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writingwithfolklore · 5 months

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Following a Trail of Clues

Lots of plots have at least some aspect of figuring out a mystery or uncovering some hidden truth. While it may not be a traditional murder mystery, writing a plot that revolves around the gathering of information and uncovering of clues can be written using a lot of the same techniques.

1. You should probably plan it

If you’re strictly a pantser, give it a shot, but I have never been able to pants mysteries like this. I would recommend planning it from the beginning and saving yourself a lot of time and headaches trying to piece it together later.

2. Start with the beginning and end

When planning a mystery, I start with the beginning, and then skip to the point that they uncover the truth or figure it out and work backwards to fill out the middle. What is the last hint they need to uncover the full truth, then, what leads to that hint, rinse and repeat until we get back to that beginning you created.

For example, say the MC is trying to find their missing friend. The last point would be ‘they find their friend’, so that’s where we begin. Maybe right before that, they’re told the location, to get their location, they’ve kidnapped one of the bad guys who knows it, to get to him, they need to break into the evil lair, to find the lair, they need to spy on the organization, and so on.

3. Diversify the hints

I talk about this a bit in my post about written elements (here), but essentially, you’ll want to diversify how your characters get their hints. It will seem cheap if they find everything they need to know on conveniently spaced notes or journal entries (unless you can really justify that), or it’s all told to them by someone who happens to know it all (such as the ‘wise man’ trope).

Maybe they find the last clue written down, but the one before was told to them from a key character, and the one before was puzzled out through a riddle, etc. etc. Here are some places to find clues:

Someone else knows something

This could be either an ally or an enemy. Family members, friends they weren’t aware of, a hidden partner, seemingly a stranger who knows more than they’re letting on. If they are an ally, there should be a reason they haven’t come forward yet, or justification for why their testimony is where it is in a story. Maybe they are somewhat accidentally guilty in the mystery, maybe they are afraid to be involved, maybe they aren’t aware anything has happened at all.

If they’re an enemy, maybe your protagonists need to corner them, best them in a battle, talk to them away from their boss, kidnap them, etc. Consider why this person would betray their ‘side’ to provide a clue to the protagonists.

Journal entries, notes, letters, ledgers, or otherwise written down

Physical evidence—footprints, pieces of clothing left behind, an object, photos, drawings

Biological evidence--fingerprints, DNA, hair, etc. If your character already has access to the equipment for this, great! If not, consider how they could find this out.

A prophetic dream or vision (use in cases in which it would make sense for your character to have this, obviously)

A riddle, poem, or song, if you can justify it.

An educated guess (for small jumps)

Timing—if they can figure out a timeline, they may be able to figure out something else

Something is missing or off place. That’s odd, character always leaves their book on the bedside table, so why isn’t it there?

Any other ways to get hints or clues to your characters?

#writing #creative writing #writers #screenwriting #writing community #writing inspiration #books #filmmaking #writing advice #hints #clues #following a trail of clues #writing mystery #mystery #detective

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butchhamlet · 4 months

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"But there is something particular about Cleopatra and the imaginative escape she offers for white performers. She presents a fantasy of a stately queen with an erotic power that white actresses can inhabit and take pleasure in without facing any of the difficulties faced by Black women. Like white European colonial settlers, they occupy her character though only briefly. And this is nothing new. In the seventeenth century, one aristocratic woman had her portrait painted as Cleopatra—a performative act in which it was possible to pretend to be the kind of woman she could never actually be within the chaste and virtuous bounds of Renaissance white womanhood. The sitter is identified as Lady Anne Clifford. A Jacobean lady in Egyptian regalia, according to seventeenth-century orientalist notion of national costume, holds an asp above her breast, iconically invoking Cleopatra. For a long time, it seems, white women have stepped into the fantasy of the dark queen. It seems odd that Antony and Cleopatra was not always viewed as one of Shakespeare's race plays. That is changing, finally. If theatre directors continue to centralise whiteness in their readings of the play, however, it in many ways replicates Caesar's triumph over Egypt. We relive Cleopatra's defeat every time we watch a white woman play her—due respect to Dames Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Harriet Walter, and Eve Best. But we begin to see more clearly the Egyptian Queen's own prophetic vision as she chose to end her life on her own terms. She imagined herself being performed for years to come by actors who do not resemble her in any way—and that is, for the most part, what has happened."

—Dr. Farah Karim-Cooper, The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race (emphasis mine)

#max.txt #antony and cleopatra #i am reading this book so so slowly due to the Life but i recommend it!#i honestly wish dr. karim-cooper was a little harder on shakespeare. but the analysis is really good regardless

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cosmic-ghost-hermit · 2 months

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Take what resonates. Leave the rest behind but always be open to new perspectives! Also followers I will be answering my inbox soon. I just needed a day of rest because my life is busier than initially expected.

PILE 1

plushie: Rainbow Pastel Grim Reaper

astrology: Aries ♈️, Capricorn ♑️, Aquarius ♒️, Cancer ♋️

Welcome, pile 1! Your psychic abilities help you make decisions and keep yourself safe from harm. Often you aren’t given the time to use this ability because of people rushing you and not respecting your time. However, when you are given the time to listen to your heart and mind, you make such intuitive decisions. You have a mixture of clairvoyant, claircognizant and clairsentient. Clairvoyance is when you can see the future in different ways. You could see visions of what is to come or have prophetic dreams. Clairsentience is when you can feel the future in your gut. Claircognizance means “clear-knowing” which means you can know information just by tapping into your abilities. The combination of them can be a little odd to experience. You could enter an environment and immediately know who you can trust and who you can’t trust . You just know. There is no explaining it or proving it because you just know it and you can feel it in your bodily response. That’s how your claircognizance presents itself. You are especially good at lie detection. If someone tries to deceive you or has ulterior motives you can see the motive dripping from their words. It’s like you get the ICK but you couldn’t really say why. Or perhaps you dreamed someone would betray you or that someone was crushing on you, then it became real. Please don’t ignore your hunches or your dreams just cus there is no proof. The two different fool cards in your reading tell you to trust your gut because if you listen closely you will never be wrong.

🩵🎀⚜️🟣🏳️‍⚧️🔮💓🥣🪁🍭🏳️‍🌈🍇☂️💦🌨️🪺🦋🦄👛💘👚💅🏿😈🔀💝👾🥶🎐⚛️💖

PILE 2

plushie: Gray Grim Reaper

astrology: Leo ♌️, Sagittarius ♐️, Scorpio ♏️, Pisces ♓️

Hi, pile 2! Your psychic abilities help you to naturally alchemize time and pain. You are a healer, clairaudient and clairsentient. It looks like you have been through so much pain that your clairsentience has helped you remain positive even when life gets tough. You usually transmute your pain into creative projects as a way of healing from that hurt. I see that you might absorb others' pain when you touch them. So, you might not enjoy physical contact very much. People really like your physical contact though because it takes their pain away and soothes their emotional wounds. Your clairaudience is very strong but it looks like it is a fairly inactive skill of yours while your clairsentience is used regularly. Your clairaudience is most active when you are in a deep focus state. When you are reading or watching something you are the kind of person to predict the twist ending before it even happens. Your psychic abilities make you a master of art and creative endeavors. They also make you a master of energy manipulation.

🤍🍏🥚⛅️☘️🐣🐯💛⏲️🚕🧩🪀🎾🧂⚾️🥡🍯🐻‍❄️😶‍🌫️🌽🥦🍌🍋🧪⚱️💚🖼️

PILE 3

plushie: Plague Doctor

astrology: Libra ♎️, Taurus ♉️, Gemini ♊️, Virgo ♍️

Hey there, pile 3! Your psychic abilities include telepathy, claircognizance and manipulation. I know manipulation sounds kind of scary to hear if you have the view that manipulation is a negative thing. I promise the kind you use isn’t that way. It honestly focused on uplifting people rather than putting them down. I also see you use it to open people's perspective up to new ideas. You use your telepathy as a tool to do this. Same for your claircognizance. You are incredibly intelligent. You may not exactly read minds but you might as well be by the way you read body language and micro expressions. You use all these abilities to do very good stuff. Which is very honorable and noble of you honestly. You could do so much malicious shit with psychic skills like you have. People might mistake your skills for being an empath. Despite how good you are at filling up other’s hearts, you are quite new to the ability to persuade them. That feels like a newer ability that you may have started honing recently. I see you probably have ADHD or some kind of neurodivergence that works in tandem with your psychic abilities. You are so powerful pile 3. I honestly can’t say that enough.

❤️💙🌹🦋💥💦🍒🫐🍓🧊🎸💎🎯✈️🧲♿️🎈🧿🚭🛜🩸🔷♦️💤🪭🥶💔🇦🇺

#tarot reading #astrology #tarot #pick a crystal #pick a pile #tarot pick a card #pick a card #crystals

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jedimandalorian · 7 months

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If you are a Sabezra shipper who isn’t familiar with the Star Wars Legends novels, there’s a ship you should learn more about: Luke/Mara.

Think about these parallels:

Luke Skywalker gave Mara Jade his blue lightsaber because he had built himself a new green one.

Mara loved teasing Luke, using banter to hide her true feelings for him.

Luke was adorably awkward, sweet, and encouraging to her all the time.

Mara’s Force powers increased dramatically after teaming up with Luke.

They were one of the most epic battle couples in the Legends universe.

Ezra gave Sabine his green lightsaber and built himself a new blue one.

Sabine loves teasing Ezra, using banter to hide her true feelings from him.

Ezra has an adorably awkward crush on Sabine and he is always incredibly sweet and encouraging to her.

Sabine’s Force powers dramatically increased after teaming up with Ezra in Ahsoka episode 8.

Sabezra is definitely one of the most epic battle couples in the Disney SW universe.

Disney keeps copying the Star Wars EU and changing it a little thinking that we won’t notice that they cheated. 😏

In Timothy Zahn’s novel, Vision of the Future, Luke and Mara, who have been mutually pining idiots for years, join minds through the Force to fight as one in order to survive a battle against overwhelming odds. That’s when they both realize that they have been hiding their true feelings for each other for all those years. They are in love and can no longer deny it.

In the immediate aftermath of that battle, this is what happened:

I’m predicting an emotionally charged Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger reunion, more Sabezra battle couple action scenes, and a Jedi/Mandalorian wedding in my vision of their future. 😉

The Prophet of the Church of Ezrabine has spoken.

#sabine wren #ezra bridger #star wars #ahsoka series #sabezra #ezrabine #luke skywalker #mara jade #luke x mara #timothy zahn #vision of the future

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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1900s futurism

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

I'm profoundly skeptical of the idea that the future can be predicted, and doubly skeptical that sf writers are any kind of prophet. The former grotesque fatalism (if the future can be predicted, then what we do doesn't matter); the latter is tragicomic hubris.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

That said, few people have been more consistently useful in understanding and anticipating (and yes, building) the future than my friend and colleague Karl Schroeder, whom I've known since I was 16 years old. Karl was the first person I heard say the world "internet." Also: "fractal," "World Wide Web," "ftp," and numerous other touchstones of the future just over the horizon.

Karl is, in fact, a futurist ("foresight consultant") who approaches the work with the same shrewd insight, wild imagination and humility that he brings to his fiction. In a new essay written with both his futurist and sf writer hats on, he nails down the toxic shadow cast by the 20th century sf, or, as he calls it, "The Science Fiction of the 1900s":

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/the-science-fiction-of-the-1900s

Karl starts by describing the odd "double vision" of the future of the 1900s. On the one hand, many of us (myself included) were convinced that nuclear armageddon was inevitable. Unlike the unhinged architects of the nuclear arms-race, realists understood that a nuclear war would effectively end the future. As Einstein put it, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

But the flipside of that certainty that the future would end with the first nuclear strike was the belief that if we could just somehow walk the tightrope over the chasm of nuclear holocaust, we'd emerge in a future worth looking forward to: "a new era of peace and prosperity for all."

Contrast that with the existential dread of today's polycrisis: environmental collapse and political decay up to and including fascism. These aren't the binary proposition of nuclear annihilation vs Utopia – rather, they're a continuum of worse-and-better outcomes of every description. As Karl writes: "It’s not that simple. Our future now is an exhausting spectrum of scenarios, each with its own promise, and its own problems."

For Karl, we have entered a new epoch, but we've dragged in the long-expired way of imagining (and hence creating and navigating) the future with us. What makes this a new epoch? For Karl, it's the kind of future on our horizon. He cites Charles C Mann’s 1491, a superb history of the Americas before Columbus:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-edition-by-charles-c-mann/9781400032051/readers-guide/

1491 radically reframes "the patchwork of propaganda and inference" that makes up the received narrative of the so-called "New World." It describes a land of flourishing cities, art, science and culture "in the Americas while Rome was just getting its act together." Contact with colonizing Europeans was a disaster for First Nations people, who call this period "The Invasion." It was an epochal break.

Futurism is an inextricably historical discipline. The willingness of some settler-colonialists states to consider this epochal break forces us to reframe our literal place in history, the story of the land under our feet. At its best, this futuro-historical work can begin the long work of reconciliation, as with the Canadian government's promise of $23b in reparations for the First Nations people who were kidnapped as children and sent to murderous "residential schools" before, during and after the Sixties Scoop.

The sf of the 1900s is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. It's a literature that was steered by open fascists like John W Campbell, who explicitly saw the literature as a means of inculcating a societal narrative of the triumph of white, corporate technocracy over all other forms of government:

https://locusmag.com/2019/11/cory-doctorow-jeannette-ng-was-right-john-w-campbell-was-a-fascist/

Karl isn't the first sf writer to try to overturn this orthodoxy – indeed, it was continuously challenged by radicals within the field, as with the New Wave, personified by the likes of Samuel Delany and Judith Merril (who both mentored and introduced Karl and me):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/better-to-have-loved/#neofuturians

The cyberpunks took a good hard run at it, too. For plenty of writers (including me), Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's 1981 story "The Gernsback Continuum" was a wake-up call:

http://writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng216/gernsback.pdf

Not for nothing, William Gibson has long insisted that his 1984 classic Neuromancer should be read as utopian: after all, it depicts a future in which the inevitable nuclear war only reduces a few cities to radioactive ash, sparing the rest of the planet.

Bruce Sterling once paid me the supreme compliment of describing a 2003 story I wrote about the ways that algorithms will enshittify self-driving cars as "making everybody else in the business look like they live in a dark basement growing on the mulch from old STAR TREK scripts":

https://craphound.com/stories/2005/10/12/human-readable/

Schroeder – along with today's new radical sf writer cohort – wants to fashion a fictional futurism that is fit for this world and its crisis: "in our modern technological society, science fiction tells us what to spend our time and money on." The fact that our mediocre billionaires are mired in the sf of the 1900s means that we're getting some decidedly old-fashioned futures.

For Karl, Musk is a poster-child for this profoundly conservative, backwards-looking vision: "He’s fighting the intellectual battles of the last century, a 1900s hero dropped into the 2000s with an unlimited budget to reshape the future to fit the era he’s from." Musk's obsessions – "Space flight. Settling Mars. Cyberpunk-style brain-computer interfaces. Artificial Intelligence. Self-driving electric cars. Humanoid robots." – are 1900s science fiction.

Ironically, much of this fiction labels itself "hard sf," despite the fact that interstellar travel is utter fantasy – as is mass-scale, near-term interplanetary civilization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

Karl wants "a future for the 2000s." He points to some efforts to make this happen, like Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph anthology, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hieroglyph-ed-finnkathryn-cramer

The "Hieroglyph" is Stephenson's shorthand for a recognizable, tangible, meme-able gizmo or other touchstone for a 2000s-era vision of the future – a replacement for jetpacks and flying cars. Karl's story for the anthology, "Degrees of Freedom," focuses on an abstraction (governance: "the single most important thing humanity can focus its creative energies on right now"), and by Karl's own admission, it's not quite the hieroglyph Stephenson was looking for.

But Karl did come up with a hieroglyph in a later work, the "deodands" of 2019's Stealing Worlds – a software agent "that believes it is some natural system, such as a river or forest, and acts in its own self-interest, that being the preservation and thriving of that natural system":

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/18/karl-schroeders-stealing-worlds-visionary-science-fiction-of-a-way-through-the-climate-and-inequality-crises/

(My own contribution to Hieroglyph was very gadget heavy – "The Man Who Sold the Moon," about autonomous lunar 3D printers. It won the Sturgeon Award):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

I've been impressed with Karl since the day I met him in 1987. There's no one whose thoughts on the future I'm more interested in hearing. I don't think that's a coincidence, either: Karl is an autodidact who was raised by a Mennonite TV repairman – the first TV repair shop in the Canadian prairies. If you want to understand the future, try being raised by someone who takes that kind of deliberate approach to which technology to adopt, and how.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

#pluralistic #science fiction #futurism #the future #reactionaries #tescreal #retrofuturism #scientifiction #karl schroeder #1491 #genocide

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m1d-45 · 9 months

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judas

summary: who can be blamed for a world wide calamity? the executioner, the judge, or the jury?

word count: ~1.3k

-> warnings: mention of blood, implied death(you, but you revive after), um minor spoilers for inazuma and sumeru archon quest, as well as for kazuha lore

-> gn reader (you/yours) and unspecified traveller (no pronouns)

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yuus3n || @esthelily || @turningfrogsgay || @cupandtea24 || @genshin-impacts-me || @chaoticfivesworld || @raaawwwr

< masterlist >

to see a god is a feat most strive their whole lives toward. to bear witness to one so much holier than you, to view a deity far beyond your time. mortals pray to statues and shrines, each vying for the eye of the heavens, a select few showing off their rewards in the form of a gleaming vision.

but even those with a vision cannot see the stars. true gods- the true god is a memory beholden to only a few, to those that remember the times prior to the archon war. before the creator lifted to celestia, sequestered away far from the petty meddling of people.

they’re missed. they’re always missed. the gods have a hole their gnoses are too small to fill, a deep ache that beats with their hearts, yearning for the one they called ‘home.’ it’s not unlike the feeling one gets on a clear night, looking up to the stars, knowing the world’s so vast and you are so small, unsure whether to be afraid or comforted.

so they wish their god a well recovery? do they grieve the idea that they may die before that happens? do they grab a bottle from the shelf and bear headaches without hangovers, do they sit at a worn table and drink tea nobody else remembers, do they sleep endlessly, hoping to dream instead? what does one do, when so alone? what does one do, when the stars blanket the sky and they are struck with the remembrance of their finite lives?

mortals get up from their blankets. look away, go to bed, rise the next day with the only star they know being the one that warms the stones beneath their feet. but gods don’t tire easily, and the nights are known for stretching far longer than days.

the unlucky ones die.

the cursed are given a false prophet.

“if you remember me, then i don’t care if anyone else forgets.”

the greater lord was kind. too kind. beloved. unfairly so. how strange, she wondered, fading to dust, that she did not see her god greeting her. how odd, she thought, that the closest she had come to heaven was within the moments before her death.

it’s not her fault. it never was. the eyes that watched from celestia were hard with iron and not time, cruel with choice and not purpose. so many died, so many didn’t have to, so many fell under the foot of a fraud while their true colors hid behind a mask.

“do you remember me?”

“do you?”

it wasn’t your fault either. it never was. your chosen warrior, your first picked, saved from the grips of the one who had stolen your place. so many people, so many names, so many conversations held within proxy. the earth remembered, the people rejoiced, and yet it was only your golden companion that questioned the sea.

(the waves calmed. eons old bodies finally laid to rest. the abyss itself stilled for just a moment, just long enough to stop and watch you smile, and even now occasionally lent an ear to your pride.)

how unfair, that you once laughed together but now cry alone.

to lay eyes upon the divine is one thing. to view with one’s own eyes even a fraction of true power is enough to blind the commons, and even the most ancient dragon must bow its head. but to touch? to hold, to grasp, to feel universes thrumming beneath your fingers, the power of giants hovering barely an inch away?

“we named a constellation after you.”

you had said hello. a god, a being so far beyond mortal understanding, crouching to one knee and extending a hand to a child that had fallen. you could have walked by. perhaps on another day you might’ve. but you didn’t recognize the world as your home, and she didn’t recognize you as hers, fleeing to the guards the moment she saw something a little too bright in your eyes.

it wasn’t your fault. the ground is stained with blue and that child’s hand burns with the fire found in the core of a newborn sun, hot and new far too much for someone so young to handle. a samurai will never be able to look at his sword the same way again, but you shouldn’t blame yourself for that either. his hand holds the grip as his own shakes, red eyes struggling to take in what he sees.

the human mind reacts strangely when it sees something it doesn’t understand. it fizzles, stops, the wiring going dull as it realizes its neurons are far too small to comprehend the unusual stimuli. unfortunately, this response does not lend itself to survival, and the drive to live overshadows your cries for the same.

he doesn’t like the visit that part of town anymore. he can’t look at maple leaves without remembering how they stuck to the ground, weighed down by blood. he visits a familiar grave, tucked between two sharp cliffs, lingering far past the settling of lavender melon on the ground. he kneels there for a few hours too long, wondering of all the what ifs.

it’s not his fault either. it’s nobody’s. they were given a candlelight and were told it was a star, even as they watched the wax drip. he was doing his best, and it just so happened that in the blind grasp for a handhold, he’d pushed you away. he couldn’t see. it wasn’t his fault.

“don’t blame yourself, kazuha.”

“the tide does not stop rising when asked. neither does the guilt.”

it wasn’t his fault.

you try to remind yourself of this, at times. so does he. the two of you lie awake at inane hours of night, searching the sky for an answer.

what happened? what went wrong? was it me? was it anyone?

celestia looks down with eyes of fake steel, looking between you and the empty throne behind them. they’d finally caved, thrown the one they puppeted for the vishaps to dissect and the hillichurls to pull apart, but now worried. they’d certainly be punished if it was known they’d allowed this to happen… was it their fault, perhaps?

eyes sought out others, the council known as ‘heaven’ lost for what to do. their eyes joined yours, as yours joined kazuha’s, all tilted up and beginning to turn glassy.

the universe is so big, each star their own system, and it’s so hard to feel like any more than sand when it’s displayed so clearly. maybe it was kazuha’s fault, for not recognizing the light you shed as that of the sun. maybe it was celestia’s, for continuing to entertain an impossible fantasy. maybe it was the earth’s, for guiding you where it thought was safe, maybe maybe maybe. it doesn’t matter. did it ever? your heart burns with grief—love—as you go to bed, sheltered within a hilichurl camp. kazuha stays up too late, punishing himself with the fog of sleepiness that lasts a little too long the next day. celestia doesn’t feel guilt, for when did it ever, but the next day is unproductive, something strange taking place of the air there.

maybe it was nobody’s fault. maybe the world was disjointed, unfamiliar with your presence, stuttering for a moment as it collected itself once more. maybe in that moment of confusion, of flickering light and a burnt out flame, tragedy had struck like lightning. the universe was illuminated, bathed in the gleam of your power, able to see what it couldn’t in darkness.

it wouldn’t happen again, but that didn’t stop it from hurting. scars still ached when it rained, and the skies were weeping as it realized what had occurred in shadow.

#sagau #genshin #genshin impact #genshin sagau #self aware genshin #genshin impact sagau #sagau genshin #kazuha #kaedehara kazuha #sagau kaedehara kazuha #sagau kazuha #gn reader #genshin self aware au #written at 3:30-4am lmao #pro of writing at 3am: words!#cons: it’s THESE ones….#i like it when i get all metaphorical and vague like this sometimes; genuinely. it’s a cool facet of my style that i do enjoy #on OCCASION.

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connorsnothereeither · 5 months

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So, Brink is canon to Fable… but how, exactly?

Well we sure talked about it on @venear-tmblr ‘s stream and here are my thoughts. None of them are canon, but none of them aren’t canon either. Pick one. Or pick none of them, this was just me being goofy :D

The Brink books in Fable-canon aren’t exactly like the Brink fics that exist irl. In a way similar to the fictional “The Princess Bride” book within William Goldman’s The Princess Bride. They exist, but different to the story we know about. The books in Fable are the real story, and the fics we have are a retelling of them, recontextualised to be more in line with Fable SMP. Maybe they have a similar story, but characters names are slightly different, or certain characters don’t exist. Certain things happen in different ways, and to the people reading it, it’s similar enough to their lives to be an odd coincidence, but not similar enough to be unsettling.

They actually are a weird, prophetic series of books in universe. Think like the “Supernatural” book series written by Chuck in the show Supernatural. Someone in the world of Fable, at some point in history, is/was getting these horrible visions and premonitions, and they treated them as inspiration for their novels, not knowing those people actually existed when the books were published. Maybe they intentionally added the Lovecraftian twist, or maybe that’s how they perceived the visions.

They’re literally the fics from AO3, leaking into the Fable universe from our universe via ✨multiverse shenanigans✨ We know thanks to Sherbert that our streamer reality exists in that multiverse. Maybe Ocie’s blood ritual, or Rae and Centross accessing the void, caused them to slip through the cracks. Or maybe Quixis is wacking them in, intentionally or unintentionally, trying to get Icarus’ attention. We know that once a book exists in Fable, it can show anywhere, any time, so they could have been hurtled through time and space enough to become an established book in-universe. Books are appearing, memories and timelines are crossing, it’s just one of those elements of the multiverse that’s a little bit unstable.

Elizabeth has secretly been writing RPF novels about the people he meets/secretly watches from a distance this entire time. He publishes them under a pseudonym, and has a cult following of readers, who eagerly await the next chapter to arrive by mail. It’s only recently anyone has actually started connecting the dots…

OR if anyone has their own little theories (goofy or serious) as to how/why the Brink books exist in canon, I would absolutely love to hear them /Gen

#like I said none of these are canon but I think they’re all fun #absolutely let me know if people have favourites of these options or even other thoughts #they’re all very amusing to me #on the brink of scientific discovery #mcyt #fablesmp #fable smp #fanfic

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8hsaturn · 4 months

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Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk's Possible Astrology Placements

Hi! This has been in my drafts ever since I watched ASTV, so here's what I think Hobie Brown's big 6 are :

- Aquarius sun :

I think this is probably the most non-brainer of all his placements. Hobie is a punk anarchist who hates authority, structure, and consistency. He helped Miles, who was antagonized by everyone at Spider-Society and believed in him against all odds. he will not praise structure for merely existing especially if said structure thrives on sacrificing the minority for the benefit of the majority: you can't get any more aquarian than that 🤷‍♀️.

(I also think his constant clash with Miguel comes from the fact Miguel is a Scorpio with probably several other Scorpio placements squaring Hobie's.)

- Sagittarius moon :

He has firm convictions (sag is the philosopher, the guru) fueled by his sun sign's drive for equality sans authority. He's also very influential and has a massive following of people who take his words as gospel without him even trying. Nevertheless, he doesn't take himself too seriously and knows how to joke around and not be too uptight. Having a Sagittarius moon could also be why he loves to keep everyone on their toes since Sagittarius despises stagnancy and predictability.

gif cr. : happy-xy

- Aquarius mercury :

his inventive and crafty nature, his wittiness and slightly-too-frank humor, his understanding of deeply complicated subjects like societal structures and political power, not to forget how he was the first one to predict the downfall of Spider-Society and begin planning for it... His intelligence, inventive nature, and almost prophetic sense of futuristic vision all point to having an Aquarius mercury.

gif cr. : cost.

- Aries venus :

Hobie loves spikes, piercings, and tattoos, all things sharp and edgy ruled by Mars. He's also not afraid to express his affection and liking for people he just met (like with Miles, he immediately coddled him as if they were long-term best friends). The unabashed way he expresses himself on top of being rebellious and rooting for the underdogs to speak up (showing Miles how to break from Miguel's shield) are very Aries Venus actions.

- Aquarius mars :

Having a Saturn-ruled Mars explains why he was able to plan ahead for the upcoming divide of the Spider Society, likewise how he managed to remain cool-headed through all the conflict between Miguel and Miles (Saturn is a cold and calculating planet); He was able to predict the clashes to happen because he can recognize patterns early: that's his Aquarius mars conjunct mercury in action.

- Aries rising :

I think this one was the hardest one to pin down... Hobie was described as tall and lean, with a prominent bone structure (Saturn influence), and his spider suit was designed with spikes all over. He was born in an autocratic society and overthrew -then killed- the despot of his universe... This has a lot of Martian themes like rebellion, leadership, fearlessness, standing up for the weak... But his ability to persevere under such circumstances, plan out things far ahead, and remain coolheaded is definitely due to his Aquarius Mars being his chart ruler.

This would be it! let me know what you think of these specific placements, and if you'd like me to do a similar run-down of a character you like just send me an ask <3 have a good day!!

#astro observations #astro notes #astro placements #aquarius sun #aquarius mercury #aquarius mars #sagittarius moon #aries venus #aries rising #astrology #aquarius #sagittarius #aries #into the spider verse #hobie spiderverse #hobie brown #spider punk

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gatheringbones · 2 years

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[“…. what really struck him about the ‘primitive’ societies he was most familiar with was their tolerance of eccentricity. This, he concluded, was simply the logical extension of that same rejection of coercion that so impressed the Jesuits in Quebec.

If, he noted, a Winnebago decided that gods or spirits did not really exist and refused to perform rituals meant to appease them, or even if he declared the collective wisdom of the elders wrong and invented his own personal cosmology (and both these things did, quite regularly, happen), such a sceptic would definitely be made fun of, while his closest friends and family might worry lest the gods punish him in some way. However, it would never occur to them to punish him, or that anyone should try to force him into conformity – for instance, by blaming him for a bad hunt and therefore refusing to share food with him until he agreed to perform the usual rituals. There is every reason to believe that sceptics and non-conformists exist in every human society; what varies is how others react to them.

Radin was interested in the intellectual consequences, the kind of speculative systems of thought such out-of-sync characters might create. Others have noted the political implications. It’s often people who are just slightly odd who become leaders; the truly odd can become spiritual figures, but, even more, they can and often do serve as a kind of reserve of potential talent and insight that can be called on in the event of a crisis or unprecedented turn of affairs.

Thomas Beidelman, for instance, observes that among the early-twentieth-century Nuer – a cattle-keeping people of South Sudan, famous for their rejection of anything that resembled government – there were politicians and village ‘bulls’ (‘operator types’ we’d now call them) who played fast and loose with the rules, but also ‘earth priests’ who mediated local disputes, and finally prophets.

The politicians were often unconventional: for instance, it was not uncommon for the local ‘bull’ actually to be a woman whose parents had declared her a man for social purposes; the priests were always outsiders to the region; but the prophet was an altogether more extreme kind of figure. He might dribble, drool, maintain a vacant stare, act like an epileptic; or engage in long but pointless tasks such as spending hours arranging shells into designs on the ground in the bush; or long periods in the wilderness; or he may even eat excrement or ashes. Prophets, as Beidelman notes, ‘may speak in tongues, go into trances, fast, balance on their head, wear feathers in their hair, be active by night rather than by day, and may perch on rooftops. Some sit with tethering pegs up their anuses.’ Many, too, were physically deformed. Some were cross-dressers, or given to unconventional sexual practices.

In other words, these were seriously unorthodox people. The impression one gets from the literature is that any Nuer settlement of pre-colonial times was likely to be complemented by a minor penumbra of what might be termed extreme individuals; ones who in our own society would likely be classified as anything from highly eccentric or defiantly queer to neurodivergent or mentally ill.

Normally, prophets were treated with bemused respect. They were ill; but the illness was a direct consequence of being touched by God. As a result, when great calamities or unprecedented events occurred – a plague, a foreign invasion – it was among this penumbra that everyone looked for a charismatic leader appropriate to the occasion. As a result, a person who might otherwise have spent his life as something analogous to the village idiot would suddenly be found to have remarkable powers of foresight and persuasion; even to be capable of inspiring new social movements among the youth or co-ordinating elders across Nuerland to put aside their differences and mobilize around some common goal; even, sometimes, to propose entirely different visions of what Nuer society might be like.”]

david graeber and david wengrow, the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity, 2021

#david graeber #history stuff #currently reading

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usedtobeguest123 · 7 months

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Encantober Day 1 - Sunset

Bruno stepped his bare feet down onto the wood of his bedroom floor. He stood from his bed and padded to the center of the room. The air was thick with salt and brine, filling his nose with the sharp, wet scent. He could taste the saltiness on his tongue. The tide pushed in across the floorboards, the chilling foam washing over his bare feet, thinning as it went until it was just a film across the wood behind him. As the water pulled back, it carried grains of wood with it like sand, and Bruno's heels sank slowly into the floor, leaving him standing just a little deeper than he'd begun. He'd never been to the beach. He'd read about it, but being here was different. The saltiness tasted different than salt tossed into the air, than the rush of dry sand. It all felt thicker, heavier. He used to daydream as a child of visiting the beach, and here he was. How funny that all he had to do this whole time was step out of bed. Ahead of him Mirabel and Antonio splashed and played in the wake, seagulls dipping down to greet them with harsh calls. Deeper in, Luisa and Camilo swam amidst the waves. Antonio was almost as tall as Mirabel. When had he gotten so tall? ... It was a sunset. Or was it a sunrise? Wait--hadn't it just been night, hadn't he just been in bed? As the last of the orange sun slipped below the line of water, a flash of green raced out like a gunshot, pulsing toward him faster than the tide. WOOSH. He squeezed his eyes shut as it pushed past. Everything tasted green, salt and brine.

For @encantober-official Day 1, I took inspiration from a vision-dream that Bruno has in chapter 13 of my fic La Traes. His reimagined bedroom is from my other fic Bruno from Before; you can find its description below the cut!

