STS! Tell me about the characters in your most recent WIP?
oooh - wait what is an sts?
and my most recent WIP… fanfic or original?
so i’m actually going to choose one of my originals for this bc. well i occasionally reblog or write complaining text posts about it here so y’all should know. (it might get long so. read more!)
STS and valentine's Day (answer whenever): is there an OTP in your most recent WIP? If yes, what is the wildest thing they would do for valentine's Day?
Oooh okay.
My most recent WIP would technically be Cheaters Prosper where both Jun x Bo and Shing x Jing are OTPs.
I’ll answer for Jun x Bo because the wildest thing they’d do for valentine’s day would likely be... Arson?
They’d probably sit on a secluded hill under a starry sky throwing DIY molotov cocktails or small vials of chemicals/powders that make the fire burn beautiful colours into a self-made bonfire. Bo would rest his head on Jun’s shoulder, twiddling his hair while shovelling down cheap chocolate, stopping to offer him one every other box.
Romantic in the criminal way, you know? ;)
STS and valentine's Day (answer whenever): is there an OTP in your most recent WIP? If yes, what is the wildest thing they would do for valentine's Day?
Hi! Yes there is, in my newest wip, Ascendance!
The wildest thing that the OTP (Joanna and Nathaniel, in this case) that they’d do is probably...karaoke together (loudly and off-key) just to embarras their (future) kids.
Otherwise, I haven’t really thought about it 😂😂
Hope this answers your question!
STS and valentine's Day (answer whenever): is there an OTP in your most recent WIP? If yes, what is the wildest thing they would do for valentine's Day?
Thank you for the ask, friend!
The book is FILLED with OTPs, honestly. I’ll answer this for the whole of Spartan Team, though most of them are used to constant warfare, so some of the most common things (you know, besides bumpin’ uglies) we find as normal they would find as odd or strange.
I think for Adam and Gwen, the craziest/wildest thing they would do is probably going out to eat. As for Titus and Beth, the two of them are super-romantic to each other, so there isn’t a whole lot of “wild/crazy” stuff for them to do. That being said, they’d probably be the goofy/cheesy couple and go out to the grocery store and make each other laugh the whole time. Jasmine and Sam would probably just read in a library together, hand in hand. Rex and Casey would probably go to the movies to catch a new movie they found interest in. Will and Kara would most likely take John with them and go to the arcade, though since one’s a half-blind eleven-year-old who’s never played arcade games before and the other is an Android, it would be easy to say that William’s got his hands full.
Thanks again for the ask! I hope this helped and answered your question! If you’ve got anymore, please send them my way!
STS and valentine's Day (answer whenever): is there an OTP in your most recent WIP? If yes, what is the wildest thing they would do for valentine's Day?
Thank you for the ask! And again, my bad for not answering right away, school gets the most of my time!
In the Arthurian story "The Dragon and the Herald" it would be Tristan and the Apprentice...
So, I feel like Tristan probably tries to impress the Apprentice in some way, and he probably gets Gawain or Percival to help, and it just results in him getting covered in mud or falling, or the Apprentice looking at him like "Are you okay???"
In the Irish mythology inspired one "Tales of Tirinth", the OTP would be Orla and Princess Eydís
Orla probably trains her wolfhound, Brady, to take a bouquet of flowers to Eydís, but he would end up getting distracted and run off. Orla writes Eydís a letter, she would end up losing it, invite her to a picnic? Orla would get too nervous and stutter her way through a confession of love and change the subject probably
STS and valentine's Day (answer whenever): is there an OTP in your most recent WIP? If yes, what is the wildest thing they would do for valentine's Day?
There is! Eris and Ayana. Eris is kind of a wild child and Ayana is more reserved but would totally do anything for her. I can see Eris wanting to do something like make out in a public place to embarrass everyone. Or maybe Ayana would like create a whole ice rink for Eris to go skating on. Maybe both? Thanks for this!
STS! Does your WIP have a cinnamon roll?
Cináed MacMahon is the cinnamon roll from the urban fantasy WIP my buddy and I are working on. The one true absolute cinnamon roll 😭
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Swallowing, Ryang Ji-hoon made a formal bow and said in a hoarse voice, “Thank you. I don’t deserve your kindness.”
Tears pricked her eyes. Yueliang couldn’t recall any of her clients who’d given such heartfelt thanks. She literally saved lives, yet this edgy, insecure mess of a man put a genuine smile on her face. With such awful circumstances surrounding him, decency remained. She put a cold hand to her hot cheek to calm a flush of embarrassment. Ahn Jeong-oh was an interesting person, if distant and slightly desperate. Ryang Ji-hoon was far more genuine. Ironic, since according to him, he had to kill her. “Where do your parents live?” she said, to break the weird tension.
Ryang Ji-hoon straightened up and replied, “Their apartment isn’t far from the restaurant. When I agreed to go with the Brotherhood, I made them promise to look after my family.” His tone turned bitter as he added, “They’ve always had their eye on them.”
In case he double crossed them. She understood the coercion Ryang Ji-hoon dealt with. She didn’t excuse it, but he wasn’t a monster. “Okay. We’ll get the next bus.” They had a plan—kind of. The more she spoke to Ryang Ji-hoon the more sure she became he was as much a victim as those he hurt. She’d be hard pressed to refuse orders if she knew her family and friends’ lives were at stake. She hadn’t forgiven him, nor did she trust his motives, but her instincts said Ryang Ji-hoon wasn’t the root of the problem, he was a symptom. Was it her duty to find a solution? Maybe not. But she couldn’t ignore it, either. No decent human being could.
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From Pen.
Got the last half of the chapter finished and edited and that’s about it. I’m at the midway point in the story and it’s decision time. The first half, Ji-hoon and Yueliang aren’t together the entire chapter, so there’s povs from each which take up half the chapter. That’s fine. It works. The second half they’re gonna be together for an extended amount of time—possibly the whole time I haven’t worked it out yet—so I’ve gotta choose which pov to focus on. Ji-hoon’s had a lot of focus on his inner thoughts and stuff; he’s taken a very main protagonist role with Yueliang secondary, so we’ve had less in depth from her. If I choose to focus on Yueliang more—I’m gonna—then I need to figure out how much of a step back from Ji-hoon I need to take. He’s technically the bad guy, but he needs to be sympathetic. That means I’ve had 9 chapters to make him sympathetic enough to people that they’re not gonna be throwing shit or wanting to shake Yueliang for sticking with him. Because she could legit just walk away from this. There’s none of that “Imma isolate you from people you care about to force you to fall for me” bullshit, which I hate more than life itself. They’ve spent time alone, but there’s never been a point where one couldn’t say goodbye and leave or the other forced them to stay. So, yeah, Yueliang is a bit of a wild card, who has a lot of sympathy for Ji-hoon, but now’s the point we’re gonna see more of her as a person and why she’s so keen on helping Ji-hoon out—ykno, other than she doesn’t wanna die.The thing I need to decide is how much of the chapter is Yueliang-centric and how to balance that with the rising tension? Fun times.
tbh i get queer fans being mad/sad about kavinsky being killed off in that yeah, bury your guys can always be upsetting no matter the character. but it's weird to me when people go the 'he didn't DESERVE it blah blah' route because like, that has nothing to do with the trope. like i agree with queer characters always getting killed off being exhausting, but i don't get people going hard for this particular character lmao
hmm i… sort of agree. i guess i can understand fans being sad about kavinsky being killed off if they empathise with him, even though personally i just… can’t imagine relating to a character like that. but i honestly, genuinely don’t believe he’s an example of Bury Your Gays. it would be BYG if kavinsky was the only queer rep in the books, or even he killed himself specifically for being gay… which, no matter what people argue, he didn’t. but rather than give my opinion on it, i’m gonna take this chance to go through the trope systematically and explain why the shoe doesn’t fit. it’s meta time!
[All quotes are taken directly from TvTropes, though the emphasis is mine.]
The Bury Your Gays trope in media, including all its variants, is a homophobic cliché. It is the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heteronormative counterparts. In this way, the death is treated as exceptional in its circumstances. In aggregate, queer characters are more likely to die than straight characters. Indeed, it may be because they seem to have less purpose compared to straight characters, or that the supposed natural conclusion of their story is an early death.
Kavinsky is never viewed as “more expendable than his heteronormative counterparts”. If you see Kavinsky as simply Ronan’s foil, then the reasoning doesn’t apply, because Ronan is gay himself, so he can’t be a “heteronormative counterpart”. However, Kavinsky apologists like to latch on to Gansey’s “We matter” quote to prove Kavinsky is treated as unimportant – but that’s a fallacy for several reasons. First, you’re taking Gansey to speak for the author, or for objective truth, when Gansey is one of the most unreliable narrators in the book, and his world view is extremely biased. Secondly, Gansey isn’t Kavinsky’s counterpart. Kavinsky is an antagonist, so you have to look at what happens to the other antagonists – his actual heteronormative counterparts. And, well: they pretty much ALL get killed off. Not just that, but they often get killed off in a way that does not have the emotional/narrative impact implied in Kavinsky’s death. By that reckoning, he gets the better shake. Additionally, we get 4 heteronormative villains killed off - Whelk, Neeve, Colin, and Piper. So in the series, queer characters are not more likely to die than straight characters (even among the protagonists, Gansey and Noah are the ones who “die”, where Ronan and Adam do not).
The reasons for this trope have evolved somewhat over the years. For a good while, it was because the Depraved Homosexual trope and its ilk pretty much limited portrayals of explicitly gay characters to villainous characters, or at least characters who weren’t given much respect by the narrative. This, conversely, meant that most of them would either die or be punished by the end.
This is not applicable to TRC, as portrayals of explicitly queer characters are not limited to villainous characters; Adam and Ronan are both explicitly queer and they are treated with huge amounts of respect by the narrative. So Kavinsky isn’t being killed for being the odd one out/the Token Evil Queer; plus, there are other reasons why he doesn’t fit the Depraved Homosexual trope (while sexual molestation is a part of this trope, TVTropes encourages you to “think of whether he’d be any different if he wasn’t gay” – and Kavinsky wouldn’t. Not only because DHs are usually extremely camp while Kavinsky’s mannerisms aren’t particularly queer-coded, but also because he is not shown to have any more respect for women than he does for men, and his abuse would look the same if he was straight).
However, as sensitivity to gay people became more mainstream, this evolved into a sort of Rule-Abiding Rebel “love the sinner, hate the sin” attitude. You could have sympathetic queer characters, but they would still usually be “punished” for their queerness in some way so as to not anger more homophobic audiences, similar to how one might write a sympathetic drug addict but still show their addiction in a poor light.
Again: Neither Ronan nor Adam – the two sympathetic queer characters – are punished for being queer, hence subverting this form of the trope.
This then transitioned into the Too Good for This Sinful Earth narrative, where stories would tackle the subject of homophobia and then depict LGBT characters as suffering victims who die tragic deaths from an uncaring world. The AIDS crisis also contributed to this narrative, as the Tragic AIDS Story became its own archetype, popularized by films like Philadelphia.
Okay, this is DEFINITELY not Kavinsky’s case. Kavinsky’s death isn’t specifically connected to being gay (e.g.: a hate crime or an STD), and he’s never depicted as some innocent suffering victim. As for the “uncaring world”… eh. Kavinsky may not have a valid support system, but that’s just as much by choice as by chance - and when Ronan extends a helping hand and tries to save him, Kavinsky rejects it. Too Good For This Sinful Earth is definitely not in play.
