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dromjournal · 5 years ago

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21 August

We are a family living rural in the woods 1800s. Our father is a priest. We are pretty well off and we got nice clothes, but also very sheltered and our parents are overprotective. Three brothers and three sisters (from oldest to youngest: two brothers, two sisters, twins) There is a dark lake outside their house and on the other side of it is a piece of land called the "Princesses Graveyard". It's said to be haunted by evil and their mother have never let them go there. They are all afraid of it.

In the water there is a piece of an ancient stone bridge that used to lead to the Princesses Graveyard, but an old king demanded it be torn down and now only a little bit is left and can be seen above the water. Basically, this place is very old magic but it's not really something we've paid much attention other than some scary tales. We are used to it looking the way it looks.

One day a young handsome strange man shows up. He asks to hang out with the second oldest (a bit plain) girl and offers a small hammer made of gold to show that he got money. It's suggested through social ettiquette that he want to ask her hand in marriage.

Their dad the priest says no as he will not allow his daughters to be alone with a man. However the girl, somewhat rebel-ish, is curious about the stranger and sneak outside on the roof where they meet up. They talk and then they drop something off the roof onto a protruding part of the house. The guy suggest the girl tie the blanket around her, and he'll hold on and lower her down so she can get it back. The girl say she isn't sure she trusts the fabric to hold her, but after being called chicken she basically throw herself off the roof. The guy manages to pull her back up with the thing, he's surprised and kinda shocked that she actually did it. He was just teasing.

He asks then to see her at The Princess Graveyard the next time, just before dark.

She decides to go, telling her siblings and saying the place being haunted is just old stories when they get worried. Her siblings however all follow her because they think it's a bad idea.

When they get there nothing immediately seems off, but the guy have a friend there who says it's apparently his birthday and he's smiling creepily big. They are standing inbetween two trees right before a forest of trees. It kinda looks like a portal and they are suspisciously insistent she walk in between those two trees.

As an intelligent and well read young woman (though easily baited) she now gets suspiscious and won't do as they say. The other children however are not that hesitant.

The trees shoot out roots and "trap" everyone by them turning into trees (like the people in Annihilation). The girl finally run in after her siblings, seeing them getting stuck - and get stuck too, obviously. The boys turn out to stand like in the middle of what is an interconnected circle of these twiggy trees, and they turn themselves with glee. Every tree is in fact a person. All the siblings are becoming trees too. The guys talk hysterically happily about how good it is to be a tree, which no one buy into clearly as they're screaming and crying and struggling to get out. Then someone scream something that stop everyone momentarily panicking about turning into trees and reminds them of how it is to just be human, and the roots start to retreat. The girl realize this and shout that they must think of what it's like to be human and the things they like to do, and not think about turning. The guys get mad and tries to get them to stop, but they've already started turning themselves so they can't move from where they're standing. The sun is setting, and for some reason it gets clear that it's a clock ticking down. The girl get out, but her siblings still struggle to focus on not being scared. They are running out of time. A mist coming from the forest is starting to cover everything and freezes it as it is. It's clear this guys birthday is actually the only reason they were "free" and they use this day every time the wake up to haunt for more people to join them.

Some of the siblings which had gone inside first and therefor transformed the most, including the youngest boy and girl, are not completely free yet. The mist cover them and at first I think we lost.

Then it starts to let up and I find them back - but the tree have stolen stuff from them, depending on what it still held. The second oldest brother stand up and it have taken his leg knee-down. The youngest sister and brother are crying. The little sister moans about her eyes and the brother about his spine.

The sister looks up and she have no eyes. "I" (the middle girl) get scared as her brother said his SPINE but he's sitting up relatively straight and he even stands up. Then he turns and I see that his back is now made of wood, and he have something like a tail but it sticks out between his shoulder blades.

We go back home over the lake and try to forget and for stuff to go back to normal. Only the boys go to school and the youngest haven't gone yet. The rest of them only stay at home and more or less never leaves. Our parents weirdly enough doesn't seem phased at the changes to some of the children. The boy learns to use his "tail" and it's actually pretty functional. But by walking through the portal we've opened the otherworldlys eyes to us. We've turned into a beacon for all evil.

Another demon creature makes it's home in our well. It only comes out at night and the kids are not allowed outside after dark. However, the mother lets out their small white terrier because it's barking and angry in the window. Then she goes back to sleep.

In the morning they find the dog dead and mauled.

The creature is really after the children, but it can't get inside the house as long as the doors and windows are closed properly. However it's not like the children know what is wrong - just that something seems to be. This creature is completely new there.

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leightaylorwrites · 7 years ago

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Leigh Dissects YA fiction: Fallen Kingdoms (Chapter Seven- Chapter Ten)

Chapter Seven - Auranos

Sigh… I thought we’d at least get a break from Cleo by heading back to Magnus but I guess that was foolish of me to hope.

No one knew why, but Cleo guessed her sister had fallen in love with someone else.

The gender-neutral “someone” makes me hope for a single lesbian in this story. It’s another foolish hope.

Emilia had never so much as cast a flirtatious glance at any of the men in the palace [...]

LET EMILIA BE GAY 2K18

His parents didn’t approve of smoking inside the house. Aron might be arrogant and confident, but he was still seventeen and had to abide by his parents' rules until his next birthday-unless he wanted to move out ahead of schedule. And Cleo knew without a doubt that he didn’t want that sort of responsibility, financial or otherwise.

I’m sorry when did I leave this YA high fantasy and enter a teen drama on the CW? This entire part is a mess of modern-ness and should have been cut.

Aron: [I’m not sorry for killing him lol I kind of liked it too]

Cleo: How can you sound so calm about this?

Aron: Would you rather I lie and say I have nightmares too? Would that ease your own guilt?

Cleo: I want the truth.

Aron: And that’s what I’ve given you.

I get that Aron is a horrible creepy killer, but he has a point. He IS honest. When the villain makes more sense than your heroine, there’s an issue.

When he smiled, the look was equally menacing and enticing. “I will find you.”

YA authors stop writing scary love interests challenge.

Chapter Eight - Limeros

“Naughty girl.”

She ignored the flush that immediately heated her cheeks.She wasn’t being naughty; she was being inquisitive.

And I’m being disgusted. So not only does Magnus have the hots for his adoptive sister, Lucia blushes when he calls her “naughty.” Clace are BOTH unemployed.

“Cleiona’s also the name of the youngest Auranian princess,” Magnus mused. “Never really thought about it before. Same age as you are, right? Nearly to the day?”

I have… questions. First, how does he know Cleo’s exact birthday? Two, it’s likely going to come into play later that they are at most a few days apart but how does that work with Lucia? How does Magnus know her day of birth? We find out later Sabina (the lady from the prologue) brought Lucia to the palace as an infant but it wasn’t the day she was born so how would Sabina know her birthday? Even if she had a vision on the baby’s day of birth or something like that, how did Lucia survive without being breastfed? I need answers.

Magnus: One of grace and beauty, my sister, with a multitude of suitors at her beck and call. Forced to be siblings with a scarred monster like me.

Lucia: As if that scar makes you a monster. You can’t be blind to how girls look at you-I even see maids here in the castle wistfully watch you pass, even if you never notice them. They all think you’re devastatingly handsome. And your scar only makes you more… intriguing.

If you think plain hetero splooging is bad, just wait until you see plain hetero incest splooging!

“[Tomas] was cut down as a spoiled lord tried to show off in front of a princess - Princess Cleiona [...] The two watched Tomas Agallon’s young life bleed from him in front of his own family.They didn’t feel sorry for the pain they caused that family and all Paelsia.”

I mean… it’s true. Too bad the evil king is saying this and therefore the reader is supposed to disagree with him and know that Cleo the Super Special White Girl can’t do anything wrong ever but still. He’s right.

The words were acid on his tongue as jealousy flashed through him like a bolt of lightning. “But [Lucia] isn’t interested in walks around the palace grounds. Not with, well… not with you.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

Magnus forced a tense look on his face as if he’d said too much and now felt guilty. “It’s really none of my business.”

[...]

“It’s just that she’s mentioned you to me [...] And she made it clear that if you ever stopped by, you should not be encouraged any further. She means no offense, of course. But… her interests in a potential suitor lie elsewhere.”

In case incest splooging wasn’t enough to make me hate this character, he’s entered Rowboat’s, well, boat. Territorial pricks are not cute @ YA authors.

Magnus had no patience for anyone who would be manipulated so easily. If the boy was truly interested in Lucia, he should be able to stand up to any adversity, including an overprotective older brother.

