#the gods are bastards

[st-just]

The presence of a 'thieves guild' as, like, an organized public corporate body with a monopoly on crime is such a weird fantasy trope.

Especially when the text seems to unironically position them as, like, 'criminals but not that bad. Always looking out for each other and never really hurting anyone who doesn't deserve it.'

[fallowhearth]

Art inspired by The Gods Are Bastards web serial, oil pastel on paper. By me.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 52 – The Gods Are Bastards Volume Three by D. D. Webb

Okay this is properly a review for Books 8, 9, and 10 of the gargantuan serial – which I’ll freely admit I read more than a month ago in one week-long fugue along with all the books before them and the next few after. Which is to say I really shouldn’t have waited this long to write this review, and my apologies for all the vagueness and inaccuracies that are going to result. Which is a pity, because this is the best volume of the serial I’ve read and it isn’t even particularly close.

The serial continues the story of a Dungeons & Dragons-esque generic fantasy world advanced a couple hundred years and in the throes of a magical industrial revolution. The story theoretically stars the now-sophomore class of almost comically privileged and powerful students at what’s basically Adventurer University, but compared to the previous volumes they get barely any screentime in this one. Instead you get the Bishop of the god of thieves, the Archpope of the Universal Church, their respective pet openly-plotting-and-near-mutinous adventuring parties, political intrigue in the goddess of war, and a huntsman we’ve never met before learning the secrets of creation and also that his god was always just kind of a dick. It’s great! Also, to reiterate, the students get barely any screentime!

Really I kind of get the sense that I’m a deeply atypical fantasy reader, in that I find 90% of both involved romance plots and drawn out action scenes deeply tedious and basically the price you pay to get at the good parts of the story. In this case the good part is incredibly byzantine and too-complicated-by-half political shadowboxing carried out by proxies only barely kept on their masters’ leashes. Also several thousand words of pure exposition about the deep lore of the setting delivered by a malfunctioning AI.

Because yes, the big massive reveal of the volume is that the elder gods who were overthrown millennia before the story began had actually pulled a Lord of Light. The world runs on generic fantasy tropes because it was created by powermad demiurges who were also specifically insufferable 20th/21st century earth fantasy nerds. The different types of magic were just the results of them folding and rewriting physics, the fact that mortals can only access four is down to the vast majority getting wrecked when their creators died in the Titanomachy. Gnomes are an apparently successful attempt to perfect humanoid life.

This is, first and foremost, an absolutely hilarious bit of worldbuilding. Like, I actually burst out laughing. Knowing that orcs existed because the elder gods were big Tolkein and Warcraft fans may have permanently damaged my ability to take the setting seriously on its on terms but like, honestly? Probably worth it. Also just an excellent excuse for any shotcuts of contradictions in the worldbuilding and for all the kind of lazy fantasy worldbuilding tropes.

While it hasn’t happened yet, I hold out some hope that the increased pivot to the divine and Deep Lore means the serial will start to live up to its title and foreground the gods and their bastardry more – as I’ve said before, a narrative where the literal lords of creation are present but only because they just show up sometimes to descend to earth and make the protagonists lives easier is just boring. Which is why Archpope Justinian, the scheming mastermind who wants to overthrow heaven and earth and works exclusively through needlessly convoluted schemes that don’t stop a single person from knowing he’s to blame. I’m sorry but ‘somehow brainwashed the gods into making him their high priest so he can use the resources of their church as his personal power base’ is such a great bit. Also he’s opposed by literally every major POV so of course I need to root for him. (Honorary mention to Basra Syrinx, who is literally just The Worst in an incredibly entertaining way)

[dorksidefiker]

Expanding on my theory that the Gods want their half-blood children dead

There is a precedent in Greek myth for using a Grand Quest as a way to try and eliminate an inconvenient young prince/demi-god/young man that could be trouble for a ruler without making oneself a kinslayer (thus rendering one vulnerable to the likes of the Furies), or at least to grant oneself plausible deniability in the death of an inconvenient demi-god.