The only trope that kind of fits the bill is Gayngst-Induced Suicide… but only on the surface. As TVTrope puts it, Gayngst-Induced Suicide is “when LGBT characters are Driven to Suicide because of their sexuality, either because of internalized homophobia (hating themselves) or experiencing a miserable life because of their “deviant” gender or sexuality: having to hide who they are, not finding a stable relationship, homophobia from other parties, etc.”. Kavinsky certainly has quite a bit of internalized homophobia, but he is absolutely not experiencing a miserable life because of his sexuality – i.e. he’s not being bullied or taunted or subejcted to hate crimes. He doesn’t have to hide who he is: his parents are effectively out of the picture, his cronies worship him, and he constantly makes gay jokes to Ronan and Gansey. As for “not finding a stable relationship”… well that’s not exactly the problem, is it. He’s not looking for a stable relationship – he’s pursuing Ronan specifically, obsessively, through stalking and abuse. So even this trope is not applicable.
And then there are the cases of But Not Too Gay or the Bait-and-Switch Lesbians, where creators manage to get the romance going but quickly avoid showing it in detail by killing off one of the relevant characters.
Once again this is not the case with Kavinsky, as 1) there was no romance going between him and Ronan, and 2) he is not killed off before the nature of his obsession with Ronan is revealed – he gets the chance to both admit (sort of) he wants Ronan, and to confront Ronan about his sexuality, to which Ronan admits that yes, he is gay, but he is not interested in Kavinsky. So, there is no But Not Too Gay nor any Bait-and-Switch here.
Also known as Dead Lesbian Syndrome, though that name has largely fallen out of use post-2015 and the media riots about overuse of the trope. And, as this public outcry restated, the problem isn’t merely that gay characters are killed off: the problem is the tendency that gay characters are killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters, or when the characters are killed off because they are gay.
This is a very good definition of the trope and why it doesn’t apply to Kavinsky: he’s not killed off because he’s gay, and he’s not killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters; TRC is definitely not overwhelmingly diverse, but 2 of the 4 protagonists are queer, giving us a solid 50% ratio (I’m not counting Noah because his “character” status is vague, and I’m not counting Henry because he came in so late, and also because his sexuality is the matter of much speculation).
For a comparison that will make it even clearer: take a show like Supernatural. Supernatural’s range of characters is almost entirely presented as straight white cis men (as of canon – despite much of the fandom’s hopes and speculation). They’ve had problems with diversity in general, with a lot of black characters dying immediately, and a lot of women getting fridged for plot advancement or male angst (a different problematic trope altogether). Now, apart from minor inconsequential cameos, Supernatural had ONE recurring gay character: Charlie Bradbury. And they killed her off for no discernible reason other than plot advancement and male angst, in a context that had elements of Too Good For This Sinful Earth (Charlie being a fan-favourite, ~pure cinnamon roll~, being killed by actual nazis, who historically targeted gay people). See, THAT was Bury Your Gays, AND Dead Lesbian Syndrome, AND Fridging…
However, sometimes gay characters die in fiction because, well, sometimes people die. There are many Anyone Can Die stories: barring explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight deaths in these, it’s not odd that the gay characters are dying. The occasional death of one in a Cast Full of Gay is unlikely to be notable, either.
…But that is not the case with TRC. As I’ve said above, there are no explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight villain deaths. Kavinsky’s death is not Bury Your Gays; it’s Anyone Can Die – even a protagonist’s foil who has magic powers and is present for most of the book.
Believe me, I would not be cavalier about this. As you rightly said, queer characters always getting killed off is exhausting, and as a bi woman myself, I am deeply affected by instances of Bury Your Gays. When Supernatural killed off Charlie, I wrote a novel-length fix-it fic and basically stopped watching the show – a show I had been following, flaws and all, for 10 years. I don’t take it lightly. But Kavinsky’s death isn’t Bury Your Gays, nor is it homophobia. Sometimes, a character death is just a character death.
STS! In brotherhood, what character had surprised you the most so far?
