#Moral complexity in fantasy

[joncronshawauthor]

Colonial Themes in Fantasy: A Deeper Look

Fantasy has long engaged with themes of conquest and resistance, from Tolkien’s hobbits facing industrialisation to modern works exploring the complexities of empire and colonisation. As I wrote The Knight and the Rebel, I became deeply immersed in these themes, examining both the machinery of conquest and the human cost of resistance. The Colonial Narrative in Fantasy Colonial narratives in…

[zevranunderstander]

i dont think i will ever be over dragon age 2. like. bioware made an epic fantasy story about a chosen one having to save a country and stop the apocalypse and then they made the second installment of the series be about the sociopolitical climate in ONE city through the lens of a family of refugees fleeing from the war of the first game and just. made it about political tensions and class dynamics and the influences of living in a church-mandated state and the growing tension over an occupied piece of the city and political killings and interpersonal conflict and power and its story is ENTIRELY character-driven. it has easily the most iconic set of companion characters. the premise of living through a story told over the course of ten years and knowing from the start that something really bad will happen in the end was so fresh and exciting. the fact that the acts really built on top of each other andhow much the city changed over time. and the game was so mature in terms of the topic of fighting against oppression in so many ways (im usually generous and say that the short development time left some things a bit wanting), and as much as some people say that the game treats mages and templars as being equally bad, i don't think that that is actually true about the game and it very earnestly tries to grapple with some pretty complex political dynamics.

and then the game completely flopped financially and was almost universally hated for its queer themes and its sympathy for "terrorism" and a lot of the things that stemmed from basically having no production time at all and then the studio just made another epic fantasy story about a chosen one that has to save the world from the apocalypse

[pastafossa]

"Oh, so he/she/they played THAT type of character, so they think this is ok-"

I am begging you to learn what the word 'acting' means, Susan.

[anim-ttrpgs]

didnt behind the bastards really recently do an episode about the coercion of prisoners to give blood, too?

I’ve never listened to that podcast but yeah forced blood donation in US prisons is already a real thing, that’s why I bring it up every time somebody tries to “solve vampirism” by saying that the government should just make blood donation mandatory.

It’s easy to say “oh the government should just force people [to do good leftist thing]” when you don’t think about a less idealistically morally pure government could do with that power and will after an inevitable shift in voter opinion. These things really are never that simple and have to be thought about very carefully both in real life and in fiction.

[bittsandpieces]

do not send me messages about your real life experiences with incest. do not ask me about my real life family members. I cannot stress enough that I do not want to engage with real life incest, that is a hard limit and I can and will block anyone who violates it.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Very funny to me how Stansas present her character as being so interesting and complex because of her vulnerabilities, while simultaneously ignoring those same vulnerabilities in other characters. Dany is sold as a bridal slave and lacks agency throughout AGOT and after. Her dragons are either too young/small to utilize effectively or locked away for the majority of the story. They aren't some all-powerful trump card that protects her from harm. Arya is captured as a prisoner of war, forced to watch countless people tortured and murdered, and then essentially enslaved in Harrenhal with no way to fight back. She has an entire arc of feeling powerless, of being a "mouse", during ACOK. She doesn't have "kung-fu" or the ability to magically fight her way out of every situation, she's a young child lacking physical strength with only the most basic sword training.

Sansa isn't the only female character, she isn't the only young character, she isn't the only character who suffered, and no one is obligated to prioritize her. I'm so tired of Dany and Arya being mischaracterized and having their stories erased to prop Sansa up. "Sansa has kept her dignity" In other words, let's praise her for having a level of security that Dany and Arya don't have access to. She hasn't ever been forced to make a hard decision which of course means that she's morally superior to them. They can't even admit to themselves that her lack of action is due to her own passivity. If it doesn't fit their delusion, they erase it from the story and expect the rest of us to play along. Ask one of them what they like about her character without bringing up her being the ultimate victim, and I genuinely don't believe they'd be able to give you an answer. They belittle other characters more than they talk about her and these takes just scream insecurity/jealousy at the content and development other characters have in their POVs.

[jessread-s]

✩🕯️📜Series Review:

Core concepts

⋆ The Atlas Six - Physics

⋆ The Atlas Paradox - Psychology

⋆ The Atlas Complex - Philosophy

“The Atlas” series is so much more than dark academia or romance. This series studies what happens to human beings when they are promised access to infinite knowledge and power. It is about how quickly we turn on each other and abandon our own morals to gain. said knowledge and power. Each installment blew me away as I watched Blake’s six protagonists gradually find and/or destroy themselves. My mind was continuously expanded by her prose and it made me question my every decision. It’s a soul crushing read, but perhaps also a necessary one.

Cross-posted to: Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads | StoryGraph

@torpublishinggroup @olivieblake

[truthfultales]

The Fractured Mirror: Sapkowski’s Witcher and the Illusion of Depth

Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher saga is often cited as a towering work of modern fantasy - praised for its moral ambiguity, sharp dialogue, and gritty realism. Its defenders will tell you: these people aren’t supposed to be perfect. That’s the point. The world is gray, the choices are hard, and the suffering is the realism. But it’s not perfection that critics should demand - it’s coherence. And on that front, The Witcher series falters deeply.

Beneath the stylish grit and political gamesmanship lies a philosophical vacuum: a story that gestures at complexity but often refuses to build the structures required to sustain it. Its characters are not consistently human. Their emotional lives do not always shape their choices. And the world they inhabit, though morally chaotic, often mistakes contradiction for depth. This is not moral ambiguity. This is incoherence dressed in cleverness.

1. The Illusion of Moral Complexity

To defend Sapkowski’s world as “morally ambiguous,” one must first define what that means. Real moral ambiguity requires two things: internal consistency within characters, and tension between equally compelling ethical paths. It asks us not whether right and wrong exist, but how they are weighed against each other when both paths carry cost.

In Sapkowski’s saga, however, this ambiguity often dissolves into moral relativism. Characters do not wrestle meaningfully with consequence - they act, suffer, and continue. Geralt’s famed neutrality, for instance, is not wisdom earned through introspection; it’s often an abdication of responsibility. When his neutrality leads to tragedy, the narrative rarely interrogates it. It shrugs. The burden of choice is never explored beyond Geralt’s brooding silence, and thus, moral “grayness” becomes emotional fog. Real ambiguity demands conscience. Sapkowski often avoids it entirely.

2. Yennefer: Complexity Undone by Contradiction

Yennefer is widely considered one of Sapkowski’s most complex characters - fierce, intelligent, deeply wounded. Her transformation from a deformed outcast into a powerful sorceress is laced with pain and ambition. Her longing for motherhood, denied to her by the very system that gave her power, becomes the defining arc of her emotional life. It is, in many ways, the most honest part of her character.

But here lies the fracture. Despite her obsessive grief over infertility - despite the tear she sheds at the idea of a quiet home, a child, a life beyond power - Yennefer is portrayed, without reflection or narrative tension, as performing abortions. This is not a political critique. This is a logical one.

If motherhood is sacred to her - if it is the deepest wound she carries - then every act involving the ending of innocent life must be emotionally consequential. Not politically disallowed, not even morally condemned, but felt. Yet Sapkowski provides no such reckoning. No moment of hesitation. No inner conflict.

Some will argue: “She is not perfect. She is wounded.” But again, this is not about perfection. It is about narrative and psychological coherence. A character cannot build her arc around the sanctity of creation, then erase that value without reflection, and still be called complex. Inconsistency is not the same as nuance. It is a betrayal of character truth.

To be clear, coherence is not the same as moral rigidity. This is not a call for characters to act predictably or to espouse a particular worldview. Coherence means that a character’s emotional core - what they love, grieve, desire, and fear - must inform their actions in a way that resonates. Even if they fail, we must understand why. Without that, the story stops being about people and becomes a string of authorial conveniences.

This contradiction is not incidental - it reveals Sapkowski’s deeper flaw. He does not believe that belief itself needs to be consistent. He treats identity as performance, not formation. And in doing so, he hollows out the very emotional ground his characters claim to stand on.

3. The Sorceress Pendulum: From Infantilization to Armor

Women in Sapkowski’s world are rarely allowed to be whole. They are either infantilized - portrayed as frail, flirtatious, emotionally underdeveloped - or presented as hardened power-wielders whose strength is often reduced to sexual leverage or emotional manipulation. The Lodge, in particular, functions more as a satirical exaggeration of femininity than a sincere exploration of it.

Yes, the sorceresses show vulnerability. They mourn, they fear, they grieve. But these emotions exist as flashes - isolated and ineffectual. Vulnerability that does not inform choice is not growth. It is costume. A sorceress might cry in one scene and orchestrate mass deception in the next without any throughline of conscience. This is not complexity. It’s narrative inertia disguised as depth.

One might argue that the emotional contradictions within the sorceresses are intended to be subtle - suggesting a deeper realism. But true subtlety leaves traces. Hesitation, guilt, rationalization, transformation - something. When no such trace exists, what remains is not nuance, but narrative evasion.

Sapkowski would likely argue that this is intentional - that the world taught these women to harden, and they simply adapted. But that, again, is not the issue. The issue is that their humanity never reshapes their trajectory. They are granted pathos but not transformation. And in a series that claims to explore the human cost of power, that absence is glaring.

4. Geralt and the False Romance of Despair

Geralt’s relationship with Yennefer is often held up as one of fantasy’s great romances. But love, in Sapkowski’s telling, is rarely about mutual recognition. It’s about mutual damage. Geralt is drawn to Yennefer not because they heal each other, but because they reflect each other’s brokenness.

He craves steadiness. He is drawn to kindness, to emotional clarity, to women who do not wield affection as a weapon. And yet, he remains bound to Yennefer - a woman who mocks his love, withdraws when she feels exposed, and only offers warmth in fleeting, unstable glimpses. Their love is not built on growth. It’s built on proximity, on trauma, on the spell of shared wounds.

And that is not fate. That is codependency mythologized.

Even when Sapkowski grants Geralt and Yennefer a moment of emotional clarity, he refuses to let it bear fruit. After making love again, Yennefer tells Geralt, “I forgot how good it is to make love with someone you love,” a confession that should mark a turning point - a moment of emotional integration. It implies she’s known emptiness, and that this time is different. Geralt, too, finally says he loves her - at Thanedd, during the banquet, and she weeps. These are rare moments of truth between them. But Sapkowski does not allow these truths to matter. When Yennefer is later kidnapped, Geralt assumes betrayal without pause. Not even love gives him reason to doubt the worst of her. And when he discovers she was tortured, not treacherous, his response is not remorse - but resignation. He leaves Fringilla, but only after one last night with her. There is no reckoning. No guilt. No repair. Yennefer is in pain, and Geralt answers with absence. That is not the arc of two people growing closer - it’s the proof that nothing has changed. Their love is built on moments that should mean something, but are never allowed to. What begins as emotional revelation ends in the same cold cycle. That’s not tragedy. It’s futility disguised as depth.

Sapkowski has claimed that Yennefer was never meant to be liked. That love, to him, is tragic, unresolved. But if love cannot shape, cannot change, cannot soften or inspire - it ceases to be love. It becomes performance. And for a character like Geralt, who is built on the ache of conscience, that kind of relationship rings false. Not because it’s difficult - but because it’s empty.

What makes this portrayal of love especially troubling is not just that it’s sad or toxic - but that it’s framed as "true". Sapkowski himself has stated in interviews that he does not believe in romantic ideals, in fated or karmic love, and that his writing reflects this cynicism. But this isn’t ambiguity - it’s bias. And when an author’s distrust of love becomes the dominant lens through which all intimacy is portrayed, it stops being realistic. It becomes ideological.

A good story does not need to be cheerful. It does not need to paint love as simple, or painless. But it does need to acknowledge that love, at its deepest, can be redemptive. That it can *transform*. That it can be *good*. The bond between Geralt and Yennefer offers none of this. Their love doesn’t grow - it corrodes. It doesn’t challenge their wounds - it confirms them. And while it’s believable that Geralt might be drawn to someone like Yennefer - someone who reflects his own brokenness - it is far less believable that he would *cling* to her, despite the damage, and call that fate. That is not the man we see in his relationships with Ciri, or with others who earn his loyalty through quiet, steady trust.

More troubling still is how this dynamic undermines the very soul of the saga: the found family. Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri are meant to be a triad—a fractured but chosen unit. But how can that bond ring true when the romantic root is rotted? If love between men and women is portrayed as fundamentally unstable, manipulative, or doomed, then the emotional scaffolding collapses. It poisons the well. And that isn’t just a narrative failure - it’s a cultural one. Because stories shape how we understand connection. And a story that presents love as inherently violent, fraught, or impossible doesn’t just reflect despair - it fuels it.

This is how fiction begins to destabilize. Not through exaggeration, but through repetition of lies that feel sharp because they sting. Sapkowski doesn’t show love’s complexity. He strips it of dignity. And in doing so, he feeds a subtle war between the sexes: mistrust masked as realism, disconnection disguised as depth.

Sapkowski’s dialogue is often praised for its wit, but too often it functions as a shield. Characters speak cleverly instead of honestly, and the result is that emotional stakes are deflected rather than confronted. Pain is masked with sarcasm, love with banter, grief with irony. The result is a narrative voice that sounds smart - but frequently avoids saying anything true.

5. Ambiguity Requires Structure

The defense of The Witcher as a morally ambiguous saga collapses when its contradictions are placed under logical scrutiny. Real complexity requires that characters behave according to the values they claim - or wrestle with them when they fail. Sapkowski’s characters often do neither. Their moral postures shift not in response to inner change, but to narrative convenience.

Yennefer’s longing for motherhood is believable. Her abortion practice, as portrayed, might also be. But to write both, and refuse to reconcile them - to never let one touch the other - is not a sign of depth. It is a refusal of meaning.

This inconsistency is not isolated to Yennefer. It reflects a larger pattern in Sapkowski’s depiction of sorceresses as a class. Across the saga, powerful women are portrayed performing abortions - not as moral decisions, not even as personal burdens, but as casual services, political favors, or commercial acts. There is no narrative space given to the ethical complexity of ending a life, even in a world where fertility is rare and deeply valued. The most striking example comes from Nenneke, who notes that Yennefer could earn far more performing an abortion for a noblewoman than accepting Geralt’s gemstones. Whether or not Yennefer actually does so is beside the point. The mere suggestion that such a thing is routine, unemotional, and beneath reflection reveals a troubling hollowness in how these women are written. Sorceresses jump from role to role - midwife, killer, diplomat, seductress - without ever carrying the moral residue of those choices. This is not strength. It is detachment. Real complexity would allow for contradiction followed by reckoning. Sapkowski gives us contradiction with silence.

Nowhere is this narrative bias more ideologically glaring than in Sapkowski’s treatment of abortion - especially in Season of Storms. Instead of presenting both sides of a morally complex issue, he reduces the pro-life stance to a caricature: authoritarian, cruel, anti-woman. He frames abortion not as a tragedy or a dilemma, but as liberation - flattening its emotional weight and erasing the voice of the most vulnerable: the unborn child. This is not ambiguity. It is moral inversion. Worse, he silences the very possibility that abortion could be a source of grief, coercion, or loss. The only fleeting moment of nuance - Milva’s story in Baptism of Fire - is powerful but undercut by a flippant dismissal of anyone who values unborn life. In a saga that handles war, race, and power with philosophical depth, this shallowness stands out as both a narrative and ethical betrayal.*

Some defenders of the saga will argue that its bleakness is the point - that Sapkowski never intended to write a redemptive world. But even bleak worlds require moral causality. If the intended theme is despair, then it must be earned through character consequence, not merely assumed through aesthetic. Cynicism, when unearned, is not depth. It is laziness disguised as sophistication.

6. The Illusion of Moral Neutrality

When a story tries to be sharp without being honest, it cuts in the wrong places.

Sapkowski constructs an illusion of narrative neutrality - a world where the reader is meant to believe they are free to draw their own conclusions. But this is deceptive. The story leans heavily toward a specific moral atmosphere, one dominated by skepticism, irony, and fatalism. Characters who express faith, sincerity, or clarity of purpose are undermined by the narrative, while those who act with ambiguity or moral detachment are rewarded with survival, status, or narrative centrality.

There is no room in this world for love that is steady, for sacrifice that is transformative, or for ideals that hold. Every conviction is undercut, every act of kindness made suspect. This does not challenge the reader to think - it conditions the reader to flinch from meaning. And when such a worldview is absorbed uncritically, it teaches the reader not complexity, but despair.

The effect is subtle but significant. Instead of offering ambiguity as a space for moral growth, Sapkowski offers confusion. Instead of allowing readers to weigh competing truths, he tilts the scales so that all truth appears fragile, even foolish. This is not a reflection of reality - it is the author’s bias, shaped into narrative.

Conclusion

Perhaps most troubling is the illusion Sapkowski creates - that his story merely presents a world, neutral and open, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions. But this is disingenuous. The narrative is not neutral. It leans, it implies, it leads. And what it leads toward is not moral discovery, but moral numbness. Again and again, the reader is presented with moments that appear to offer ambiguity - choices, arguments, conflicts - only to find that one side has been subtly mocked, weakened, or stripped of dignity. Conviction is framed as naïve. Faith is quaint. Sacrifice is futile. Characters who act out of conscience are outmaneuvered or quietly sidelined, while those who manipulate, detach, or endure in silence are framed as “realistic.” This bias is not stated outright—but it permeates the tone, the outcomes, the emotional signals. And when readers praise Sapkowski’s ambiguity, they are often mistaking cynicism for depth, and detachment for sophistication. This has consequences. Stories shape moral instincts. They don’t just reflect our world - they teach us how to feel about it. And a story that trains the reader to see kindness as foolish, conviction as dangerous, and love as inevitably corrosive, is not just incoherent - it is spiritually corrosive. Not because it denies easy answers, but because it denies the possibility of meaning itself.

This is not to say that fantasy must become moral instruction. But it must take seriously the emotional and psychological weight of the worlds it builds. Fiction does not need to preach. It needs to care. When a story repeatedly rewards detachment and mocks meaning, it doesn’t challenge reality - it conditions its reader to distrust hope itself.

Sapkowski gave the fantasy world a gritty, clever, often moving tale of monsters, kingdoms, and survivors. But his work is not morally complex. It is emotionally scattered. It does not suffer from character imperfection - it suffers from authorial incoherence. The characters are not shaped by what they believe. They are shaped by what the story wants them to do.

That is not ambiguity. That is contradiction.

And contradiction, when left unexamined, breaks the spell.

Even the internal logic of the world shifts when convenient. Magic, religion, politics - these structures don’t evolve or collide in meaningful ways; they appear or recede depending on what the plot requires. A truly complex world demands not just darkness, but coherence. Without that, all the grit and ambiguity become arbitrary. A world without rules is not complex - it is manipulable.

In addition, Sapkowski is often applauded for subverting fantasy tropes. But subversion must be followed by reconstruction. If you deconstruct everything - heroism, love, belief, fate - but build nothing in its place, the result is not insight. It is emptiness. A storyteller cannot only dismantle. They must also offer. And Sapkowski, in the end, offers very little but disillusionment.

Let it be stated clearly: I loved the first three books - The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, and Blood of Elves. They carry emotional truth, striking characters, and moments of rare narrative clarity.

I also deeply appreciate what others have done with Sapkowski’s world The Witcher games, especially The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and many of the comics that expand his universe with greater coherence and emotional honesty. These adaptations often build on his foundations with a steadier hand. But love for a world does not require blindness to its fractures. And respect for a work does not mean ignoring what no longer holds. If anything, true engagement demands the courage to name where it falters - especially when those faults are passed off as literary strength.

*For a full, in-depth analysis of Sapkowski’s treatment of abortion from a pro-life perspective, see my companion essay: A Pro-Life Critique of Abortion Themes in Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher Series: A Response to Season of Storms and Beyond. There, I examine not only the ideological framing but also how it undermines Sapkowski’s reputation for moral complexity and narrative balance.

[outeremissary]

It is crazy how Owlcat in KM and RT put out some of my favorite writing in games and also the further they go and the more they make the more it's like wow <3 I hope they never try to say anything serious

[joncronshawauthor]

Redefining the Dark: Brent Weeks' Groundbreaking Impact on Fantasy

From the sun-kissed lands of Tolkien’s Middle Earth to the frostbitten realms of Martin’s Westeros, we thought we’d seen it all in fantasy. Ah, bless our naïve little socks. Little did we know, the genre was primed to be knocked squarely on its ethereal arse by an unassuming bloke named Brent Weeks and his seminal novel, “The Way of Shadows.” In the dimly-lit world of fantasy, where elves…

[ominous-faechild]

Hello, @ominous-feychild ! 👋✨

From the QnA tag, my eyes immediately went to Tazin the theatre kid (can relate). Can you tell me a little more about this character?

Haha, it doesn't shouldn't surprise me that you'd be interested in Tazin "the theater kid" {REDACTED}, Golden! Sorry for taking a while to get to this ask, I've been busy!

(Aka I've been stubborn about trying to get to these in order, but was stuck on Ludmila's part of another ask...)

Before I begin, I figured I should clarify: Tazin's name is pronounced "tah-zeen"! I've received some questions on this in the past and I know it's unconventional, so.

Tazin {REDACTED} | aka "Svarog"

So, to begin with! Unlike most characters, Tazin's last name will never be given within these posts, haha. Not only does he purposely hide it/his family, but it's actually spoilers! His family's name appears within the story, and I definitely don't want to expose him early, haha.

The reason I call him "Tazin the theater kid" is because, predictably, he's an absolute theater kid. I mean, he's never been able to do participate in theater stuff because Glavnran (but especially Kavo, the town he grows up in) is way too poor and stuck in survival mode to be able to afford stuff like that. But, still! Just one glimpse at this kid and you'd see it.

I'll give you a few glimpses of an as-of-the-moment (and will be for a while) unpublished chapter narrated by him as a treat, haha.

It wasn’t normal for someone to be in the alley, of course. The only “decent” people to ever go there would be the pasidnyy—taking a shortcut in pursuit of a villain—or a person chasing something stolen by the wind. Why would you go through an alley when it put you at risk of running into a bolyui or some punk looking for trouble? Well, Tazin was that punk. And bolyui weren’t real. They were just a scary story told to children to make them behave for adults.

(Note: bolyui are very real. The first and second chapters prove that much, and that they are utterly terrifying. He's just an arrogant kid who thinks he knows everything. /lh)

But some of {the "everyday people" on the streets} might’ve been pretenders, like him. Some of them might be out there with ominous motives—might even be working with the khonitva. Them, or the uzhar. Like him. Except, he didn’t work with the uzhar anymore. He’d seen to that.

(This kid KILLS me, istg--)

This strategy never went wrong. Nope, nuh-uh.

A genius plan, of course. He’d come up with it, after all.

Worst case scenario, if he couldn’t lose his pursuers, he could just set another building on fire. That always distracted people. A kid goes in a building, then the building burns down. Nobody ever suspected that the kid made it out—much less that the fire was meant to cover his escape.

(If that seems unrealistic, it's because it is. The cops absolutely suspect the kid survived, especially since he's pulled that exact same stunt a few times. He just thinks he's getting away with it because he hasn't noticed anything and they're too busy putting out the fires/saving others to find him in or escaping from the site.)