The myths of Perseus and Medusa and Jason and the Golden Fleece are probably the most well known examples -- at least, they're the ones I can think of off the top of my head. King Polydectes of Seriphus sent Perseus off to slay Medusa to get him the hell out of the way while he, ahem, courted the young man's mother, and King Pelias sent Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece in order to rid himself of an inconvenient Rightful Heir To The Throne He Was Sitting On. (It's also fun to note that while Jason's quest failed to kill him, he still failed in the end goal of becoming King and proceeded to fuck up so badly that he died alone, crushed under the rotting remains of the ship he sailed on, his children dead at the hands of the wife who made his ability to even succeed at the quest possible because he betrayed her in an effort to secure ANY throne he could get.)

While Perseus and Jason were both successful at the task given, it is made very clear that MANY men who came before them failed and died. How many children leave Camp Half-Blood on their Quest, only to never make it back? For every Perseus, there were surely a dozen forgotten failures.

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"...the asskicking I shall rain down upon you will be the crown jewel of my career, an unimpeachable masterwork of retribution.” She raised both her arms as if in benediction, gazing at the ceiling with a nearly rapturous expression. “Your culpability shall be known to the most infinitesimal degree, and you shall be stomped with godlike fucking exactitude. I will smite you with an exquisite fucking symphony of fairness, measuring every blow to the tiniest iota of its positioning and force until you have been punished so flawlessly for your two-year parade of shitheadery that not even your self-involved victim complex will enable you to walk away feeling you’ve been mistreated. Vidius himself shall descend from his throne on high to sit at my feet and learn the ways of fairly judging souls, that’s how precisely I’m gonna pulp you. I shall be a cleansing fire of fists and feet, and you shall emerge with the dross burned away to leave only a sore and chastened, but pristine and new, piece of shit of exactly the caliber the gods half-assedly created you. From the divine instrument of flawless retribution that is my size nine boot, you will ascend, born anew by the baptismal asskicking of Style which will echo down through the ages as a legendary arbiter of the very abstract fucking concept of justice.”

[k1ngm1d45]

imagine an AU where Percy did worship the gods… but to a disturbing degree that bordered obsession… No. No not bordered. He crossed that line a long time ago.

Greek mythology had always been his favorite growing up, and learning that every twisted legend, every fucked up tale, every dysfunctional family line was all true? He felt truly in awe.

A level of respect and adoration that clouded one’s judgement. Loyalty was his fatal flaw after all.

Percy was powerful and he knew it. And though he could tear apart Olympus with his bear hands if he so chose, the gods knew he never would. Their Perseus Jackson worshiped the ground they walked on, the air they breathed. Every ounce of his godlike abilities was used and exploited in every war, in every quest, and who was Percy to protest the wishes of his gods?

He was isolated from everything. Everyone. Kept close and attended to. Kept on a short leash so to speak, constantly being fed false praises and having the illusion of importance bestowed upon him from the beginning. The gods feeding their perfect little soldier with lies to feed into his obsessive worship. Every word. Every touch. Blind eyes turned to the box he was kept in.

He wanted to breath in the air surrounding them, to appease them, to worship them, to abide their words and to accumulate their respect. He wanted it all.

He didnt need friends.

He didnt need love.

Not when his beloved and omnipotent divines had their eyes on him and him alone. Thats what they promised anyway.

Anything to appease them.

Anything for even a shred of a thank you.

Anything for that validation from beings so powerful.

Anything…

But he was still mortal. Disposable.

…so what would happen if the gods he so adored were to betray him?

with no one around to support him.

The most powerful, bottled up demigod to walk the sands of time. An atomic bomb that the gods failed to consider.

[kvothbloodless]

I Need more people here to read The Gods are Bastards, specifically because @therealrichardfeynman and I have probably figured out a Major mystery, but have no one to get excited about that.

[jiskblr]

I just finished binging The Gods are Bastards and I highly recommend it. It's set in a 'late Old West'/industrial fantasy world where the 'age of adventures' is widely considered to have ended a century ago. It follows the eight-person Class of 1182 at the Unseen University at Last Rock, an invitation-only college headed by the greatest archmage ever to live (possibly excluding dragons), Professor Arachne Tellwyrn, absolute bitch and Enlightenment philosopher. School field trips include "this town is falling apart with internecine violence, fix it" and "the werewolves around this slightly-cursed city are howling every night, figured out why and fix it". This is normal at the ULR.

The world has a bunch of interesting religious and physical peculiarities keeping the magic embedded into the world pretty thoroughly. Like the frontier that the Old West covered is not just plains occupied by Indians, it's the Golden Sea, a literally-trackless, unmappable infinite prairie where the only reliable directions are "uphill is further in, downhill is further out", and no way to predict where along the frontier you'll pop out. Even time warps; at one point the Class of 1182 meet and fight a smilodon. (A similar thing happens in the forested Deep Wild, where lives Naiya the elder goddess of nature.) There's still natives - the plains elves live primarily within or around the edges of the Golden Sea, and have a native-like culture. And an army of horse nomads once escaped into it and raided the entire frontier for a decade before they got worn down by attrition.

The main cast, Class of 1182:

Trissiny Avelea: Hand of Avei, i.e. the world's sole paladin of the goddess of justice, war, and feminism. Orphan raised by the Avenist church, intelligent and extensively educated in war and law, but initially very sheltered. Spends most of the story expanding her range, learning to think along other lines, use other methods of problem-solving than combat, and inhabit other perspectives. (She was 13 before anyone reassured her that being heterosexual wasn't a mental disorder.)

Princess Zaruda Carmelita Xingyu Sameera Meredith Punaji, "Ruda" to everyone at school. Princess and presumptive heir to the pirate kingdom of Punaji. Like her entire family, cursed "to drink and never be drunk", meaning she's the only student exempt from ULR's dry campus. Incredibly stereotypical, except when she chooses not to be. Extremely competent politician and swordfighter, but least scary member of her class.

Teal Falconer: heiress to Falconer Industries, manufacturers of the best and most common enchanted carriages (her father is essentially Henry Ford). Host to the archdemon Vadrieny, youngest of the daughters of Elilial, goddess of cunning and Hell, and sole survivor. Teal is a butch lesbian bard, an extremely committed pacifist, and managed to prevent herself and Vadrieny exploding when she was possessed by the power of love and acceptance. Vadrieny nonetheless lost all her memories.

Shaeine nur Ashaele d’zin Awarrion: youngest daughter of the drow Matriarch of House Awarrion, which produces the diplomats for the city of Tar'naris, a drow city which recently allied with the Tiraan Empire. Shaeine is a priestess of the 'upper-tunnel' drow goddess Themynra, goddess of judgment, and a trained diplomat like all her family. (As opposed to Scyllith, elder goddess of light, beauty, and cruelty, creator of Hell, who the 'lower-tunnel' drow worship and Themynra's worshipers keep bottled up away from the surface.)

Juniper: dryad, youngest of Naiya's daughters. Extremely hot, extremely dangerous, extremely difficult to kill, and even more extremely unwise to kill, because Naiya would take issue with her murderer and everyone else within about a half-mile. Knows almost nothing about civilization except how it tastes (kinda like pork), but she's here to learn. By the end of her freshman year, she has let more sexual partners live than all other dryads put together. Complete sweetheart.

Fross: pixie, the tiny, completely inexhaustible granddaughters of Naiya. Probably the smartest pixie to ever live, due to her wild talent that allowed her to eat fey energy and turn it into intellect and arcane energy instead of just enhancing her fey gifts. Absolutely fascinated by civilization and has read everything she could find about how it works before the first day of classes. Also a complete sweetheart.

Tobias Caine: Hand of Omnu, paladin of the god of life, the sun, and agriculture. Skilled in Sun Style martial arts, a philosophically-pacifist Omnist style; also skilled in being the mom friend. Like Triss, orphan raised by his church, but his temple was in the big city so he's a lot less isolated. Quietly gay, which is probably frustrating since the only other guy in his year is his brother in all but name.

