenVPN fails to connect, even though outgoing packages are successfully being delivered, Wireguard and IKEv2 can't finish the handshake and hang on the last stages of initialization. (ShadowSocks seems to be blocked as well, though there are means to bypass the blocks AFAIK, but I don't know the exact ways to do that).

For me VPN was a way to securely connect to my servers' network first, then provide a safe way to connect my devices in different cities second (e.g. I used it to connect to my home PC in Moscow from Saint Petersburg, ignoring internet provider's NAT).

Lack of such secure connection to an inner network is significant issue for privacy and security. Of course, home internet providers are not the first to implement such shit, but risk of all the work halting just because some imbecile woke up thinking "yup, that's a great day to block an entire internet protocol" (or even multiple) is insanely high. So I had to start looking for ways to solve the problem -- good thing I already saw some helpful articles about the matter before.

I was using Wireguard and OpenVPN as my primary protocols before (they are widely supported and well documented), and right before the first protocol blocking tests I finished setting up IPSec/IKE. All three of these protocols are successfully being blocked (and it's not a huge surprise, none of them is designed for bypassing censorship).

Solutions were found thanks to Chinese friends: ShadowSocks and XRay/XTLS. First is basically a proxy, which is masking internet traffic and doesn't let DPI to detect it on internet provider level (well, they managed to start blocking this protocol too). XTLS is basically the same, but with a more advanced config (it actually uses SS under the hood, it seems), which can also specify, which data goes through proxy and which goes directly. Instructions can be found on GitHub, and everything in the process is more or less straight forward. There is also GoodbyeDPI, but it only helps bypassing DPI and every instruction I've seen required rooted phone.

The biggest question about ShadowSocks: is it possible to use it as a proxy for OpenVPN? The answer is actually yes. You can start SS in local proxy mode and in OpenVPN config add socks_proxy 127.0.0.1 1080, after that all traffic will go to ShadowSocks first, secure channel works perfectly, everything is great. I didn't try to do the same on PC, but in theory it works the same way so you just have to select the correct virtual network adapter.

With XTLS I didn't go that deep yet, but it's interesting for tinkering and adjusting everything for your needs. And seems like it can also work as a proxy (already used it a couple of times to be able to work in difficult conditions).