Fake Manga cover of the very real events that totally transpired after book five. Riffing off those works with the very long and descriptive titles.

tumblr ads serving up ready-made heartstriker shitposts on a platter

I know in the Heartstrikers books there’s a lot of emphasis on how Chelsie (and Felicity) takes after her mother (“reeks of Bethesda,” as per Fenghuang), and i know how they're narrative foils to each other and all, but let’s take a moment to appreciate the similarities between Bethesda and BOB?!

Look at this shit. This makes me insane.

Bethesda being initially underestimated by her father and brothers before she successfully staged her coup, and Bob being fully embraced by Bethesda as her seer only to then ultimately betray her too?

NOT TO MENTION ONLY THEY HAVE RAINBOW FEATHERS?!??

Plus with Amelia being in the “starter clutch” and lacking the green eyes, this means Bob is the first child to truly look like Bethesda.(well, since the rest of his clutch died)

Like mother, like son.

The Heartstriker series by Rachel Aaron

This series may be the most Hufflepuff thing to ever exist.

Julius Heartstriker (my pure, cinnamon roll son) is one of the youngest dragons in the Heartstriker clan, the largest and perhaps most ruthless dragon clan on earth. The problem is that Julius...is not ruthless. He’s way too nice, and soon someone (probably his mother) is going to kill him for it.

But Julius is part of a larger plan - a piece set up and protected by his seer brother Brohomir - and it might just be his niceness that makes him an excellent tool in determining the outcome of Earth’s future, and perhaps give him the power to change the dragon world.

Perfect if you like urban fantasy, dragons, atypical protagonists, and a balance between character focused and epic fantasy (complete with prophecies, seer plots, and apocalyptic threats).

I picked up this book because twitter termed it “the least toxic example of masculinity in fiction” and honestly...that’s all you need to know. Julius is such an amazing, lovely character who is just...nice? And while every other character tries to code that niceness as weakness, he manages to be just as badass as every jerkass male protagonist you’ve ever read, without ever descending into jerkassery. No matter how awesome and powerful he becomes, he never lets it compromise his moral compass. It’s a breath of fresh air to have a powerful and competent male protagonist without him having to be an asshole.

And then there’s the female characters. Julius might be the protagonist, but nearly every other major character is a woman. There’s Marci, his human mage partner-in-crime who literally levels up at twice the rate he does. There’s Chelsie, his awesome assassin elder sister who is (IMO) the most complex character in the series and basically gets an entire book to herself, and Amelie, his awesome plane-traversing (queer) mage elder sister. And that’s not anywhere near reaching the end of the list.

Equal! Partnership! between! male! and! female! leads!! No sidekicks to be found here!!!!!

Just a completely dismantling of “court intrigue”. Julius calls out any and all nonsensical, counter-productive, and abusive behaviours that everyone else sees as the only way to succeed. Basically the true source of strength in this series is diplomacy.

The writing style is also just...really funny? I laughed aloud on multiple occasions.

And guys! GUYS! I haven’t even TOUCHED ON THE STORY OR THE WORLDBUILDING. Do you enjoy prophecies, and like the idea of all-powerful seers warring against each other to try and make their futures a reality? Worlds in which magic has only just returned and humans, dragons, and spirits are all vying for dominance? Dragon hunters, a UN magical task force, and interdimensional threats? Loads of cool dragon clans with cool awesome dragon powers? This book has so much going on, it’s freaking insane.

Fic: Frozen Ash

Fandom: The Heartstrikers

Character: Svena the White Witch

Also on: Dreamwidth, AO3, FFN. 

Summary: Svena mourns, and plots vengeance. Set after No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished and before Last Dragon Standing. 

Deep in her mothers' glacial fortress in Siberia, Svena the White Witch plotted.

She plotted for the survival of her clan, her ten surviving sisters and five unhatched eggs, in the face of Algonquin’s looming threat. She plotted vengeance against that same enemy—true, Algonquin seemed invincible now, but Svena’s daughter would be a seer, and perhaps a seer could make even the Lady of the Lakes pay in blood for the Three Sisters’ deaths.

Mostly, she plotted against Brohomir, Great Seer of the Heartstrikers, for the death of his sister and her enemy. Amelia the Planeswalker, Svena’s last and greatest rival, who should have died in battle against her, not been struck down by the one dragon she’d trusted.

It galled her all the more because she’d played into the seer’s hands. Amelia had persuaded her to help with an ill-advised bit of magical experimentation, dividing Amelia’s vast flame in half and placing half—for safekeeping, the Planeswalker had claimed—within a mortal mage. A mortal who wasn’t even hers, either of theirs, but who served Amelia’s weakling of a youngest brother. A mortal who’d been dead days later, before Amelia herself, turning that protection into a greater weakness, draining Amelia until she’d been as vulnerable as an old and powerful dragon could be.