Gabriel Arquin: half-hethelax demon, which means he could be thrown off a mountain and he wouldn't even sprain an ankle. Pathologically bad at thinking before he speaks, at least initially. Nice guy once he starts to cool off his hothead. Gets a major promotion at the end of freshman year which I won't spoil.

Non-Students:

Eserite Bishop Antonio Darling: Currently the representative to the Universal Church of the Pantheon from the church of Eserion, god of thieves and subtlety. Formerly Boss 'Sweet', head of the Thieves' Guild. Everybody's friend and model believer in Eserite theology, whose first dictum is "all systems are corrupt". Handed over High Priest duties to Boss 'Tricks' and became Bishop instead to pursue some personal political and covert agendas.

Professor Arachne Tellwyrn: archmage of archmages, absolute asshole, professor of history, political science, and philosophy. Philosophically opposed to having chill but will sometimes attempt it for practical reasons. Doesn't know where she was born, and interrogated every extant god about it before she settled down to found the University. Committed deicide once; everyone agrees that he fucking had it coming.

Joseph P. Jenkins: The Sarasio Kid, greatest wandslinger in the world. Walking stereotype of a polite, well-mannered roving hero. Never misses. Almost never loses a hand of poker. High-functioning autistic savant who literally perceives the entire world as data and can compute all the math required for impossibly-good trick shots in his head instantly.

Also featuring: Zanzayed the Blue, notorious fop and wastrel of a dragon, who has a three-millennium feud with Arachne which is almost indistinguishable from a close friendship. Avenist Bishop Basra Syrinx, expert duelist, fantastic political operator, and complete sociopath. Archpope Justinian of the Universal Church, who apparently sincerely desires to elevate all of humanity (and probably other sapients) to divinity and yet is among the most contemptibly hateable pieces of shit ever to grace the page. Principia Locke, tag 'Keys', inscrutable con-artist and possibly the best thief in the world. Jenny Everywhere, world-shifting adventurer and favored employee of Vesk the god of bards. (And unlike all her other open-source appearances, actually well-used by the story.) Brother Ingvar, Huntsman of Shaath, unwilling prophet. Duchess Ravana Madouri, who coup'd her father and brother at the age of 17 and successfully framed them for the treason they had committed but concealed.

[jiskblr]

Can I interest you in

You are well known to be completely uncontrollable monsters but I'm going to teach you to operate in polite society and prove them wrong

I know you are completely uncontrollable monsters, but I've seen one of you learn to control himself, and I'm going to figure out how to teach some of you to do it too, no matter how many failures it takes

romance is lame and overrated i love mentor/mentee relationships in fiction and especially when theyre sort of fucked up

[starii-void]

going to chb must be crazy like imagine sharing a camp with

-one of the strongest demigods ever who's saved the world like at least 3 times, fought multiple gods & titans and WON (and is a tartarus survivor)

-the literal main architect of OLYMPUS who's also saved the world multiple times (also tartarus survivor)

-THE lord of the wild who's also close friends with the first two (and has helped save the world multiple times)

-an emo kid from the 1930s who again helped save the world and is also a tartarus survivor (TWICE)

-a son of apollo who survived tartarus with nothing but cargo shorts and sheer will (pun intended)

-the main designer and builder for the argo II, also the first hephaestus kid to have fire powers since hundreds of years ago (did i mention killed gaea? no? yeah he did that too)

-a girl who somehow charmspeak-ed gaea into falling back asleep (also side note daughter of super famous actor because why not)

-pretty much everybody is a two-time war veteran

-THE GOD APOLLO who just sometimes comes down to visit in the form of a teenage boy

-did i mention dionysus, god of wine madness and theatre

-also chiron, trainer of pretty much every greek hero ever

[st-just]

You know, I've talked myself around to liking the idea of 'the dungeon' as this vaguely eldritch almost living thing spreading beneath the earth and rearranging itself as people try to explore it.

But I just really entirely do not get the impulse to take what are clearly game mechanics from an MMO and try to work them into the metaphysics of your dramatic story.

[fallowhearth]

The Gods are Bastards is getting a new book! I'm so excited. Now is your chance to read up if you haven't - it's a very good fantasy web serial. Particularly if you have always thought, you know what would be great in this fantasy? A Western.

One thing I like about TGAB is that it manages a (mostly) queernorm world in a way that makes sense diagetically. SPOILERS: It was initially a constructed world, so the starting point was a grab-bag of modern day ideas imported by individuals with particular cultural baggage. The author has then actually put thought into the development of those ideologies over the world's history! Avenist feminism in particular is very interesting. And not without its own competing internal sects. Same with Shaathism, etc.

Can't wait to reunite with all my favourite characters, Arachne, Principia, Darling, Kuriwa, Rafe, Natchua, Gabriel, Juniper, and so on and so forth.

[kvothbloodless]

Ive got a whole (in progress) list of such stories that I enjoyed enough to recommend. Not all of them fit this description exactly, and a few are romances that heavily focus on that, so I wont post the full list here, but here are the ones that i think fit well enough:

The Gods are Bastards (very much this, but unfortunately this subplot happens in books 11 and 16, so its a Lot (of an excellent series) to read through before you get to it))

Starless- Not exactly this, since its about a person (minor spoilers) afab, but raised as a boy by a temple of warrior monks, and so its more abouth him figuring out what his gender identity is, rather than a transition. Alao extremely good.

The Story of Silence- Almost exactly the same as Starless (reading this was very much a two nickles situation for me)

Burke Misadventures- This is almost exactly what OP described. Its an important but relatively minor subplot about one od the two MCs towards the end of book 1, and by book 2 shes mostly fully transitioned

Dreadnought (The Nemesis series)- I wouldnt really say this counts, because she starts out knowing shes trans, and gets a (spoilers) surprise magic transition in the first chapter, and id say its about 50/50 between focusing on her coming out/socially transitioning and on her superhero activities. But im including it anyways because its just genuinely phenomenal.

Same thing OP described, but for women realizing theyre sapphic, rather than someone realizing theyre trans:

Santa Olivia- Yea, definitely not the focus or even a Major plot point, but thats mostly just because it doesnt take all that long for the character to get past it and start dating the MC. Mostly. Definitely worth reading though.

The One Who Eats Monsters- Ive plugged this enough on my blog i assume anyone seeing this is already tired of hearing me talk about it. Insanely fun plot, excellent romance, extremely well written subplot about a girl realizing shes queer.

Longshadow- Faerie tale mystery with a sapphic romance subplot that invovled the MC learning that being queer is A Thing, and then does that. Other than the ending (which was okay), extremely well written

The Midnight Lie- Pretty similar to Longshadow in terms of "MC realizes she can be gay. Bes gay." The romance is definitely a major plot point here, but not quite 50/50 i think.

Wild and Wicked Things- Great Gatsby retelling sort of, same as the previous two. Not an Incredible story, but its fun and interesting and gay.

I want stories to have characters that like. Realize they're trans and do transition stuff, like name changes and trying new looks, partway through the narrative. I want it to be a major point for their personal arc, but not the be-all end-all of their/the story's existence. Like, imagine we get a full season of a show with a particular cast, right? We get to know them decently well as characters, get kinda settled with them. Then, at some point in the next season, one of the characters realizes he's a girl, and it's a huge step for her personal development, but ultimately the main problem on everyone's minds, our newly cracked egg included, is the dark sorcerer who has bewitched the city council, or whatever else the current major conflict might be. IDK, I just wanna see more trans characters in general, of course, and I also wanna see some of them get to figure shit out bc that's such an interesting space to explore, but I also want some of those arcs to just be part of the tapestry of the lives of people with other things going on in their world. Any kind of person can be trans, and the realization can come at any point in life, and it'd be cool to see that reflected in more stuff.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 55 - The Gods Are Bastard Volume Four by D. D. Webb

This is properly a review of Books 11, 12 and 13 of the gargantuan web serial The Gods Are Bastards, which I read in one massive sprint back in August, and also mark the exact point stops including book summaries in the table of contents. So caveat lector, all errors are my own here. Though this is hopefully the last review I’ll need to open by saying that for a while.

