#daemonbound

[writeradamanteve]

Short little Sneak Peek of Daemon Bound, where Jughead is helping Betty dress in the morning:

“Shall I complicate this knot?” he asked, smirking as he tied her skirt in the back.  “So that you may require me to untie it later because you can’t do it by yourself?”

She laughed softly. “Stop it, my lord, or we’ll never get this done.”

Predictably, he dropped a kiss on her neck. “Don’t call me that if you wish to stay clothed.”

She did like to tease him in these moments. 

He helped her with her corset, tightening it with his dexterous fingers, but he would never pull so hard--far more merciful than any ladies maid that had ever helped her dress. 

“Can you breathe?” he would ask, and she would say, “Easily, which perhaps means you haven’t pulled enough.”

“Your shape is perfect. You don’t need these torture devices to squeeze the breath out of you.”

She would pull them tighter, anyway, before his very eyes, and he would sigh in disagreement, but he would never force his opinion. She wore these corsets to keep things in place, not to shape her body. She didn’t like them terribly tight, either, for her mobility was crucial, but if her corset was too loose, her lady parts would move about most uncomfortably with more vigorous activities, such as running. 

“The ladies need to be secured, Juggie,” she explained, pushing her breasts up from beneath her corset with a giggle. “Now go on and double knot it.”

He would do so as he grumbled, “Fair enough.”

[writeradamanteve]

Daemon Bound: Outtake

Here’s a scene I removed from the last chapter. I have actually removed and rewritten this scene three times and each time, I end up taking it out. I must accept that it will not find its place in this story, so I might as well just share it as an outtake.

So here it is. Enjoy.

***********************

Just as the exit was within a few feet of them, their path was hindered by a familiar looking gentleman even taller than Jughead, with slicked back blonde hair and a turned up nose. She thought him familiar, possibly ranked the same as Jughead, and his insufferably smug smile raised Betty’s hackles. 

It did not help at all that Nick St. Claire and Paulie Poutine were close behind him.   

The smile he flashed them did not seem the least bit friendly. “Jones! Leaving already? Though I suppose I ought to be surprised you didn’t leave sooner. This tends to be a fairly social event, and we all know how you positively hate people.”

She despised him already. 

“Not all people, Wallis. Just particular people,” Jughead replied, dryly. “Ms. Cooper, this is Mr. Brett Weston Wallis. We used to work in the same department. Wallis, meet Ms. Cooper.”

Wallis smirk only grew more insufferable. “Oh, everybody knows Ms. Cooper by now. In fact, I wanted to congratulate Ms. Cooper on her… astonishing accomplishment. Truly never would have thought. Mr. St. Claire and Mr. Poutine certainly had a lot to say about her.”

Betty narrowed her eyes at them. “Oh? I did not realize I was so interesting. One would think they’d find better preoccupations.”

Wallis gave an affected laugh. “Oh, I like that! Aren’t you self-deprecating! How adorable.”

Betty had never quite been called adorable in her life, but she wasn’t particularly insulted by it. She’d noted his presence during the raid, but she hadn’t given him a closer look until now. This was definitely an academy boy, possibly around Jughead’s age. 

She peered at Wallis with a tilt of her chin, studying his features. 

She smiled, eyes bright with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Were you and Mr. Jones classmates at Stonewall? Graduated together, mayhaps?”

Wallis’s eyes sparked. “Why, yes! How did you know?” He winked at her. “He talks about me, doesn’t he?”

Betty shook her head. “No. Not at all. Your name was never mentioned until the Wraith Lord raid and it was because you requested to lead it, but was passed over for Mr. Jones. Funny how that played out.”

Wallis’ face fell and all semblance of pleasantness faded. “Oh, you have this one trained well, Jones.”

Jughead sneered. “Nobody needs training to make a fool of you, Wallis. You make it quite easy for everybody. Don’t you have someone you need to impress with your parents’ money?” He made way for Betty to walk ahead and they were already leaving Wallis behind.

Wallis scoffed, loudly. “You’ll know your place one day, Jones. And you can drag your rambunctious little blonde crumpet down with you.”

Jughead might have turned around and swung a punch right at Brett’s upturned nose, but Betty told him to keep walking without turning to look. 

“Crumpet!” he ground through his teeth. “He called you a crumpet!”

She rolled her eyes. “Please. I’ve been to the Southside. I’ve heard worse.”

[writeradamanteve]

New Chapter: Daemon Bound

by AdamantEve

Fandom: Riverdale

Pairing: Betty/Jughead

Genre: AU, Steampunk, Victorian Era

P'rchance thine aethyr taketh on such an ov'rwhelming wund yond wouldst causeth thine aethyr to p'rish, thou shareth of its sev'rity may holp thy aethyr to liveth.  Alloweth those did bind in fate and blood shareth in both gl'ry and teen.

Read Chapter 10: Those Did Bind Fate and Blood

(image credit: Discovermagazine.com)

[writeradamanteve]

Daemon Bound

by Adamant Eve

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Tags: Major Character Death, supernatural themes Soul bound, ghosts and spectre, Possession,Tragic Deaths, Prostitution, mentions of paid sex, mention of cadavers, slow burn, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension

Relationship: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones

Fandom: Riverdale TV Show

Summary

The Kin hold the keys between the realm of the living and realm of the dead. It is the Kin who ensure the borders—Peace Dealers that lay souls to rest. Betty and Jughead are Kin, and in their respective worlds, nothing is as it seems. