#b: deathless

[gravityvampire]

I can picture Jack just going around and challenging crime bosses to games of Russian Roulette.

Boss: "A game i have never lost. You would do well to back down now. Lady luck is on my side!"

Jack: "...Bet."

|| 🌙 ||: ❝ P-Please don't give her ideas, watching her regenerate is horrifying! ❞

#🌙 || asks #🌙 || rp #🌙 || sentinel of dawn #🌙 || deathless #💀 || deathless #{ per wife (b/c deathless is my wife's oc): she would try that at least once } #{ per wife “I’d imagine word would get around after she blows her head off and grows a new one before she hits the ground” } #gun mention tw #gun tw

[a-koschyei]

me, fully losing my mind writing up this winter trilogy verse (major spoilers ahead):

#no one is allowed to call me crazy for saying his name is ivan in this verse !! it's canon !! #and watch me turn the war b/t medved & morozko into a war between koschei and morozko. we're looking at a deathless prequel au besties #he never got over what happened to yelena #he's taking over medved/dazhbog's spot and becoming the new summer demon so he and morozko can meet at the back of a denny's and FIGHT #♔ . ⧽ lore * 𝔴𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱

[bingusoclock]

i love torchwood so far but everytime they mention the word ‘doctor’ or even brave saying ‘THE doctor’ i lose my shit. my little whovian brain gets a rush of dopamine that is as of yet unrivaled (visual reference of my brain below)

#YIPPEE #torchwood #doctor who #i luv these stupid bisexuals and their deathless captain #but the b with the blue box has my heart completely #tw #dw

[reachexceedinggrasp]

I've been wanting to ask this question for a long time, but haven't been able to since I've never truly been aware of it till now and you can maybe provide some eloquent insight on this subject. I've been watching lots of dramas,movies,and even reading fanfics and something that truly baffles me is how most of these authors treat One True Love romance trope. They always make the main character yearn,pine,and even internally devote her/his whole heart to this one character they love. Set it up as if the main character couldn't and wouldn't have been able to fall in love again if they never manage to get together in the end. That it is NOT that the main character can't move on, it's just that they CHOOSES not to because their love is just simply too great. Some writer even go as far as making the main character be content with being ALONE and just having the other guy/girl inside their heart forever even if they're never officially together because the devotion and memory they have of that one person is enough to keep them going. ONLY TO TURN THE WHEEL right before the Ending by making the main character act like they never even think of all those stuff in the first place and Authors playing it off as "Even though the MC loves this guy/girl so much, they still themselves as a person first and foremost. They shouldn't and don't need to depend on some memories/feelings for another person to survive. They're perfectly capable of MOVING ON." 🤪 The fun and SUSPICIOUS fact is this : Usually this kind of things happen MORE OFTEN in stories where the MC is a woman🙃 Like you just know the writer's gonna backtrack right before it ends🤡 Why bother writing all those sappy romance stuff then,if you're just gonna slap your reader in the face for expecting unwavering loyalty that you set up in the first place from your MC?!

Like do you think this kind of thinking/interpretation and writing of a story is thematically right? Or is it simply the case of the writer being a coward,afraid of fully committing to that heart wrenching love and devotion THEY set up in the first place?

It's probably a combination of being wishy-washy in general because you haven't thought through your story or what it's saying, wanting the big flowery devotion and the romantic cliches but not really wanting to commit to them, and people just chickening out.

If it's a theme or intended message, then the story should actually deal with that and have the character coming to a realisation that undying devotion is a destructive ideal or something that they don't actually believe in or whatever. That would be fine. Some books do have that as a theme they're exploring.

But switching gears tonally without any justification of that or having a character randomly completely change their attitude for no reason is bad writing. And sort of yanking the rug of romanticism out from under the reader without setting that up as the point is going to frustrate and alienate them. We as the audience don't need the author to turn to us and remind us to drink water and get enough sleep. You are not our mum. It's not a guide for life, it's a story. Don't lecture me about how the main character don't need no man, I'm not reading a romance because I want to be told romance isn't important. I want them to give the cat a name and realise people do belong to each other, that's why I'm here.

Of course, people are undercutting their own drama left and right, so maybe it's just fear of being dramatic at all. God forbid we have any heightened poetic emotions, I guess.

#I feel like so much of this is just a) everyone always shitting on romanticism and authors wanting to avoid being in the genre ghetto #b) authors feeling like they have to be 'mature' and 'realistic' and/or 'healthy' lest they be labelled problemmatique #or more simply are dismissed as being old fashioned and insufficiently modern for using traditional tropes #(despite the tropes themselves being deathless and infinitely renewable- as we see whenever someone does them well) #real art is realistic and angsty etc. etc. #this is a bigger issue in fandom but I think it's probably also a huge deal in the twitter cabal genres like YA and romance #where there's cliques and bullshit that can affect people's careers #the YA author hot take industry chugs along apace for this very reason #I feel sorry for people who like YA- the wank is always coming from inside the house #all my favourite authors are dead and thus their drama is pretty minimal #their hot takes are inert

[disabled-dragoon]

The Disability Library

I love books, I love literature, and I love this blog, but it's only been recently that I've really been given the option to explore disabled literature, and I hate that. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be able to read about characters like me, and now as an adult, all I want is to be able to read a book that takes us seriously.

And so, friends, Romans, countrymen, I present, a special disability and chronic illness booklist, compiled by myself and through the contributions of wonderful members from this site!

As always, if there are any at all that you want me to add, please just say. I'm always looking for more!

Edit 20/10/2023: You can now suggest books using the google form at the bottom!

Updated: 31/08/2023

Articles and Chapters

The Drifting Language of Architectural Accessibility in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Essaka Joshua, 2012

Early Modern Literature and Disability Studies, Allison P. Hobgood, David Houston Wood, 2017

How Do You Develop Whole Object Relations as an Adult?, Elinor Greenburg, 2019

Making Do with What You Don't Have: Disabled Black Motherhood in Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, Anna Hinton, 2018

Necropolitics, Achille Mbeme, 2003 OR Necropolitics, Achille Mbeme, 2019

Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts, Zygmunt Bauman, 2004

Witchcraft and deformity in early modern English Literature, Scott Eaton, 2020

Books

Fiction:

Misc:

10 Things I Can See From Here, Carrie Mac

A-F:

A Curse So Dark and Lonely, (Series), Brigid Kemmerer

Akata Witch, (Series), Nnedi Okorafor

A Mango-Shaped Space, Wendy Mass

Ancillary Justice, (Series), Ann Leckie

An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon

An Unseen Attraction, (Series), K. J. Charles

A Shot in the Dark, Victoria Lee

A Snicker of Magic, Natalie Lloyd

A Song of Ice and Fire, (series), George R. R. Martin

A Spindle Splintered, (Series), Alix E. Harrow

A Time to Dance, Padma Venkatraman

Bath Haus, P. J. Vernon

Beasts of Prey, (Series), Ayana Gray

The Bedlam Stacks, (Series), Natasha Pulley

Black Bird, Blue Road, Sofiya Pasternack

Black Sun, (Series), Rebecca Roanhorse

Blood Price, (Series), Tanya Huff

Borderline, (Series), Mishell Baker

Breath, Donna Jo Napoli

The Broken Kingdoms, (Series), N.K. Jemisin

Brute, Kim Fielding

Cafe con Lychee, Emery Lee

Carry the Ocean, (Series), Heidi Cullinan

Challenger Deep, Neal Shusterman

Cinder, (Series), Marissa Meyer

Clean, Amy Reed

Connection Error, (Series), Annabeth Albert

Cosima Unfortunate Steals A Star, Laura Noakes

Crazy, Benjamin Lebert

Crooked Kingdom, (Series), Leigh Bardugo

Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots, (Series), Cat Sebastian

Daniel, Deconstructed, James Ramos

Dead in the Garden, (Series), Dahlia Donovan

Dear Fang, With Love, Rufi Thorpe

Deathless Divide, (Series), Justina Ireland

The Degenerates, J. Albert Mann

The Doctor's Discretion, E.E. Ottoman

Earth Girl, (Series), Janet Edwards

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Emily R. Austin

The Extraordinaries, (Series), T. J. Klune

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, (Series), Trenton Lee Stewart

Fight + Flight, Jules Machias

The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix

Finding My Voice, (Series), Aoife Dooley

The First Thing About You, Chaz Hayden

Follow My Leader, James B. Garfield

Forever Is Now, Mariama J. Lockington

Fortune Favours the Dead, (Series), Stephen Spotswood

Fresh, Margot Wood

H-0:

Harmony, London Price

Harrow the Ninth, (series), Tamsyn Muir

Hench, (Series), Natalia Zina Walschots

Highly Illogical Behaviour, John Corey Whaley

Honey Girl, Morgan Rogers

How to Become a Planet, Nicole Melleby

How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager, (Series), D. N. Bryn

How to Sell Your Blood & Fall in Love, (Series), D. N. Bryn

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites, Joy Demorra

I Am Not Alone, Francisco X. Stork

The Immeasurable Depth of You, Maria Ingrande Mora

In the Ring, Sierra Isley

Into The Drowning Deep, (Series), Mira Grant

Iron Widow, (Series), Xiran Jay Zhao

Izzy at the End of the World, K. A. Reynolds

Jodie's Journey, Colin Thiele

Just by Looking at Him, Ryan O'Connell

Kissing Doorknobs, Terry Spencer Hesser

Lakelore, Anna-Marie McLemore

Learning Curves, (Series), Ceillie Simkiss

Let's Call It a Doomsday, Katie Henry

The Library of the Dead, (Series), TL Huchu

The Lion Hunter, (Series), Elizabeth Wein

Lirael, (Series), Garth Nix

Long Macchiatos and Monsters, Alison Evans

Love from A to Z, (Series), S.K. Ali

Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses, Kristen O'Neal

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

The Never Tilting World, (Series), Rin Chupeco

The No-Girlfriend Rule, Christen Randall

Nona the Ninth, (series), Tamsyn Muir

Noor, Nnedi Okorafor

Odder Still, (Series), D. N. Bryn

Once Stolen, (Series), D. N. Bryn

One For All, Lillie Lainoff

On the Edge of Gone, Corinne Duyvis

Origami Striptease, Peggy Munson

Our Bloody Pearl, (Series), D. N. Bryn

Out of My Mind, Sharon M. Draper

P-T:

Parable of the Sower, (Series), Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Talents, (Series), Octavia E. Butler

Percy Jackson & the Olympians, (series), Rick Riordan

Pomegranate, Helen Elaine Lee

The Prey of Gods, Nicky Drayden

The Pursuit Of..., (Series), Courtney Milan

The Queen's Thief, (Series), Megan Whalen Turner

The Quiet and the Loud, Helena Fox

The Raging Quiet, Sheryl Jordan

The Reanimator's Heart, (Series), Kara Jorgensen

The Remaking of Corbin Wale, Joan Parrish

Roll with It, (Series), Jamie Sumner

Russian Doll, (Series), Cristelle Comby

The Second Mango, (Series), Shira Glassman

Scar of the Bamboo Leaf, Sieni A.M

Shaman, (Series), Noah Gordon

Sick Kids in Love, Hannah Moskowitz

The Silent Boy, Lois Lowry

Six of Crows, (Series) Leigh Bardugo

Sizzle Reel, Carlyn Greenwald

The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Kowal

The Stagsblood Prince, (Series), Gideon E. Wood

Stake Sauce, Arc 1: The Secret Ingredient is Love. No, Really, (Series), RoAnna Sylver

Stars in Your Eyes, Kacen Callender [Expected release: Oct 2023]

The Storm Runner, (Series), J. C. Cervantes

Stronger Still, (Series), D. N. Bryn

Sweetblood, Pete Hautman

Tarnished Are the Stars, Rosiee Thor

The Theft of Sunlight, (Series), Intisar Khanani

Throwaway Girls, Andrea Contos

Top Ten, Katie Cotugno

Torch, Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Treasure, Rebekah Weatherspoon

Turtles All the Way Down, John Green

U-Z:

Unlicensed Delivery, Will Soulsby-McCreath Expected release October 2023

Verona Comics, Jennifer Dugan

Vorkosigan Saga, (Series), Lois McMaster Bujold

We Are the Ants, (Series), Shaun David Hutchinson

The Weight of Our Sky, Hanna Alkaf

Whip, Stir and Serve, Caitlyn Frost and Henry Drake

The Whispering Dark, Kelly Andrew

Wicked Sweet, Chelsea M. Cameron

Wonder, (Series), R. J. Palacio

Wrong to Need You, (Series), Alisha Rai

Ziggy, Stardust and Me, James Brandon

Graphic Novels:

A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability, (Non-Fiction), A. Andrews

Constellations, Kate Glasheen

Dancing After TEN: a graphic memoir, (memoir) (Non-Fiction), Vivian Chong, Georgia Webber

Everything Is an Emergency: An OCD Story in Words Pictures, (memoir) (Non-Fiction), Jason Adam Katzenstein

Frankie's World: A Graphic Novel, (Series), Aoife Dooley

The Golden Hour, Niki Smith

Nimona, N. D. Stevenson

The Third Person, (memoir) (Non-Fiction), Emma Grove

Magazines and Anthologies:

Artificial Divide, (Anthology), Robert Kingett, Randy Lacey

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #175: Grandmother-nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds, (Article), R. B. Lemburg

Defying Doomsday, (Anthology), edited by Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench

Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, (short story) (anthology), Seiko Tanabe

Nothing Without Us, edited by Cait Gordon and Talia C. Johnson

Nothing Without Us Too, edited by Cait Gordon and Talia C. Johnson

Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens, (Anthology), edited by Marieke Nijkamp

Uncanny #24: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, (Anthology), edited by: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Dominik Parisien et al.

Uncanny #30: Disabled People Destroy Fantasy, (Anthology), edited by: Nicolette Barischoff, Lisa M. Bradley, Katharine Duckett

We Shall Be Monsters, edited by Derek Newman-Stille

Manga:

Perfect World, (Series), Rie Aruga

The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud, (Short Stories), Kuniko Tsurita

Non-Fiction:

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education, Jay Timothy Dolmage

A Disability History of the United States, Kim E, Nielsen

The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes beyond Access, David Gissen

Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism, Elsa Sjunneson

Black Disability Politics, Sami Schalk

Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety, Dr. Elinor Greenburg

Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Eli Clare

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability, Barker, Clare and Stuart Murray, editors.

The Capacity Contract: Intellectual Disability and the Question of Citizenship, Stacy Clifford Simplican

Capitalism and Disability, Martha Russel

Care work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Catatonia, Shutdown and Breakdown in Autism: A Psycho-Ecological Approach, Dr Amitta Shah

The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, Esme Weijun Wang

Crip Kinship, Shayda Kafai

Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook, Jules Sherred

Culture – Theory – Disability: Encounters between Disability Studies and Cultural Studies, Anne Waldschmidt, Hanjo Berressem, Moritz Ingwersen

Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition, Liat Ben-Moshe

Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, Emily Ladau

Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Disability Pride: Dispatches from a Post-ADA World, Ben Mattlin

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From the Twenty-First Century, Alice Wong

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability and Making Space, Amanda Leduc

Every Cripple a Superhero, Christoph Keller

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, Eli Clare

Feminist Queer Crip, Alison Kafer

The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Growing Up Disabled in Australia, Carly Findlay

It's Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability, Kelly Davio

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

Language Deprivation & Deaf Mental Health, Neil S. Glickman, Wyatte C. Hall

The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, Elizabeth Barnes

My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World That Is Sick, Lyndsey Medford

No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s, Sarah F. Rose

Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment, James I. Charlton

The Pedagogy of Pathologization Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus, Subini Ancy Annamma

Physical Disability in British Romantic Literature, Essaka Joshua

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, Raymond Luczak, Editor.