The serial is set in a world that’s best described as ‘someone’s D&D setting left to cook for a couple hundred years, and which is now undergoing a magitech industrial revolution’. Quite literally, actually – as it was revealed in the previous volume that the setting is a Lord of Light-style experiment by far-future space-magic-weilding scientists from Earth who were insufferable nerds even before their experiments and millennia of treating the world around them as an experiment drove them insane. All of which becomes much more plot-relevant in this volume, with one book’s main plot dedicated to an imperial concubine learning how computers work in what is like 90% of the way to a femslash harem anime, and the main villains of another being a cybernetics cult who were objectively the coolest thing to show up in a hundred thousand words.

This volume returns more focus to the ostensible protagonists of the serial (sophmore class at Adventuring U), while also splitting them up so Triss (the only-occasionally-murderously-racist paladin) can go get some character development and also spin out the cast even more. Which may have been part of the reason this is the volume I started to burn out on the series in this volume, really – I have, I think, an unusually high tolerance for sprawling casts of characters. But there’s really only so many different sets of sympathetic plucky teenagers learning to bond and work together I can take before I literally stop being able to tell them apart. Certainly my limit of characters I actually cared about got hit some time before Triss’ half dozen new fellow thieves guild apprentices were introduced. At the point where I’m waiting for a murder demon to get loose just to clean up the dramatis personae a bit.

I mean admittedly it didn’t help that they all had the most incredibly predictable character arcs imaginable and none of them ever really got enough screentime or, like, creative energy to ever become memorable. The one besides Triss who got much independent focus was instead someone whose entire character, arc, and impact on the plot was ‘realizing she’s trans and being loved/accepted/supported for it’. Which I acknowledge many people find important and validating, but if I am looking for Representation Fiction it probably won’t be a million words into an epic fantasy web serial (and the author can clearly do better! Ingvar is trans and it clearly informs his character and backstory and he still gets to, like, affect the plot and do things).

Though honestly I’d probably forgive the bloated cast if at this point I wasn’t getting, well, either bored or impatient with the conflict of the story. Which is to say – look, the story’s titled The Gods Are Bastards, I don’t think I’m being unfair in expecting a certain rebelliousness or blasphemy in the narrative. But it’s been 13 books, and all morality aside, 13 books of the protagonists working for Gods and Empire and University and either upholding the status quo or mildly reforming it from within to strengthen it just gets monotonous. Even the thieves guild is somehow a pillar of the establishment. The forces arrayed behind the heroes so utterly outclass their opposition in basically every case that it’s really hard to care about them on any sort of dramatic level, and I keep waiting for a reversal or betrayal that just isn’t occurring.

Anyway yeah, if you liked the previous 10 books you will probably like these ones as well! Would just recommend spacing them out so you don’t burn out.

[fallowhearth-art]

Malivette in her bathrobe and fuzzy pink slippers, from The Gods Are Bastards, warmup drawing thanks to a suggestion from the Webbiverse discord lol

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

Smoke and ashes drifted on the air around them; Toby’s aura flickered as the circle walling off this patch from its home dimension passed back over him in shrinking. It did not dissipate this time, though. The golden scythes now drifted slowly around them, tumbling end over end as they orbited the Hand of Omnu. They had cut down even the bone structures, leaving only shattered and charred fragments to vanish back into Hell as the circle shrank.

The very air sang, filled with a tone like distant bells.

“I understand it now,” Toby said expressionlessly. His voice resonated almost like Ariel’s, as if there were a second, deeper voice speaking in unison. “It’s so simple, I don’t know why I struggled with it for so long. Omnu is life. Omnu is peace. Omnu is paradox. Omnu’s real path is navigating the tension between opposites. Because the truth is as Avei has always taught it. As Vidius has known. There is only one true peace…and it is the opposite of life.”