#the autumn court in general owns my heart. everyone else is in a romance novel & they're in game of thrones.

[auutumn]

autumn court inspired by germanic folklore & fairytales, my beloved

[unhealthyfanobsession]

jealous cassian but this time instead of competing with high lords and sons of high lords what if it's a general from another court... this general could also be a lover of romance books and sweets ;)

I had a lot of fun with this one and I may have fallen a little bit in love with my own OC 🤷‍♀️

Nesta Archeron was not a force of nature. People loved to describe strong women as forces of nature, but that wasn’t her. That was Feyre. Feyre was brash and wild and unpredictable as a tsunami or an avalanche.

Nesta Archeron was a collection of cosmic power held tight and controlled beneath iron thick magic-infused skin.

Which made her an amazing general. All of that power and her amazing control. That was what was required to lead a legion.

Contrary to popular belief, Cassian was not a wild thing. He was not a good general because he was wild and elemental. He was a good general because he was in control. Because he woke up every morning and he didn’t flash his siphons around and try to beat anyone into submission. He trained. He fought. He lead by example. He flew at the head of his legions. He showed them the he was the best.

Mates were equals. It should have surprised no one that Nesta wanted to raise an army.

And she did. Oh she did. Nesta Archeron went to every court in Prythian and she picked up women who wanted to fight. She went down into the Court of Nightmares and took any women who wanted to fight with her. Freed them. Liberated them. Nesta planned on a small unit of females. By the time she was done she commanded thousands. It was the second largest military force in Prythian. Right after the Illyrians. Which was a nightly topic of debate. When she would surpass him. Cassian would be pissed if it happened sooner than a century.

Nesta was determined to make it happen by the end of the decade. Which was why she had set up this meeting with the new general of Spring.

“General,” the tall, pale man inclined his head, light brown hair falling over his brow as he did. “General,” he said it again, inclining his head in Cassian’s direction now. Lips tipping up in an amused smile and pale blue eyes sparkling with amusement. “To what do I owe the pleasure of having you both here?”

Nesta adjusted the knife strap around her thigh and moved into the room ahead of both males. “Cassian has decided to high-jack my meeting because he is intimidated by my success. His official reason, however, is that you are new and he comes to speak on behalf of the Night Court. To ensure that your goals are aligned.”

“Hmm, and you?” The general pulled out a chair at the head of the table and gestured for Nesta to take it. His breath tickled her neck as he leaned in to push the chair in after she sat. “What are your interests, Nesta Archeron.”

“Romance novels and chocolate cake, mostly.” Cassian laughed.

“Good taste,” the general smiled. “Hadley Minn?” a well-know romance novelist from Dawn. Sweet stories of proper young ladies falling in love and having missionary sex.

Nesta smiled just a little. “Sellyn Drake.”

He whistled low under his breath. “I like your style, Archeron.”

Cassian’s eyebrows drew together as he watched this male look over Nesta with a new type of appreciation.

“My name is Malakai.” The general reached his hand out first to Nesta, holding on a little too long and then to Cassian. Who squeezed his hand harder than necessary. The general just smiled broadly. “Call me Kai.”

“Well Kai,” Cassian leaned back in his chair, wings spreading out behind him. “What can you tell me about the Spring Court’s forces now that your court has got its army together enough to have a general?”

Kai just kept smiling. Kind and open. “And what would you tell me about your forces, if asked?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Cassian admitted.

“So no disrespect general, but…”

“I told him this was pointless,” Nesta rolled her eyes. “I, on the other hand, have something of actual use to discuss with you.”

“Happy to be of service,” the Spring general winked.

Cassian tensed up in his chair. arms crossing over each other and face going stone hard.

“Excellent. Now, I know your High Lord is a chauvinist, but I’d like to start by asking if you are too, because that will determine how I approach this conversation.”

The air tensed for a second. Cassian prepared to jump in between his mate and this male. Insulting someone’s High Lord… he’d be surprised if the male managed to just kick her out and not attack like a feral animal.

