#anna ivtouched

[goose-books]

goose-books productions: a 2023 review

only [checks watch] two months late! view the image in higher quality here; read past years-in-review here; and thank you as always to my beloved @yvesdot for the template!

i shan't be dishonest; 2023 was not exactly the year of max. but i still got a lot of good writing done! transcripts + commentary under the cut, and, uh, take the godsong character roster again.

cws: animal death (february), pregnancy/miscarriage + body image issues (july), addiction (september), self-harm-as-metaphor (october)

january

what’s that? godsong ran away with me for another year? well, it does that. in the second of a plotted trilogy, anna (roughly: what if aeneas were a very sad lesbian?) and her lieutenants visit a soothsayer. ichari wants to kill for her, btw. anna please let them kill for you,

“Have we got to sacrifice an animal?” Sascha said, tilting his head. “Let you dig around in the entrails?” “If you’d like,” the Sibyl said, upper lip wrinkling. “But I’m haughty enough to believe I can make do with a bit of holy blood. Not you. Annadrijanna, if you would give me your hand.” Anna didn’t move. Her eyes widened, very slightly, as she stared at the hand the Sibyl had extended to her, palm up. Ichari’s hand was on their knife again before they could blink. Damn the gods and Avender’s Sibyl, and damn Anna’s quest, the moment she needed it they could have their blade in the prophet’s throat no matter what holy punishment tumbled down on their heels— “It won’t be like the other,” the Sibyl said, nodding to Anna’s right hand. “I keep my tools clean. Far less messy than entrails.” From their cloak pocket they drew a glinting silver pin, topped with a bead of pearl. “Just a prick, that’s all.” Ichari couldn’t tell if Anna’s chest was rising and falling beneath the robes, or if she had calcified entirely. “Anna,” they said, soft, warning. Almost pleading. Just give me the word, Anna. Just say the word. “You’ve a lot of ghosts clinging to your robes, Annadrijanna,” the Sibyl said softly. “I need a bit of life.”

february

while anna’s doing that, ambergris is causing problems. raised in regency patriarchyville, she recently befriended a dragon and received Powers; now she’s working toward 1. making it seem like her family’s manor is haunted 2. killing her parents and 3. having gay sex. not necessarily in that order.

Blood and yolk still stuck to her hands, gumming the webbing between thumb and forefinger. But it was a pretty picture, the mews desecrated, the falcons gone mad and tearing open their eggs. The duchy would whisper that Pyranimia had forsaken even the birds, that the Armindale fortune was suffocating in broken shells, and no one would consider that it was only nature, that rabbits and snakes and stable cats would swallow down their young if they got hungry. But not here, Ambergris thought, serene, picturing what her mother would say when she learned of the mews—the slight twitch of her mouth before her face settled back into glacial calm. Not you. You wish you could. You’re starving for it. But you won’t be rid of me now. You don’t know that yet. But I hold you in my hands now. If I were really a sorceress, I could twist up your body, ruin the organs that made me, the ones that hurt you. Or I could take them out and let you go free. She could sympathize. Abandoned by the goddess, she too might have withered and waned, and come to loathe the children sapping her strength as they grew inside her body. But her mother had made Ambergris too well for that—too cold to love a child or a husband, too cold to shrink from blood. You took the knife from your chest and put it in mine, Ambergris thought. But the gods have been watching. My god has been watching. The storm is building. And before I ever let you eat me, Mother, I will finish a daughter’s work and drain you dry. She raised her hand to her mouth, where her thumb met her forefinger, and licked away the blood.

march

in the spring i wrote a very long paper about antony and cleopatra (the shakespeare play, and also the people, and also the echoes of their story in the aeneid). which got me thinking about the deliberate narrative parallels between dido and cleopatra, which got me writing a ten-minute play where they have a one-night stand. happens to the best of us. i’m very proud of how this one came out, actually, but i have no idea what to do with it. target audience of weird lesbian classicists?

D: I want to be someone they don’t write tragedies about. C: (to the audience) Well. How charmingly ironic. D: If I could just—have—if I could just—just a life. Just someone who loves me. Just someone who won’t go away. Something boring. Something monotone. I don’t care how good I look burning. I want to stop being on fire. C: You have absolutely no sense of flair. D: I miss my sister. (A pause. She looks to C.) C: Can’t help you there. I had mine killed. D: (exhausted) Happens.

april

fans of the aeneid, please enjoy The Scene In Which The Protag Loses To A Tree. if godsong ever drops i will accept a 10-page double-spaced essay about how it is in conversation with the jason & medea myth.

Anna set his jaw. He braced his wooden hand against the trunk, then stepped up onto the coil and reached for the golden branch. It was slick and cold under his fingers, closer to stone than wood; Anna took hold and yanked. The branch slid from his fingers. Anna grabbed the trunk so he didn’t fall backward, ice jolting up his spine. The serpent hadn’t moved. Again he tried to snap the branch. A whisper of leaves as it bent, but there was no give; again his sweat-damp hand fell away. The word that slipped from his mouth startled him, because it was the sort of word no one used in a temple, something Caradorra had been scolded for saying in front of their mother. Another glance at Sascha. The serpent hadn’t stirred. Anna wiped his hand on his robes, straining up on his toes, and wrapped his hand around the base of the branch. If he could saw at it—but his sword lay gleaming and useless in the grass, his calves starting to ache, the branch warming under his touch. Please, Iv, please, please, please— He ignored the flicker in the corner of his eye: movement from the lakeside. But then came the hiss, rising like steam from the water thrown at the charred walls of a burning city, and his blood ran cold. Breaking from the lake, wet and shimmering, came an enormous frilled head. The second serpent, awake and alert, slitted yellow eyes fixed on Anna. It moved faster than thought—legs bunching, coils rippling, launching itself for the tree. “Sascha, down!” Ichari shouted from the treeline, and the gun went off, louder than godly thunder, and the branch beside Anna burst into splinters, and as he gave a last desperate yank the golden branch snapped cleanly into his hand.

may

while working on the actual plot of godsong, i was also fleshing out the backstory, and ended up stumbling into the personalities of anna’s parents (a t4t4t throuple! let’s go gay people). so here’s a bit of anna backstory from the perspective of his mother, who is wonderful and nervous. did you know anna was chosen for priesthood at age 11? probably had no long-term psychological effect on her at all.

It was a celebration for Eli’s records: three days and three nights of festival feasting, of singing and dancing and hymns, of the temple bells ringing a clangorous echo from dawn until dusk. In past years, after past Ivtouchings, the celebrations had been citywide but quieter, briefer—the ceremonial anointment before the temple doors, to mark the new priest as a new melody in Iv’s living voice, and then a song. But it had been three hundred years since Iv had plucked a child from the rings of Ivander to holiness. No simple ceremony would suffice. On the first day, the older Ivtouched helped Anna atop an oxcart, the horns of each ox wrapped in gold ribbon, and led him in cheering parade through the city’s spiraling roads to the temple. In the street, in the surging shouting crowds that followed on foot, Radi cheered her voice hoarse and tried to etch the picture into her memory: the brilliant blue of the sky, the loose tail of ribbon flapping from one oxhorn, the glint of the sun off the bronze-painted spokes of the cart’s wheels. All of those details she might have set to canvas, with a small enough brush and a steady enough hand. But she knew even then that she wouldn’t try. There was no replicating her son’s smile, so broad it must have ached, or the dazed look of joy in his eyes. As if he were dreaming and praying not to wake. As if some curtain had unveiled before him to show him the heavens in shining vivid color, the world created for him anew. Someone else’s hands would mark him holy; someone else’s hands had dressed him in the dark Ivtouched robes, billowing out behind him in the breeze. He wasn’t quite tall enough. The hem was pinned up so it didn’t drag. Every few minutes atop the cart, Anna’s hand drifted down to hike the fabric up, more twitchy than deliberate, each yank a quiet spear through Radi’s heart.

june

please refer to my february comments on that list of ambergris’s.

Ambergris regarded them coolly. She had pulled them around the back of the orchestra into a corner: curtained from the rest of the room by a clot of musicians, the strings near too loud to speak over, the lanterns throwing warped shadows over the floor. “I apologize,” she said, slow, “if I startled you, Captain. I’d like a word.” Ichari’s heart still pattered at their ribs. Again they forced down the shaking need to wipe that faint smirk from her face. “You’ve had a few. You satisfied yet?” “Y-you’ve met my husband,” Ambergris said, “twice now.” So she had been watching, then, probably sunken into the shadows like a grotesque. “Twice too many times,” they said, curling their lip. “You aren’t impressed.” “Don’t let me offend your wifely sensibilities.” Ichari flashed their wickedest grin to see if she would squirm. “But you’re too pretty to go to waste on an ill-dressed fool’s limp cock.” Ambergris didn’t flinch, but her eyes widened slightly. Big innocent eyes, Sascha’s eyes, with all the guilelessness of a kitten. “Am I?” “Too good for him? I’m sorry you had to find out this way, duchess.” “Not duchess,” Ambergris said, “yet. I find—I know I’m too good. Am I pretty.”

july

more backstory, this time in second person about ambergris’s mother, who gets a POV in the book proper. not a very fun POV, but there's generational trauma to explore. creusa is the doctor that's been called in to help jonquilla through a miscarriage; she is gnc as fuck (jonquilla voice: you're insane).

Four weeks Creusa tends your bedside—four fuzzy weeks drifting in and out of fever, your thoughts racing like loosed horses, as you bleed out the last of your hoped-for heir. You loathe her for it, with a bright-hot intensity you can only grasp for moments at a time between unconsciousnesses. You loathe her for daring to pity you, for helping you sit up to drink down your pain relief; you loathe her for doing it well. You loathe her because she is fresh and young and rosy-cheeked and you are soft and lumpy and pathetic. You loathe her because she is beautiful despite all she does to destroy it, despite the way she prowls the manor in trousers, despite the fact that you have never once seen her suck in her stomach. Beautiful the way you were mere years ago. Beautiful enough to make breath catch when those worn fingers tuck her shorn hair behind her ears. What gives her the right to see you like this? What gives her the right to sprawl out in your home, in your chambers, in all her impropriety? What gives her the right to choose to be—this? Does she have a husband somewhere who lets her run free? Children she tends to with the same slight curve of a smile she gives you? Sisters? Brothers? Who does she fall into bed with at night? You want to step inside her skin, to pry it up, to take her apart and see how her heart beats. She’s had her hands in enough of your blood. You want to hold her organs. Your dreams come in tatters. Your stomach swollen to bursting again. The endless hallways. Dittany soaring away from you. Children squirming in your gut. Creusa stroking your hair. Sometimes those are not dreams, you think; sometimes your eyes flutter open and she is there, patient, quiet, calm. As she always is, except for the crease in her soft rose-petal lips, because when you are asleep she does not smile at you. She watches you as if she is afraid for you. She watches you as if she is guilty of something.  There are other dreams, too. Dreams you refuse to remember.

august

in august i had a Medical Experience. but first i finished the draft of godsong2, because i never fucking lose. this bit is from the very last scene, where no one is doing well.

Most days she shaved her face each day after morningsong, when she had the strength and a passable mirror. In Ivander she had not needed to, but she liked the look of it, the cleanness; in Armindale Manor she had been particularly careful. Sascha must have noticed, or picked it up from her face, because he scrambled wobbling back to his feet. “I’ll fetch a razor, eh?” “Sascha—” Ichari started, but Sascha waved a hand. “I’ll do it, Anna,” he said, earnest. Her twinge of warmth was faint; she inclined her head slightly. They had done something like this before, Sascha scrunching up next to her to wind his fingers through her hair—hair, Anna realized distantly, that was soot-choked and tangled now. He had spun her waves into a thick braid, then a number of tiny ones, chattering all the while; she had repaid him for it once with a spiraling swirl of mehndi across each of his fluttery hands. Now, though, when he held the razor up to her face, there was a new trepidation in the set of his lips. It took Anna too many sticky seconds to realize he was trying and failing to settle the terrible shake in his hands. “Sorry,” he said, blanching, when Anna looked at him. “Ah, I’m sorry, I…” “Armindale,” Ichari said, soft. Gentler than she had ever heard his name in their voice. They held out a palm. “S’okay.” Anna tilted her face toward them. Sascha scooted back to wrap his arms around his knees and watch Ichari sliver the hair from her chin, one hand braced against her cheek, their hands callused and cold and kind.

september

and we've reached the part of the year where school hit me like a Fucking Train. here's some carronash. that is, MILF julius caesar x neopronouns mark antony, in an extremely uneven borderline-religious-worship dynamic that has swallowed the latter's entire life (more about their deal here). you know, out of context here, they almost look sweet.

Ash shut xir eyes so xe wouldn’t see her hear it, and xe croaked, “I need a drink.” Her chest rose and fell beneath xim in silence. Somewhere beyond xir walls, a cart rattled over the streets. “I know,” Ash said, panic starting to rise cold in xir throat. “I know—I know, but it hurts, I need a drink, Julienne, it hurts, I think I’m going to die. I think I might fucking die.” I know you do, she had said the last time xe’d told her xe needed a drink. I know you do. I know you know why it’s a bad idea. And she had kissed xir forehead like an anointment and held xim when xe shook with frustrated sobs. Nothing now. Just her hand combing through xir curls. “Julienne,” Ash said, near a whine, the craving a spidery itch beneath xir skin. “Ash,” Julienne said. “Am I asking too much of you?” It didn’t sound like a condemnation. Xir insides curled anyway. “No,” xe said, small as a scolded child. “No, I just—I just…” “If it’s too much,” she said, soft. “If you can’t bear it. There’s no shame in that.”

october

i posted this poem here, but we’ll see it again! i think it’s kind of heavy-handed, but that's what happens when you try to articulate an insanity.

2:35 grindstone // max franciscovich there is a knife in my hand. there is a knife i am holding in the palm of my hand. i hold it by the blade. when i squeeze the blood runs down through the webbings of my fingers and the sting is hot. if i uncurl my fingers i will let go of the knife and it will not hurt. if i let go of the knife i will forget pain. suffering and fear will dull and scab over and my eyes will close. when i squeeze i remember it hurts. i remember i am dangerous. my eyes can close. i can cut with a touch. if i let go of the knife it will not hurt to make a fist. if i let go of the knife i will make a fist. if i let go of the knife in my hand i will forget there is a knife in my hand. when i squeeze the sting whets my thoughts and i see the world in all its brutal glory and i touch nothing i could ruin. there is a knife in my hand. there is a knife i am holding in the palm of my hand.

november

no nano this year :( i was being crushed by school and mentals, unfortunately. which sucks, because i've had a streak since 2018! but alas. next year. i did write a little more godsongverse backstory, set in anna's old city and starring the book's hector and andromache figures (ira and lucia, respectively; imi and nia are their twin toddlers).

Here was a part of the war that would not be told: that sometimes it would be late, very late, the sun sunken into the earth and the children in bed, before Ira came home. That Imi and Nia were asleep, Lucia suspected, was not an effect but a reason, because sometimes her heart-knit lover was nigh unrecognizable in the doorway, hunched and haggard, bathed in gore, and the twins would have been terrified. Blasphemous, maybe, for Lucia to see the dried blood cracking in rivulets on Ira’s skin and think of Iv’s shattered face. But even blasphemy was better than the other reason she shied from the thought—that likening Ira to the holiest of martyrs felt like giving up. Giving into what she suspected everyone else already thought inevitable. After the first night she had stopped fearing the worst. There would have been no missing the uproar in the city. Her fears were simpler: how much blood there might be, how many times Ira would wake in the night. But unless the wailing rose high enough to shake the temple down, the sixth wall of Ivander stood, and Lucia sat at home with the spinning and waited.

december

and… would you look at that, more godsong. i did write non-godsong things this year! but most of them are short stories i'm hoping to send out for publication, so i'm not keen on sharing yet. this, however, is literally a godsong x hadestown AU that i’ve been calling spadestown, and if i ever finish it i Will be posting it here. in a beautiful alternate world, godsong is an annaspades romcom. (it's not even that in this AU.)

Lying on the bed watching Anna write, Spades said, “You know xim. The queen.” Not an accusation, exactly. But a search for solid ground, an escape from the ice shifting under her. At the desk, Anna tapped the end of his pen against his lips. Distracting lips, unfairly plush. “Yes,” he said after an absent moment. “It is—natural. Xe returns every summer.” “Only here?” “As far back as I remember.” Anna blinked; Spades watched it sink in. “But not where you come from.” Spades shrugged. There were gods where she had come from, too. Not the sort one poured drinks for. “I suppose we can’t all be holy,” she said, reaching out across the narrow span of the room to his chair. Anna took her hand, his skin warm against hers, his pen calluses already familiar—the tip of his second finger, the inside of his third. When she closed her eyes, Ash’s grin flashed behind her lids. Xe must have known who she was. Gods always knew. “Sing it again,” she said, patting the bed beside her. Anna was staring at the page. He hummed another bar under his breath. Spades thought she might have to get up, to close the journal for him, to slip the pen from his hands and kiss him and hope he kissed back instead of dreaming louder. Then Anna said, “Sing what?” Spades tipped his chair back to hear him yelp. “What do you think, dipshit?” “My song?” Anna said, and there was his little winking smile. “Or our wedding hymn?” There was only one bed in the attic room, so they slept curled together. Invariably Spades woke with silky hair in her mouth. Not bad, she figured, for a night always warm.

and that's a wrap! i know i didn't post much this year, but i'm still hard at work at various odds and ends. thank you for sticking around, and i hope everyone reading this has a wonderful 2024!

[fifthlydoyoudream]

Sometimes I wonder what it looks like to people who don’t know about Max Goose-Book’s wip Godsong when I/other Godsong people tag posts as “Scylla and Charybdis”. At least “Anna Ivtouched” is obviously a fictional character. “Stella Errans” could be someone’s #aesthetic tag.

[goose-books]

3 for Anna and Errans, and also 20 and 21 :3

i meant to remember to answer these before the last day of pride month. and then! anyway,

3. How did your oc discover themself? Did something cause them to question, or did they always know?

(godsong WIP page with links) (for context, anna is god's specialest girl ever and the main character, and she's a transfemme nonbinary lesbian. errans is a minor side character with terrible sideburns and transmasc unswag)

anna grew up in a city where priests have a special gender and pronoun, and she was designated a priest at age 11 by the gods, so her transness started as sort of an occupational thing; she was like, "okay, i'm priestgender," and then progressed to, "wait, i like this gender stuff." you are allowed to be priestgender and also another thing, and getting to explore her presentation at the temple lead to the realization that her Other Thing was womanhood (nonbinary-flavored). more a sister than a woman etc <3

as for the lesbianism, i don't think that was ever a discovery for him; there's no homophobia in ivander and his parents are in a bisexual polycule, so i think he just always knew his future person would be a woman. (i say "person" because ivander doesn't have legal marriage, but there is a religious equivalent if you want to dedicate yourself to someone long-term; otherwise you can just do Whatever. city that is absolutely bursting with gender and fruitiness)

errans i'm less sure about dskhfkdsfkdsnfsd. i know he came out as trans when he was around sixteenish; i think he knew he was bisexual first, and the image coming to me is errans experiencing the "do-i-want-to-date-that-guy-or-be-that-guy" about someone he probably never actually spoke to. i don't get a vibe like he ever loathed being a woman, more so that eventually he just realized he could simply be a man. for free. and was like. "well this is clearly so much more what i'm supposed to be doing"

now i'm thinking about awkward teenage errans and his awkward genvy crushes. god bless him

20. Have your ocs helped you in self discovery? How?

sigh. well i have to tell the story don't i. POV: you are [max], age 12, working on the first iteration of the story that will become TMR (my on-hiatus YA transgender evil-faerie high fantasy). you give the character who will become moon marigold all of your uncomfortable feelings about your body, feelings that are certainly not physical dysphoria because you are cisgender. about a year or so later, you realize that this WIP is full of cishet white people (i have since remedied this), and you should really add some diversity. hey, moon's got weird body feelings! what if you made her genderfluid? that sounds great! you are not thinking at all about where those weird body feelings may have come from or how this may reflect on anything at all.

POV: you are [max], still age 13ish, and you've got a new WIP (it's my also-on-hiatus NA monsters-in-NYC thing). you are going to put a binary transgender person in it. not for any specific reason. you just wanted to. who can say why. certainly not you. anyway you've never done this before and you are a little nervous because how can you, as a cisgender person, accurately represent a trans character? you muse about how to write dysphoria as you dress up for an orchestra concert, in an outfit that is extremely feminine. halfway through, you get derailed by crying real tears about said feminine outfit, because now the boy who sits beside you in the orchestra will know that you are a girl (because your long hair and name clearly couldn't have tipped him off beforehand). could you draw on this experience to describe dysphoria, you wonder? or maybe that other time you cried in the shower? but that's bad and wrong, isn't it? because you're cisgender. so comparing your own... whatever this is... to dysphoria would be an APPROPRIATION of dysphoria! how villainously cis of you! how horrible! you'll have to figure out some other way to write this character.

...anyway. thank you to moon and augustus for that. my kings my brothers in arms. and they BOTH do arson in their respective WIPs, so maybe i have another plot twist in my future?

21. Free ramble card wee

FREE RAMBLE WEE... hmm, well, since i've already touched on it a little in this ask, one of the most interesting things about worldbuilding for godsong is that most of the major settings don't have homophobia/transphobia/misogyny the same way that our world does. (i say most because ambergris is stuck in misogynyville. it's probably fine and i bet she won't get violent.) i honestly didn't think super hard about this; i just wanted to write a high fantasy world where women and nonbinary people and bisexuals and lesbians can hold positions of (sometimes corrupt) power, or where the chosen one can be a transfemme lesbian whose issues aren't transphobia but how to complete her quest.

except then i realized that not having homophobia/transphobia/misogyny invites so many other questions about the social fabric of a society. i mean, the modern legal concept of marriage is rooted pretty solidly in heterosexual relationships wherein women move from one family to another, right? so if gender relations are entirely different, do these places even have marriage? do these places even have gender? this is something i'm still figuring out (and honestly, if anyone has suggestions for media that pokes at this kind of thing, i'd love to hear them!). the two main cities in godsong are ivander (a theocracy) and farria (a democracy with a new revolution every tuesday), and i've been playing around in my head with some of the differences--for example, in ivander, being trans is generally considered holy, because the city's patron god is many-gendered; in farria, being trans is something nobody thinks twice about, because everyone is focused on Just Getting By. in ivander, there are at least three defined genders (man, woman, and priest) which can all overlap. in farria, gender doesn't define social relations so much as a parallel hierarchy of military and/or governmental power--eg, farria's very own neopronouns marc antony isn't afraid of "emasculation" in the gender sense, because xir gender is "if you like me you're gay," but xe's terrified of emasculation (for lack of a better word) in the sense of being seen as weak/submissive. in farria these things are way less connected than they are in our world. i'm still working out a lot of the details, but it's been a lot of fun to think about :3

wow that sure was a free ramble. thank you for the asks rook i love you so much <3

(pride asks!)

[goose-books]

view the image in higher quality here; thank you as always to my beloved @yvesdot for the template! last year’s year in review can be found here.

this was the year of godsong eating my brain forever and ever amen. and a good year for writing overall; i wrote a lot of very silly for-fun-to-share-with-friends stuff, and that felt very nice, particularly when i was in the Productivity Torment Labyrinth with school. transcripts and month-by-month details under the cut! (take the godsong character roster; you might need it.)

cws: alcohol (february), pregnancy (april)

january

i started the first draft of the first book of godsong for nanowrimo 2021; in january, i wrapped up the draft with the last plotline. godsong is split into three plotlines, each driven by a major character (our friends from the intro post!). though these plotlines will be integrated in the final draft, i wrote each of them separately, for coherency reasons; last to go was ambergris’s, which i think of, affectionately, as the HTTYD movie for dykes on mood stabilizers. interspecies pack bond except both members hate everybody else in the world. [forbidden friendship playing]

Vaska let her reapply the paste to injuries slick with saliva. Ambergris was aware of his gaze on her, his head tilted at the very corner of her vision, but she kept her focus on her unsteady hands, until she had finished dressing the wounds and she turned to find Vaska’s head right next to her own.

Her breath caught. This close, so near he could have pressed his snout against her nose, his eye was brilliantly bright, gold in the sunlight, shot through with darker rays. There were no whites, and a slit pupil rather than a round one, and yet Ambergris couldn’t shake the thought that he looked unnervingly human.

The other side of his face reeked with infection, so swollen she could barely see the empty eye socket. Long-dried blood trailed down his neck. The medicine was cold in her hand. She watched his gaze move, slow and deliberate, to the vial, before he raised his stare back to hers.

Slowly, tremblingly, Ambergris shuffled her crutches beneath her arms and held her hand out. Not reaching for his snout, nor straight for his injuries, but to open her palm beneath his head, just under his chin.

For a moment they stood in silence. Both of them frozen. Both of them, Ambergris realized with a quiver, afraid.

“Vaska,” she said softly, barely a breath, and the dragon laid his great head down in her palm.

february

2022 was the year of ash pyrris, aka godsong’s neopronouns-user marc antony expy, aka a bona-fide no-asterisk war criminal and the lapdog lover of the most popular butch milf in town. (can you imagine making an ancient roman read all of those words.) i spent the first three months of the year working on an extended second-person ash story (er. novella. it’s twenty-two thousand words) detailing xir backstory (referred to, inventively, as “ashbackstory”), and it remains perhaps my favorite thing i’ve written this year.

“Ash,” Julienne says, soft, calm. Not Captain. Your name, and when you look up she’s looking at you. And there’s something you have to say to her, and her face is hazy and huge as the moon—what were you going to say to her? Her eyes glitter coin-flip gold. Fuck, she’s beautiful. Like a saint. Like a god.

Your eyes fall on her lips, stained blossom-red with wine. And it comes back. “Julienne,” you blurt, voice too thick, too clumsy, “you’re drunk, you shouldn’t—”

“Ash,” Julienne says, low enough to stop your heart, and you fall silent. She’s gazing up into the stars again, and suddenly you want her to look at you again so badly it hurts like a kick to the ribs.

“I think my fate is coming together at last,” she says, voice breathy with wonder. “This city needs more than a high judge, Ash. This city needs a god.”

When you reach for your words, you have none. How can you argue with her? When you’d follow her anywhere? When you’d fall to your knees to kiss holy wine off her fingers?

You can’t.

You don’t.

That’s the horrific part, later. You don’t.

march

in march i read gideon the ninth, which is to say that in march i became a changed man. someday i’m going to get called out for the similarities between godsong and TLT, and to that i’ll only be able to say that the first draft of godsong came before i’d read GTN and i guess catholic lesbians just write the same shit about religion and devotion and grief and redheaded butches. anyway, lots of the character dynamics in godsong slot very interestingly into TLT necro/cav dynamics, so i wrote a scene from a godsong canaan house au. which then inspired my dearly beloved @lazarusemma​ to proceed to dream up and write an entire godsong/TLT au that i think is topping 20k words. if you’re thinking, “wow, i know stuff about TLT, i’d like to read the godsong edition!” then shoot me a message and brother, i will hook you up. (lines as featured in yves’s parallels post; in which ichari is felidore and spades is the ninth cavalier.)

“This ought to be good,” Sascha said, in a voice he certainly thought was a whisper. Ambergris did not answer; her gaze had slid past the Eighths.

The Ninth cavalier stalked to the middle of the room with the steady grace of a great cat. Though the skull paint muddled her features, Ambergris could pick out a square jaw, narrow eyes, dark hair chopped off blade-straight just above her chin. She was broader than Felidore, limbs taut with muscle; she stood steady and poised, statue-still in a breathlessly anticipatory way. She did not speak. She bent her rapier blade, as though loosening it like a ligament, and stood at ready position.

Behind her, Vanya Nonavulpa leaned back against the wall, and beneath the paint Ambergris saw its lips twitch into a smirk.

Felidore had disarmed Anemone in moments. They had disarmed the Second House girl in minutes, and even the Fourth House soldier had drawn them to a sweat but not a standstill. The Ninth House cavalier, Ambergris realized within the first breath, was a different sort of creature. The two of them crashed together with the elegant violence of a dance. Ambergris didn’t have the knowledge or reflexes to make sense of the flashing rapiers, or even follow their blurring arcs through the air. What she could recognize: the new speed at which both combatants moved, and the new intensity to Felidore’s dodging as they barely kept their ribs from the delicate touch of the Ninth’s black blade.

april

re: writing a lot of noncanon stuff for fun: thinking really hard about neopronouns marc antony led to an extended au where xe accidentally knocks up xir boringass coworker (stella errans), whom xe hates. this is colloquially known as “erranspreg” and i feel like i need to at least mention it in here because i can’t go fucking anywhere without one of my bastard friends bringing up the bland pregnant man. look, HE WANTS TO BE A DAD! his DANGEROUS AND MORALLY QUESTIONABLE POLITICAL POSITION shouldn’t get in the way! (say hi to the godsong roman triumvirate, btw, in which the role of octavius caesar is played by a teenage girl.)

“You are not pregnant,” Sisyphania clarified.

Stella blinked. He blinked again. “Well,” he said, rather uselessly, “I am.”

Which broke some sort of spell. Ash exhaled, hard, and reached expressionless for xir bottle. Leanna said, “Are you—really?,” and Sisyphania said, “Because that would be—”

“Inconvenient,” Stella allowed, shifting his weight from foot to foot and wishing she would look away. “Strategically. I know.” With a stiff shrug: “But the gods work in arcane ways. Better to take our blessings when they come.”

“You are being serious,” Sisyphania said, still very calmly.

Leanna whistled. They were making eye contact, which unnerved him; usually they spoke without glancing up from their papers. Not unkindly, they said, “Who’s the lucky parent?”

Stella watched Ash’s hand tighten around the stem of xir goblet.

He let xim feel it for a moment. Then he exhaled and said, “I’m the parent. I’m the child’s father. That’s all.”

may

...and on the note of teenage girl octavius caesar. yves once described me as having “never worked on canon in my life,” and i would like to declare that that isn’t true. i wrote SO much canon this year! i just happened to write so much more stupid AU stuff. this one comes from a document known as “getalong au” because the premise is that every character is aged down about thirteen years and they’re NICE to each other, goddamnit! (no one is nice to each other in canon.) specifically, the plot of this is “ash and carron raise carron’s five-year-old adopted daughter,” which makes this technically the octavius-caesar-kindergarten-AU, i guess??? i love to say words

Still, Ash maintained the brief and futile hope that it might go well, that whatever poor little Dickensian orphan Julienne was taking pity on might actually be tolerable. This illusion lasted until xe saw her: a tiny round-faced thing with big goggly eyes and a puff of blonde hair, half-hidden behind Julienne’s leg. She looked way younger than five. She looked like a stuffed animal. She looked like xe could have punted her easily into the sun.

And she was staring. Unblinking. Owl-eyed. Ash’s stomach curdled. It was one of the (many, many) reasons xe didn’t like kids. At least adults tried to be subtle. Maybe they startled a little when they saw xim, maybe their eyes lingered too long on the scarred half of xir face while they stumbled over xir pronouns, but they did most of their gawking out of the corner of their eyes, sideways glances they thought xe didn’t catch. Little kids had no such instinct. Little kids stared.

The kid stared. Ash lifted xir chin and stared back.

“This is Mx. Ash,” Julienne said, and her voice, though not the babying tone in which people talked to cats, was lowered, softened. Rare for her. She let one hand slip down to tousle the girl’s unkempt hair. “I promise xe’s very nice.” Which was paired with a biting look that told xim xe had better be. “Ash, this is Sisyphania. Sisyphania, you want to say hi?”

june

OKAY WE’RE BACK TO CANON STUFF. godsong has an achilles character and i gave her narrative awareness. i really enjoy playing with POV and i really enjoy writing second person; you may have noticed that ashbackstory, from february, is also second person! godsong’s character backstories usually are: you are [NAME], they say, and here is your story, and you are whoever the narrative says you are. only one godsong character has been granted first-person arguing-with-the-narrative privilege and by god is she going to use it. (and by god, was this a fun exercise in POV.)

This story starts with a sacrifice. It ends that way, too.

Your legend begins before you are born. Your father is a wise man and a great king, ruler of the seaside kingdom of Pyrrinth, devotee of Orinaea famed across the land and seas for his piety. When his queen dies, when he is left bereft of the only woman he ever loved without a child to carry on her memory, he kneels before the ocean for forty days and forty nights and prays for an heir. Then he lines six hundred bulls along the beach, a row that stretches a lowing dappled half-mile, and his servants slash their throats into the sea. The legends will say the terrible cry of six hundred broken throats still echoes off the cliffs. The legends will say the shallows washed red over the beach for years. The legends will say your father cut his hand and let three drops of blood fall over the water, and when the tide washed out, you lay, tiny and red-faced and screaming, in the sand.

The legends will call you Blood of the Sea, Blade of Shysha, Hand of Death. They will call you the swift-footed lioness of Pyrrinth, the flashing-eyed daughter of Orinaea’s salt foam, she who outraced the winds and wielded the war god’s sword. Your body is the pyre that burns Ivander-in-the-West. You are the last true hero called great.

My name is Atelanta Anankares. I am born angry. I am born great.

july

briefly leaving godsongland--over the summer, i tried my hand at writing horror for the first time, for submission to a shakespearean horror anthology! i think my piece (based off twelfth night) turned out, um, not very horror-genre. and i didn’t get into the anthology, which i’m not bothered about because i didn’t expect to (sometimes you submit things as a total crapshot in the dark). as a result, i’ll be posting this piece to my ao3 account on twelfth night itself; tune in this january 5th to see me do gender to another malvolio.

“Go to my lady,” you begged her. “Do not say that I am mad.” And again, a hoarse cracking scream: “I am not mad!”

Perhaps it is a lie. You would not know; you do not know if the cell is dark, though you cannot see your own bleeding hands, because the priest and the fool swore they could see as if wreathed in the light of God. If you are mad it is not your fault. If you are mad you are something to be cared for, something to be wrapped in woolen blankets with someone else stroking your hair, something that no longer has to fight and claw and cry out against the rest of the world. If you are mad it is not your fault. If you are mad she may feel sorry for you. How easy it would be. How simple. The price, of course, is being wrong. You play with the cuff of your sleeve, twisting it back and forth though it chafes against your wrist. You are not sure if you fear being wrong less than you fear knowing this. Than knowing she is in danger. Than knowing she is alone.

You are alone. Your shoulders have stopped shaking with sobs; your voice has given way. You are as sane as any man in Illyria, unless you are mad, unless you are wrong, and in truth you are not sure you know the difference anymore.

august

and we’re back in godsongville. in july, i started working on the first draft of the second godsong book. maybe i ought to edit the first one first, but i hate editing and i didn’t want to get bogged down. godsong1 is split into three plotlines, as mentioned; godsong2 (godspark) has just two, so i started with the shorter one, a continuation of the shakespeare’s-julius-caesar-themed plotline. in godsong1, this was narrated by local traumatized gladiator spades; in godsong2, her weird little roadkill-looking bestie has the reins, and they were biting my fingers the entire fucking time. yes, they have the same name as their patron god (a two-faced fox); they did this on purpose; i apologize on their behalf.

As Vulpa eased their box of matches from their belt, they thought fleetingly of the old story: their god and the sun. Sometimes it was both faces, in the story; usually it was only the younger half, pup-soft and arrogant. Leandros had crafted the sun between his hands like pottery, breathing a glow into its mouth to hang it in the sky and light the earth. One by one the other gods came to him to gaze at it; one by one they departed. Only the younger face—the one whose name they had taken—paused.

“I should like,” it said, “to hold it.”

When Leandros narrowed his eyes, the god Vulpa swore to the stars on his cloak that it should only hold and never take—“for if I flee with it,” it added, “I shall call Vasha, and you may have our shared eye.” And this concept made Leandros hungry, for the stories said that the eye the faces shared could see into past and future alike, and with that the art god might create divine things indeed. And so he drew back his cloak and stepped aside and allowed them to hold the sun.

Yet as soon as he moved aside, Vulpa cried out, “Our eye I promised, but not our blood, and there is no bloodless blinding! And the stars we swore to only stretch as far as the hem of your robes, and we can leap that distance in a moment—” and so saying, it snatched the sun and leapt the moon and fled across the sky, light bleeding from between its teeth. But Vulpa had spoken too quickly; the sun in its mouth seared hot as a fresh coal, and halfway through the sky it dropped its prize, smoke spilling from its jaws. No matter—it left Leandros to gather up the burning coin and fled laughing to the cave that it called home.

september

see above. i finished the vulpa POV plotline this month, and yeah, it gave me hell the whole way through. spades is relatively easy to write because she thinks like a normal person. vulpa can have thought spirals you’ve never even IMAGINED, babygirl. this is one of its only chill moments.

Spades sat still as marble, elbows on the bench, hands beneath her chin, staring at the far wall. Vulpa let itself gaze at her profile: the scar slitting over the low bridge of her flat nose, the hair chopped off knife-straight at her square jaw. Sometimes it recalled the way she had looked when they met, that very first moment with her hair falling past her shoulders, but it could never quite reconcile that with how she looked now. This was Spades, in front of them; the hapless half-gladiator with the grabbable silken mane was Cinquedea.

“Is there something on my face,” Spades said, without moving.

“Stoic heroic torment,” Vulpa said.

For which it won the smallest of eye rolls.

october

this was the month i wrote the least; i was recovering from finishing vulpaplot and preparing to dive into the next plotline for nanowrimo! so take this scrap from a noncanon piece i wrote where vulpa (horrible little rat creature, hates rich people, eats cigarettes off the floor) and sascha (rich people, resident airheaded prettyboygirl) hook up. neither of them are having all that much fun. neither is anna, who walks in on it.

Their teeth knocked together. Vulpa hissed; Sascha cursed. Then his hands were on its shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and they clutched at each other, Vulpa like it could pull him off the desk and Sascha dragging it forward until it stood between his knees up on its toes crumpling his coat in its hands mashing its mouth against his thinking Here fucking taste it then get my blood in your mouth get my hideous heathengod filth all over you is this what you asked for—

“I—am sorry,” came a low voice from the doorway.

Oh mother fuck, Vulpa thought, and bit him.

Hard, judging by his shriek and the sudden burst of blood on its tongue. Vulpa shoved him away and staggered back, cold with horror, tinted glasses hanging off its face.

In the doorway, Annadrijanna Ivtouched stood silent and still, face betraying no touch of emotion except, perhaps, a deep and fantastic exhaustion.

november

set to work on the other plotline of the second godsong book! in which anna’s plot and ambergris’s plot intertwine, because everybody ends up in the same place: ambergris’s fucked-up family home with her horrible horrible parents who breed birds. “why not this,” anna thinks, “life as the chosen one is already so goddamn weird.”

“The man who drove us up the hill,” Anna said. “He said there has been… a god wronged.”

“Yes.”

One word, and an answer she had already surmised from Iv’s messages. Even so, it was a stone to the chest. “Which one?”

Ambergris shrugged. “Eggs have gone missing,” she said. “My father thinks it’s thief.” Her frown was a barely-there twitch. “Um—theft. He’s put guards around the mews.”

It took Anna a moment. “The—falcons’ eggs.”

“The falcons,” Ambergris repeated. “You must understand—” Another slight smile. “They’ve made us very rich.”

She looked remarkably unbothered. No bird perched on her shoulder or wheeled about her head, and Anna realized she had ascribed it in the back of her mind to the crutches, as if a falcon small enough to hold in two hands could unbalance her further. “And do you think it’s theft?”

Ambergris blinked at her, slow, almost feline. “I think if this house is cursed,” she said, “it’s a curse that’s been a long time coming.”

december

trying to do nano and school at the same time beat my ass, so i took a little break in december. i haven’t finished godsong2 yet, but i’m hoping to pick it up again in january! in the meantime, i went back and fleshed out some bits of godsong1 now that i have more lore. +10 trauma points for anna.

At some point they lay back on the gauze-soft blankets, just as they had in the cave: Anna’s arm under Cairo’s shoulders; Cairo curved into his side with her head on his flat chest; Anna running his hand up her stretch-marked thighs, her soft stomach, her small breasts—over her nightgown, not pushing for more, just marveling at her. Just to say with his touch a thing he couldn’t quite fit in words. When she reached out, fingers kiss-light, to trail her fingers over his shoulder and down his side, he wondered how long it had been since anyone had touched him this gently.

Even as he thought it, her hand drifted to his hip. His left hip. Anna stiffened.

“What happened to you?” Cairo murmured. One finger traced a line along the scar slicing over the bone, tissue thick and knotted as mooring rope. Easy to curtain with his robes; impossible to miss in his underclothes. “I mean here.”

Bile in his throat. A flash of memory, scalding sea-gray eyes and blood between white teeth.

“It was a war,” Anna got out, cupping Cairo’s hand to move it away. When she blinked, he managed a soft, “Please—it hurts.” A lie dropped from a holy tongue like prayersong. The scar only ached when it rained. The memory hurt.

i know it’s been a quiet year for this blog, but thank you to everyone who’s stuck around and taken interest in my projects! wishing you a very very peaceful and fulfilling 2023

[goose-books]

attention: you are legally obligated to observe this godsong commission by @woodhousejay and you are also legally obligated to commission james

okay, but seriously, commission james! amazing art! incredibly reasonable prices! quick turnaround with lots of communication about the process! look at the fucking shading!!! look at the fabric folds!!! colors!!!

pictured, left to right: ichari (butch sharpshooter pirate; the one who drives the boat), anna (god’s saddest little sacrificial lamb; the one on the quest), and sascha (poncy little rich brat; the one funding the quest). they’re lesbians. more about godsong here but let’s be honest this is mostly a post about how you should commission james my friend james

[goose-books]

17 and 69 for spotify wrapped asks

17: stay soft by mitski

okay, this one is on repeat because it fucking bangs. but also because of our very own anna ivtouched (lesbian aeneas theaeneid and long-suffering chosen one, for those unfamiliar)

just tell me what you want to do tell me what you want to burn away 'cause i could be your stoker open up your heart like the gates of hell you stay soft, get beaten only natural to harden up you stay soft, get eaten only natural to harden up

i do think about book 3 anna. i do :3

69: fan behavior by isaac dunbar

okay this one just makes me laugh. but i did put it on the julienne carron (milf julius caesar) playlist

[goose-books]

happy trans day of visibility. godsong might be the most transsexual book i’ve ever written. have some Moments (warning for non-graphic nsfw)

(read about these characters here. transcripts + more details under the cut)

+ one bonus excerpt of spades’ mother figure going in on her best friend, because the city of farria is a fucking nightmare, but at least everyone (even the MILF who hates your guts) will use your pronouns

image transcripts:

1: anna is the main character of godsong & the narrative’s favorite little chew toy. she’s also a nonbinary trans woman (she/he) and god it is cathartic, as a trans person who’s done nothing in the vein of medical transition, to write a trans character who hasn’t either and doesn’t want to.

She had woken with the gold lock perfectly whole, a month’s worth of curl grown overnight — though of course her hair had been shorter then, at eleven, when she had been considered her parents’ elder son. Not that Ivander had ever put much stock in those sorts of things. The Iven language had he, loosely, and she, loosely, and a special word for the priests, one that didn’t exactly translate. In the legends, Iv was he and she and they and elsewhere, too. From the day Anna’s hair had goldened, she had been that way as well. It was half-holy, half-heart. Most of the Ivtouched had stuck to one set of words outside prayer; some, like Ira, had only used the priest’s terms, whether dressed in holy robes or not. But Anna had for many years been he and she both, long-haired and large-handed and low-voiced. A woman more than a man, but, really, not so much of either; not so much a woman as a sister, anyhow.

2: ichari felidore, anna’s sidekick. nonbinary butch lesbian. bastard swag. best quality: can’t keep their shirt on.

Ichari scoffed and shot him a look. They were replacing a shattered plank in the deck, hands smeared black with tar that gleamed in the spring sunlight. Despite the nipping chill, they’d forgone their coat for a shirt they hadn’t bothered to button. The edges of their faded scars nosed out from beneath the fabric — the scars they’d traded for their breasts, as they liked to put it, though that had been near seven years before Anna had met them.

3: sascha armindale, anna’s OTHER (less helpful) sidekick. he/him femme who self-describes as a gentleman. for someone with an absolutely empty head, he has the most to say about gender of anyone in the cast.

He was a woman, after all, ah? And not a woman like Ichari was a woman. Because Ichari was a woman, or at least they only fucked women who fucked women, but they were a particular sort of woman, the sort his parents would have been rather displeased to see him associate with. And they weren’t beautiful, not the way a woman was supposed to be — but gods, were they gorgeous. Bright hair, bright eyes, a fox-narrow face and lithe limber arms. Everything about them was sharpened and scraped clean. Effortlessly slender. Effortlessly strong. Sometimes when they slept together, Sascha dug his nails into their flat toned stomach, pretending it was passion and not bitterness. They only ever laughed, anyway. They liked it when he played rough.

No. He wasn’t like that. Sascha was a woman shaped like a woman, dressed like a woman, silky skirts and petticoats that spun out when he twirled, powders carefully applied to his eyelids and cheeks — but then, he wanted to be a woman shaped like a woman just a little bit wrong, what with the short hair and the he and all. Woman off-kilter. A flatter chest would help with that, surely, same as it did for Ichari — but then, his chest was about the only part of his body he actually liked. His chest and his face and his hair. The places he liked being touched — though he liked being touched in general; he liked when other women liked him pretty.

4: scylla and charybids are the worst butch/femme couple in the world. but their genders are so cool (she/her butch king and he/him femme queen respectively) are so cool that who cares if they do a little murder.

The wolf king did not answer, only turned to face the rest of the hall and raised her free hand high. “I am Scylla God-King of the ice and stone,” she proclaimed. “He is my consort, holy and divine, Charybdis God-Queen of storm and snow. And the north is ours to rule and raise.”

5: sascha, drunk: when you. when you. when . he/him lesbians 😃 charybdis, who considers himself more monster than woman: uh huhhh

“We’re the same sort of woman, ah, aren’t we?”

Charybdis tilted his head. “Are we?”

“Well, you are a woman, ah?” He paused, in case he’d somehow been wrong, and waited for a denial that didn’t come. “And so am I. But — he, and all that, and yet you wear dresses anyhow. You know Ichari doesn’t. Ever.”

“No, Scylla neither. Not anymore.”

“And Anna only wears those drab robes all the time. But I suppose that’s her culture.” He crossed one leg over the other and went on: “And you’ve been with women, of course, the same as I have. We’re not supposed to do that back where I’m from.”

Again Charybdis’s smile was slow and creeping, like he was trying to hold it back. “No. Not at the temple, either. I suppose we are the same, then.”

6: cinquedea spades: the OTHER main character. as a trans woman (she calls herself a “self-made woman”), a bisexual, and a gladiator, she is maybe the coolest person in the world. sorry about the A cups

Spades had been uncomfortable about this part in the beginning, the first few times she’d been hurt bad enough to merit it. The nakedness. Particularly with her chest near-flat as it was. The morning draughts she’d been taking since twelve had smoothed her face, sleeked her limbs, curved her hips ever-so-slightly, let her shift from a small and silent boy to a small and knife-edged girl and then into a woman. But they had done little for her in the way of breasts. At this point, though, she was past caring. She’d been ground into the sand often enough that most of the medics in the arena had seen her shirtless.

7: she’s also long-lost nobility and god she is so traumatized but SO fucking funny about it

“It’s always setting the story straight,” said someone else, leaning forward — Luna, maybe, pale-haired with a scar running over her chin. “Let the rumors run too far and you’ll never catch them back. You know people still say Sun Ru’s boy escaped sixteen years back when they took the whole greedy nest out—”

Spades spread her already-relaxed stance, made eye contact with Vulpa over Ki’s shoulder, and observed, “I’m pretty sure that’s a myth.”

+ then our bonus. the citizens of farria said “can we please have some rights” and the city said “best i can do is everyone uses your pronouns”

“You know how the ones from the lower city are,” Carron said. “Too much time spent scraping for scraps and they get hungry for more than a meal.”

Spades kept her voice measured: “I wouldn’t say that any louder.”