There were no more treacherous stairs to trek up, nor ghastly images of a haunted prophet to pass to get to Tío Bruno's cave. Now it was just the ornate round door settled deep into the back wall of his room, shadowed slightly by an hourglass shaped entryway that no longer poured out sand. His main room was cozy and warm now, despite the impossibly high ceiling of the tower that rose above it. Natural light filtered in from the round window at the top of the tower like a cathedral, illuminating minute particles of dust and sand that floated lazily through the air. The left side of his room held a small bed tucked against the wall, a desk littered with papers and pencils, and a dresser situated next to the main door. The entire right side of the room was a sitting area, red and green cushioned chairs angled at each other just enough to encourage conversation but not enough to force it, a low table sitting between them. The backs of the chairs were to the center of the room, the chairs positioned to face a wall of bookshelves loaded with not only books but also doo-dads and collected odds and ends that Tío treasured for some reason or another. Two or three of the plants gifted by Isabela climbed precariously from their potted places on the shelves. One entire shelf seemed to be some sort of rat maze. Framed pictures of each and every Madrigal, some current and some yellowed with age, spread across all the walls like butterflies drifting in clustered groupings. And there, straight across from the main doorway, stood the hourglass cutout and the large round door through that, looking for all the world like nothing more than a particularly interesting closet and not a room where the future sifted into the present.

--Bruno from Before

#Encantober #Sunset #Encanto #Bruno Madrigal #Encanto fanart #encanto fanfic #This took me all of september lol #we'll see what else I can get to #but man am I proud of it!#Woot woot!#mirabel madrigal #antonio madrigal #luisa madrigal #camilo madrigal #Bruno from Before #La Traes #my art #my writing #flashing lights

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completeoveranalysis · 7 months

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[3]

I cannot BELIEVE we are back at this dinner table - the same one echoed in a similar scene between our earlier pair of Sakura and Syaoran. The scene that Lava Lamp remembers vividly, but Sakura can’t remember him being there at all, and can only ever recall seeing an empty chair.

And HERE WE ARE, back in another important scene with a similar premise - another pivotal domestic moment between a Sakura and a Syaoran at this dinner table, one that only the Syaoran of the pair will remember (since the fate of this Sakura is unknown).

Did Lava Lamp recall this moment when he had to watch Syaoran and Sakura do the same thing? Was he just silently suffering his own eternal torture watching ALL of these INCREDIBLY SIMILAR MOMENTS that he had also lived, with a different Sakura, play out so similarly yet so incredibly differently?

Also the SHEER SIZE of these seats compared to the children trying to sit in them. The enormity of the fates they are trying to live up to already, when they are only tiny children.

Oh that IS lovely!

Nadeshiko making special preparations for Lava Lamp’s arrival - not only mirroring her acceptance of the way the future will change, and how she’s not fighting it or trying to prevent it, but also treating Lava Lamp with the trust and kindness that many others wouldn’t if they knew the fate that lay ahead of them.

Nadeshiko MVP

And THIS is what gets me.

If we are to believe what CLAMP are deliberately leading us towards thinking, Lava Lamp is speaking about Cardcaptor Sakura as his mother. WHO DOES INDEED have prophetic dreams about the future, so it fits!

But she’s not the only Sakura we know who has that power, so it STILL doesn’t ENTIRELY rule out anyone else out yet, even though any other option makes much less sense at this point in the narrative.

The odds that your birth is a complicated time travel miracle are low. But never zero!

EITHER WAY, the fact that Sakura stops having visions of the future after Lava Lamp is born has some very juicy implications. Either this is implying that she’s passed on that power and no longer retains it herself, or it’s implying that she doesn’t NEED to have them once she’s given birth to Lava Lamp. The visions of the future are usually a warning - a chance to take the right steps to ensure the best future (See also: Sakura in Infinity). But if, once Lava Lamp is born, the future doesn’t hinge on SAKURA’S actions but Lava Lamp’s? The presumably she would stop having the visions!

I think that’s the option that makes more sense to me at this point, but I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.

#What’s worse?#Having visions of a future you constantly have to save?#Or knowing that your role is DONE #And that now it’s entirely up to your six year old child?#I have a guess!#Liveblogging the reservoir chronicle #Tsubasa #Vol 191 #Lava Lamp Guy #Sakura #Which Sakura?#A Sakura #Nadeshiko #And IMPLICATIONS #Every time I want to go all in with the CCS option #And yet everytime they say something that still makes me go BUT WHAT IF...?

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snail-eggs · 23 days

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KISSING DOWN THE GD BODY BOONESIX YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO 🔥🔥

pairing: Craig Boone/Courier 6 (F!OC)

warnings: smut. sex. they finally fuck. are you happy, Rags? you've created a monster. Seriously though, this is my first attempt at smut. That's a warning on its own.

divider by @/saradika

There’s something off about this. About the way Six looks as she’s counting their remaining bullets in the divot in her lap. She looks more alive than she has the past few days, despite the bags under her eyes growing worse and worse by the day.

The house around them is falling apart. Foundation groaning with every strong gust of wind. He taps his boot against the steel bed frame. Rust flakes off. He has no idea how it’ll carry his weight, let alone both of theirs. Boone’ll let her take it tonight, he thinks. She needs the sleep more than him, even if her pseudo-prophetic dreams keep her from getting any real rest.

What he doesn’t know, however, is that it isn’t just visions of tornadoes, swirling around the irradiated dirt and leaving nothing in their wake that’s haunting her. No, more recently, it's his hands. Six hasn’t been able to stop thinking about his hands. Looking at them. At the way they grip his rifle, pull the trigger just so. The way his hands clench, knuckles turning white when she’d asked one question too many.

She wonders how they’d feel in her own. If his white-knuckled grasp would really hurt. She doesn’t think so, though. Not so long as he’s holding her. When it really comes down to it, Six thinks, all she wants is to feel him. If it hurts, then it hurts. So be it.

Six looks up at him now from her spot on the floor. Bathed in the warm wasteland glow, he looks like something else entirely. Something not Boone—closer to the approximation of him that lives in her head and nowhere else. Lives deep in her chest too, she supposes. Close to her heart. And in her chest, her heart thumps hard against her ribs. Six can feel it in her throat. She swallows hard when he looks back; looks her right in the eyes in that precise, cutting way he always does. And maybe it's a trick of the light or the lack of sleep, but she sees something else there too. Something that softens the edge of his gaze. Her heart beats faster.

This adrenaline rush isn’t new. Odd, sure, but not new. Six can recall having felt it precisely once before. With Benny. At the Tops, on his bed after too many drinks, roughly fourteen months after he’d shot her in the head. But she wasn’t scared then, not at all. Guesses that means she isn’t scared now, either. Just nervous.

Boone has never made her nervous, though. Not back in Dinky’s mouth when he’d pointed his rifle right in between her eyes, not ever.

Except for now, in this rotting house, sitting at the foot of some disgusting bed. Staring.

Six has forgotten all about the bullets now. They lay scattered on the floor, less than a handful still resting in her palm. There’s a flash of concern in Boone’s face then. He leans his rifle against the wall. Drops down to his knees right in front of her and begins to pick up the bullets in between Six’s legs like it's nothing. Like he isn’t so close. Her jaw clenches.

“You need to sleep,” he’s tossing the bullets back into the box by the handful. His fingers brush against the ones in her palm. Hesitate for a moment before he grabs them up like all the others. “Look like you’re gonna keel over any second.”

Her hands move of their own accord, cup Boone’s face on either side and tilt his head up to face her head-on. He’s deathly still—every muscle in his body tensed. Six runs her thumb back and forth on the rough skin of his cheek. Boone isn’t breathing, she thinks. He’s staring at her apprehensively. Like at any second, she’ll draw a knife and stab him right in the gut. Her eyes flit from his wary green eyes down to his lips. They linger there, long enough for Boone to notice. He inhales deep, exhales loudly. Their eyes meet again.

Boone takes her by the back of the neck, faster than she can process. Pulls Six in and collides his mouth against hers .Its bruising—all wrong and still, neither of them break away. He can’t remember what it's like to kiss somebody—to really kiss somebody. Hasn’t so much as entertained the thought. Not after Carla. But now with Six’s lips pressed against his, it feels like second nature to have her so close. Feels like this is how it's supposed to be. He leans into her, the remaining bullets in his hand falling to the ground and he couldn’t care less about them.

Six is halfway to having her back pressed against the dirty, splintering hardwood when his fingers find themselves tangled in her short brown locks and she pulls away. “Boone,” it's breathless, the way she says it. Nearly quieter than a whisper. She studies him as best she can from so close. Hasn’t ever seen him like this—so desperate. Hungry for more. Boone presses his forehead against hers. Leans into her, wordlessly begging to continue this—whatever this is.

“Six.”

“Still want me to go to sleep now?”