Happy storyteller saturday to you too and thanks for the ask ^=^
I got a cool surprise from Victor the other day! I wasn’t even thinking about Smudged Iron cause I had a convo on loop between Ghenha and Ina from Broken Oaths that I wanted to get down, then suddenly this fact jumped out about Victor—who I’d only included as a minor character to fill space and give me an idea of the kind of story Smudged Iron would be—and I was like OMGOSH I LOVE IT!! It’s gonna take a good amount of research so I get it done right, but I’m seriously loving this surprise detail from what I figured would be a bit part character ^=^
I’ve started revamping and sorting out character boards for Tiamat Chronicles and thought i’d out something together for my favorite red-head while i’m at it! I’ll have to put some things together for the main protagonists in Naida’s side of the story.
IT’S AVARI AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH *shrill fangirl shrieking*
"I ask myself what if I'd been more insistent, made her see a doctor sooner or not let her tell me it's okay. What then?" Aurora's eyes glistened with unshed tears, making them shine all the brighter. She shrugged, smile wavering against accepting defeat. "But, I mean, hindsight is twenty-twenty, right? So what does it matter what my prescription is now? It's not like clearer vision will bring her back. Everything still happened and what-iffing won't change it. I just wish I wasn't so angry all the time. Like, the wrong kind of angry. The kind that has me screaming at a stranger in the woods because every time I try with people who matter they write me off as a little girl throwing a tantrum!" Aurora kicked leaves, sending them scattering into the air. She laughed until she sobbed. "What else am I supposed to feel!? Huh!? She was my mother and they killed her! Not because they couldn't save her! Because of race!" Dropping to her knees, Aurora buried her face in her hands. "How is this fair!?" Her hollow laugh held a lifetime's disappointments. She scrubbed away the tears. Sniffed. Adjusted her glasses. Took them off and wiped them to a smeary clarity. Stood. Drew a breath. Resolute. "So, okay, kill me, then. Because either way me and my people get murdered, but at least I get to choose who screws me over. I know your name, Hisakawa Tadamasa."
STS! Name a trope in your most recent WIP. What is your favourite trope? Least favourite?
Happy STS! Thank you for sending an ask!
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My favorite trope in my recent WIP is the character hates another but ends up falling in love with them. My least favorite is the character thinking they’re bad luck or cursed because their romantic life is falling apart. Every date fails. ill
STS! Which oc is the boss of the rest? Is there one that only thinks that they are in charge?
Thank you for the ask!
Because there are various groups throughout there is more than one boss. Adina is headstrong and assertive but she’s also more concerned for herself and the people she cares about than the whole picture, so she has no interest in actually leading people. The reason she leaves the resistance is that her goals differ from theirs, but even on her own she has a way to form a group to boss over.
Natalie is a hidden leader because she inspires others to find their strength. She is quiet, a thinker, and can question the others in her group until they come up with a better plan. So someone thinks they are in charge, but actually she is without really taking the lead.
STS! What oc has changed the most since creation? How did they charge?
Hmm, I think all of them have changed a lot, but Uril and Nyx have defo changed the most! Their relationship became more complex and some other spoiler-y stuff
STS! Who is the disaster oc? How do they and the other ocs cope?
Tybee. He is peak disaster bi, and everyone copes by forming a mutual Exasperated By Tybee support group. Gil stress bakes, Lia gives him the silent treatment when she’s truly mad at him, and Kyle plays group therapist
"The king of fire is no friend of mine," my mother used to say. I remembered the way she looked the first time she told us the story.
"He is no friend to you, either. But the king of fire will save us all someday, and there will be love once more. People will roam the streets and well have our festivals and suppers together again. And someday, everything would be okay. Someday."
"Someday," my brothers would parrot back while j stayed silent. How would it be okay, how, when the kind of wolves had no enemies, muchess an opposing king of fire?
I wish, now, I could tell her that she was wrong; there never would be a king of fire.
There would be a Queen.