But Tazin’s mind wasn’t on any of his strategies. Instead, he was thinking of the letter he’d left. ‘I left the uzhar,’ it’d begun. ‘I don’t care if you want me to stay with them, I QUIT!’ Tazin had written, aggressively underlining the word “quit.” When he’d left the uzhar, he’d destroyed one of their hideouts. The recipient probably didn’t know that, but Tazin was sure that the uzhar had figured it out. That, and the message he was trying to send by doing so. Fire was Tazin’s whole ‘thing’, after all. ‘They were horrible, just like YOU, and I hate both of you!’ he’d written, once again aggressively underlining the word “you” on top of using all caps. ‘So I’m not going back,’ Tazin had written. Little did the recipient know that Tazin wouldn’t be able to go back even if he wanted to. He’d burned that bridge—almost literally—alongside their hideout. That’s why he’d done it, after all. ‘And don’t expect me to come back to you, either,” Tazin had initially finished the letter with. ‘You’re no better than them.’ But then he’d crossed the two sentences out, running the charcoal over them so it’d be impossible for the recipient to read it. As much as he wanted to hurt the recipient of his letter, he also hated the thought of it. And calling them “no better than the uzhar” would be too far. If Tazin had told them that, they might’ve finally given up on Tazin completely. Left him alone. And, as much as Tazin tried telling himself otherwise, he didn’t want to be abandoned. Not again. So, instead of that, Tazin had replaced those lines with: ‘and tell Mom I’m NOT coming back and to STOP looking for me!!!’

THIS IS ALL FROM HIS INTRO CHAPTER BTW-- 🤣

That last "bit" (read: everything about the letter) is spaced out between paragraphs of action. He's thinking about it while doing other stuff. I think it's a great intro chapter in general that pretty solidly explains his character and a lot of his business, haha.

Then again, maybe I'm just flattering myself.

ANNNNYHOW! As you can probably tell, he's an absolute drama queen with horrible attachment issues. A little under a year before the start of the story, Tazin was kicked out of his home. His family later changed their minds and tried inviting him back, but he's stubbornly refused to return, leading to him being in the position he is at the start of the Arcane Rifts.

I don't know if it's clear from the snippet (overall it's not the biggest deal but I want to clarify), but the "recipient of the letter" isn't his dad, but someone who is/was closely associated with his family.

Overall, Tazin's genuinely a fun character to write (most of the time)! He's very overdramatic; his narration is condescending toward the reader, as though he's talking to them, because he sees his own life as a story where he's the tragic hero; and whether it's ironically or played straight, lots of people seem to find him pretty funny.

Which, hey, he'd love to hear that!

(Minus the ironically part... actually tbh young!Tazin would probably lash out at you if you told him you thought he was funny. Y'know, thinking you thought he needed the validation. Whoops.)

Like Gene, Tazin starts the story young. He's only nine at first (if you couldn't tell,,,) but progresses to fifteen by the end of book 1 (there's a lot of timeskips through Important Events as the kids age up. Trust me, I'm careful with the pacing though, haha).

But, uh... that definitely colors my perception of his character a little differently than I'm sure you guys will see him. For a long while, you'll only see him as a kid, where his more negative traits (arrogance, selfishness, refusal to admit if/when he's wrong, etc) are a lot more excusable and possibly even charming. But in my head, all I see is how that stuff carries over to Adult!Tazin (because he never gets better), and I like him a lot less because of that, haha.

On a similar note, feel free to check out the songs that represent him.

A little more relevantly! If it wasn't obvious enough already (or if you haven't stumbled upon me mentioning it before), Tazin is a fire mage and healer! Otherwise known as a sech and izsech respectively in their language. Both powers typically come from their fire god (which, out-of-universe, takes a lot of inspiration from Hestia), Rholvny.

Like most mages, Tazin has an affinity for his element... which has turned more into an obsession for him if you couldn't tell. I've mentioned before that his (actual, lowkey) obsession with arson is related to a traumatic incident in his past?

Tazin is a complicated character. As much as I (hate to hate and hate to) love him, his character arcs revolve around his family / abandonment issues; the many, many problems it caused him (he used to just be a brat, but now...); and his relationship with Gene.

The two--Gene and Tazin--grow up together supporting one another because nobody else will do so for them. Tazin faces discrimination for his arson his skin tone, being Jhandan (or Fantasy!Indian) in a xenophobic country, aaaand for his deeply problematic aggression issues. Gene, on the other hand, is disabled and autistic--and you betcha Glavnran is ableist and social darwinists, too!

On Tazin's end, their relationship is/was problematic for a few reasons. One, Gene is too timid to stand up to him, leading to Tazin's worse habits never getting corrected since he can get away with them. Two, Gene becomes an enabler for Tazin's worse traits because of their history together. Aaaand, three... while Gene sees Tazin as like a brother, Tazin develops romantic feelings for him by the end of the first book.