Carron curled her lip. With a hint of scolding reproach: “Am I to hold my tongue for you and not the world, Dea?”

“I fight for my scraps, too. Does my blood make it different?”

“Oh, I’m the last person who can put stock in bloodlines. I was a street brat once, you know, or I wouldn’t speak with such confidence. But you’re a warrior. Your friend looks at the world like they’d sell their soul to stick a knife in its back, never mind if they go down with it.”

[goose-books]

@courtjester69420 drew my lesbian aeneas oc for me. i have embodied this for 24 hours

[goose-books]

GODSONG CHARACTER ROSTER IS UP sorry for dropping this two days after a valentine segment but if this is gonna be my nano WIP i need to provide some real information about it

godsong intro post here, but the tl;dr is that it’s a high fantasy story about wlw and religion inspired by the classics courses i’m taking! the picrews used are here, here, and here; transcripts/descriptions of the slides are under the cut!

[slide descriptions:

slide 1: background is this photo by maria teneva of a dark blue-green ocean swirling with froth. large white letters read “GODSONG CHARACTER ROSTER”

slide 2: labeled “remind me what this is real quick?” & bordered with cropped versions of this photo by naja bertolt jensen of a dark-gray stormy ocean surface. the text reads:

a loose retelling of virgil's aeneid

(with some other plotlines too)

in a game-of-thrones-esque high fantasy world

with dragons!

and with an entirely wlw main cast ⚢

in this world everyone pledges to one patron god (out of a pantheon) who represents their values

or their family's values. who knows.

i can't make small casts so here's the character list

every character slide from here on out contains 1) a border 2) text about the character 3) the character’s pride flags 4) a screenshot of the spotify listing for a theme song and 5) a picrew of the character.

slide 3: annadrijanna ivtouched pride flags: lesbian, nonbinary, & trans song: sleep alone by two door cinema club border: textured gold fabric text (dark orange):

late 20s, she/her/he/him

pledged to the god of faith, loyalty, duty, & family

the last living priest of this faith

his city. uh. burned to the ground

has been a priest since she was 12 so faith has been her whole life

totally does not have religious ocd.

on a quest to found a new city for his remaining people

don't ask about her brother.

this slide also features a picture of booty shorts that read “god won’t let me die” <3

slide 4: ichari felidore pride flags: lesbian, nonbinary, & butch song: dutch by dessa border: a foggy sky over a sea text (dark gray-green):

late 20s, they/them

in a world where pledging to a god defines your entire life, ichari is a reddit atheist

(you're ALLOWED to be an atheist, it's just, like, uncool so you have to have a fair amount of personal swag to pull it off) (they do)

sharpshooter, pickpocket, & former soldier in their home country but they ditched

(they're lying to their mom about it, though)

part of anna's mission via contributing the boat

which they totally didn't steal

imagine the hamlet/horatio dynamic if the horatio character was somehow the worse one

the only god they worship is anna

slide 5: sascha dorian armindale pride flags: lesbian, nonbinary, & femme song: #grownupz by FEiN border: glittering green velvet text (dark green):

late 20s, he/him

debauched heiress ichari keeps around for cash

sascha thinks ichari is his bestie. ichari calls sascha his purse. ichari is not joking but they sound like they are!

female manslut

no thoughts head SOOOO empty

“i think you’re the kind of person who’s pretty susceptible to joining a cult” “aww, you think i’m pretty???”

hiding the increasingly concerning mental illness by externally embodying mambo number 5

pledged to the god of pleasure/hedonism

slide 6: ambergris armindale pride flags: lesbian song: orca by wintersleep border: fire sparking over a dark background text (black):

early 20s, she/her

hates you.

sascha’s slightly-younger sister, except ambergris didn't get away from their parents

uses forearm crutches because of (what would be called in our world) cerebral palsy

raised to be a pretty porcelain doll of a human being. & it worked but like. you know how horror movie dolls want to kill you

pledged to the mother goddess of creation & destruction

an injured dragon went down near her family's estate.

she's got plans about that.

slide 7: scylla god-king pride flags: wlw, nonbinary, & butch song: king by zayde wolf border: glittering gold text (dark gold):

late 20s, she/her

scylla & charybdis grew up in a religious cult

they were supposed to kill each other. they killed all the cultists instead & declared themselves gods

these two are a sidequest for anna, who wishes they weren't

scylla is the self-declared protector of the two

hot & charming & absolutely brutal

"maybe drinking and women and violence will make me feel better" *it doesn't* *rinse & repeat*

ambiguous disorder dot gif

this slide also contains a screenshot of the onion headline “Relationship Definitely Hurtling Toward Something”

slide 8: charybdis god-queen pride flags: wlw, nonbinary, & femme song: modern day cain by IDKHOW border: glittering silver text (dark gray):

late 20s, he/him

scylla will stab you with her massive sword. charybdis will poison your drink

he'll seduce you first, though

very charming & kind & empathetic <3

presents as such because he likes to collect people <3

(not literally, but as allies/friends/lovers)

(very normal behaviors about relationships over here; certainly no desperation for love)

"dear diary, today i performed 3 cartoonish acts of villainy. gay sex slays. goodnight"

scylla and charybdis aren't pledged to gods; their gods of choice are each other.

slide 9: cinquedea spades (though “cinquedea” is crossed out) pride flags: bisexual & trans song: fighting fish by dessa border: folded red velvet text (dark red):

late 20s, she/her

lives in a city that has a new revolution, like, every tuesday

former nobility whose family got robespierre’d when she was a child

now she’s got a new identity and makes her living in the gladiatorial ring

it’s JUST like d*sney’s anastasia!

was pledged to the god of justice; now pledged to the god of war; quietly conflicted about it

“you know how i’m full of rage?”

straddling the line between aristocracy and the simmeringly revolutionary lower class. foot in both worlds. surely this won’t go badly for anyone

slide 10: vanya vulpa pride flags: lesbian & nonbinary song: blood by my chemical romance border: dark green leaves wet with dew text (dark green):

late 20s, any pronouns (defaults to it/they)

what's the gladiator arena version of a pimp. they're that for spades. they do the PR work

it's also her best friend & connection to the revolutionary side of the city. and all plots therefore ensuing.

(murder.) (definitely murder.)

sometimes being generally disliked makes people find themselves but sometimes it just makes them really jealous and bitter

this slide also contains a screenshot of the onion headline “Area Man’s Free Time Monopolized By Friend With No Other Friends,” labeled “spades is area man. vulpa is the friend”

/end description.]

[goose-books]

promptober day 10: pick

She was eleven when it happened, sickly and small, narrow-shouldered and thin-faced. A lock of her hair grew in gold. Indelible and unmistakable. Like Iv had pressed a kiss to her head and the color had bloomed in its wake. Picked by the god. Ivchosen.

So then she was Ivtouched instead of her family name, a child of the temples and not her family’s house, raised up by the city and celebrated as near-saintly, a holy child, the youngest ever blessed. It was a lot. It was exhausting. She was grateful, of course — it would have been unholy not to be — but at night, in her new room in the temple, she stayed up late straightening the blankets on her bed, unable to rest easy, head spinning around her new duties, her new fate, her new self. Thinking what-if-what-if-what-if. What if she was not enough. What if she could not believe the way she had to. What if the city could not believe in her.

She was eleven; Caradorra was eight. “I’m proud of you,” he whispered, the night after the final celebration, tangling his arm into hers to rest his head on her shoulder.

Anna waited for the joke. There usually was one, these days. He was, their mother said, ‘cultivating wit.’ But his wide eyes were entirely sincere.

“I’m not surprised,” he told her. “You’re the best person I know.”

The rest of it was easier after that; she went to bed warm and slept easy.

[goose-books]

fandom ask for godsong

i just got so many asks in the span of a second. thank you macy for also sending godsong the reason i asked is because 1. the godsong characters won't leave my head 2. i was literally thinking abt who is who in this regard yesterday

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most): okay "favorite" character is impossible with godsong because every main character is the love of my life but. unfortunately the one who has lived most rent free in my head is sascha armindale and that's not fair because i KNOW he has the funds to pay rent so what's he doing in there for free with his mental illness

scrunkly (my "baby," character that gives me cuteness aggression): vulpa is a scrunkly and it's not even cute. like it isn't but it looks like the word scrunkly. i'm putting it in the washing machine on a very fast spin cycle and then gently moving it to the dryer to recover

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave): underrated is difficult when this book has a fandom of "my friends" but i think i don't talk nearly enough about cairo. like she really does it all. she has the range. she just wants to be loved without feeling guilty for it. my head is in my hands thinking about her

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and i won't shut up about it for a week): hellenira ivtouched my fucking beloved my meow meow my bestie. also anna's dead brother but like... hellenira i want to make angsty fanart of. caradorra i just want to hug like a plushie

poor little meow meow ("problematic"/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave): when you look up poor little meow meow in the dictionary anna's mugshot is in there. mugshot bc she's also a war criminal at some point

horse plinko (character i would torment for fun, for whatever reason): what is godsong but a neverending anna plinko

eeby deeby (character i would send to superhell): shoutout to anna and ichari because they actually go to hell. like on purpose. ichari isn't impressed

[goose-books]

promptober day 24: extinct

Once upon a time there was a city with walls as high as heaven, founded on duty and faith. (Once upon a time there was a family who killed kings.) The streets were spiraling, the temples were gold, and on the holy days every voice rose in harmony. As a child you clung to your parents’ hands and let your voice rise, too, soaring on aureate wings. (The old portraits showed silver flashes of swords, toppled tyrants, cut-off crowns, and as a child you would stare up at the faces of your ancestors and wonder what kind of bravery it took to rise in the name of right.)

You’re the only one left now. (You’re the only one left now.) Your city has burned, is burning, will burn forever in the notes of every song that spells out the destruction of Ivander, a chorus that never ends, a destruction that never stops even when the walls and the temples and your home and your parents are all ashes. (They came for your family in the dead of winter, with the river almost frozen over, bearing firebrands and cold steel.) You carried your brother from the city in your arms and — how many times will you have to tell this story? As many times as it takes. As many times as your city requires, because you carried that from the ashes, too. (You ran and the ice cracked beneath your feet and you won’t ever tell this story.) You are the only child of your parents left. (You are the only child of your parents left.) You carry your history in your chest. (You carry your history in your chest.) Sometimes at night you stare up at the stars and wish to join them, a wanting so fierce it feels like blades in your stomach, but you can’t because it’s very simple, really. You can’t stop breathing. Not when you know what will die with you. (You’re a different person now, but you dream about it sometimes: the snow and the river and the toppled crowns.)

[goose-books]

[screenshot of a discord message: “yeah spades is every mythological hero man and anna is this emoji 🧍”]

[screenshot of a discord message from mr. (tentative) goosehorsebooks: “just some guy (self dx’d)”]

[screenshot from a google doc: “anna is not a real person she is a paper doll and when you unfold her she unfolds into every other character one after another but especially cairo and spades”]

[screenshot from a google doc: “balancing out my protag’s terminal drippy sadsackishness by giving him unhinged friends”]

[an edited tumblr post that now reads (edits bolded): “queen cairo: if i had a lame ass girlfriend i would hype him so much i would make him wait out side so i could go in first and be like get ready here comes the most specialist girl ever if you don’t cheer and clap for him ill fucking blow this whole building up”]

[screenshot from the notes app: “like she’s just a normal well-adjusted woman who has something deeply and fundamentally wrong with her”

collection of normal things i’ve said about the protagonist of my nano project

[goose-books]

promptober day 19: loop

Ira woke her.

For a moment Anna’s lungs stilled as she took in the familiar dark eyes, the familiar freckled jaw — and then she knew it was a dream, because that face was untouched by blood, and she let out a breath that was half shout and threw her arms around Ira’s neck, because she could handle the illusion of a dream if it meant she could hold her friend one more time.

Against her touch, Ira was still and cold, and made no move to hold her in return.

“Ira,” Anna said, a relieved laugh bubbling up in her throat, and Ira said, “How long has it been?”

Anna pulled back.

The two of them stared at each other, and Anna took in Ira’s face, flat and cold as glass, unsmiling.

“How many months?”

“What?”

Ira took Anna’s amulet in one hand, held it up until the chain looped around Anna’s throat pulled taut. It shone, smooth and gold, between their faces, a wordless message.

“Ivander’s gone,” Anna said.

“You aren’t.”

“And what am I, then? A living mausoleum? I don’t get to—” Move on? Her hands were going corpse-cold. Ira’s face wasn’t shifting.

“You have a destiny.”

“I’ve kept everyone safe—”

“Not Caradorra,” Ira said, and Anna staggered back like she’d been hit, ears ringing. The amulet thumped against her chest.

Not Caradorra. No. Had she forgotten?

Guilt flickered in Ira’s dark gaze. Softly: “I know, Anna. I know. But you’ve stayed too long. It doesn’t end here.”

It doesn’t end, Anna thought wildly, it doesn’t end, it never does— Already Ira was turning away, dissipating like mist, and Anna’s voice crawled from her throat, a foreign croak, a guilty truth: “Ira, I’m happy!”

Ira looked back, turning with slow liquid grace, and for just a moment that freckled face flickered, replaced by the bloodied shattered bone lying underneath.

“When did happy ever come into it?”

[goose-books]

promptober day 14: tick

It was less than comfortable, wearing a dead boy’s necklace. Well, a dead man, Anna supposed, but it was harder and harder to remember Caradorra as anything but her baby brother. She twisted the string of the amulet: one, two, three times; then one, two, three times in the other direction. Back and forth, three times each. No more and no less. Symmetrical. The same way she adjusted her coat when it itched, tugging once on each side so it lay the same over each shoulder; the same way she breathed on her glasses and wiped them each three times. Anything different was just — wrong, in an itchy sort of way that bit at her neck like a tick. It was most important with the amulet, though, because that wasn’t hers even now. That was her brother’s. She couldn’t let it hang uneven against her chest. She already felt unbalanced enough without him.

[goose-books]

promptober day 6: spirit (today with GodLore!)

In the temples of Ivander they strung the story out and sang for hours, filling in details, harmonies, every note a new lush description. But the story as Anna learned it first, as everyone in Ivander learns (learned) it first, was simpler, shorter. The three living-dead gods were mortal once. Three siblings: Nikolin, Shysha, Iv. Three siblings in a long-since-lost city whose prisoners were thrown to maddened devotees of the hunt. Three siblings who loved each other more than anything in the world.

The legends rarely agree on why Shysha killed the boy, if it was self-defense or something pettier. The legends agree that they were sixteen, that they fled home to beg their siblings for help, that Nikolin the eldest stood back and leaned on their cane and said it was only fair. Life for life. Death for death. And Shysha argued, swore and spat, and Nikolin stood in silence, and young idealist Iv crept off to meet the soldiers at the door and took their sibling’s death on their shoulders.

That was where the weeping always started, back in the temples — where the priests would pull out their hair and prostrate themselves on the floor, passion and performance intermingled. That, and the part afterward, the part where the two surviving siblings prayed to the spirit of their lost ghost, prayed so long and hard and loving that they turned a sibling to a saint, prayed so loudly that the mother goddess raised all three of them up to godhood. But these days Anna rarely got that far when she hummed the hymns under her breath. The first half of the story always tripped her up, left her staring into space and clutching the golden amulet around her neck.

It would have been blasphemy, of course, for Anna to pray to a dead mortal. Still. Even her god had been a dead sibling once. The irony, Anna thought, rubbing her thumb over her brother’s amulet, wasn’t nearly subtle enough.

i ought to say something about godsong’s three main gods, since godsong is inspired by greek/roman classics but not set in their world. so there they are! the once-mortal trio whose sibling spats are ruining our protagonist’s life literally every day. from left to right, in ascending age order:

iv, god of duty, loyalty, and family; famous figure of self-sacrifice and lost youth; anna’s patron god and the patron/founder of anna’s burned city; don’t take that thing off their neck or their head might come off (it was a pretty nasty death they had!)

shysha, god of glory, warfare, and bloodshed; matchmaker in the worst way; spades’ current patron god

nikolin, god of justice and judgment; spades’ former patron god and the patron/founder of spades’ (not-burned) city; “isn’t it an anachronism for them to have sunglasses even if they ARE blind” look. they can do what they want

(more about godsong here!) (picrew)