The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability, Jasbir K. Puar

Sitting Pretty, (memoir), Rebecca Taussig

Sounds Like Home: Growing Up Black & Deaf in the South, Mary Herring Wright

Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness: How to Stay Sane and Live One Step Ahead of Your Symptoms, Ilana Jacqueline

The Things We Don't Say: An Anthology of Chronic Illness Truths, Julie Morgenlender

Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability, Scott T. Smith, José Alaniz 

Uncomfortable Labels: My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman, (memoir), Laura Kate Dale

Unmasking Autism, Devon Price

The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe, Ellen Clifford

We've Got This: Essays by Disabled Parents, Eliza Hull

Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life, (memoir) (essays) Alice Wong

Picture Books:

A Day With No Words, Tiffany Hammond, Kate Cosgrove-

A Friend for Henry, Jenn Bailey, Mika Song

Ali and the Sea Stars, Ali Stroker, Gillian Reid

All Are Welcome, Alexandra Penfold, Suzanne Kaufman

All the Way to the Top, Annette Bay Pimentel, Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, Nabi Ali

Can Bears Ski?, Raymond Antrobus, Polly Dunbar

Different -- A Great Thing to Be!, Heather Alvis, Sarah Mensinga

Everyone Belongs, Heather Alvis, Sarah Mensinga

I Talk Like a River, Jordan Scott, Sydney Smith

Jubilee: The First Therapy Horse and an Olympic Dream, K. T. Johnson, Anabella Ortiz

Just Ask!, Sonia Sotomayor, Rafael López

Kami and the Yaks, Andrea Stenn Stryer, Bert Dodson

My Three Best Friends and Me, Zulay, Cari Best, Vanessa Brantley-Newton

Rescue & Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship, Jessica Kensky, Patrick Downes, Scott Magoon

Sam's Super Seats, Keah Brown, Sharee Miller

Small Knight and the Anxiety Monster, Manka Kasha

We Move Together, Kelly Fritsch, Anne McGuire, Eduardo Trejos

We're Different, We're the Same, and We're All Wonderful!, Bobbi Jane Kates, Joe Mathieu

What Happened to You?, James Catchpole, Karen George

The World Needs More Purple People, Kristen Bell, Benjamin Hart, Daniel Wiseman

You Are Enough: A Book About Inclusion, Margaret O'Hair, Sofia Sanchez, Sofia Cardoso

You Are Loved: A Book About Families, Margaret O'Hair, Sofia Sanchez, Sofia Cardoso

The You Kind of Kind, Nina West, Hayden Evans

Zoom!, Robert Munsch, Michael Martchenko

Plays:

Peeling, Kate O'Reilly

---

With an extra special thank you to @parafoxicalk @craftybookworms @lunod @galaxyaroace @shub-s @trans-axolotl @suspicious-whumping-egg @ya-world-challenge @fictionalgirlsworld @rubyjewelqueen @some-weird-queer-writer @jacensolodjo @cherry-sys @dralthon @thebibliosphere @brynwrites @aj-grimoire @shade-and-sun @ceanothusspinosus @edhelwen1 @waltzofthewifi @spiderleggedhorse @sleepneverheardofher @highladyluck @oftheides @thecouragetobekind @nopoodles @lupadracolis @elusivemellifluence @creativiteaa @moonflowero1 @the-bi-library @chronically-chaotic-cryptid for your absolutely fantastic contributions!

---

Submit a Book:

#disability resources #disability #chronic illness #disability books #books #resources #book list #disability literature #literature #disability representation #disabled characters #information #informative #disability education #disability history #disability rights #please add to this #to be updated #long post

[ardafanonarch]

maybe a silly one: thoughts on crablor?

Crab-Lore

For those who have yet to encounter him, “Crablor” is a portmanteau of “Crab” and “Maglor”, i.e., the crab Maglor became after his many ages of wandering the shores in pain and regret. Crablor is fanon. It was born here.

As @faustandfurious wrote in that very post there is no canon about Maglor’s eventual fate. (You can read about the various ways Maglor ended, or didn’t, here).

But the idea of Elven crabification in general does have some basis in canon!

In his writings on Elven fading in Morgoth’s Ring, Tolkien talks about the fëa (spirit) consuming the hröa (body):

As ages passed the dominance of their fëar ever increased, 'consuming' their bodies (as has been noted). The end of this process is their 'fading', as Men have called it; for the body becomes at last, as it were, a mere memory held by the fëa; and that end has already been achieved in many regions of Middle-earth, so that the Elves are indeed deathless and may not be destroyed or changed. The History of Middle-earth Vol. 10: Morgoth’s Ring, The Later Quenta Silmarillion, ‘Laws B’ (p. 219)

This was not, however, Tolkien’s last thought on the matter. In a marginal note on the entry for hröa published in the linguistic journal Parmasan Eldalamberon (Vol. 12), Tolkien revisits the metaphysical implications of Elven fading:

What of a hröa that resists fading? It is not then consumed by the fëa, but compressed by the process of containing it; by which it will in time be overcome, though at great expense to the strength of the fëa, for this at last takes possession of the changed hröa as its ‘casement’.

What?

This note Tolkien clearly did not intend to be seen or interpreted by anyone but himself, and its meaning is rather opaque. What he seems to be describing, however, is a slow process of shrinking and shapeshifting, from body to “casement”, in cases where a hröa resists fading.

Casement as in… shell? As in… exoskeleton? Elves who resist fading become crabs?

Okay, so that probably wasn’t what Tolkien meant, but I can find nothing to contradict it. Let us assume, for our amusement, that the hröa - casement transformation is, or can be, into a crab.

The next question is: Might Maglor have resisted fading?

If one imagines his fate in the published Silmarillion as self-punitive (a reading supported by the alternate versions in which he does in fact commit suicide like Maedhros), it would makes sense that he might resist fading as a sort of release from his punishment. Or perhaps the metaphysics of the Oath had some interference in his ability to fade in the usual fashion.

In which case, Maglor may very well have been one of the Elves who became a crab. Or something like it.

ETA: Happy April Fool's.

#crablor #maglor #elven fading #history of middle-earth #parmasan eldalamberon #happy april 1

[bowenoke]

ok i promise ill stop after this but A) cassandra has to be straight or superhell for gay people is canon in fantasy high which is too funny to be true and

B) they loved each other so much that even in a deathless death, hearing the name Cassandra is enough to offer some momentary reprieve. like they must've been so in love. not enough to save each other from it all. but enough that a cleric could perform a miracle on a god.

#fhjy liveblog #fhjy spoilers #OK gonna stop spamming sorry my brain is so full

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 56 – Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

I consider myself a pretty big fan of Gladstone’s, but until now I’d only ever touched his standalone works – I was previously a bit put off by the length of the Craft Sequence and so never actually tried it. So, thank you to the people who recommended I give it a try anyway! Despite being the first in a series, Three Parts Dead is a perfectly fine self-contained story and not relying on you reading the sequels to finish anything important. While it’s not the best thing of Gladstone’s I’ve read (Last Exit my beloved), it’s not the worst, either.

The book takes place in an industrial fantasy setting about a generation out from the apocalyptic, centuries-long war between the old gods and the ‘deathless kings’ – human sorcerers who had learned to master magic such that they could face them and tear the world apart in the crossfire. Tara, the hero, graduated from basically-Hogwarts entirely because there’s a binding preventing the school from doing bodily harm to its students – the next second they literally threw her out a window at 10,000 feet. The story follows her as she’s hired as a junior associate helping a world-famous lawyer/archmage as she’s hired by the church of Kas Everburning to investigate the sudden and mysterious death of their god. What follows are several hundred pages of convoluted scheming, legal proceedings, forensic accounting, and bloody magical duels and assassinations.

There are a few twists I genuinely didn’t see coming, the plot overall hangs together very well, and the pacing was just about perfect for the kind-of pulpy mystery/adventure story it was. Overall just a great time reading it.

That said, the setting’s probably the main thing to really sell people on this book. It’s just fun, and actually pretty damn original. The basic conceits are that a) magic is real, and b) so is capitalism. Kas Everburning is the beloved god and protector of the city, and also a highly leveraged legal entity loaning power across the globe whose death would catastrophically destabilize the global financial/metaphysical/political system. Mages can fly and raise zombies and enscroll people, but it’s all done in the idiom and with the vocabulary of contract law.

Beyond the basic conceit, Gladstone just clearly delights in layering weirdness on weirdness. Vitally, he does actually have a bit of restraint with the exposition – the book’s full of off-hand comments about different places and institutions that make you (me, anyway) incredibly curious about what the hell their deal is, but the actual explanations are restricted to what’s actually relevant to the plot and what the characters actually need to know. I still really want to know what’s up with King Clock or the Iskari or a half dozen other things, though. So, top-tier worldbuilding.

The themes are not exactly subtle, but I very appreciate that Gladstone lets them mostly remain as worldbuilding subtext and manages to make them feel like they emerge very naturally. I appreciate the slight restraint it takes to let the reader draw their own conclusions about the fact that the city’s police force is so empowered by strength and lack of need for doubt when on the clock that it’s literally addictive, or that one of the main antagonists is a brilliant older academic whose masterwork is a system where his star pupils (including a disproportionate number of attractive young women) are magically networked together to achieve incredible results he can take credit for while their lives and personalities are drained away to nothing. Being able to literalize the subtext a bit is half the fun of secondary wrld fantasy, after all.

Anyway, yes, very fun read. Four stars.

#book review #sff #three parts dead #craft sequence #max gladstone

[filmnoirsbian]

Hi !! I was wondering if you had any book recs/favorite books? Things that you think of as inspiration or just plain like? Genuinely curious. <3 im in love with your work btw i spent the other day binging your patreon

Some favorites that deeply impacted me from a young age up into teenagedom: the Animorphs series by K. A. Applegate, Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, Oddly Enough by Bruce Coville, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Little Sister by Kara Dalkey, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage, Piratica by Tanith Lee, the Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, Holes by Louis Sachar, The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg, Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Mori, The Sea-Wolf by Jack London, Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech, Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins, Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath, Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan, The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg, The Iliad and Odyssey (allegedly) by Homer, The Táin by many people, Harlem by Walter Dean Myers, Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan, The Wall and the Wing by Laura Ruby, The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkein, The Hainish Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin, Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, The Ethical Vampire series by Susan Hubbard, The Howl Series by Diana Wynne Jones, the Curseworkers series by Holly Black, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters, An Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, Beloved by Toni Morrison, A Stir of Bones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, World War Z by Max Brooks, This is Not A Drill by K. A. Holt, Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Crush by Richard Siken, Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo, Devotions by Mary Oliver, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Some favorites read more recently: The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, Engine Summer by John Crowley, Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, The Princess Bride by William Goldman, Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix, Reprieve by James Han Mattson, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Kindred by Octavia Butler, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, Station Eleven by Emily St. John-Mandel, The Crown Ain't Worth Much by Hanif Abdurraqib, The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica, The Girl with All the Gifts by Mike Carey, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, She had some horses by Joy Harjo, Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón, The King Must Die by Mary Renault, Books of Blood by Clive Barker, Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, Cassandra by Christa Wolfe

Plays: The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Electra by Sophocles, Los Reyes by Julio Cortázar, Angels in America by Tony Kushner, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco, The Trojan Women by Euripides, Salome by Oscar Wilde, Girl on an Altar by Marina Carr, Fences by August Wilson, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, Our Town by Thornton Wilder, Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond

Graphic novels: The Crow by James O'Barr, DMZ by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli, Eternals (2021) by Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribić, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and John Higgins, My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris, Maus by Art Spiegelman, Tank Girl by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

#watchmen is difficult to recommend on account of the misogyny but beyond that it really did change my life lol #asks #an open window #book recs #also i know technically eternals isn't a graphic novel it's a comic run directly related to the avengers and such at large BUT #it is sooo so good and u don't really have to know much abt what the avengers losers are up to in order to understand it #i didn't include any other favorite comic runs bc they require other things to be read for context. ur welcome.

[journeysfable]

Ok so I found some interesting stuff I think?

I was just watching a clip and Fit was sent on a mission and found this book full of outpost names and I paused and searched them up and...

all of Sector A is named after mythical utopian (except for 1) locations from Slavic folklore and all of Sector B is named after Norse gods I think.

Vitor-A name that means champion. Also maybe a mountain in Slavic mythology that was made in heaven and frequently changes locations Bujan-(Buyan) A mythical island paradise that appears and reappears with the tide. Opona-(the kingdom of Opona) A utopia where peasants are no longer oppressed and live happily under the rule of a pure and just tsar Viraj-(Iriy) The place human souls in the form of birds fly to for winter Nawia-(Nav) The underworld. Basically the result of Christianity's influence on Iriy. Also its where souls that died tragic deaths go. They're jealous of the living and become monsters. Tyr-The Norse god of war Wodan-Odin. Donar-Thor Mani-Possibly the Norse god of the moon? Frija-Either Freya or Frigg

-

I really want to talk about Sector A cause it has some really strong connections to Quesadilla Island.

(pretty much all the info I got was from wikipedia, excluding Vitor, which I only found one source for)

Vitor is a mysterious mountain that changes location with the wind. Apparently dragons live on it. And it was created in heaven by the god of thunder and war, Perun.

Bujan is really interesting. It reminds me of Quesadilla Island a lot. It's a paradise and home to three brothers, The West, East, and North Wind. It's also home to The Deathless, who hid his immortality/soul in an egg and then hid that egg in a tree. It's also said the island was made in heaven by Perun. There's also a legend that there's a stone with healing properties guarded by a bird and serpent. (also note that an "strong east wind" was a reason for evacuation of the outpost. (If the two white and one black Curucuhos are brothers that correspond to the wind, did one of them go berserk?))

The Kingdom of Opona is a utopia where all the peasants are no longer oppressed and live happily under a white Tsar.

Vyraj is the place where human souls, in the form of birds, go to for winter, before returning to be reborn (sometimes the returning souls are carried by storks and nightjars)

So yea I just think all this is interesting.

Also this probably is a coincidence but Odin is charge of preparing fallen warriors, the Einherjar, for Ragnarok and for a split second I started wondering if the island was like Valhalla and that's why it's so fucked up and full of things that can one shot you if you aren't wearing armor. Or maybe Etoiles is like an Einherjar. He keeps being told to protect something... Or maybe I need to chill out and read an actual fucking book for a little bit.

Small thing but I spelled Einherjar right on my first try :D am proud of myself.

#qsmp

[secret-third-thing]

Chapter 4: Fathers, Be Good to Your Daughters

Another Eris chapter. I swear this isn't filler. Lot of fun lil details for the people with their conspiracy boards at home 🧡

Eris x OC | Rated E | Read on AO3 | Read on tumblr below the cut

Read on Tumblr: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

Gianna of Montesere's life is shattered when her family becomes the target of a chilling assassination attempt. Forced into exile at her estranged father's side in the Autumn court, she embarks on a journey that thrusts her into the treacherous depths of Prythian's most perilous family. Amidst the dazzling highs and heart-wrenching lows of cutthroat politics, Gianna discovers an unexpected love in Eris Vanserra that turns her world upside down.

Warnings: Typical violence and scheming, gambling, old-school slut shaming (nothing in this chapter other than more dead bird talk)

If you want to be on a taglist, let me know. I forgot to start one earlier.

No one stopped Eris as he left Forest House and walked to the estate’s perimeter, where the trees of the old Autumn Wood gave way to his father’s home. Here, the trees sparkled in the waning sun of the day; the leaves glimmering brilliant reds, oranges, and greens.

The forest was far older than his ancestral home, far older than the fae themselves. While there were various settlements throughout the Court, they had not been founded through some resource-based strategy, instead emerging where the trees had yielded to the fae. Any place the woods did not want them, their kind did not survive.