Yeah. There's just NO end to the problems there--

But I guess those are just some of the many tragedies associated with two kids raising themselves and each other! (Despite that, they're still cute to read the interactions of whenever Tazin isn't being toxic.)

And, of course, this is all stuff I tackle (even if only through implication) within the story!

I'm sure this all is only one of the many reasons tAR won't be the most popular of my stories. 😅😭

Sorry I got a good bit into Gene there! I don't know if you can tell, but the two are practically inseparable, and their dynamic with one another majorly shapes how they turn out! (For probably obvious reasons.)

Hope you enjoyed reading! I actually cut out a LOT of possible snippets for the sake of (nonexistent) brevity, haha. Feel free to reblog and/or tell me what you think! PS: I think I'm probably going to change Tazin's title to "the dramatic". Thoughts?

Tag list: @honeybewrites @the-golden-comet @illarian-rambling @ashirisu @urnumber1star

@the-letterbox-archives @48lexr @aalinaaaaaa

Divider by @cafekitsune

[authorslhyson]

Day 1/6

Ezlynnia, 1 or two Main Characters in the dual pov novel The Tragedy In Your Light. After a tragedy befalls her best friend, she leaves the shores of her homeland, in an attempt to escape from her troubled past. She never expects to uncover a secret that lay inside her very mind. While she struggles with the weight of her guilt and grief, it seems the universe won’t cut her some slack. Follow along as she explores this new land in search of something or somewhere to quell her grief and call a home; while it seems everything in her life tries to stop her.

[llycaons]

I do appreciate how quickly things happen tho. like xff is betrayed, almost dies, is taken in, taken on jl's identity, escapes zhennv, gets herself welcomed back by society, navigates various social hijinks and schemes, gets herself into a school, enters and nearly completes a competition, gets into a weird relationship with a member of the gentry who is maybe using her? and establishes herself as a Person To Know, all within 10 episodes. they're dense, but stuff happens and I really am enjoying the characters and themes and relationships and costumes and set designs

[oysterie]

got three hours into a book and quit god bless you were kinda boring. sorry butch lesbian mc you couldn't save it

[jessread-s]

✩👁️⌛️Review:

This book turned my brain into scrambled eggs and I’m honestly okay with that.

The conclusion to ���The Atlas” series follows Callum, Reina, Parisa, Libby, Nico, and Tristan as they fight to survive the lethal terms of their initiation and face the consequences of limitless power.

The beginning of the “Atlas Complex” is so slow I nearly gave up on it, but if you find yourself in the same position, do NOT do it! Blake intentionally takes her time leading up to the novel’s explosive ending so as to focus on how the characters develop when they are given endless knowledge and power. I was gripped by each character’s point-of-view as they become corrupted by Atlas’ promise of making their wildest dreams come true—the cost of which was losing themselves and even then that proved to not be enough, a realization that came too late. Gone are the people they once were in “The Atlas Six”. Callum is consumed by obsession, Reina devotes herself to things she cannot control, Parisa sheds her vanity, Libby loses her moral compass, Nico becomes too trusting, and Tristan wants for too much. Their fates were sealed once the Society, the Archives, and the Forum became a part of their lives and this just goes to show that human beings will do anything to achieve greatness, even if that means compromising their goodness. Blake’s commentary is haunting and will make you reflect on your own choices and question what you would do and who you would betray for glory. The final chapters are an emotional overload as each character is confronted by the repercussions of their actions. It’s utter chaos…just as it should be. There was never going to be a “happily ever after”.

Cross-posted to: Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads | StoryGraph

[bee-ina-boat]

person who has done terrible unspeakable crimes and ruined lives and doesnt feel guilt for any of it and they would do it again in a heartbeat and their morals are fucked in real life: ew die please

person who has done terrible unspeakable crimes and ruined lives and doesnt feel guilt for any of it and they would do it again in a heartbeat and their morals are fucked but fictional: 💘💝💟❣💕💞💓💗💖💗💞❣❣💝💘❣💞💗💖💗💞💕❣❣💌💌💝💘❣💞💖💖💌💓💕❣💝💘❤