“Is she always this direct?” Kai’s smile never faltered. Not for a second.

“Talking to him instead of me answers that question,” Nesta muttered. “So, here’s what you’re going to-”

“I did not mean to offend you, General. I assure you it is my sincerest belief that females are just as militarily capable as males.”

Nesta narrowed her eyes. “So you plan to train females along with males in your new army?”

“Of course I do,” Kai shrugged. “Who would be stupid enough to give up half their military power because of their sex?”

“Spring is a small court,” Cassian said. “You only have one army. It gets more complicated when there are several. In the larger territories.”

“I see.”

“What he means to say is that significant parts of the Autumn, Night, Day, and Winter courts do not train their females to fight. Their main armies might, but different territories in the courts run that way. And actually Night and Autumn even their main armies don’t train females.” Nesta glared at her mate.

“They do now.” Cassian sighed, not needing to be reminded how long it took to reach this point.

“Ah,” Kai nodded, “you’re here to see if I planned to train the females and to take them with you in your liberation march if I said no.”

“I run an army that trains those other courts reject.”

“So I have heard, an extraordinary feat from an extraordinary woman.” His teeth glittered as he smiled, eyes entirely focused on Nesta. “I know you have your reasons for distrusting my High Lord, but he is trying. Trying to return this court to what it once was. I’m a part of that. Our army will train anyone who wants to fight. And it will protect the human/Fae border.”

Nesta blinked. That was…

“I fought in the war,” Kai nodded to Cassian. “I always admired how you fought at the front of your legions, General. You are the legend everyone claims you to be, but I have to admit…” He turned to face Nesta. “I accepted this meeting so that I could meet you.”

Cassian growled low in his throat. “How does this keep happening?” He muttered under his breath, low enough for Nesta to hear but not Kai. Cassian loved Nesta with his entire being. Heart, body, and soul. The problem was that, apparently, so did every other male in Prythian.

Nesta smirked, subtly reaching her foot out under the table to kick him in the shin for being a possessive brute.

“I met with Eris Vanserra last week. He commands Autumn’s armies.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Cassian said that one loud enough for Nesta and Kai to hear.

“I mentioned I was meeting with you. I knew about your army, of course. But I asked him what to expect meeting you. And instead of answering he told me what you said in the High Lord’s meeting. About humans. I’m pretty sure his point was that I should prepare myself if I was trying to go up against a female who paused seven High Lords in their tracks, but… it is rare to meet a Fae who cares about humans. Truly cares.”

“Well I was one.” Nesta stared forward, unsure where this conversation was going.

“I know. Cauldron born. Phenomenal cosmic powers. Ability to bring us all to our knees if you wanted to. But instead you choose to defend humans and make an army of Fae the courts have cast off.”

“Nes knows how amazing she is,” Cassian cut in. Two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. “Could you get to the point please?”

“I want to work with you.” Kai said, point blank, staring at Nesta.

“I bet you do,” Cassian muttered.

“I have my own army, general. I’m not interested in working for anyone else.”

“Not for. With. I want… my forces are beaten down. Their morale is weak. Faith is low. I… you brought the High Lords to heel and you started an army from nothing. I’d like your advice.”

Nesta swallowed. She’d accomplished amazing things. So many amazing things, but still… no one had ever asked her for advice. Help. Expertise. She was the novice. She… he wanted her help.

“My army is from all over Prythian,” Nesta said. “We train in the Night Court because the territory is massive and that’s my home, but… Spring doesn’t have the manpower to protect that border. Convince Tamlin to let me bring in some of my warriors to protect the human border and I’ll help you with whatever you want.”

“Deal,” Kai smiled, reaching out his hand.

Nesta shook it.

Later, after they took off and she was wrapped up in Cassian’s arms as they flew back to Velaris, her mate was stone faced once again.

“I swear to the mother, Nes, if he proposes to you I’m going to make what Feyre did to the Spring Court look like a Sunday walk along the fucking Sidra.”