Advisor Bassell had not been wrong about what haunted the woods. A handful of Autumn’s tomes, located deep in the royal archives, documented ancient creatures that had once ruled Autumn. Eris had only seen the documents once when he had accompanied Beron into the deep recesses of the archives to search for mentions of some ancient artifact - a sword. From what he recalled, most of the ancients here had been the Daglan, the deathless monsters who had hunted his kind for sport. Several fae in Autumn would swear they could hear the call of the hunting horn echoing within the wood. And many young fae who had wandered into the thicket at night had never been found again. Beron insisted there wasn’t anything notable to report, of course.

Eris walked along the edge of the trees and past piles of birds until the servants removing the creatures were far behind him. He’d ask them questions later when they had finished and weren’t working under the pressure of his father’s watchful eye.

The songbirds that usually warbled at the end of the day were silent, now lifeless on the ground, leaving the surrounding area unusually quiet. Though he wasn’t frightened, Eris wished he had brought his hounds along. Even if his father didn’t believe in ancient beings, he certainly did; He knew what creatures roamed the woods of Spring. He had heard of what monsters the Night Court’s prison held. Eris was certain their kin were here as well.

As the mossy roof of the Forest House vanished from view, Eris noted less fallen birds in the area. He was confident that the servants had yet to make their way out here. It was as though the animals were aiming towards the estate. The cicadas had emerged and perished rather quickly, but the birds…. They had all been swarming Forest House. Something for him to investigate later.

He spotted a finch splayed out on the ground. Eris picked up the tiny thing, cradling it gently in his hands. The feathers of its wings were soft against his fingers. And yet Eris could sense some kind of magic on the bird, like residue. Something old… deep magic… Daglan magic. Bassell’s words echoed in his brain. Once his father’s meeting was done, he’d need to follow up with the advisor, probably tomorrow.

A rustle in the woods interrupted Eris’s train of thought. The male froze, still as a predator, and scanned the woods for any sign of movement. No other animals were in the area, nothing climbing the trees or leaping from branches. Eris stepped forward to the edge of the wood, almost at the threshold, where the roots of the trees emerged from the ground and twisted around each other.

The noise happened again, and Eris gazed into the depths of the forest beyond where he stood. He felt something staring back. Eris lifted a foot to step on a root and approached the creature, but the air seemed to crackle around him. Not quite a warning, but not an invitation. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and his legs were unable to move him forward or away - he was stuck.

“Show yourself,” Eris said, his own voice wavering. He willed his hand to move to the pummel of his dagger belted at his waist, but his body was frozen, still grasping the bird. There was no response. Instead, a gust of wind blew out from the forest, nearly knocking him back, and the scent of oak and sweet moss curled around him.

Eris scoured his brain for a reason, to understand what was happening, but almost as soon as he felt the thing’s presence, it vanished. The only evidence of it being there was a patch of dead foliage on the ground turned a dark, sooty black, as though someone had set the forest floor alight. The air now smelled of smoke. Eris dared to step forward and nudged the soot with his boot. It seemed like simple debris, save for the circling of magic, bitter and earthy, swirling around him.

Eris wasted no time, winnowing back to Forest House and shutting himself away in his study. No creature of the wood would find him here. The study was small, tucked away in a less used area of the manor, but it offered him respite from the endless pestering of courtiers and servants. He sat down in the plush chair of his desk and took a moment to appreciate the solitude.

Soon, Eris examined the finch, turning the creature over in his hands. The bird was still intact, with no apparent harm. If anything, it seemed like it had been frozen in time when its little heart stopped. Eris stroked its head gently. Had it known it would die, a soldier in some death god’s game? Or had it been a surprise?

As Eris sent a tendril of magic into the bird, he encountered resistance, as if the deep magic, as the advisors had dubbed it, wanted him out. He retreated and frowned. Eris tried his magic again, this time ever so gently, letting it seep in rather than prod. He felt the threads of the other magic open until it started weaving with his, trying to pull him into the tapestry of whatever spell had enthralled and killed the creature.

Someone knocked on his study door, and Eris yanked his magic from the bird. It felt like he was ripping a cloth in half, an unsettling, tearing sensation. Eris furrowed his brow and grimaced, wondering if it was safe to have the bird in here at all. After a beat, he set the bird on a cloth and then removed his gloves.

“Come in,” Eris said. The door creaked open, revealing Bassell. The brunette male stole a glance behind him into the hallway before stepping into Eris’s lavish study.

“I was hoping to have a moment alone,” Bassell said softly. Eris flicked his hand, and the door sealed shut, a protective ward shimmering so no one could walk in or listen to their conversation.

“What is it?” Eris asked. Bassell settled into the other chair at Eris’ desk, his eyes fixed on the brown bird between them. He reached to touch the creature, but then hesitated. Gone was the fierce debater from his father’s meeting.

“I stand by what I said before,” he murmured. “The magic in these animals predates the fae. It’s ancient. But why it’s woven into such common creatures, I can’t fathom.”

“Whatever the magic, it’s still active,” Eris said, tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair. “It reacts and attaches to living magic.”

“Like an arcane parasite,” Bassell said. “May I?” He gestured to the bird.

“Be my guest,” Eris replied. He cocked a brow and watched the male hover his hand over the creature. Bassell closed his eyes and clenched his jaw in concentration. Not a minute later, his hand wavered, and he pulled it back quite suddenly.

“Fascinating,” he said with a shiver. He massaged his palm, likely having experienced the same ripping that Eris had.

“Is it?” Eris asked. “I’d think you’d be more concerned.”

“My apologies,” Bassell said. “It is concerning, but this kind of magic differs from what we know and use. I’m surprised your father isn’t more interested. This power is difficult to control, and more difficult to counter.”

“Give him time. My father will be if he isn’t already,” Eris said, as he watched the male continue to prod at the finch. “How much more do you know?”

Bassell paused, the bird giving off an eerie glow from whatever magic he was using.

“Not much at the moment, but I can send a report when my healers finish their research.” Bassell pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gently wrapped it around the finch and bought it closer to him. He scanned its body, then turned it over. The eerie glow on the bird stopped. Eris sighed. He might as well give the finch to Bassell.

“I expect you to keep what you relay to my father to a minimum. And if you cannot, let me know what he knows.”

“You have my word.” Bassell replied. He was staring straight into the beady, black eyes of the creature. He didn’t seem like he was leaving any time soon, so Eris cleared his throat.

“Is this really why you’re here? Certainly, this conversation could have waited until tomorrow.”

“Well, yes… and no,” Bassell said. His eyes flickered away from the bird to the portrait of the Vanserra family hanging on the far wall behind the heir and then back to Eris. He gave a thin-lipped smile.

“What is it?” Eris pressed again. Bassell was always so hesitant.

“My daughter...” Bassell began, “She’s coming to Autumn.”

“I didn’t know you had a family,” Eris stated plainly. Well, most of his father’s advisors had a family: a wife, children. It was the respectable thing to do - something the Autumn Court valued. But Bassell never brought a wife with him to court. No children, young or grown, had been introduced to the Vanserras. It was unusual, but Eris hadn’t found a reason to pry until now.

“I don’t. She’s the result of an affair. Her mother is... noteworthy, and I was a fool for not marrying her,” Bassell said. The male possessed the slightest tinge of pink on his cheeks. His eyes were dancing across the room, hiding from Eris’ narrowed stare.

“I hope you are not implying what you seem to be,” Eris said.

Bassell put his hands up, horror plain on his face. “Oh, absolutely not,” he sputtered. “I-I would never presume -“

“Then do get to your point. It’s getting late and I have other things to do, Bassell,” Eris interjected, his voice even and cold.

“Gianna,” Bassell said. “Her name is Gianna.”

Eris frowned at this, waiting for Bassell to continue. It did not matter to him what she was named.

“Gianna is coming to Autumn sometime next week. Her mother is the spymaster,” Bassell said. “But she’s being accompanied by the emissary, not her mother.” This fact obviously meant something to the advisor. His brows were furrowed, and he seemed almost frazzled by the information.