Had she refused to help Amelia in her foolishness, Svena was certain that her rival would still be alive. There was no way that the second greatest dragon mage could have met such an ignominious death if she’d been at full strength; even Brohomir was no match for the Planeswalker, either as a mage or as a fighter. Had been no match for her.

Svena swore that she would make him pay for using her. She and her daughter would turn all his plans against him, for that. And they'd make his life a misery, because he'd taken Amelia from her.

Rage made a fine distraction from her grief.

My best and greatest enemy...

The Heartstrikers Series – Rachel Aaron (Spoilers)

Julius Heartstriker, youngest son of Bethesda Heartstriker, is a Nice Dragon. Which is a bit of a problem when ‘nice’ is seen as weak, and the rest of your family considers you a disgrace to dragonkind. Instead of going out into the world and carving a place for himself, as any proper dragon would, Julius prefers to keep his head down and hang out in his room, playing online games with humans (whom most dragons consider as either playthings or pets), or taking online classes in every subject imaginable.

Finally tiring of her wayward son and his lack of draconic traits, Bethesda storms into Julius’ room, seals his magic (meaning he cannot transform into a dragon but is forced to remain in his human form) and dumps him in the DFZ: the Detroit Free Zone, a notoriously lawless city (think Chicago during the Capone years) which is run by the dragon-hating Water Spirit, Algonquin aka, The Lady of the Lakes. He stays one night on the couch in his sister Jessica’s apartment (Jessica is a doctor and is fully expected to be running her own hospital within a few short years) then his mother gives him a task – prove himself to be a proper dragon (which generally means ripping people off for one’s own gain, rather than ripping people’s heads-off in this near-future setting), or she’ll eat him. Oh, and he’s only got a month to do this – and because his dragon is sealed, he cannot access his fire or magic – so he’ll have to find ways around the limits Bethesda’s imposed on him.

He is tasked with helping his older brother Ian’s girlfriend Svena to retrieve her wayward sister, Katya. Like Julius, Katya is the youngest of the Three Sisters Clan of dragons, and also something of a disappointment to her family. Rather than hiding in her room, however, Katya runs away a lot. Svena wants to bring her back home and via Ian, tasks Julius with the job, giving him a silver chain with a spell on it to placate Katya. Julius has to put the chain on Katya and then Svena will be able to collect her sister and take her home. Unsurprisingly, Julius is reluctant, but agrees to the task because he wants to be allowed to return to his own home, and to have his dragon form unsealed again.

To the surprise of almost everyone (certainly to Bethesda’s, and even to Julius’), the ‘Nice Dragon’ not only survives the quest he’s given, but he manages to broker a relationship between his clan and that of the Three Sisters, the oldest clan of dragons (all of whom are female), rather than getting eaten as nearly everyone, including Julius, was expecting.

From here, Julius goes on to overthrow his mother (a move that definitely surprises Julius as well as the rest of the Heartstrikers) – but instead of doing the obviously draconic thing of killing his mother and putting her head on a spike somewhere to terrify the rest of the Heartstrikers into obedience, he has her dragon form sealed (a tiny bit of poetic justice!), and instead proposes forming a three dragon Council to run their clan so that it can be run in a manner that encourages dragons to concentrate on what they’re good at, instead of encouraging them to destroy each other. This is also considered very un-draconic, of course, but Julius got the idea from humans and he introduces his clan (who are all very powerful, properly draconic dragons) to the concept of elections and doing things democratically so that they can become even more successful in their various enterprises instead of being subject to the whims of their mother Bethesda, who punishes any dragon against whom she takes by sending her daughter Chelsie – the clan enforcer – to punish or kill them.

Julius is aided and abetted by the human Mage, Marci – who is extremely talented and capable – and by his oldest brother, Bob, formally Brohomir, the Heartstrikers’ Seer who has made Julius the lynchpin of a fantastically convoluted plot to improve the lot of all dragons, not just the Heartstrikers. Bob, in turn, is aided by the eldest of the Heartstriker dragons, Amelia who, like Bob, is the only surviving member of her particular clutch – Bethesda, unusually, produced large clutches of eggs at regular intervals, leading to much snide commentary from other dragons who often referred to her as ‘the Broodmare’. Amelia is also known as the Planeswalker as she spends very little time in ‘our’ reality, since she fears Bethesda will pre-emptively kill her, rather than let Amelia challenge Bethesda for the leadership of their clan (which Amelia doesn’t want!). Bob is also, somewhat more reluctantly, aided by Chelsie, the clan enforcer, who is one of the only two remaining members of C-clutch (Bethesda gave her children alphabetical names running from A-clutch through to J-clutch).

Aaron’s Heartstrikers series successfully inverts the toxic masculinity trope by allowing Julius to succeed at whatever he turns his attention to without using violence or treating other beings (humans, dragons, Spirits) as disposable to be used and then dropped. Of course, Julius does not have it easy – during the course of the series both Marci and Amelia die. And while their deaths aren’t permanent (this is a world with magic, after all), they nevertheless have a significant impact on Julius. He and Marci have fallen in love – though, being a Nice Dragon, Julius has largely kept his feelings to himself – and his grief at Marci’s loss is palpable throughout the chapters that follow (he literally takes to his bed and won’t stir until, eventually, he is forced to do so by his older siblings).

Julius is a self-sacrificing noble Nice Dragon – he literally dies to save Algonquin, despite the fact that she hates dragons. He insists on going to talk to her in the hopes of saving her from the Leviathan, a Nameless End – an extra-planar being from outside of ‘our’ reality which is quite literally destroying our reality. The Leviathan has infested all of Algonquin’s waters, meaning she will soon die as the Leviathan is sucking up all of her water which, being a Water Spirit, she needs in order to survive. However, Julius knows that she can make use of dragon blood at a pinch, so after talking to her, and establishing that she would not use the Leviathan again if given a second chance, he swallows the last of her Leviathan-infested water, then as the Leviathan destroys him from the inside, Algonquin flows out of Julius into the pool of blood that’s forming on the ground in front of him from the Leviathan ripping his body apart, and she takes Marci to safety, at Julius’ request, and Julius is killed by the Leviathan.

But while a dragon’s body can be destroyed quite easily, it’s harder to destroy a dragon’s fire – which is the core, essential part of a dragon in the same way that the soul is supposed to be the core, essential part of a human. Bob is able to capture Julius’ fire before it goes out, and he, with the help of many more dragons (not all of them Heartstrikers, and one of them his mother Bethesda, whom Julius – and pretty much everyone else! – had thought still despised him for being a Nice Dragon instead of a blood-thirsty predator) is able to restore Julius back to life by the dragons giving him the magic of their fire.

In the end, all’s well that ends well – Julius and Marci get married, and Dragonkind across the world agrees to work together instead of working against each other, with Julius taking over running the DFZ so that it’s no longer a lawless city, and Marci becoming the Archmage (but without the usual long white beard!).

Note: Last Dragon Standing is not out until March 1 – I was fortunate to read an ARC of it.

The Heartstrikers Series - Rachel Aaron (Spoilers) Julius Heartstriker, youngest son of Bethesda Heartstriker, is a Nice Dragon.

Heartstrikers and DFZ series as text posts

Heartstriker/DFZ Fic Recs! (No Spoilers)

Heartstriker and DFZ fic recs that are spoiler free! (as in major plot points, but some have character backstory spoilers)

HEARTSTRIKER SERIES

Battle on the Wing— Sheliak_(Sheliak)

AO3: Teen, Graphic Descriptions of Violence, Amelia/Svena, Pre-Canon, Complete, 756 words.

An Impulsive Act of Baby Theft— Sheliak_(Sheliak)

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Amelia & Brohomir, Pre-Canon, Complete, 901 words.

Enemy Territory— Sheliak_(Sheliak)

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Amelia/Svena, Pre-Canon, Complete, 809 words.

All Our Hues— LemonsBitter

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Amelia & Brohomir, Pre-Canon, Complete, 1939 words.

DFZ SERIES

50/50— mimiwrites

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Nikola Kos/Opal Yong-ae, Post- Minimum Wage Magic, Complete, 766 words.

then i might miss you— mimiwrites

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Nikola Kos/Opal Yong-ae, Post- Minimum Wage Magic, Complete, 1599 words.

Dinner and a Show— Atomicpom

AO3: Teen, No Archive Warnings Apply, Nikola Kos/Opal Yong-ae, Miniumum Wage Magic, Complete, 1430 words.

He’s the meme, your honor.

Um, so I wrote a fic for this fandom of less than a dozen people. 

It’s Amelia saving baby Bob from their mother’s vanity. Slightly canon divergent, since I think Bob was described as the runt of B-clutch, and I don’t think this story lines up exactly, but creative liberties, yo. 

Okay, now someone teach me how to edit videos so I can make a Heartstriker vine comp.

"pigeon lovers dni" <- estella the northern star's twitter bio

im rereading heartstrikers

if great seer of the heartstrikers brohomir “bob” has million number of fans i am one of them. if bob has ten fans i am one of them. if bob has no fans. that means i am no more on the earth. if world against bob, i am against the world. i love bob till my last breath... die hard fan of brohomir.