And he chuckles earnestly before leaning in to kiss right under her jaw. Six’s breath hitches. She can feel Boone smile against her skin. He coaxes her back, tugs at her hair before he has her flush against the ground. It didn’t feel like this with Benny. Not even close. Six’s hands move down from his face to his chest; she clutches his shirt in a vice grip. Doesn’t think she ever wants to let go.

Her heart is beating out of her chest now, more so than before. She never imagined she’d have him this close, feeling the calluses on his hands run under her shirt; his fingertips digging into the skin of her waist like his life depends on it. Never thought she’d whimper at the pressure, only wanting more.

This is dangerous territory they’ve crossed into. Despite the arousal muddling her thoughts as Boone grazes her collar bone with his teeth, Six wonders what comes after this. Nothing good, surely. She stares up at the ceiling, half hyperventilating now. He tugs at her shirt. She lets him take it off. Whatever the consequences are, they’re not worth losing Boone. Losing what she has with him.

And yet.

She’s got her hands on his shoulders now, beckoning him down further. His hands are starting to mess with the button of her pants. Six gasps—no, whines as he presses a chaste kiss to her abdomen. Then he stops. With her pants unbuttoned, zipper down as far as it’ll go, Boone leans back onto his knees. Takes in the sight of her before him. Looks a little spooked, even, and the sight makes Six smile. A laugh escapes her throat unwillingly. Boone watches her fondly through his heavy-lidded gaze. Runs his hand up and down her still-clothed thigh. The sun’s rays bleed through the windows as it sets. Light’s waning and he can still see those intense bags under her eyes better than anything else. His cock stirs in his pants watching the heaving of her bare chest. He doesn’t understand the scope of this—doesn’t want to consider the consequences—all he knows is that he has never wanted anyone more than he wants Six right now and it's killing him. It's been killing him since their last night at the Tops when he’d watched her disappear with Benny into his room for what he’s sure was a piss-poor fuck. Really he would have been fine with anyone else but Benny—never really thought he’d be in this position anyway. Something about it made his skin crawl. The thought of Benny running his hands all over Six’s body after what he did to her. After he shot her in the head and left her to die in Goodsprings like a dog.

Boone might not be deserving of Six, but Benny is even less so.

If it has to be anyone, Boone sure as hell isn’t mad that it’s him. He’s fucking psyched about it actually—as psyched as Boone can realistically be about anything. He pulls his shirt over his head, unbuckles his belt with fervor and tosses it to the side.

Six arches a brow, looks him up and down. She’s amused and he’s not entirely sure why. “What?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs, “You’re—you’re really pretty right now.”

“Pretty?”

“Handsome. Whatever. Cut me some slack, I don’t do this.”

“Six, we can stop if you—”

“Fuck off, I never said that.” Six reaches up, brings him in close and presses a gentle, languid kiss to his lips. Words catch in her throat when they pull apart. Words she can’t quite place. Only knows the tug she feels in her chest when they’re eye to eye. She’d stay like this forever if she could.

Tongues gliding against each other’s, Boone grinds his hips into Six’s. She’s half starved with the way she’s gripping at him in any way she can. These messy, open-mouthed kisses aren’t enough. Having his body pressed against hers isn’t enough. No, she’d need to be in his skin to be satisfied. Though she’ll settle for the next best thing.

She reaches down, palms his cock through the fabric of his boxers. Boone groans into her mouth. He’s breathless now, desperate.

When they fuck, its slow. He’s got one of her thighs held up against his hip as he drives himself into her at an agonizing pace. Being with Boone is nothing like how it was with Benny. There’s something fundamentally different about this, she thinks as she stifles her moan in the crook of his neck. Maybe Boone is just better at fucking—she doesn’t entirely doubt that—or maybe she’s just more present now that she’s not drunk off her ass.

Benny was fun. Quick, but fun. They’d fumbled and laughed and drank but god, it was nothing like this. She’s almost glad it wasn’t. Glad she’s feeling this way with Boone instead.

Her walls clench around him. The room’s completely dark now—Six has no clue how long they’ve been at this. She’s closer to the brink with every second that passes. Her breathing is becoming erratic—so are Boone’s thrusts. She comes loud and hard, nails digging crescent-shaped craters into his back. It doesn’t take long for him to follow. He pulls out, spills all over the inside of her thigh.

She gets as good a look at him as she can in the darkness. Stares him in those tired eyes, knowing hers must look leagues worse. Six opens her mouth to speak but the words are held hostage by some unseen force yet again. She kisses him on the forehead instead. Smiles and nods over to the bed right beside them.

“Sleep with me?”

Boone shakes his head at her. Cups her cheek with his hand. The way he’s looking at her scares her. She doesn’t know she’s looking at him the exact same way.

“I’ll sleep with you.”

For the first time in weeks, Six is not haunted by visions of tornadoes or of Boone’s hands. Instead she finds herself in a deep, dreamless sleep with Boone right by her side.

By her side where he belongs.

#snail mail #vide0-nasties #ship: boone x six #craig boone fanfic #boone x courier #fallout new vegas fanfic

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explodingsilver · 5 months

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Book review: Nightbane by Alex Aster

Lightlark…2!

I’ve already made my thoughts on the first book quite clear (read that review first if you haven’t already; I don’t feel like rehashing all the context), and were I a bit more sensible, I would have stayed away from its sequel. I am, however, somewhat of a literary masochist, so of course I borrowed this from Hoopla the day it was released (November 7th, not too long ago). Very pleased that I was able to write this review much faster than the first one, though this review is shorter, at only 2,100 words long. Was the experience worth it? I don’t know, you tell me.

(There are spoilers ahead, on the off chance that you care)

The plot and style

After the events of the first book, Isla is trying to learn her several powers as well as get a hold of this “leading two different realms” thing while trying to move on from getting betrayed by four different people she used to love. At a celebration for a Wildling holiday (in which no Wildlings other than herself are in attendance), Grim magically crashes the party from afar and announces that the Nightshade army will destroy Lightlark in thirty days. The other realms start preparing for the invasion, and Isla tries to recover all her lost memories of being with Grim in hope that they will reveal what his goal is and how to stop him, especially after receiving a prophetic vision of him standing in the ruins of a village he destroyed with his powers.

Put simply, if the plot of the first book is split between “Isla and Celeste search for a MacGuffin” and “Isla and Oro search for a different MacGuffin”, this book is split between “Isla and Oro do basic defense building stuff” and “Isla remembers the time she and Grim searched for a third MacGuffin”. There’s also a subplot about a rebel group trying to capture Isla, but this is inconsequential and could’ve been dropped entirely.

It feels like there was an attempt to address some of the criticism of the first book, but not nearly enough of an attempt. On the one hand, metaphor usage has improved to the point where it actually feels like it was written by a human being and not a neural network (no throbbing and raw glaciers this time around), the book acknowledges that no longer having a power no one else had in the first place is less bad than having a maximum lifespan of 25, and Isla realizes that Grim let her win the duel in the first book and that she did not win against a 500+ year old army general on the strength of her own skill. On the other hand, it does not address questions like “how does Starling society even function if none of them ever live to 26?” or “if Oro always knows when someone is lying, why didn’t he call bullshit the moment Celeste said ‘Hi, my name is Celeste’?”

Speaking of that last thing: I didn’t mention it in my review of the first book because it didn’t really feel relevant to anything, but each ruler has a ‘flair’, a special power that is unique to them. Oro’s is that he can always tell when someone is lying. Grim’s is that he can teleport. This book reveals that Isla’s is that she is immune to curses. Glad to finally have an answer to one of my biggest questions of the first book (checks notes) 75% of the way through the second one, when this explanation should’ve been given the moment we learned the original stated reason does not apply.

Wildling elixir and its (lack of) consequences

Much of this book centers around the presence of the Wildling elixir from the first book, a potion that is super effective at healing wounds. As you might imagine, this kills a lot of the tension. Used in conjunction with Isla’s magical teleportation device, “teleport away, use Wildling elixir, teleport back” becomes an easy way to recover when the characters get their flesh ripped apart. And indeed, they do this all the time! The book tries to nerf this strategy by stating that the elixir is rare due to the flower used to make it being rare, but 1) this is at odds with Isla’s very liberal use of it, and 2) aren’t the Wildlings the “make flowers grow instantly” people? Why can’t they just use those powers on it like they do for every other plant?

There was a bit of potential for an interesting theme with these flowers: Isla eventually learns that while the Wildlings use them to make the healing elixir, the Nightshades use those exact same flowers to make the titular nightbane, which is basically fantasy heroin. I was intrigued by this motif (I like it when things have a dual nature like that), but unfortunately this doesn’t really go anywhere, other than some vague gesturing at “wow, just like Isla”. Speaking of Isla…

Isla

This time around, Isla is clearly traumatized by the events of the last book, trusts very few people, and is aware that she is in over her head with leading two realms full of subjects she barely knows while also being the king’s unofficial consort. Not a bad start for a character arc, but in effect, she has gone from naive and impulsive to naive, impulsive, and guilty about those things while making little effort to amend them. It feels like her attitude towards leadership is basically “I’m allowed to call myself a bad leader but nobody is allowed to agree with me on that.”