But you literally just told this kid Lucia SAID she doesn’t want him. If he’s taking your word as truth, that’s not him being manipulated, it’s him believing you because why would a prince lie to him about this? He’s not doing anything wrong by respecting what he believes are Lucia’s wishes??? He has more respect for her than you do?? Why do people like Magnus??

“I wouldn’t hesitate to say you were lying.” He took her arm in his and squeezed it until she flinched. A flicker of fear went through her pale eyes. “Who do you think the king would believe? His son and heir? Or a kitchen maid?”

Amia swallowed hard. “I apologize, my prince. I would never say such a thing.”

“Smart girl.”

So… Magnus is literally physically abusing and threatening his casual hookup and people stan??

There was no Limerian law that stated that pure royal blood was necessary for the position. Even the son of a whore could become king.

Magnus is being all emo over the fact that Tobias could be king someday, a problem which is easily solved by Magnus killing Tobias. This doesn’t happen, but I think I’ve found the problem with all these series that try so hard to be the YA version of Game of Thrones/ASOIAF: nobody has the balls to write how these conflicts would actually play out in a real political setting. YA does have to be toned down in comparison to adult fiction but when you tone things down so much that they make no sense, it doesn’t work at all.

Blood sacrifice? How deeply savage.

Can’t tell if I’m tired of the word savage being used in this book (it’s used at least 20 times in reference to Paelsia) or if I’m tired of it in general (thanks stan twitter).

The king swiftly moved behind the boy, pulled his head back, and slashed the blade across his throat. Tobias’s eyes went wide and his hands came up automatically to his neck. Blood squirted out from between his fingers. He collapsed to the ground.

I’m DONE. We got half a page about Tobias being a threat to the throne for Magnus and instead of seeing them battle it out, or Tobias team up with an enemy later on, or anything that might give some payoff to the fact that Magnus has a secret half-brother, he’s sacrificed a few pages after his main introduction. Do you see what I mean now about YA fantasy writers holding back?

Chapter Nine - Auranos

I DON’T CARE, WHERE IS JONAS

“It’s unfortunate about Princess Emilia, though. So, so sad she isn’t well enough to attend.”

We get it. She’s dying. You’ve reminded us like four times already.

[...] Emilia’s most recently finished painting, a study of the night sky.

Subtle foreshadowing isn’t subtle enough for me.

That [her marriage] was solely a political choice sounded so cold, so analytical.

Does Cleo… not know what politics are? Does she not understand that royal arranged marriages happen all the time? Does she not realize she’s a princess? Why is she so dumb??

“You do know [Nic] is madly in love with you, right?”

Dammit. We came so close to having that platonic relationship but we can’t have a young man in this series not want to splooge over Cleo. It’s the first book and Cleo already has three love interests for this series. Alien Trashryver is worried.

Emilia: “I fell in love with someone else [...] I’ve never felt such love as I felt for him.”

DOUBLE DAMMIT.

Despite being named for the goddess, Cleo wasn’t invested in religion [.]

Isn’t being named after a religious deity frowned upon? I know in some religions you can be named after a minor figure - such as Christians with the archangels. But you can’t name your child God. Cleo being named after the primary person in the religion seems wrong.

But how else would we know she’s a Super Special Magical White Girl if she didn’t have a name far beyond what she deserves?

Her sister had been in love with a guard who’d died two months ago. “It was Theon’s father, wasn’t it?”

Isn’t he like… old??

Her sister had been in love with the king’s bodyguard who’d been thrown from his horse to his death. A tragedy.

That is verbatim from the book and I can’t stop laughing. This bitch said “a tragedy,” I’m CRYING.

Emilia was always the rock - comforting Cleo when she was upset over [some petty stuff] or the loss of her innocence to Aron.

“You’re the same as you were yesterday and the day before,” she’d soothed. “Nothing has changed. Not really. Forget what troubles you. Regret nothing, but learn from any mistakes you make. Tomorrow will be a brighter day, I promise.”

If you think things are cool because HEY we’ve got a YA heroine who isn’t a virgin, we later find out Cleo was drunk when this happened and therefore is an assault victim. The book never acknowledges the later, but instead has Emilia tell Cleo to learn from her mistakes and that nothing has changed. Feminist YA at its peak, y’all.

“You can’t. You’re to be the queen one day. If you die, that means it’ll be me. Trust me, Emilia, that would be a very bad thing. I would make a terrible queen.”

I mean, yeah I agree that Cleo would be a shitty queen but I’m more annoyed at how these five sentences are written.

Emilia: “There’s no one out there spying on us through the eyes of birds, hoping for clues of where to find the Kindred.”

Cleo: “I’ve never believed in such nonsense.”

Btw, Cleo said earlier she thought the birds were watching her. Consistency is hard, I guess.

[Theon] shook his head. “I knew my father cared about someone, but he wouldn’t say who it was. I figured he was involved with a married woman. Now I know.”

So Cleo’s boyfriend is her sister’s dead husband’s son… Cleo’s love interest is her nephew. He’s her step-nephew, but her nephew nonetheless.

Chapter Ten - Limeros (this time with the bird dude)

[...] to see his bird friend, Phaedra, perched on the branch next to him.

Now, I could give this book points if the whole point was that the western world was meant to be Greece, while Mystica is a mix of Italy and Spain. But the existence of Paelsia with its North African/Asian/Roman setting messes it all up.

All [Lucia] would see when she looked at him was a golden hawk. For some reason, this realization pained him.

So we can’t have lgbt+ romances or poc romances but Cleo the Super Special Magical White Girl can get three+ love interests and Lucia can get two love interests - her adoptive brother and a dude who can turn into a bird. White authors, man. White authors…

One thing I do like about this Ioannes dude is that his chapters are short, leaving little room for bullshit. However, they make me go back to Magnus and Cleo sooner than I want.

#leigh reads it #leigh dissects ya #falling kingdoms review

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always--tan · 7 years ago

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it feels better biting down...

Name: Julian Wood

Age: 23

Date of Birth: July 10th

Occupation: Transfiguration Professor

Location: Hogwarts School

the electronics of your heart...

Personality: meticulous, organized, reliable | perfectionist, stubborn, impatient

Magical Strengths: Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy

Magical Weaknesses: Potions, Herbology

see how fast they fall apart...

Younger Brother: Ethan Wood. Julian is not on good terms with Ethan due to a fallout they had in school concerning Quidditch. While Julian is open to reconciling, he is unsure of how to move forward considering that Ethan had gone to play professional Quidditch and it had been years since they last spoke.

Former Best Friend: Roxanne Weasley. Their friendship developed due to the fact that they were the youngest faculty members at Hogwarts, in addition to a growing interest in each other’s subject matter. However, Julian fought with Roxanne before she left to pursue a job at Beauxbatons instead of staying with him at Hogwarts.

Athletic Rivals: James Sirius Potter. When Julian had first started on the Quidditch team, James Sirius was one of the naysayers who doubted his abilities as a Quidditch player, being the first to claim that Julian’s only reason for being chosen for the starting lineup was because his last name was Wood. Years later, James would also taunt Julian for quitting the team and force him to be ostracized by Gryffindor House.

Youngest Brother: See wanted connection.

Academic Rivals / Former Friends: See wanted connection. An odd friendship developed between the two during their years at Hogwarts; she was the top of the class for several years until Julian decided to quit the Quidditch team and focused on academcis. Despite being in different houses, they would support each other through studying and become high achieving students while indulging in friendly competition.

Current Girlfriend: See wanted connection. She fell for whatever charm Julian exuded when he replaced her spilled coffee at Madame Puddifoot’s. She is very committed to Julian, though she questions his obsession with work.

skip a hit, don't make a sound...

Early Years

The Wood family was quite well-off because both parents were professional athletes, and only stopped playing to raise their children. Oliver didn’t retire immediately after Julian’s birth; he wasn’t present all the time, but Julian became driven to make sure that his father took notice of how much he improved whenever he was around.

Julian is the eldest child of Oliver Wood and Heidi Macavoy, and before attending Hogwarts he spent more time on a broomstick than his own two legs. Oliver wanted his sons groomed to be play professional Quidditch, halfway serious about having seven children to fill his own Quidditch team. He did get lucky, however, with three boys who could potentially become the most powerful chaser team to ever exist.

Most of Julian’s energy was put towards making his father proud, which wasn’t easy given the high expectations Oliver had from being on Puddlemere United for most of his career. However, Julian and his brothers easily became skilled Quidditch players due to the constant practice Oliver required them to do. Quidditch had become the only priority for the Wood brothers.

The only time in his childhood that Julian stopped blindly following what his father wanted to do was when he had chased his brother Ethan and caused Ethan to break his leg. Oliver insisted that Ethan still practice the next day, and the cracks in the façade of the perfect father started to develop.

In School

There was one thing to be said about the Wood family that, despite any argument Julian could make, would always be true: they loved Quidditch. Much so that the day before Julian was on the train to Hogwarts, he had broken his arm trying to play one last game with his brother. (Although Heidi was skilled with Quidditch related-injuries, he was immediately ushered to the Hospital Wing after being sorted).

His second year made it clear that he was Oliver’s son, and he was one of the youngest chasers on the starting lineup of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. Although he enjoyed playing, the pressure of winning in front of a very expectant public soon began to terrify him as he became more known as Oliver Wood’s son than as Julian Wood. This was especially so with his more envious classmates, who claim that he was only picked for the starting position due to his claim to fame.

Although Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup with Julian’s assistance as a chaser (and more so with the addition of his brother, Ethan Wood, in his third year of school), he was given two options before his fourth year: become prefect or become the assistant Quidditch captain for the Gryffindor Quidditch Team. Choosing the latter would mean that he would be its captain by his seventh year, and on the shortlist to be recruited on a professional Quidditch team.

However, the assistant captain position would go to someone else: Julian was already stressed by the attention Hogwarts Quidditch got him, there was no way he would be fit for professional Quidditch. A long apologetic letter addressed to his father was written, but never read: Julian didn’t have the heart to tell him that he chose to wear a badge over throwing quaffles in a goal. After a bit of guidance from Professor McGonagall, it wasn’t long until Julian quit the team – causing a rift between him and his brothers, especially Ethan.

Ethan was disappointed with Julian’s decision, to say the least, but one argument ended all communication with brothers who were once inseparable. A still overprotective Julian attempted to stop Ethan from playing the next match with a broken wrist, but who was he to tell him what to do? Julian wasn’t captain, nor was he in charge of Ethan, nor was he part of the family anymore. Julian would claim to hate Quidditch for what it did to his relationship with his family, and more often than not he felt like he didn’t have one.

For the rest of that term, Julian studied and passed his O.W.L.s with one of the highest scores in his year. He spent most of his fifth year in the library and empty classrooms, practicing spells and avoiding people. His sixth year, however, was spent enforcing rules as a prefect for another year, maintaining the guise of the perfect Hogwarts student, eventually coming to believe that academic success was the only means of success, and his stellar marks meant that he was going to be much better off in life than most of his peers.

This attitude was carried into his position as Head Boy, ironically becoming just as judgmental towards other students as they were when he first started playing Quidditch. Julian was good: he followed the rules to the letter and worked hard to become Head Boy. Therefore, he didn’t get along well with the Head Girl, Roxanne Weasley, famed either for her party days or for her family’s lackadaisical regard for authority.

Several attempts to ignore her included long walks to the Astronomy Tower on the nights he was not on patrol, most of which was spent contemplating what the next year held for him as he soon realized that his good marks meant nothing when he had no connections aside from Professor McGonagall and a Head Girl who tossed a blanket on him when he finally decided to double back and fall asleep on the couch.

Present Day

Professor McGonagall offered Julian a Transfiguration teaching position to get his career started, and it didn’t hurt that he was chosen as Student of the Year in Transfiguration Today two years in a row. Whatever career that was, however, he wasn’t sure. To his chagrin, Roxanne Weaslette was in a similar position and this time around there seemed to be no ignoring her: the fact that the few friends that he had made through a competitive camaraderie were all on their way to become the potential future Ministers of Magic made his social life very limited. The two begrudgingly became friends for a year, only for Julian to burn more bridges: Roxanne’s eventual decision to leave Hogwarts was one he did not take well after eventually coming to the realization that Roxanne was his only friend.

Julian wasn’t sure if Roxanne leaving was the cause of his setback, if he could call it one: he remained at Hogwarts for the next 4 years, improving his teaching abilities and developing a passion for teaching. Most of his work now involves convincing the Ministry to fund more programs for students at Hogwarts as well as changing the magical curriculums to better fit the needs of the present day. Although Julian’s main subject was Transfiguration, he very much believed that magical abilities of wizards, witches, and wix are all better utilized when subject matter is combined and pushed for a more interdisciplinary education.

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julian--wood · 7 years ago

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Julian Wood: The Biography

Early Years

In School

Present Day

#bio #bdjulian #archive

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