“And does my father know?”

“He informed us after you left.”

Eris paused at this. It was peculiar for his father to allow a strange female from the continent into their court, especially one from Montesere. He recalled from several meetings ago that his father had been in contact with emissaries from the kingdoms on the continent, but a Gianna was not mentioned as someone of interest. It was equally strange that this news had not come from Bassell, the female’s father, but from his father... unless the advisor really did have an awful relationship with his former lover, something that Eris could at least understand.

“What else did he say?” he asked Bassell.

“Nothing. Only that she was staying at Forest House. I’ll be staying here as well.”

“How is this, at all, relevant to the birds?” Eris asked, suspicion lacing his words.

“I want to make a deal,” Bassell replied.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Ensure my daughter stays out of trouble, and I’ll use all my resources to help you understand what’s happening in Autumn.” Bassell shifted in his seat. His shoulders were now squared, eyes boring into Eris’s with such confidence Eris hadn’t seen in the male before.

“I am not babysitting a spoiled brat from the continent,” Eris said, his patience wearing thin.

Bassell leaned over the desk, dangerously close. His eyes gleamed. “I know your goals. Use her as leverage, if you must. She has her family’s ear,” Bassell urged, barely above a whisper. Eris refused to acknowledge the implication.

“And did you offer this deal to my father as well? Is this why you sit at his table?” Eris asked. “Did you sell your daughter’s freedom for a chance at power? I recall you come from nothing.” Bassell flinched at Eris’s words.

“I did what any good father would do,” Bassell said. His jaw was set, and he grasped the arms of his chair.

“She was likely fine in Montesere,” Eris spat back. “What does my father intend now you’ve dragged her into this?”

“He only knows her heritage and offered her a place to stay. What else he plans is beyond my knowledge, Eris.”

The room fell into a tense silence, the weight of their unspoken agreement settling between them. Either Bassell was the worst politician he had met this century, or his father set another scheme in motion, one Eris somehow missed.

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t get herself killed,” Eris said. The only kind of agreement he’d willingly make. Bassell seemed satisfied with this and leaned back in his chair, a smile creeping onto his face.

“I think you’ll find the Monteserrans more interesting than you think.”

“If by interesting you mean scandalizing,” Eris said. “I can’t think of a group my father would hate more.”

“But what will you think?”

Eris scoffed at his answer, but Bassell simply hummed, lost in thought. 

#stt writing #eris vanserra #acotar #autumn court #pro eris vanserra #eris acotar #acotar fic #eris vanserra fanfiction

[ace-exploring]

Do I have any grayace book recs?

Short answer: no.

Here's why: I primarily read either YA or very adult smut. In YA, the characters are usually experiencing their 'firsts' and very few of them have the self-awareness or maturity to know that they are any kind of ace. YA is still under-represented in gay and sapphic lit, and 'ace' feels even more niche than that. A lack of attraction doesn't really mean anything as a teen, because a) everyone develops differently and b) it's so much more romantic if the love interest is your first love ever (barring unrequited crushes). If you're sixteen and experiencing sexual attraction for the first time, is it because that's completely normal or is it because you've met the exact person that you're sexually attracted to? (please read the rest of this post before you jump on me, I promise I go into this more and I am not erasing teen aces! I am only speaking from MY experience as an adult reader of teen books.)

Teen books with asexual but not aromantic main characters that I have read and can recommend:

What We Devour by Linsey Miller, however this also goes heavy into self-harm as a form of magic so maybe tread lightly if you're a teen, speak to an adult about it. Incidentally, THIS was the book that first triggered the idea that maybe my experience wasn't mainstream. I'm not sure if the main character is graysexual: I need to read it again.

Deathless Divide (Dread Nation #2) by Justina Ireland, but read the first one, too, because it's awesome. Also, I can't specifically remember if the character (Katherine) is aromantic as well, it's been a few years since I read it, and I read it before I realised I was ace, so I didn't actually pick up on Katherine's asexuality until much later.

I'm grayace and I didn't figure it out until I was 35, so I don't really expect teens to know and understand asexuality. I am still amazed that people younger than 18 identify as asexual, and that's purely because they're still in school and likely haven't travelled widely or met a whole bunch of people, so how do they even know who they're attracted to? Also, I'm asexual, so I never experienced sexual attraction as a teen and part of me still thinks it's all just an elaborate hoax. When I was 18 I had no idea I was asexual. I just thought everyone else were complete horndogs and I was the only normal person around.

That leads me to the very adult smut I read. I also don't expect to find a bunch of asexual people in adult smut. This is because, well, they're horny motherf*ckers. I'm still waiting (wading) to find characters who have an aesthetic but not sexual attraction. Unfortunately, most of the adult smut I read are very heavy on the sexual attraction and not so much into romantic attraction or development, let alone emotional or aesthetic attraction.

And part of the reason for this is because if you want to write a romance book, especially a smut book, with an asexual character, that WILL turn a LOT of mainstream romance readers off, because they do not understand what asexuality is. They think it means sex-repulsed.

Adult books with an asexual but not aromantic main character that I have read and can recommend:

Role Playing by Cathie Yardley - demisexual biromantic male lead.

More Than I Can Bear (Ursa Shifters #4) by Sam Hall - demisexual female lead, but she has multiple love interests so this is NOT a mainstream romance.

I also want to mention BUT DO NOT RECOMMEND AT ALL the Fifty Shades of Grey books, because I believe Anna actually is graysexual. Until she met Christian at age 21, she had literally never been attracted to anyone else before, nor experienced any kind of sexual feelings. I identify with that HARD, having had sex for the first time when I was 22. I have not read, nor will I ever read these books, and I do not recommend them to anyone, but I do think this could have been an amazing opportunity for an actually asexual character to be thrust into the mainstream. Now, this book is actually about an abuse victim and her rich and handsome abuser, so please do not read it expecting to find ace rep. This is my headcanon and the author does not have the skill to present her as asexual, relying instead on her naivety and inexperience as part of the titillation and submissive angle.

On a side note, I am a writer, and I am currently trying to figure out how to sell an asexual/graysexual main female character in an adult smut book while appealing to the masses. It's not the writing part that I'm struggling with (see this whole-assed post I just wrote). It's the marketing.

#asexual #asexuality #ace #asexual pride #lgbtqia+ #acepride #greyace #grayace #exploring asexuality #pride #asexual heteroromantic #married asexual #asexual post #asexual positivity #sex favourable asexual

[julictcapulet]

NARI SEONG &. SAMIR AUDEN — “shakespeare had it right all along. love will kill you in the end.” for @asystcle

james pradier, pan and bacchante (1834) // karese burrows, persephone writes a poem // samson and delilah (1949) dir. cecil b. demille // richard siken, a primer for the small weird loves // the royal ballet, romeo and juliet (2021) // richard siken, wishbone // hélène cixous, stigmata: escaping texts; “love of the wolf” // tesis (1996) dir. alejandro amenábar // catherynne m. valente, deathless // trista mateer, the dogs i have kissed; “for the one who loved my hands more than anything else”

#(nari and samir. you are the knife i turn inside myself; this my dear is love) #(nari seong. the white widow) #parallels #mine #💖 mutually assured destruction 💖

[queerfandommiscellany]

Worldbuilding for The Red String of Tim Drake Is A Fucking Liar

The fic is here

1.       Basic rule differences

a.       Not everybody has soulmates

b.       Not everybody who has a soulmate only has one at a time

c.       Soulmates do not have to be romantic—they are often assumed to be, because of amatonormativity, but it’s pretty common to have platonic bonds or completely ignored bonds. Soulmates are an option, that’s all.

d.       Soulmates do not have to be people—they can’t be non-sapient things or animals as far as anyone knows, but someone can be soulmates with a city or a song or a piece of art. It’s weird, but it does happen. The average citizen doesn’t know this, but doctors will.

e.       Not everybody who has a soulmate, knows they have a soulmate.

2.       Types of soul bond

a.       Red string of fate – grows more taut the closer you are geographically

b.       First words – the first words (if any) that your soulmate says are on your body, may appear only after meeting

c.       Last words – the last words (if any) that your sm says are on your body, may only appear after meeting

d.       Color touch – blooms of color appear on your body where your sm has touched

e.       Countdown – each sm has a countdown on their body in unspecified units until either they meet their sm or the sm dies. These are two different variants, just indistinguishable until meeting/death.

f.        Color vision – you are completely monochrome colorblind until you meet your sm

g.       Tattoo – each sm has a tattoo-like pattern, which move to interact when sms are in contact

h.       Shared skin – your skin shares the same marks

i.         Deathless – sms cannot kill each other, often combined with another

j.         Emo bond – sms share strong emotions without context

k.       Shared dreams – sms appear in each other’s dreams

l.         Memory flash – upon first physical contact, each sm experiences the best and worst day of their sm’s life, past and future

m.     Moon compass – every time a sm throws something under the full moon, it moves toward their sm

n.       Touch bond – sms each feel noxious stimuli and skin-on-skin contact from the other sm

3.       List of known soul bonds

a.       Bruce Wayne has a touch bond with the city of Gotham (he does not realize this, but it’s true)

b.       Alfred used to be soulmates with Martha and Thomas Wayne via a countdown-to-death bond, and is now alone. Martha and Thomas had something else going on between them.

c.       Dick simply does not have a soulmate

d.       Barbara has memory flash bond (angst!), but has not met hers yet and does not particularly want to pursue it

e.       Jason has a primarily platonic color touch? bond with Roy, who is also his boyfriend. They are both also dating Starfire, but Kori has no metaphysical ties to them

f.        Tim has a touch bond with Danny (and later, both will have a bond with Kon)

g.       Cass and Steph are soulmates via a skin marks bond

h.       Damien is developing the red string of fate with Jon Kent (and refuses to acknowledge it)

i.         Jack and Maddie share a touch bond, Maddie has a color vision bond with Vlad, and all three of them share a no-kill bond

j.         Roy and Jason with a touch bond is A Story For Another Time because Yikes ™

k.        Sam Manson does not have a soulmate (or possibly has a moon compass bond she refuses to interact with because she would HATE that and it would be hilarious)

l.         Tucker sure has somebody’s last words imprinted on his ankle. It’s like an ENTIRE paragraph. Possibly two. He does not know whose. (It might be Danny’s, but also that would be a lot of soulmates for one kid... Hm. I have not decided.)

#The Red String of Tim Drake Is A Fucking Liar #TRSOTDIAFL #dc x dp #danny phantom x tim drake #dead tired #soulmates but make it less amatonormative

[bestworstcase]

i do think the key to how things will fall out regarding death on remnant is the jabberwalker, bc like

the brothers created death by creating him

the god of light, fearing they had disrupted the balance, tried to get rid of him. the god of darkness refused to countenance this, and they fought about it.

they leave the ever after. jabber remains, implying one of three possibilities: 1. dark ‘won’ the argument and both brothers agreed to let jabber live, 2. dark recreated jabber one last time in secret before they left, or 3. jabber came back later a la modern humans. given light’s general inflexibility my inclination is 2 or 3.

in any case the tree seems to accept jabber as part of the ever after and the presence of his figurine on the blacksmith’s worktable implies that he will continue to exist in some form.

during the creation of remnant, the brothers agree that death will be permanent. their reasons are not yet fully clear, but light was the only one concerned about enforcing this rule; i think it is almost certainly a rule that originated with the god of light.

“but balance cannot be restored by force or calculation; true balance finds its own equilibrium”

force = destroying jabber. calculation = creating a new world with permadeath.

—

the god of light conceives of balance as a fragile order that must be meticulously maintained or else fall apart: his purpose, as he sees it, is to maintain order. everything he does comes from this. he cannot tolerate change because he lives in abject fear of ‘disrupting the balance’ again—as he believes they have already done once, by creating jabber.

so there is a certain narrative equivalency being drawn here between removing jabber and making death permanent for remnant. both decisions are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of what balance is.

thus the problem of death is not that it exists, per se. the problem is that death is the locus of light’s anxiety about change.

he first attempts to fix the ‘problem’ by getting rid of jabber, eliminating death. but he can’t, because dark won’t let him. so plan b is to leave the ever after and create a new world where death is part of the design—which isn’t contradictory at all if the intention is to prevent disruption of the existing order.

and something to keep in mind here is that 1. the cat and the jabberwalker were both deathless and unable to ascend, and 2. the brothers created death by mistake. for light these are crucial factors that must be accounted for in the new design. the only way to ensure that the disruptive introduction of death can never happen again is to include death from the start, transforming the accident into a deliberate choice.

which is all well and good except for one teeny, tiny wrinkle: for humans, death is not actually annihilative. they don’t simply cease to exist when they die.

i think it’s extremely likely that wasn’t supposed to happen. in a system where death is final and forever, spiritually immortal humans pose an obvious risk of disruption—and the ‘afterlife’ is evidently just permanent unconscious stasis, so it doesn’t seem like human souls were preserved for any purpose.

if your aim is to design an orderly system that can be maintained exactly as-is forever, and one of your core building blocks is that death is permanent, no exceptions, then why would you ever create beings capable of rising from the dead? you wouldn’t!

but once humans with immortal souls exist you’re sort of stuck with them, aren’t you? and i think that dilemma makes the most sense of why light’s afterlife is… like that. the souls of the dead ‘resting’ in everlasting oblivion in another realm that living humans cannot enter is the same in practice as annihilative death as long as every being capable of reaching the afterlife follows the stated rules.

the instant dark decides to make an exception, the whole system collapses. it reveals to salem that death isn’t inherently final or forever—that this is an arbitrary rule that the brothers decided, and one of them is open to the idea of changing those rules. then the gods make her immortal and light reprimands her for failing to understand how important his rules are (rules his brother just broke with no consequence except that light got mad), but ultimately what she learns is that the brothers are fallible and their rules can be changed. her rebellion is underpinned by this revelation.

the divine order suffers one small disruption and almost immediately, catastrophically fails, just as the god of light feared.

but that failure did not happen because of the disruption; the system failed because it was artificial. the brothers designed it a certain way and then light focused all of his efforts to keeping it that way, unchanging, forever—because their world wasn’t an ecosystem so much as it was a lawn in arizona. that lawn can only exist for as long as someone is doing the work to keep it on life support.

anyway the point i’m getting to is that remnant still isn’t in stable equilibrium, largely because of salem’s immortality and ozma’s reincarnations but also in the more general sense: the people of remnant are spiritually immortal but made to spend the vast majority of their existence essentially comatose because One God is afraid of change.

you can’t bring remnant into equilibrium by eliminating death: killing the jabberwalker isn’t the right answer. and you can’t restore balance by restoring the old system of divine rule and rigid adherence to the original design, because that system was a spindly papier-mâché machine that imploded the second somebody breathed on it wrong. and you can’t just yank the dead back to ameliorate your grief because that isn’t your choice to make, that’s an ethical position the narrative has made very clear.

which… really leaves changing the nature of the afterlife as the likeliest direction. death isn’t the problem, the afterlife of eternal stasis is. death isn’t the problem, light’s refusal to allow beings with immortal souls to keep going after their first life ends because the rules say death is final is the problem. because that finality is just… not reality. a person’s soul persists after death, ipso facto death isn’t the end.

but the reverse idea that death shouldn’t happen at all is not reality either. salem can’t die and her immortality is isolating and endlessly painful. ozma can’t stay dead and it’s eroded him down to a miserable shell of who he used to be. afterans choose to leave their memories behind when they ascend—nothing can happen to you in the tree except what you want to happen. without destruction, creation stagnates. death is part of life, not its enemy.

i doubt very much that the endgame here is for afteran ascension to be directly ported over into remnant—these are different worlds, different peoples, different systems, and while people from remnant can spiritually connect with the tree they are still fundamentally not part of it. afterans are emanations of the tree; humans and faunus are not. when afterans ascend they return to the roots of the tree and flow upward to blossom again from its crown, and that is, to put it mildly, not a system of reincarnation that physically makes sense for remnant, where things reproduce and have babies instead of new lives budding from the cosmic tree. if reincarnation brings equilibrium to remnant then it will presumably happen in a manner more natural to remnant’s people, and may not even involve passage through the tree at all.

it’s also not the only possibility: for example, there’s no reason that remnant’s afterlife has to be eternal sleep. it could just be… a new realm, a new world to live in after your life on remnant is ended. the brothers’ departure from the ever after into the boundless potential of the unknown is as likely a model as ascension. maybe remnant’s dead can’t return except by an act of god, but “gone from remnant forever” can coexist with the afterlife being… alive, as opposed to cold storage for inconveniently immortal souls.

basically the narrative setup isn’t toward rejecting death, it’s toward rejecting the state of affairs where you die and then millions of years later a god wakes you up and you have no awareness or memory of your existence since the moment of your death because you were kept unconscious until that god needed a servant. the point is that death isn’t the natural end of existence (because souls are immortal, on remnant as in the ever after) and remnant’s dead shouldn’t be held in stillness by light’s futile effort to make the facts of reality conform to his intended design.

the jabberwalker has existed for eons without bringing the ever after to ruin; the balance shifted, things changed a little, and life went on. remnant is existentially threatened by the factual reality of life-after-death only because light is so convinced of this danger that he is determined to prohibit it by any means necessary, including “demolish everything and start over from scratch.”

even a god can tilt at windmills.

#it’s also just darkly hilarious in a way #afterans are eternal #the cat was immortal #jabber was immortal and light TRIED and FAILED to unmake him #the b r o t h e r s a r e e t e r n a l #they make a world where death is supposed to be The End #and then fill it with beings #MADE OF THEMSELVES! #MADE WITH THEIR OWN NATURE! #light rattling the cosmic blueprints #what do you mean humans are eternal #WE AGREED THAT THINGS SHOULD DIE #THIS IS A DISASTER #dark like you SAID you wanted to make them like US #sorry for listening to you bro it won’t happen again #by the way i gave them magic instead of eradicating the grimm like you asked #they’re exploding beowolves with fireballs now it’s awesome #light like WHY ARE YOU THIS WAY #it’s hysterical. the divine blorbos

[bendingwind]

Fanfiction Year In Review

This was a special year for me, in that I wrote a lot after almost a decade of writing relatively little and believing I'd never be a particularly active fan author again. Thank u psych meds (and the years I spent trying to find ones that didn't absolutely wreck my extremely dumb brain chemistry).

I started out January with writing like, just a ridiculous amount of explicit Witcher fic, which I still haven't finished posting all of. I hyperfixated on Bleach once again and wrote a good amount of Bleach fic, though I abandoned a few incomplete works I started. I wrapped up the year writing some Dragonriders of Pern fic, which hardly anyone will read, but I sure will enjoy! I reached 150 stories total posted on AO3! I posted over 100k words this year! Shoutout to the Bleach folks in particular, for engaging with me and making it so that posting for that fandom is such a fun time!

And honestly, I wrote probably half as much again that I didn't complete or chose not to post as what I did share. Overall I'm very pleased with how this year went writing-wise!

Statistics:

Kudos: 701 Comment Threads: 50 Bookmarks: 104 Word Count: 101,131 Hits: 8,725

Not too bad for mostly old or older fandoms and several obscure pairings!

Stories I Posted (scroll to see what I didn't, which in my stupid opinion is the more interesting part):

Something So Magic About You (The Witcher) (2,825 words)

Any Stranger I Choose (The Witcher) (1,027 words)

glow (Bleach) (1,019 words)

Any Thrill Will Do (The Witcher) (3,118 words)

i'd tell you i miss you (but i don't know how) (Bleach) (1,365 words)

we're takin' on the world together (Bleach) (462 words)

my days once revolved around you (Bleach) (811 words)

Scarred and Scarring Still (The Witcher) (1,016 words)

the way you move is like a full on rainstorm (Bleach) (4,173 words)

i don't know how to be something you miss (Bleach) (200 words)

Need To Be Youthfully Felt (The Witcher) (1,590 words)

Offer Me That Deathless Death (The Witcher) (5,873 words)

The Wretched and the Joyful (The Witcher) (871 words)

The Most Eligible Bachelor in the Seireitei (Bleach) (20,607 words)

shrike (Dragonriders of Pern) (19,516 words)

Touch (The Witcher) (1,006 words)

felessan (Dragonriders of Pern) (7,524 words)

branoren (Dragonriders of Pern) (3,250 words)

Settle Soft (The Witcher) (1,082 words)

robse (Dragonriders of Pern) (3,432 words)

jarrol (Dragonriders of Pern) (4,097 words)

gellim (Dragonriders of Pern) (5,234 words)

All the Things I Would Do (The Witcher) (721 words)

No Shortage of Sordid (The Witcher) (1,189 words)

Fell In Love With the Fire Long Ago (The Witcher) (928 words)

Any Way to Distract and Sedate (The Witcher) (1,089 words)

Remember Me When I'm Reborn (The Witcher ) (1,089 words)

For Years or for Hours (The Witcher) (1,056 words)

The Same Kind of Music Haunts Her Bedroom (The Witcher) (4,961 words)

Stories I Didn't Finish or Didn't Post

untitled RenRuki pre-academy smut in which they attempt and badly fail at having "casual" sex (abandoned at 2k words because I lost the hyperfixation, though of all of them this is the one I most want to pick back up)

A really, truly, absurdly cracky Ichigo/Shuuhei a/b/o fic (abandoned at 3k words because I woke up and went "wtf am i writing here")

not what you thought it would be, IchiRuki, part of my speak now series, this one based on the titular song. I don't want to deal with the drama of posting it and I don't think the fandom needs any more of this particular variety of take on IchiRuki. It's also one of the first things I wrote after getting back into the fandom and I'm not sure I agree with the characterization any longer?

never grow up, Ichigo & Isshin, abandoned at under 1k words because it's hard to balance Isshin being, well, Isshin, with the tone of this story

Another moderately cracky story in which Toushiro develops a crush on Byakuya and finally starts to grow up because of this and is mortified (abandoned at a little over 13k words + some outtakes--same lost the hyperfixation deal)

the same music series, which deals with Ichigo dying unexpectedly and having his memories erased before being sent to Soul Society. There's a finished standalone piece about Rukia dealing with losing Renji in a battle (all that we intend is scrawled in sand, ~2k words) which I haven't posted because it makes me Very Sad. The series is primarily Orihime/Rukia, but eventually ends up Rukia/Orihime/Ichigo. I also sort of vaguely had an idea about a final part that was Byakuya/not!Renji (there's a core theme where souls can be tracked across incarnations because their zanpakuto always takes the same shape, even if they are fundamentally a different person due to different life experiences and have completely lost their memories). I abandoned the first draft at about 5k words in and the second draft at about the same point.

NORTH, the first in a planned IkkaYumi series where they wander the Rukongai and fall in love. (abandoned on draft 3, each about 4k words long, because Ikkaku is hard af to write)

Around half of the An Art to Life's Distractions explicit series, which I'll probably get around to editing and posting next year. It's, uh, been more or less finished since February of this year :flushed_emoji: I just struggle with it because I think it's good but the kudos:hits ratio... does not agree.

A Pern series focusing on original characters late in the Ninth Pass. There's one "complete" het story that needs to be rewritten (about 20k words), about 12k of a femslash story that's technically a prequel, about 15k of a slash story that's also technically a prequel, and plans for an additional het story that takes place after and features one of the OMC's like five billion half-brothers.

All this to say, I wrote a shitload of words this year \o/ I will not be jinxing myself by making any wishes about next year \o/ Happy New Year y'all \o/