Much of Isla’s internal conflict in this book is based around her Nightshade heritage on her father's side. She is convinced that there is an inherently evil part of her because her father was from the Inherently Evil Realm. This may not come as a surprise, but I do not like when stories have such a thing as an Inherently Evil Realm. Not only does Nightshade fill this role, but the book never even gestures at pushing back against Isla’s conviction that her heritage taints her, and in fact ends up affirming it.

This book really told me to my face that Isla is the first person in millennia to have both Wildling and Nightshade powers. I do not buy that even for a moment. Maybe my disbelief is because the series discarded the “only one realm’s power set per person, even if their parents are from different realms” thing in the same book it was introduced, and I would expect there to be Wildling/Nightshade couples way more often than once per few millennia. But no, that highly plausible thing can’t happen because then Isla won’t be the most special person currently alive!

The other characters

Sadly, the rest of the cast did not improve, and in some instances, got worse.

Oro going from "world weary, distant king" to "official love interest" has unfortunately sanded down all his interesting aspects, and everything I liked about his character in the first book now takes a backseat to being overly protective of Isla and making stock Love Interests threats to kill anyone who hurts her. I swear, he turned so generic that some of his lines were indistinguishable from something Grim would say. But hey, if nothing else, he at least didn’t get character assassinated like I was sure he would!

While Grim actually does stuff in this book, he still has no personality traits other than what's included in the Sexy Villain Starter Pack. Like, it actually upsets me that he's such an absolute nothing of a character. Everything about him begins and ends with “what if the villain…was sexy?”, and there are about a morbillion stories out there that provide more interesting answers to this question. You’d think focusing on him this much would be the perfect opportunity to give him any unique traits at all, but Aster certainly did not take that opportunity, nor did she ever answer the question of why he likes Isla, despite the sheer number of pages dedicated to their relationship.

As for everyone else? Azul, our beloved token gay black man who runs his realm like a democracy, still receives woefully little page time. Cleo, the bitchy ruler who hates Isla for no reason, receives even less, but at least we get to hear about her dead son, I guess. Ella, Isla's Starling assistant, is mentioned so rarely I wonder if Aster forgot she exists. There are also several new average citizen characters introduced, but none of them are remotely interesting. They're all defined solely by whether or not they're on Isla's side. It says something when the best new character is Isla's new animal companion (a panther named Lynx, who rules because he does not give a shit about Isla).

The chili pepper emoji, as the TikTokers call it

Because I must do as the book did and address the topic of sex before I get to the final important bits.

This book is much hornier than the first one, but in a way that makes large parts of it feel like one of those dreams where you're trying to have sex with someone but your attempts keep getting interrupted. I regret that I did not count the number of times Isla was about to fuck someone and then got denied for some reason or another.

There are three times she actually succeeds, and luckily these scenes do not read like they were written by Sarah J. Maas, despite her obvious influence on everything else. This doesn't seem like much of a compliment, but this series needs all the W’s it can get. That's not to say everything is fine, though. There's one scene that's obviously using all the "first time" stuff for characterization, and I can't help but feel this would be more effective had they not already slept together a few short chapters beforehand? Like c’mon, all you had to do was switch the order of those two scenes.

The ending

Shortly before the Nightshade army is set to storm the island and destroy it, Isla learns Grim’s (and Cleo’s) real motivation for doing so: there’s a portal on the island leading to another world, one in which the original founders of Lightlark came from before making Lightlark in the image of the world they left. Grim and Cleo want to open that portal and reach the other world, which will just so happen to destroy the island. They’re not actually trying to kill everyone for the evulz. Isla, in her naivety, accidentally opens it for them before they even arrive.

During the final battle, while trying to steal Grim's powers so she can kill him and save Lightlark, Isla finally remembers the last two important memories: 1) she and Grim actually got married right before he memory-wiped her, and 2) what she thought was a prophetic vision of him killing an entire village was actually a memory of her doing so. Convinced that she'll accidentally kill Oro if she stays with him, she agrees to go with Grim, whom she just realized she is still in love with, in exchange for a promise that he'll withdraw the attack.

I cannot remember the last time I had this strong of an "are you fucking kidding me" reaction to the end of a book. But after some thinking, I decided that it actually makes for some great tragedy material. “Traumatized woman with a supportive partner becomes convinced that she’s too horrible to be with him and goes back to her terrible husband” would make for a good story if this was a more grounded book written by anyone else. Alas, this concept just had to be tackled here.

I also naively thought that because the deal was for two books, that means this would be a duology. But it feels like there will be a third book, and I'm hoping there is, not out of any desire for more (unsure how much more I can take), but because it would be straight-up authorial malpractice to end the series on that note.

Conclusion

This honestly wasn’t quite as bad as the first book, but the problems that persisted outweighed the ones that got fixed, and the severe case of Middle Book Syndrome certainly did not help its case. It’s a very small improvement stylistically, but when the nicest things I can say about it are “there were some concepts that could’ve made for an interesting story in the hands of a better author” and “the sex scenes aren’t atrocious” and “the cat is kinda cool”, then I feel justified in calling it terrible overall. It’s a good thing that Lightlark…3! is presumably a long ways away, because I will need all that time to recover from having read this.

#nightbane #lightlark #alex aster #ya fantasy #book review #book discussion #original content do not steal

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cutephlegm · 1 month

Text

Bloody knees

VI - The knight

Pairing: Enki x reader

CW: Description of gore

Read on Ao3

Summary: As you get closer to entering Ma'habre, you decide take rest for the night, only to be rudely awakened with a blade pressed to your throat. You decide to aid the culprit, who seeks out an imprisoned man, one that the priest seems rather familiar with.

It had been a couple hours so far since you and the priest had performed the ritual and the journey had become tiresome once more. You had both agreed never to speak of this again and surprisingly the journey wasn’t unbearably awkward, besides some tension it was fine. Eventually, as both of your legs started giving out, you’d wandered into a seemingly safe room.

It smelled dank, and felt somewhat colder than the rest of the dungeon. There was one bed propped up against a corner, and facing is was a statue of a woman holding what looked like a crow. You averted your eyes from it, staring too long made you feel uneasy. Once more in the centre of the small room was an unlit campfire that Enki had already begun tinkering with.

You placed your satchel on the bed and dusted the sheets, clearing some of the dungeons grime that had built up. You produced some of the food that you’d gathered from a pocket in your bag and returned to sit by the campfire that had now been lit. Tired embers fell from the flame, biting at your toes, making you let out a slight yelp as you pulled yourself back out of reflex. “Watch yourself.” Enki scolded you, his eyes dark and stern boring holes into you. Though you swore you saw the priest grin for a split second…

“I wish that there was some way of getting clothes down here…” You breathed onto the hot food that the priest handed to you, sucking in the warm that radiated from it. “I’m confident we will find some, eventually… “He said after a pause, attaching more skewers onto the scorching heat. You considered his words for a moment; it was rather odd that you hadn’t found much material yet. The cloth that you had found was now drenched in the priest’s blood in some hallway. The same hallway you’d shared that intimate moment with only a few hours ago…

“I have a question.” You asked, resting your head on one of your hands drearily. You studied the priest, the crackling flame lighting up his face in contrast to the dark room. “Is it about the incident?” Enki shot you a flustered glare, before reluctantly chewing on a piece of stale bread. “No! No, it isn’t!” You corrected, awkwardly taking a drag of tobacco. “I’m just curious about something…” Enki raised a brow. “What?” “Why did you decide to become a dark priest?”

He stared at you with a conflicted look on his face before leaning himself back slightly, his gaze dragging across the ceiling. “I was born and raised to become this... It was never a choice of mine, although…” Enki hesitated a moment, his eyes softening as they met yours. “I must say I do not think anything else could suit me better.”

“How so?” Enki lifted his palm to the fire, causing small ripples to appear and spring off the open flame. “It enables me to achieve my full potential in this word. For my yearning mind to solve enigmas, unearth vast knowledges few mortals have ever discovered.” He shut his eyes, lost in a brooding trance before they snapped back open. “In short, It has satiated my drive for understanding pertaining to this cruel existence.”

You were at a loss of words for a short moment before forcing out a nod, curving your mouth into an understanding smile. “Is that what lead you down to these dungeons?” “Yes.” Enki twiddled a piece of his hair across a finger. “At the brisk of death… I was granted a vision.” You fought back the desire to flood him with a surplus of pointless questions, instead looking on at him In awe attempting to hide how intrigued you were.

“It was of a prophet, residing here in these very dungeons.” You took another drag of tobacco, blowing the smoke out above the fire. “So, you’re searching for him?” “Not exactly.” Enki held out his hand, reluctantly you passed him the pipe. “The gods guided me. But…now that I’m here I’m free to do as I wish.” He took a drag, his eyes relaxing as soon as the smoke entered his lungs. You hesitated a moment, unsure whether you should tell him about the headaches you had, before letting out a sigh. “So… your goal is to go to this ‘Ma’Habre?’”

He nodded, exhaling the fumes into the misty room. “Yes. I have reason to believe that there may be a place there that contains crucial information.” Taking a long pause Enki passed the pipe back to you, absentmindedly rubbing the side of his face which had now been plagued by fatigue. “The cube you gave me… It’s the key to accessing it. Now all I need is to find that cursed entrance.” He sighed squeezing his temples before rising from the floor. Your eyes followed him, studying his movements curiously. “What are you doing?” “Rest.” He stated walking over to the singular bed and laying himself down on it.

“You’re not eating anything else?” He turned back to look at you, and the remainder of the food cooking above the dying fire. “Eating will only slow me down.” “Eating will give you energy” You retorted. An unreadable expression crossed his face for a split second before he shook his head, angling himself against the wall, leaving a comfortable amount of space for you. “I have enough energy gifted to me by the gods. I have hardly any use for food.”

The priest opened a book and started flicking through pages, which you took as him ending the conversation. You turned back towards the fire that had now dwindled to a low whisper, the heat from it slowly seeping away into the cold air, turning the room almost pitch black.

Getting to sleep that night had been rough. The surplus of food you’d forced into your body had made your stomach writhe and bloat, nausea creeping up your throat, the taste of bile lining your tongue. All while you could faintly make out Enki’s silhouette sleeping peacefully next to you. You wondered what he might be dreaming of- if he even dreamed at all- it wasn’t the type of conversation you’d ever have with him.

Your mind wandered back to the moment of passion the two of you had shared once more, you could hardly believe it had even taken place. It was almost a blur however you couldn’t shake off the memory of undeniable pleasure you’d gained from it, the feeling of his body and yours joining in such an intimate and personal way… it sent a shiver down your spine and lulled you into a peaceful sleep.

You opened your eyes, feeling an awkward pressure digging into your neck- it felt cold and sharp… You jolted awake, trying to keep as still as possible while above you, you could make out a figure. The blade which prodded at your skin was sharp, you could tell that it would make quick work of you in an instant if you dared to move or call for help. Your eyes darted around the room for Enki but he was nowhere to be found. The stranger held a torch closer to your face lighting you up before she let out a gasp, withdrawing her sword from you.

“I’m so sorry- I thought you were one of those… monsters…” The stranger said. Her voice was soft and determined, yet slightly hoarse. As she lifted the torch away from your face you could make her out much better- her skin was pale, her eyes a mystic blue and her hair cut into a practical bob. You let out a sigh of relief as you lifted yourself to your feet, rubbing your neck which had begun to bleed from a small cut caused by the pressure. Taking a closer look at the woman, she seemed to be dressed in armour, the type a powerful and prideful knight would wear.

“I’m D’arce.” She announced, a kind smile prying open her lips, as she extended a hand towards you. “I’m… erm, y/n.” You managed to muster, coyly taking her hand. She shook it, her grasp on you firm against the trembling grip the adrenaline rushing though you caused. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen a man around here perhaps?” She asked, a certain urgency in her tone. You cocked your head to the side, earning a sigh from the knight. “A blonde, about thisss tall.” She said, pointing her hand to a few inches above her.

“Perhaps… that’s a rather vague description you give. Does this man have a name?” You questioned, scratching at the back of your neck. You silently prayed that she wasn’t searching for the priest, if the knight had a problem with Enki, you weren’t confident that he would win against her in a fight…

“Le’garde.” The woman sighed, drearily, a lost and conflicted look on her face. “He’s trapped down here, sentenced to death and I need to find him.” She expressed to you; her voice shaking with a pained melody. Your heart sunk at the woman’s words, you felt strangely sorry for her. She cared a lot about finding this man… and something deep inside of your gut urged you to help her.

You nodded with all the understanding you could muster before grabbing your satchel from beside the bed and slinging it over your shoulder. “I want to help you…” You began, studying the woman’s expression intensely. “In fact, I think I might be able to. My… friend knows a lot more about these dungeons than I do.” “Your… friend?” She pointed her gaze towards Enki’s satchel before narrowing her eyes. “Kind of.”

“Well, I certainly hope he’s not the same man I met earlier in this dungeon.” She spat, the slight hostility in her tone bouncing off the dark room. “Who did you meet…?” D’arce grumbled something under her breath, crossing her arms and sheathing her sword. “A thief, that’s who.” Her sour expression turned somewhat remorseful. “Although… he did rescue me from some rather… nasty creatures.”

“It sounds like you’ve had… quite the experience.” You leaned against the rusty bedpost, still transfixed on how mystical the woman looks- it was nothing like you’d ever seen before, well in your short few days of newfound existence. “Certainly… I can’t wait to leave this wretched place. I just need to find Le’garde…”

“Am I interrupting something?” Called a familiar voice behind the both of you. D’arce spun around and pointed her sword up to the priest’s throat in reflex, causing him to shoot her an agitated look. “This is who I told you about…!” You said, desperately trying to diffuse the situation, taking a step closer to the frightened Knight.

“My apologies.” She cleared her throat, once again sheathing her blade and giving Enki a slight bow. In return, the priest raised a brow towards you, his face plagued with confusion and annoyance, which only seemed to fuel your anger. Whatever the importance of what he’d been doing, by leaving you asleep and vulnerable he’d endangered you. If the knight hadn’t been so diligent and spared you- you would’ve surely lost your head to her.

“You’re back.” You stated, not bothering to hide your bitterness. “This is D’arce, we will be aiding her.” You announced shooting a friendly glance in the knight’s direction. The priest’s eyes widened with irritation before he sighed, pinching his temples. “No we will not.” His eyes shot daggers into the two of you.

“When we made our deal, you specifically stated that the only person I’d have to drag with me would be you. That is what I agreed to.” “Yes, and you failed to do that by leaving me alone here this morning.” You seethed, through gritted teeth. A look of guilt flashed across his face before he shook his head, his eyes darkening.

A few still moments passed while Enki mumbled undiscernible words to himself, before pointing his attention towards the knight who seemed to be watching the ordeal with keen interest. “Fine. What is it you need?” He questioned her with unconcealed arrogance.

“I need your help finding a man named Le’garde.” D’arce’s expression softened once more at the topic of discussion. “He was taken hostage, and is being held prisoner in the depths of this dungeon… I’ve been looking everywhere I can but to no avail. Please, help me find him.”

You caught the priest glance towards you in the corner of your eye, his stoic demeanour slipping as he watched you with an emotion, you’d never seen him display before. However, as soon as you noticed it, it had disappeared and was replaced by his usual callousness. “Tell me about this man.” “He uhh… he is…was… my superior.” She spurted out, suddenly flustered. “The captain of the knights of the midnight sun, he was sent to his execution here, by the Kingdom of Rondon.” Enki's body stiffened, his face lighting up in recognition, a sudden air of curiosity possessing him. He cleared his throat, twirling a piece of pale hair between his fingers, humming a low melody to himself.

“Yes… that seems awfully familiar… I’m confident I know who you speak of. Unfortunately, I don’t possess the knowledge of his whereabouts.” The knights hopeful smile quickly dissipated into a frown as she processed the priests’ words. “We plan to venture deeper though… right, priest?” You questioned; your tone as sympathetic as you could muster. He stayed silent, walking behind you to reach for his satchel. “Which means that we’ll most likely find him there, D’arce!” The knight’s lips spread into a weak smile before sighing to herself. “I suppose you’re correct… would you be willing to accompany me?” Before Enki could retort you nodded gleefully.

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with my journey, I will allow it.” You heard him mumble from behind you. The knight's lips spread into a thankful smile before she lifted her torch to the room’s exit, her gaze following yours out into the unwelcoming darkness. “Do the both of you need more time to prepare? Or should we set off immediately?” She asked, looking back and forth between you and the priest.

“No.” Enki stated blankly, his cold eyes flickering towards you before he disappeared into the hallway without another word.

#fear and hunger #funger #enki ankarian #fear and hunger enki #fanfic #enki x reader

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