[spockandawe]

What are your favorite chinese webnovels? What are some of the differences youve noticed between cnovels and other types of novels?

That second question is really, REALLY interesting, and I really want to answer it well, and I am REALLY sure I’m going to do a bad job of answering it, so let me just noodle about that first question for a minute while I try to think XD

I went through some of my TOP-top favorite novels in more detail yesterday, but generally speaking, mxtx and meatbun are both at the top of the pack. They’re really good at writing compelling main characters and balancing piles of angst with plenty of humor and pulling everything together into a very satisfying ending (which is something I don’t alwaysssss see, even in some of the novels I really like). After them, The Disabled Tyrant’s Pet Palm Fish (transmigration, ancient chinese prince falls in love with pet fish) and Golden Stage (ancient chinese gay arranged marriage between bitter enemies(?)) are two novels that I love a lot, which both have very cute romances and go a bit lighter on the main character suffering front, and which I broadly recommend to anyone who’s interested in the genre. They didn’t end stick the landing QUITE as hard as an svsss or tgcf, but they still were very nice.

Then, let me see. I’m trying to remember which books I’ve read in the last year, and am doing a terrible job, haha. I will say that a book I enjoyed for like... eighty percent of it and then the ending let me down terribly was The Dreamer In The Spring Boudoir (modern day career woman transmigrates into barely-fantasy ancient china novel as the disliked primary wife of a nobleman), which is also the only straight webnovel I’ve read so far. The main character and romance were delightful, but that ending... haha, wow, I felt betrayed. But I did like the first half very much!! I’m idly contemplating a deliberately-partial reread. Then I’m currently like two chapters away from catching up with the current translation of The Wife Is First (ancient chinese prince lives out time travel fixit fic, determined to treat his spouse better this time around). I’m also catching up on Heroic Death System (transmigration, across MANY universes, where the goal is to die heroically in each one, and also maybeeeee to find his boyfriend in each one. this shit gets fucking bananas. in one of them, he emotionally seduces his boyfriend while he’s a dolphin. in another one, he’s a sentient mushroom. i’m in the middle of a section titled ‘I Am An Evil Pen’. yes, like a writing utensil type of pen. this is the weirdest book I’ve read so far). Oh, and Thousand Autumns (righteous sect leader gets sabotaged and loses a fight, wakes up blind and amnesiac, demonic sect leader is like ‘lol i bet i can turn him evil’ and accidentally catches feelings along the way).

What else... I’m keeping up with (but behind on) some others. First, there’s How To Survive As A Villain (modern terminally ill CEO transmigrates into stallion novel, wakes up as villain, accidentally seduces hero). Then, we’ve got Transmigrating Into The Body Of The Heartthrob’s Cannon Fodder Childhood Friend (only modern webnovel I’ve read, young man transmigrates into beginning of gratuitous whump book, back in high school, and is determined to protect the protagonist from all the canonical suffering). Then there’s Pulling Together A Villain Reformation Strategy (guy transmigrates into story as the hero’s childhood friend who will eventually become his enemy and get killed, successfully acts out his part and dies, completely fails to realize he’s broken his friend’s heart in the process... and then wakes up in another character’s body). And then there’s The Villain’s White Lotus Halo (a transmigrator keeps bouncing from universe to universe as a cannon fodder villain, who gets like half a line before being killed. he tries to purchase an upgrade package so he can be a COOL villain instead, but accidentally gets sold a ‘white lotus halo’ package instead, so that no matter what he does, everyone is just DEEPLY moved by his appearance and is positive he did nothing wrong). All of those are EXTREMELY delightful. You may notice a running transmigration theme, which....... yeah, I think there are a TON of delightful stories in the webnovel scene that deal with this genre, which seem so rare in English language media.

Which makes a good transition point to what’s different about the cnovel scene! I’ve seen hardly any transmigration stories in English, and I’ve got a couple go-to examples for when I’m trying to explain it, but like. Only a couple. Which is such a shame! Like, there’s the default idea of ‘I was reading this book and then I woke up inside the book!!’ but it’s clearly such an established genre that people are playing with it in all kinds of interesting ways, like in The Villain’s White Lotus Halo or Heroic Death System setups. It’s kind of wild to me, because it seems like such a gimme for a nice easy story structure? Whatever kind of world you want to present, there’s no need to introduce it to the reader from the ground up, or find a good way to hook them in. Either the main character read the book in question and can explain the premise and why we should care in pov, or the main character is new to the universe too, and trying to find their own footing. I enjoy it a lot! I’ve sampled transmigration books that didn’t grab me, but I’ve sampled way more that did. 

And then, the one semi-technical answer I thought of to this question was the way that these novels tend to handle pov. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule that regular novels are restricted to one pov, or that pov can only change at hard breaks in the story, but if I saw a bog-standard american novel glide from pov to pov the way these novels regularly do, I would tend to wonder if it was sloppiness or a mistake, or I would grump to myself about how I don’t like omniscient third person pov. And I still don’t know exactly what I think about this, or why it’s different in here, but I’m pretty sure I like it a lot, especially for stories where the romance tends to play a large part :V 

I used to read a lot of Books About Writing, and read plenty of stuff about why you don’t DO this, but.... I like it! In dtppf, Jing-wang can’t talk, and when Li Yu is a fish, he can’t talk, and drifting from one of their perspectives to the other gives me lots of useful information about how they’re both feeling. Could that be conveyed through restricted pov? Maybe! But I’m typesetting the svsss extras right now, and I’m in the bing-ge vs bing-mei section, and we get a few brief flashes of bing-ge’s thoughts, and it’s so NICE. It’s information I would not have otherwise received, because Shen Qingqiu sure wasn’t going to notice it. But early in the story, that pov was withheld from me, which also made sense (or hua cheng’s pov was withheld from me FOREVER, which makes me so sad ;u;). There don’t seem to be any hard and fast rules, which makes me really nervous about writing fic and trying to match the style, but I do like it a lot! 

And I’m definitely not able to articulate this in the way that I would like to, or speak with any real authority (I’m not that widely read in the cnovel scene, and i’m not very genre-adventurous in english), but there’s something about the role that the romances play in these stories that’s different from what I’m used to expecting, and it’s VERY tasty to me. I only rarely read romance novels, because I’m not often interested in the romance as a primary plot driver, but the romances in these books play a more substantial role than I’m used to expecting. And I’m into it! It’s a balance closer to what I’d expect from, like, a shippy longform fanfic. Which covers a lot of ground and is NOT a precise measure, but there’s more emotional weight given to the romance than I would expect, but without the romance carrying ALL of the emotional weight, and it strikes a perfect balance for me in a way I’m not used to encountering. Now, some of this could definitely be due to me not finding the right authors, or right subgenres, or whatever. But in the genres I inhabit, it’s a subtle difference, but one I find compelling.

Oh, one last thing. The cultural differences, duh :P I’m only familiar with things like, say, ancient chinese court etiquette through a lens of fan-translated novels like these, and I didn’t grow up steeped in the culture in a way I’m used to the trappings of something like medieval european courts. But there’s a distinct flavor to the social dynamics of these novels, from the formal levels down to the casual, and I know it’s super intricate and detailed and that authors play with differing degrees of historical accuracy vs fictional fun, and I wish I was better equipped to speak to the nature of any of this. But I find it really compelling! I recognize that it’s only new to ME because I didn’t seek out chinese media before now. And, the point that I originally wanted to get to before I got super distracted: the flirting. The flirting and teasing are a very different flavor from what I would expect in most english language media, and I love it, even if I can’t speak to how much of that is purely cultural, and how much of it is like... the conventions of How Fiction Is Written varying by culture, if that makes sense. I adore seeing what flirting and affection and indulgence and attentiveness look like in different settings, and these books, with their heavy romantic focus, absolutely deliver.