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commaless-a · 4 years

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*. meta - relationship with death

from my archmage’s bane meta:

then she fucking dies – and oh god, that’s a whole can of worms to unpack – she’s dead, when she revives she isn’t in her halfling body – and her relationship with death is VERY complicated: she thinks she’s expendable, especially because she’s in a body she HATES – she’ll fling herself in front of all of her friends, but at the same time she doesn’t WANT to die for the sake of her family – i wouldn’t be surprised if she’s desensitized to it, and that’d explain a lot about her taking the blow for jester, running on lava, and what she said before the dreadnought. “i’ve already died once – if i die again, at least it’d be with friends” – it’s a weird balance between “i’m invincible” and “i’m expendable”.

so, hey, it is i, your little goblin girl’s biggest fan - and i want to ramble about nott’s relationship with death for a hot second... so let’s get RIGHT into this!

tldr: why she doesn’t really care about dying: 1. nott has bad self-esteem and prioritizes her friends 2. she wants to be important to the nein 3. she feels her body is expendable 4. she feels invincible 5. she’s desensitized to the notion of dying.

what does she feel about death?: 1. initially, she’s ABSOLUTELY terrified. 2. eventually - she’s sort of... indifferent to it?

as we all know, nott suffers from an extremely low self-esteem - she doesn’t like herself, not in the slightest - though the reasons why have changed, over time. when it’s started: she’s hating herself for being a goblin, for having died in the first place, for not being pretty, or smart, or brave, or anything - just nott - someone who, in her eyes, is an untalented, waste of space who won’t amount to anything. and she takes this to an extreme level - she sacrifices herself for her friends no matter how badly she’s hurt or how bad the situation’s in, and it’s exacerbated with how often she’s called to check for traps and pick locks. even if she’s good at that - she’s terrified of the consequences that may happen when she fails - and as an alchemist, she’s used to thinking up terrible, worst-case scenarios. she throws herself in front of her friends and puts herself in stressful and deadly situations, all for them - because she believes she’s not worth much - that her friends are so much better than her - and she puts herself on the lowest rung of the hierachy. this ties into her passionate loyalty for her friends - she’ll stick up for them, defend them and be on their side, no matter what - but at the same time, she will fling herself into danger when they are in the way of actual physical harm - or will be in the way of.

now, she hates herself - not for being a goblin, though of course that’s still part of the reason why - but it’s now because of much more heavy reasons: for being selfish, being conflicted - and having been normal, before - she now knows very well she’s more than just nott - she’s brave and good with a bow and good at picking locks - but there’s a seed already planted in her head that she was once just veth - that once she was a normal, humdrum halfling in a family she loved and a culture she couldn’t get invested in - and it haunts her very much - that once this is over, once they defeat tharizdun and the chained oblivion and the bad people who hurt caleb and change herself back and fix everything - that she’ll be ‘just veth’ again, that she’ll be all alone again, with nothing she loves and nothing she cared about. she wants to be useful. she wants to be something special to the nein - wants to help her friends achieve their goals and accomplish whatever they want to do - and this definitely ties in a lot to her hierarchy way of thinking.

so, what have we learnt, with the relation of her self-esteem to death?

1. she doesn’t like herself; she believes her friends are more important than her, and acts accordingly 2. she wants to be special and important to the nein - and what better way than to do what she does best, putting herself into danger to protect them?

wait, though - there is so much more! like i said before - nott is in a goblin body - a race that she hates ( for a very good reason, of course ) - and i would be lying if i said that did not feed into her low self esteem. after all, this is coming from “they made me everything i thought i was - not pretty, not smart [...] just nott.” - and, again - with such hatred for her physical appearance, such hatred for her current identity - she believes that her feelings about getting into danger are perfectly justified: she’s not in the right body, so she doesn’t have to take care of it - she can do whatever she wants with it, her body’s expendable - and therefore it doesn’t matter what she does. this is a very unhealthy train of thought - this definitely lends into why she takes to drinking so easily as a coping mechanism - and that way of thinking definitely influences how daredevilish she is. it’s not a matter of being brave - sometimes, it’s just a matter of being reckless. of course, take note that i say her body - because she of course, doesn’t WANT to die - especially when in relation to her family, in the beginning.

with the matter of this current life being so much more exciting/dangerous that her odl life - she’s swinging into two extremes: fear and desensitization - of course, she’s fucking terrified - she’s the d&d equivalent of a rural village mother who’s been traumatized and tossed into a world where she suddenly finds herself with the need to fight to survive - but fear isn’t good - we know her relationship with fear: she doesn’t think it’s useful for her to do what she has to do with relation to her friends - that it stops her from doing things that need to be done: from fighting monsters, picking locks, checking for traps, infiltrating places they shouldn’t be in, etc, etc - so, instead, she swings onto the COMPLETE other side of that spectrum - she completely numbs herself to it. death scares her - adventuring scares her - but because of the, ironically, fear of fear, she pushes it down and makes herself numb to it - and coupled with her very, very normal morals - she often is up for violence - is vicious and ferocious and cruel when she fights. she’s hardly affected by other monsters dying - by humans dying - because they’re bad, and that’s just how adventuring is - sometimes you kill people that get in the way - and by extension, when it comes to her death - when it comes to others dying -

it’s upsetting to say that she’s grown numb to it, too - and it definitely doesn’t help, with the fact that the group has revivify and the very trivial way they treat death ( it’s okay, we’ll revive him later, it’s okay, i have a diamond ) - death feels impermanent to her. this can feed into the other reason - she feels invincible, and is very desensitized to death, at least, at current time. throughout the early parts of the campaign - nott is very quick to FREAK and run to stabilize/heal whoever who’s unconscious - and molly’s death carried such a heavy impact on her - but now, with the clerics having revivify, with the people being stronger - the only time she’s really freaked out is when caduceus dies - and the main reason for that was because she was the one who caused his death - not the monsters - but the fact that she had killed an ally - a friend.

and of course, she never gets to talk about that, because they sort of lost track of that - and so she buries all of that down and jokes about it - further solidifying that desensitized way of looking at death.

how does she feel about death, though?

death, to her - feels like everything and nothing at once. the impact of the hurt - the pain, the burning - it sends her into a flashback of the senses of her FIRST death of drowning ( which is of course the main reason why i’ve been comparing death to drowning a lot in a meta sense ) - but death is... nothing, like - literally nothing. no thought, no feeling - nothing.

and it’s weird.

of course, at first - she is absolutely fearful of death - which is fine, as she should - she’s a normal person who’s been tossed into the adventurer life. its terrifying - and how could it not? the sheer notion that something is so powerful that it can rip your life out from under you, that it could take away all of your life from you and throw it away, turn your life upside down - it’s happened once to her, and really, she doesn’t know what would happen if it happens again. downright fearful - especially with water: have you seen her scared of rain and water - when caleb goes into the bath and she’s so timid and sad when she says “i just got used to you and now you’re going to change, too”? it hurts to die - and when the prospect of others dying - of her dying, is brought up, she is fucking TERRIFIED.

being terrified of change and desiring control over her life - over her own narrative - is very, very integral to her character. but what about now? with the experiences she has - with the things she’s seen... how is she with death, now?

she’s gotten used to it - mainly because of how it’s treated around her - people revive dead people when they fall down - the sheer amount of times people have fallen but are perfectly fine in the end, she’s gotten used to it, unfortunately - with how often she’s encountered death in this career, compounded with the fact she’s died before - she’s beginning to think that death is... sort of - not a big deal, anymore.

death’s something tragically comfortable to her, now. at least death is constant - death doesn’t change, unlike how turbulent her life is. it’s uncomfortable, painful, stuffy, and she hates dying, still - but it’s in a weird way, dependable. she dies again - and though she dies in shock and in trepidation - she, eventually, embraces it - and it came to the point that she almost didn’t come back to life - that she was accepting it, that she refused to come back.

...but, of course - the two times she’s died, she was forcibly returned to life - which sort of just, adds a whole new layer onto ‘dependable’. how would she feel when she isn’t returned to life? probably panicked. i feel everything would come rushing back - like “oh. oh. i’m. i’m actually dead. oh no. oh no oh no oh no -”

so! there we have it!

#*. THEY’RE ALL SO SHIFTY. / META #( me overanalyzing nott: wow someone get her a goddamn therapist )

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lizzybeth1986 · 6 years

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Quick Thoughts on TRR Book 3 Chapter 11

• Again, fam, I'm not entirely sure I'll have this QT out in time but I hope I will. My surgery has been fixed for next Thursday, and I'd like to finish whatever I can before I leave for hospital. It's going to be hard, but fingers crossed I can get it done.

Here is Part 2 of Chapter 11's Quick Thoughts once you're through with this one!

• I'm noticing a narrative pattern here! Whenever something devastating is happening right in front of us (like the two attacks in the palace) they immediately pick up from where they left off in the previous chapter, bring that portion to its dramatic conclusion, and then play the opening theme (in this case, it's the sad version of the TRR title track). They used a similar narrative format in Chapter 1 of this book.

• This is also the third time the sad TRR track plays in the book. The only time it was played sans the narrative style of Chapter 1 and Chapter 10's openings, was in Chapter 6, after the orchard at Applewood was burned. All at points of time when all hope seems to be lost, before our lead characters get up, dust themselves off, and resolve to keep going despite everything and everyone against them.

• It was pretty clear that Constantine would sacrifice his life in this chapter, given the way he was talking at the end of the last one. It's the kind of symbolic send-off one tends to write for a character one knows will die sooner than he anticipates. Which is why even though I'm kinda pissed that Leo comes now when everything seems safe, I understand why having him there is so important. In the narrative, Leo is an important part of the closure that comes before Constantine's demise.

•

A few notes on Constantine's demise:

1. He's right about one thing: it definitely is a better end for him. He dies a hero. Cordonia never finds out that he was going to die anyway. No one gets to know what he did to the future Queen/newest Duchess either. I'm still going to be unhappy about this because it's a way better end than the man deserves.

2. I know I would find it disturbing if the man who arranged for me to be harmed in multiple ways in his own house was hailed a hero during his funeral, with only me and a handful of other people knowing he had done, and without the option of ever opening up about who was really behind it. I don't know about you, but my MC Esther would definitely feel conflicted about that.

3. Also..."everything I did, it was for you...whether or not it was right". Sorry Constantine, but that's a load of bullshit. After all this time, this man is still making excuses just before he dies. Liam answered this brilliantly in the last book - Constantine had a choice. He always had a choice. There were other, better ways of getting the MC out of the competition if that was his goal but no, his mind went straight to privacy violations and assault.

4. Also, while he pledged to help us under pressure from Liam, the fact remains that the brunt of his actions were borne by other people. The MC's name was dragged into the mud and SHE had to run around and make all the effort of setting it right. Liam was forced into a loveless match that would have culminated in a disastrous marriage had Tariq not cooperated, and he had to work on figuring out who was behind this not knowing his own family was involved. In all this, Constantine did all the work of making his own home as unsafe for his guest as it could possibly get, and very little of the work in restoring her reputation in the eyes of all of Cordonia. Did he apologize? Sure he did. But that doesn't change a damned thing. It doesn't change the fact that he sowed evil and left it for other people to reap.

5. I find his last line to Liam quite poignant though. "You are Cordonia". That's a very loaded statement, and a very accurate one. And I think if there is anything that can keep Liam strong and carry him forward, it's that. No one in this book is as immersed in the culture, history and spirit of Cordonia as Liam is - which is why he makes the best king for the nation. Because he knows it intimately and cares for it, he knows what this country needs so it can heal. Even if it takes a while for Liam to realize that himself.

6. So long, old man.

• Title: Cold Fire. Kinda fitting, considering our tour has now moved to Lythikos, but the 'heat' of the tensions within the court have turned up several notches. It could also refer to that sick, sick burn Drake delivered to Madeleine today though 😂😂😂

• Alternative titles:

Drink What Everyone Else Is Drinking. Good For Health.

Drake Doesn't Need A Sword to Slay Assholes. Nor Does Olivia, Apparently.

@callmetippytumbles suggested a shorter and better alternative title to that one, and it's: Drake Roasts And Gets Roasted.

• I was hoping we would spend at least a chapter in the Capitol and, yknow, actually help Liam work through his grief, but nope. Flash-forward it is.

• Bastien is in hospital now, with injuries sustained from escorting people out of the palace, so Mara (who apparently hasn't been sleeping since the attack) is the one doing the debriefing on his behalf.

• It's clear to Liam and our friends NOW that whoever has been conspiring against us was a part of the Unity Tour and working from the inside (bruh, I could have told you that long ago). I'm thinking now that if Neville is part of this plan, perhaps the duel was meant to serve as a distraction so arrangements could be made within the time that the entire court was out in the courtyard. Just a theory.

• This was also alluded to in Perfect Match, when one of Nadia's alternative identities is Steel, a guest in the 'royal's tour who is actually an assassin.

•

This is perhaps the closest we get to Liam confessing how much all this has been affecting him, and sadly enough, he doesn't have enough time to really work through his grief. The suggestion to continue to Lythikos and get their answers there comes from Liam, and he speaks of it as something Constantine would have wanted. It isn't entirely healthy, but I think this is the way Liam has been brought up and it's hard for him to give himself time to be vulnerable, to give himself the space to grieve properly. Because now more than ever he has an entire country depending on him, and the royal family is known for projecting displays of strength and stoicism even if they don't feel it. It's not a good way of working through one's issues, but it's probably the only way Liam knows to deal with his trauma. I feel like in a lot of ways he's reliving especially the assassination attempt that happened earlier, but worse because someone he loved actually died this time. I'd definitely see some signs of PTSD at work here, even if it's suppressed. Particularly given that he speaks of feeling empty.

•

Waitaminute...are you telling me that Esther, the future Queen of Cordonia, is going to attend a Ball, her fiancé's father's funeral, a meeting, and an entire trip to Lythikos in this fever dream of a costume???

Fine. Fine, Esther, I give up. Fanta bottle inspired Stephanie Seymour gown it is 🙄

• What Madeleine says about the effect the MC has (particularly if the MC chooses all the right options during the tour) on people is very very similar to the last thing Constantine said before he died:

I'm guessing in a lot of ways this is seen as the MC's personal victory. Constantine and Madeleine were the two people who believed least that the MC had anything of value to give if she became Queen or a person of power in Cordonian politics. It was a long hard road to achieving this level of confidence even in her naysayers, so in a lot of ways the MC now truly is a unifying factor. Which makes me wonder what they say if you do a gag-run instead where the MC fails miserably during the tour. I know @boneandfur is doing such a playthrough as of now, but I don't know exactly if Madeleine and Constantine's words to her change in such an eventuality.

•

OMG. The design team is KILLING IT with the OOTD this week! It's gorgeous, and it tells us plenty about the Lythikos duchy and the Nevrakis House! For those of you who haven't read my House Sigils essay, I theorized that red was one of the house tinctures (colours), and that the sigil was either a sword or a spider. The flaming sword is attached to the gown (possibly as a brooch pin). @i-dream-so-i-write and I discussed this, and it was she who pointed out that Diavolos signature weapon was the flaming sword, as can be seen from the above picture. I'm not sure which metallic colour would form the second colour/tincture, but evidence seems to be learning more towards silver (there is a little gold on the brooch-sword, so it could be either). Tldr: I love this gown. It has that grace and effortless style that I've come to associate with Nevrakis fashion.

• Olivia is wearing the gown she wore for her Coronation. Come to think of it, the Scarlet Duchess moniker that Olivia got would refer to way more than her fashion. Given that it's one of her house colours and she was proud to be a Nevrakis especially at the time, Scarlet Duchess would mean so much to her. So much.

• So we're seated in the front and served fresh, piping hot food. SWEET! XD This time we get to order stuff. Maxwell gets fondue, Hana gets glazed salmon and Drake has ordered for ribs.

• Olivia: I had to request a few changes for your more...rustic palette.

Drake: Are you expecting a thanks? Because you're not getting one.

You're in for the meal of your life, Walker 😂

•

If you've never liked Olivia at all before? This scene in reason enough 😂😂😂

• Lucretia drops by to make more heavy hints about marriage prospects for Olivia (including relief that her niece wasn't scarred from rubble. How...caring).

• Olivia and Liam then perform the opening dance (like they did during the social season) and Liam takes this opportunity to find out what she knows. He gets little, beyond her worries about having to marry someone Lucretia will pick for her. Hana points out that perhaps "one has to wonder who Lucretia wants Olivia to marry". Good question.

• But before that, Kiara comes up to the MC to tell her she will be withdrawing from court after the Winter Festival ends. Kiara's argument is sound - she had already extended her public support and seems to be attending the wedding. But now is a dangerous time to be a part of the court, and Kiara's doing what she can to stay safe. Remember, she was the only noblewoman in court injured during the attack at Homecoming Ball, a fact that was given hardly a minute of consideration before the MC "convinced" her to join them again.

• Hana mentions that perhaps they can speak to her before she returns. I hope this means we will FINALLY address what happened to Kiara and look into possible - very valid - concerns about her safety. This is something we SHOULD have been talking about when we meet her at Castelserraillian, but no. PB decided to create a whole new character instead just so Kiara wouldn't get the attention she deserved as a character.

• Then again, she is seen as a suspect in a way none of the other court ladies (besides Olivia, and she's only viewed as such because of her family history) are. Sigh. The MC gets the option to speculate that she "knows something" and Drake gets to answer that "we must suspect everyone". DRAKE. Who ALSO got wounded at the same Ball that she was wounded in. Ugh. I mean I shouldn't be surprised considering he gets angry about people not supporting Liam barely hours after he got shot, but he's friends with the King. Kiara is not, and if she gets wounded again wouldn't it be their fault for not addressing the concerns she and her family had in the first place? Apparently Penelope's and Madeleine's concerns should be given ample consideration, but Kiara? Kiara who?? Oh right, Penelope's love interest's sister 😠 While we're at it, let's just make her suspicious for no reason!

• CONGRATULATIONS MAXWELL STANS on getting your first character development scene! There isn't a lot of overt character development but the scene does show us how observant and resourceful Maxwell is, pointing out the hole in the armoury wall that will allow us to overhear people's conversations and give us a better idea of who we should suspect. It does this while still establishing him as goofy, fun-living and always ready to live life king-size.

• Maxwell and the MC engage in what is known in European folklore as an apple-shot (Apfelschuss in German. The most popular folk tale involving this feat of archery is that of William Tell, a Swiss folk hero, who was ordered to shoot an apple from the top of his son's head by a cruel nobleman named Albrecht Gessler. Thankfully, he succeeded).

• Oooh now comes my favourite part: the weapons!

• This is an amazing Easter Egg in two ways if you're a TCaTF fan. One is that it reminds me SO MUCH of when Val gets to be the narrator, which is ALWAYS fun! Case in point are the names she gives the Iron Empire soldiers at Ennan: Pointy, Mr Fancy, Birdface, Grumpy and That Other Guy. Here, the MC gives names to all the weapons.

• So if you're someone who has played TCaTF and forgotten the weapons, no problem! I'm here to list out what these weapons are actually called, where they originated from and how Kenna (if the reader pays) gets them!

• The Weirdly Fancy Dagger is the Black Asps Dagger (which I think might be venom-tipped, like Adder's Fang) which Raydan gets from a Black Asp agent when he is imprisoned under Azura's orders. I see this weapon as being associated most with Abanthus/Lythikos in this list of weapons, because it comes from Adder's team of Lykos spies and assassins, and eventually (if Kenna chooses so) Adder can get to rule over this kingdom either alone or alongside Princess Zenobia (or not at all).

The Dragon Face Hammer! is actually the famous Wave Hammer, made by Kailani Keawe of Ebrimel - a fierce warrior and a skilled craftswoman - from Heart Oak Wood sneaked in from Thorngate. Heart Oak has all the appearance of wood with all the strength of metal, and makes for an amazing secret weapon.

The Ram Head Thing is Crown Guardian Leon Stirling's signature weapon - The Ram's Head Mace. This is a weapon clearly associated with Stormholt as Queen Adriana bequeathed it to him. Leon gets to pass it down to Kenna upon his death, if she so chooses. This mace is strong enough to crush armour, and Leon won the tournament at Ducitora with it before Azura killed him.

The Skull...Flail? is Val Greaves' signature weapon, The Deadman's Flail, which is powerful enough to crush armour. Kenna can use this weapon in her fight against Severin Cale, Leader of the Mercenaries. Val herself uses it often in battle.

The polo mallet is just...there.

• Ooh finally! It's time to investigative.

1. Madeleine approaching a man the MC has rejected in favour of her current fiancé. If you're marrying Liam, this man is Drake and he gets to roast Madeleine like she's never been roasted before ("Liam does get what he wants. That means he also gets to throw away what he doesn't want"). If you're marrying Drake, Hana or Maxwell, she is talking to Liam, addressing the king-sized elephant in the room. Liam doesn't pull any extra punches - he just looks extra annoyed and tells her he's "had other matters to attend to". It may seem like a weak defense in comparison to Drake's explosive comeback, but to be fair the man is going through some crazy shit here, and I don't think anyone in that state can actually expand enough thought to form a rebuttal at all. I doubt he'd have either the inclination or energy to actually respond with more than "I've had other matters to attend to". It's particularly awkward if your LI is Maxwell because he is standing right next to you hearing all this, but that hardly reflects in his dialogue. Basically, I view this sequence as telling us more about Madeleine than about the men: she may have changed a tiny bit, but she's still just a huge shit-stirrer.

Possibly, this might be set up for the apology that will ensue if we save Madeleine's backstabbing ass next chapter. It'll be something along the lines of "oh forgive me, I was so wrong, what I did was so wrong, I'll never do that again" etc etc yadda yadda getouttamyfaceyoufakeassbitch.

Also, I believe that the part of the reason Drake delivered that zinger to Madeleine was because he was still stinging from Olivia's burn at dinner 😂

2. While there are very few differences between the first and last conversations, the second conversation changes drastically depending on who your LI is.

a. If your LI is Liam, Hakim comes up to Liam, gives him his condolences for Constantine's death, and then comments positively on Esther and the upcoming wedding, which leads to a discussion between the MC and Maxwell about wedding preparations. I think this is mostly because Kiara never really interacts with Liam, so they got Hakim to do the honors. Over here though, Hakim and Liam's conversation about the wedding forms only a tiny portion of the conversation, as opposed to the entire thing.

b. If your LI is Hana, Kiara and Hana have a lovely, lighthearted conversation about the latter's upcoming wedding. Kiara expresses great happiness at Hana getting married to the MC, and Hana confesses to being so nervous she constantly dreams about it. I love the way Hana and Kiara's friendship is written here: how open Hana is with Kiara and how encouraging and supportive Kiara is towards Hana. I think it's so beautiful to see 😭

c. If your LI is Maxwell? It's Hana and Kiara again, this time speculating what the MC's wedding to Maxwell will be like. Kiara confesses that she plans to skip a cousin's reception on the same day by pretending to be ill, just so she can attend their reception instead. Together they discuss what surprises the Beaumonts might spring during the reception - from dance-offs to ball pits to hot air balloons filled with kittens. Here too, it's a lovely moment - two of the smartest court members having fun talking about weddings.

d. If your LI is Drake, Kiara talks to him instead. First about the offerings at the dessert buffet, then about the wedding. Kiara is overly chirpy and happy and excited about the wedding, and Drake tenses up when she turns the topic towards the wedding preparations, because those are "complicated". Of course, if you do the LI scene with him at the ice palace, you will find out that he doesn't like talking about it because he would rather keep things simple and focus on his bride, and the nobility is all about perfection and elaborate preparations. Very possibly the Kiara-Drake conversation was written this way as a lead-up to his conversation with the MC at the snow palace. (and perhaps also to dissuade people who would like to ship Drake and Kiara, especially given the backlash Kiara got from fans just for having a crush on the man).

The main focus of this conversation of course is to give out the message that the MC's upcoming wedding is something that still excites people, and that even people afraid of staying in court don't want to miss it.

3. The third conversation between Olivia and Lucretia is given the suspicious sounding music from ES, and begins with Lucretia trying to find out more about the MC. Olivia doesn't tell her much beyond what everyone else knows, and Lucretia leaves her with this cryptic statement:

I feel we're going to have a Big Reveal about what actually happened to the Nevrakises and whether they really were traitors or not.

• With that we finish our little stint at investigation, and in comes our next chance to spend diamonds on our respective LIs!

• I love how Liam's outdoor kink has been referenced two chapters in a row now 😂

•

(Screenshots: @kennaxval for Hana, @mariamatsuo for Drake and the Vika Avey YouTube channel for Maxwell).

Again, like the previous scene, the LIs have their own individual stamp over their ice palace scene. The beauty of it is not just that they all seem different in the way they make love to the MC, but that their reactions to the ice palace itself vary from LI to LI.

Liam gives us a legend. He tells us about the prevalent pre-wedding tradition in Lythikos, where an engaged couple would have their village build them an ice palace the following winter. Kind of like a seasonal barn-raising, which also involves a community coming together to build something for the couple. It says plenty about Lythikos and its people (I won't elaborate because at some point I'm going to be writing essays again). But it also confirms for us how immersed in Cordonian culture Liam is, and how much his Queen will learn when she is with him.

Hana gives us a fairytale. She tells us a story her mother used to read to her at night, about a frozen kingdom, an ice palace and a princess with a frozen heart, which thawed the moment she found true love. The fairytale Hana tells us bears similarities to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", and more to the film it inspired, Frozen. But snow maidens are a staple of certain European cultures (particularly Norwegian and Slavic legend), so it could be a mix of many stories. It's fitting that Hana relates the ice palace to a story, connected as she is to literature and folklore and romance. In a lot of ways, hidden beneath the fable of the ice princess is Hana's own story.

Drake gives us a memory. As a follow-through to the conversation between him and Kiara in Maxwell's armoury scene if the reader bought it (unbeknownst to him, because he doesn't know the MC was overhearing them) he gets to be more open about not being very interested in planning weddings. His ideal would have been to take his bride to his mother's ranch in Texas for a wedding very reminiscent of his parents' union, and were Cordonia not in this condition that's exactly what he would have done. It's very like Drake, whose most powerful emotional associations are connected to his once-happy childhood and his memories of his parents, particularly his father.

Maxwell gives us an gift, made with his own hands. When he brings the MC to the ice palace, he suggests creating ice sculptures, and both make one of each other. It's a sweet, funny and affectionate scene, with both of them exchanging cute banter about Maxwell's "secret affair" with "Ice MC" and his tongue getting stuck in ice while pretending to kiss her 😂 It's very Maxwell. He's very hands-on, likes to do fun things, likes to entertain. And that's exactly the vibe I'm getting here.

The love scenes are tender and sweet and hot, and I think each of these scenes is worth the diamonds you'll spend. The scenes are tailored perfectly to fit the personalities of each LI. This is exactly what I hoped to see with scenes like the bathtub scene at the beginning of the book, and the spa scene. If they continue with this kind of quality content going forward, then I'm really really glad they took that hiatus.

• Okay we're back to the ballroom now. With Madeleine super drunk on...um...some pineapple drink.

• Madeleine is the only person to have the pineapple drink, and she seems to have an affinity for pineapple's since Maxwell offered her that Pineapple Paradise Punch in Fydelia. Everyone else is drinking Lythikos Nog.

• Madeleine collapses in the middle of Olivia's speech!

• The security detail uses "Code Locusta" to refer to poisons. Which is fitting, because Locusta was a very notorious maker of poisons during the time of Claudius and Nero (around AD 54 was when she contributed to the assassination of Emperor Claudius, and his son Brittanicus a year later). She was not only someone who was an expert on poisons and hired for that purpose, but also someone who used her skills to bring down royalty at the behest of their enemies. This could be a bit of a stretch, but I think this ties in symbolically with the plot of the movie scene in Liam's playthrough, where the enemy of the throne is someone who also can claim to be a royal. Especially considering poisons have been used to kill Liam's mother, and now to kill a supporter of the Crown and the MC, and a member of a very powerful Cordonian noble house. And yet...the other noble house - the Nevrakis family of Lythikos - stays untouched.

• The last time I recall "Locusta" being used in literature was in Alexandre Dumas' (père) The Count of Monte Cristo. A chapter of this book, in which a woman attempts to poison her stepdaughter so the family fortune could be passed on to her son, was titled Locusta as well.

• Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, folks. Or should I say, in the Kingdom of. Cordonia?

• Can I just say I love the parallels between Lythikos in Book 1 and now? We learned a little about Olivia's past in passing from Liam here, and now it will hit us in full force in the form of Lucretia. Constantine didn't seem to be in Lythikos, and returned to tell Liam that he was going to die soon, and now we visit the same estate after he has given his life to save his son.

Olivia gave us the worst place and the worst treatment then, and the best now. We convinced Kiara to support us in this very ballroom, and perhaps we might have to do so now too. It was here that Madeleine proudly claimed she was neither unrefined or insecure...but now she doesn't care about propriety.

I recall it was here for the first time that Maxwell stans were given the chance to express affection towards him, and it's here that they now get his first character development scene in Book 3. Most of all...it was here that the initial 3 LIs started to open up to us, in different ways, (if we paid) and now we return...an engaged couple - shedding all our layers and keeping each other warm in the cold (again, if we pay). I have many fond memories of Lythikos, and this chapter definitely brought me back there xD

• Tumblr isn't allowing me to write further for this post, so I will be writing my theories and who I believe is involved in the next post.

#the royal romance #long post #liam x mc #king liam #drake x mc #drake walker #hana x mc #hana lee #maxwell x mc #maxwell beaumont #olivia nevrakis #lady kiara #countess madeleine #trr quick thoughts #quick thoughts

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trollmarket-dog · 6 years

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See you had to say something about Barbara’s behavior, and now you’ve got me thinking about Barbara’s behavior, and my literally favorite thing is taking behaviors given in canon anything and working backwards to try and find the source, and I bet you I could peg her backstory like a fly to a wall if there was any thought put into it.

People like to gripe that Barbara has WAY too nice of a house for a single mother, even a single doctor. I’m also too lazy to find the clip, but I’m pretty sure that when Toby talks about Jim’s dad to Blinky, he mentions that he and his girlfriend ran off to some resort together, which means that’s something he could afford, or was in social circles to meet someone who could afford it. Barbara gets her son a kitchen appliance for his birthday, which can be very expensive, and her complaints about the vehicle were less about price and more about his safety. Her house is also WAY to clean to be kept up by a teen, even one as responsible as Jim, especially when things get more destructive or busy, so she probably has a maid come in every once in a while to scrub grout.

Barbara lives an upper middle class life, at worst, on a salary that’s easily 350,000 bucks a year, and claims every now and again that she keeps needing to pick up hours.

She not only lives at this quality of life, but she’s used to it enough to worry when it’s threatened rather than downsize in REALLY OBVIOUS ways, so she probably comes from a place of decent wealth.

This is important.

She also looks very young for her age, and her marital split could be blamed on her need to focus obsessively on her career, but if Jim’s father was anything but absolute scum and actually had the bond with his son that the show claims, that’s the sort of thing that can be worked around successfully, even if it’s breaking up and co parenting.

But if Jim’s father and Barb were just completely incompatible, say… two young kids who thought they were romeo and juliet and married young without feeling out a relationship first, then yeah, Jim was at about the right age for that to be falling apart.

So she come’s from a place of wealth, with a great big house and a nice car and a really great foundation and what I’m saying here is that Barb has probably never ever at all been without financial support in her life.

And she married young into a loving marriage and when that split her son IMMEDIATELY took up the emotional role that her husband once took.

yes, I’m saying that Jim was her emotion husband I’m trying to make it sound not gross but there it is.

Which yeah it’s a great narrative, lonely mom and awesome son come together after being abandoned by the world/a guy but from a real life perspective it’s not good. But ultimately Barb has also never been without some kind of emotional support either. Barb has never learned to really function on her own

And Barb… is not a giver, she’s a taker. She was raised right, that’s for sure. She’s aware of how much she’s taking up from other people. She knows she’s putting Jim in a position of responsibility she shouldn’t, but it’s necessary to keep their quality of life (again, a place of wealth, downgrading doesn’t occur to her at all) She also loves and lives for her job, but it’s ok as long as Jim is ok with it (she tells herself she’ll change it if Jim is ever not ok with it, but he’ll never not be ok with it, this is how he was literally raised) She knows she lets a lot of her emotional burdens off on Strickler with little reciprocation a lot, she states it right out in a lot of their one on ones, but he’s ok with it so, so is she. She doesn’t give, she takes, and her version of giving is “taking less if someone asks me to”

She knows she needs to give in relationships, but she’s always been so nurtured that she’s literally never learned to do that, and that’s especially apparent when Jim’s life starts to fall apart in the latter series.

Bringing back the awful term “emotion husband” (and I’d like to clarify here that I don’t mean this in any way as incestuous), it’s really apparent that Barb treats her son as an emotional equal (there it is, the better term!). The show makes no qualms about Jim having at least some degree in jealousy on Strickler taking up a space he once occupied in his own mother’s life.

And when Strickler enters her life and starts to fill her emotional needs in a much more gratifying way, and also probably any other needs she might have been craving in a relationship, safely, she now starts acting on all those promises to let her kid be a kid that she’s been telling herself all Jim’s life.

But again, Barb is very bad at giving.

She expects Jim to be the mature adult that she’s been treating him. She’s a doctor, but her mind never goes to a lot of the really bad places that she knows, as in probably has personal experience seeing as an upper class California doctor, that kids like Jim get drawn into shitty things like drugs and bullying and gangs all the time, but not her kid because he knows better.

She also expects Jim to be the kid he’s supposed to be, even though he’s never been treated this way. She’s finally giving him this, and his response is to pull away from it like it burns, and it’s frustrating.

Barb also very much perceives herself as the parental authority, because it’s never been questioned before. Of course her son is going to come to her with his issues, it’s her place as a parent. Except he’s never had the kind of issues he’d prefer she not be a part of so she doesn’t know how to get him to open up. Of course he’s going to respect her authority for things like grounding, except she’s let him have equal responsibilities and free run in the house and has absolutely no sway in setting his boundaries. Of course he should be ok with her dating his teacher, they had got along fine until that moment and he should recognize her ability to judge people (also on the side for complexity he’s always been supportive of her happiness and the abrupt turn around probably seems like a direct attack on this again, she tends to view Jim as an equal partner)

So she’s making a conscious effort to treat her kid like a kid, gets frustrated when he responds like an equal, and then automatically responds like he’s an equal in turn (cold shoulder and such are BAD responses in equal relationships, but that’s where they typically show up, and Barb has the relationship fixing skills of a teenager because that all she’s ever needed)

I’m not saying she’s doing it on purpose or is stupid or bad. She actually seems more than aware of what she needs to be doing theoretically, but her very nature as a taker in relationships has never being questioned seriously, her lack of experience in stressful situations like this and in relationships in general, Barb just… doesn’t know what to do, and it’s all coming to a head at once. These are the kinds of issues that should have been dealt with a long time ago and at a very slow pace, and Barb just doesn’t know how to get there or how to even start.

And what’s sad is that in all this mess is that Jim is acting exactly as he’s been raised. He is essentially keeping house, and trying to keep Barb’s life stress free, but on a huge level by pushing her as far away from the danger and stress as he can. He’s forcing his home life to be as normal as possible for her, and he’s using her own logic of “it’s ok if it’s a bit sucky now we’ll work it out later when things are better” to justify his disregard of authority. He also views his mother as an emotional equal, and is sure she’ll understand when the time comes, so what she says now, like “you’re grounded”, it doesn’t matter.

tldr: Barb views her child as both and equal partner, and as a child under her authority, and there was literally no response Jim could have possibly made to her actions that would have justified both of those mindsets. She’s also got the relationship stress reactions of a 13 year old which only serves to upset her authority more. She means well, but just plain doesn’t have the skills as a parent or as an adult needed to respond the way she should be

(after point) On the final note of Barb never being without emotional support, I’m really interested in season 2 because of this. Either Jim will be back right away throwing away a good plot potential and nothing will change (BOOOOO HISSSSSSS), Barb will have to learn how to cope with being alone as a human being and have some personal growth just in time to become a better and more supportive parent (probably not, having an authority figure in his life that is no doubtingly against fighting to the death is against kid power fantasy rules)

Or she’s going to go running to the first sign of emotional support she can grab onto, and the reversal for the life merging spell suggests that she only looses her memories up until the point the spell was cast.

So her son is gone and the one person she was gradually relying on well, the latest memories of him were of tea and small meetings, the last date before the first kiss. The framing of his apologies and his agony when the spell was broken also hints that those will be embedded into Barb’s psyche and possibly reoccur. Strickler is probably a GREAT idea in her mind. I will not be surprised at all if she reaches out to him and convinces him to be part of season 2. not necessarily the healthiest choice, but it’s convenient for the plot!

---

holy shit dude you wrote a whole essay on this. first of all thanks cuz uh wow good job!

also a lot of this you’re seriously not wrong on and i’m just like ‘yeaaaaahhh pretty much’.

#trollhunters #meta #barbara lake #long post #nellynee #goddamn #this is quite the read #abuse mention #submission

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giasonesdream · 4 years

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Track Your Fic’s Success on AO3

Fanfic Writing on AO3 (for ARMYS)

I'm not sure why I felt the need to make this, but I have heard writers talk about this topic before, of not getting much traction on their fics. There's a part of it that really does fall on the readers, but this is a post to maybe help get you on the right path or maybe change your perspective on the stats given to you (aka kudos, hits, comments, etc).

The 10% Idea

Basically, this is just something to keep in mind if you see that there aren't many kudos on your story.

I used to have a friend that said pretty much this: If the amount of kudos is 10% of the amount of hits you have, then it's deemed a good fic. That is to say, even if your story only gets 50 kudos out of 500 people that read it, you're in the clear.

I'll be using screenshots of my own works as example because I have a range of decently well-received stories to not well received at all.

So this one has almost exactly 10% the amount of kudos.

This, which has only a whopping 5 kudos is in the 10% (it’s actually not it’s 2am and my brain is shitting itself but I’m gonna make a point with this one regardless so leave my math error alone}

Meanwhile, this fic only has 55 kudos even though, presumably, over 2k people read it.

There are a few things that should be taken into consideration here:

THE SHIP: it's no shock to anyone -especially writers- that there are favoured ships in our fandom. Taekook and Jikook take the first place spot followed by Yoonmin (this one actually was named the top ship on all of ao3 a couple years ago!) along with yoonseok/sope maybe Namjin? This is all to say, if you write about a ship that isn't necessarily popular, not many people will read your work. That isn't to say that you should only write for certain ships. Please write what you want and what you feel! I cannot stress enough that all of this should be for fun or maybe even practice if writing is your passion.

But let’s look back at the three fics I pointed out. The first one with 400 kudos is taekook, so it had a better chance of getting seen by more people. In fact, 4k people clicked on it and potentially read that story...but the next fic with only 5 kudos is yoonmin. Aren’t they a popular ship? Why did only 100 people read it? And vhope isn’t necessarily a popular ship now (it had its time earlier on back when Rookie King came out, and the veterans for that ship are still fighting, me included!) but 2k people clicked on that and only 55 of those 2k liked it enough to leave a kudos. So, if it’s not the ship, what else could it be?

THE TAGS: tagging a story is very detrimental when posting on a site like this or any other, really. Many people like to narrow their searches down based on the criteria. Being able to filter what fics a person sees can make or break a work’s traction. My yoonmin story is a horror fic, and I’m sure there aren’t very many readers looking to get scared. As an avid reader myself, there is no denying that I -as well as many other readers- are interested in reading smut. Whether it be a one shot that’s quick and easy, or maybe it’s a slow-burn that tallies up to just being a written rom-com series, if you specify in the tags that smut is in this story, people are more willing to give it a try. For the vhope fic, I didn’t mention smut, but I did put in the tags some subgenres of smut. You can’t have “over stimulation” without sex, right?

But, again, I feel the need to stress this: do not write smut if you are not comfortable with it! Despite the fact that a lot of us are thirsty, shameless fiends, there about just as many people that are only here for the cutesy, lovey-dovey shit. That taekook fic doesn’t have any sex in it, nor did I ever mention that there was a possibility of sex. It doesn’t go past being flirty in the span of 2k words. So, then, if a fic with a popular ship can do well without having sex in it, what else is making people click on it?

THE SUMMARY: I...am such a huge advocate for summaries. There’s a nice fine line between going into too much detail or not enough. This is why I normally go the route of putting in an excerpt from the story and then add a TLDR (Too Long Don’t Read) in the form of an “OR” followed by an incredibly oversimplified idea of what the story is about. As you can see, I didn’t do that for the yoonmin fic. I only put in an excerpt that -quite frankly- is boring narrative. The reason as to why I chose that in the first place is because the horror aspect of the fic is where any dialogue comes in- which brings me to the next point!

This could just be me, but I do tend to click on stories that have dialogue in the summary. This is going to depend on if the reader cares more about dialogue or narration, but think of the story as if it were a new movie coming out or preview to a new episode of a show. Do these videos only broadcast the actors simply moving around? No, they like to add in clips from scenes, use dialogue where you can sort of understand what the context of the scene might be, but not enough context so you’ll want to watch and see what the fuck they’re talking about.

So, if you’ve gotten to this part, you have probably realized that all I did was just tell you how you can market your writing so that more people will click on it and possibly read it all the way through. And really, these aren’t necessarily sure, guaranteed ways of becoming the next “The Fic” in our fandom, but I can assure that just taking more time to consider these aspects can allow you to contemplate what works for you as well as the audience.

That’s that on that. The next thing I want to talk about some stuff I didn’t cover that are just as important:

Comments (and Bookmarks)

This is probably the biggest thing I ever hear/read/see artists of any sort complain about. And with good reason! As a writer, it truly does wonders to get feedback of almost any sort, even if it’s just a critique on how something was worded. Comments mean that we’re not just throwing our art out into a vast void. Effort was put into the art we created, so if you enjoyed it, effort put into commenting is much appreciated. But this isn’t another rant begging the audience to please just let us know how you felt. No, I’m here to mention that we should not let the number of kudos overshadow the interactions.

More examples. And keep in mind that taekook fic. Feel free to scroll back up and look at the amount of comments on that work. Now take a look at these:

So, 8.1k read this fic...and only 250 people liked it...but boy did this story cause some sort of reaction because people W E N T O F F! And rest assured, none of the comments were necessarily negative. The majority of them are just people being like “wha- how could they >.<”

Everything seems to be pretty even across the board. 2.6k readers, 220 kudos, about 20 or so comments (that’s excluding my replies).

As I mentioned before, comments are so important. The taekook fic I wrote that seemed to garner enough traction where 4k people read it and 400 people liked it enough to leave a kudos, only a handful of those readers left a comment. It kinda makes me think of instagram. How strange does it look if a picture gets 10k likes but only has maybe 10 or 20 comments. Something seems a bit off, doesn’t it? I can see how this sounds entitled, but my sole purpose in bringing this up is because those numbers can be discouraging. And I want to stress how important it is to look at your works, cherish the comments you get even if the number of hearts seems low in comparison. Some of my most heartfelt comments are on that Taegi fic just above. And it makes them all the more special because this has been my favourite story to write. So even though not many have read it (whether it be because the ship isn’t popular or I didn’t do a good job of summarizing the fic where it seemed interesting) the people that clicked on an liked it felt the need to comment some absolutely amazing words. And those are the comments that should keep you going and growing.

I’ll also just add this little tidbit because it wasn’t something I noticed until recently, you should also check the bookmarks. People are able to leave comments and tags in their bookmarks, and I believe those to be extensions of comments. Not only did people feel like saving this work you wrote, but they might just let out some of their feelings in the tags, like the tags section of a tumblr post or the comment on a retweet.

There is no rule or formula that I particularly know of for getting more comments -aside from using the note section to say “let me know what you think” or “comments are always appreciated!”. I think this aspect somewhat depends on the story itself. That taekook fic I wrote is probably one of the more “cookie-cutter” things I have written. Tropes are great, they normally have a plot and formula that people can follow and know what’s going to happen. And they’re tropes for a reason: they’re common and entertaining. I know I don’t always like to go the route of writing tropes. I have accepted that the style in which I write is not always catered towards the general audience, but that is completely okay!

As I said before, this is for fun. You write because you have a story you want to tell, and you feel so passionately about it that you take the time and effort to write it. If my numbers have proven anything, it’s that your fics will find their niche. It’s always going to fit someone. And it’s important to really appreciate those that seem to like what you’re writing, even if the greater audience doesn’t vibe with it.

And that’s that on that.

So, since we’ve gone over all this, I just wanted to say that I am open to helping writers. I know this post probably isn’t the best representation, but I’m pretty damn good at spelling and grammar. I’m not a novelist, don’t have any published works floating anywhere on the New York Times Best Seller list, but I have been writing since I was seven years old. With fifteen years of experience and having worked with authors in the past on potential books, I am always more than happy to pass on any knowledge I have gained over the years. If it’s wording something to make it flow better, trying to fill any plot holes or answer questions of character motivations, of if you should be using “there”, “they’re”, or “their”, I would love to help. All ya gotta do is message me :)

*mic drop*

#bts fic #bts smut #bts army #bts fanfiction #i would love to help with tumblr but fuck i don't even know anymore #bts imagines #just trying to call upon our fic writers

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