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The combination of 'unnervingly flawless self-control' with 'occasional tendency to engage in reckless, dangerous, and borderline self-destructive or death-seeking behaviour' in a character is SUCH catnip to me

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He's so larger-than-life and then Damien gets to actually meet him!!

This reminded me of why I never stopped loving those books. Brilliant work!

I'm finally posting more coldfire art!

Something about erasing a guy's face and continuing to worship the figure?? Idk fucked up stuff is happening to my buddy Gerald.

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you know a joke that never EVER gets old is when a character says smth like “I will NOT go to [place] and that is FINAL” and then it cuts to them in that place I eat that shit up every single time

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Neither enemies to lovers nor slow burn but a secret third thing called Schrödinger's intimacy. We are in love and we are not in love do NOT open that lid I swear to God.

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Honestly, if you're in a battle and your side's wizard comes out to fight the other side's wizard, you should all just stop and watch the light show, because once those beardy fucks start chucking meteors at each other you're really not the deciding factor here anymore.

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the type of ship i fuck with the most

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save me characters doing fucked up things out of self-preservation…..characters doing fucked up things out of self-preservation save me………..

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I am no longer explaining my chronic illnesses. I'm only ominously referencing them like I'm a fantasy realm NPC dropping plot hooks:

I am besieged by the affliction

The ritual was successful, but it has drained me. I need time to recuperate.

I can't do that, because of The Curse

Dark forces are conspiring within me. I must conserve my strength to battle them.

Unseen foes assault me. I cannot strike back with blows, but I can lessen their influence by consuming certain alchemical rites.

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All the men I hunt for sport are sustainably and ethically sourced.

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Nightborn-Induced Insanity: Almea Tarrant Meta

I realized I had way too many thoughts and Thoughts to fit into a coherent Discord blurb so I'm vomiting up an entire wall of text post instead. XD Stay with me here this is a bit of a journey but I promise I'm going places.

So.

I've never delved very far into the character of Almea Tarrant because there was one little detail I could never quite reconcile in a way that satisfied me, even with the precious little canon info we have on her; namely, that I always got the strong impression that she's afraid of the fae. Even in the extreme brevity of her role in the prologue of Black Sun Rising, I feel there's a clear implication that this is a woman who is fundamentally uncomfortable with the unseen powers around her, and I could never wrangle that into a satisfying place coupled with the fact that she married Gerald. It's far from impossible, not even unreasonable, to think that she might just be turning a mental blind eye of sorts to the reality of him being an adept, but that never added up to a relationship dynamic that particularly compelled me; how deep can their love story be, if she has no connection with something so fundamental to him as a person?

But now. Oh, folks, how the tables have turned.

See there's something I noticed while reading Nightborn (yes, I only just finally got to it, lol). And that something is that Ian Casca was a redhead. His red hair is commented on repeatedly - it's sort of his 'signature' visual descriptor, the same way that Gerald's grey eyes get remarked on frequently. And because I'm me and my brain draws connections at the speed of light, from pretty much the first mention of that, a part of my brain noticed 'huh. Almea was mentioned as having red hair too. Would be funny if... but nah, Casca clearly doesn't have kids and we know he's not going to live that long, can't be a real connection'.

And then. Guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. Then we hit this.

*record scratch*

EXCUSE ME? Is that a canonical confirmation that they saved this man's sperm, and very well may have used it, due to a lack of preserved genetic samples from Earth? Canonical implication that there may well be biological descendants of Ian Casca running around Erna?

Red hair's not exactly a common trait. Only 1-2% of our world's population, though who's to say if that number holds consistent in the alternate timeline that these books seem to inhabit, lol. Granted we don't know how many genetic samples they were able to save from the colony supply, or the range of variety in those samples, but... there's nothing here that says it's not a real connection. And if you apply that lens to Almea's relationship with Gerald, the potential - at least for me - is staggering.

If Almea is descended from Ian Casca, and knows it, that would certainly explain an ambivalent relationship with the fae; growing up with the albatross of your ancestor's deeds around your neck would inevitably shape your relationship with sorcery in an irrevocable way. It could also add an incredible depth to her connection with Gerald, though, because while she might not understand what it's like to be an adept, she might well understand the social stigma of it. She might know exactly what it's like to be judged by every single person you meet for something you absolutely cannot control, your whole life shaped and driven by a simple quirk of inheritance. And the sheer tragedy of it, to think that she might have wrestled with that legacy all her life and even believed that she had finally triumphed over it, to then lose her husband to the same kind of madness and die in a twisted echo of that same first Sacrifice that has been looming over her since birth -

Guys I'm chewing on the edge of my desk here. The. POTENTIAL.

So all of this to say that I have already conjured an entire new characterization out of this wild extrapolation from a few lines of text in Nightborn, and I'm now working on a fic about Gerald and Almea's first meeting. And going feral about it. Because my god, the sheer delicious ANGST that I am going to wring from this...

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The Coldfire Shipyard is an 18+ unofficial discord for fans of CS Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy. If you're looking for fanart, fanfics, a place to shout your Gerald/Damien thoughts outside the tumblr void, or just a friendly Coldfire fandom community to lurk in, please join us!

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i'm rereading

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Black Sun Rising p. 266

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@coldestcaress is this anything?

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I wanted to answer this person on tumblr's request for fantasy book recs but now I have to find another book that fits the criteria so it's not just me trying to get this person to read The Coldfire Trilogy like an absolute weirdo.

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okay but "the symbolism is Real and Trying to Kill You" is my favorite kind of symbolism

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OH my gods!! This is fantastic!!!! The angry pursuing crowd! The fire and destruction! The little hearts to go with the fluffiness 💗💗💗 RIP Gerald I can viscerally feel him dying inside 💀💔

So the other day I thought about the Coldfire series again, and how I liked that it actually addressed the whole "Why didn't you ride the Eagles/Gerald to Mount Doom/Shaitan?" thing. But then I started thinking about birds that are big enough to carry humans. And all I have to say is that there are some options that were disappointingly left unexplored: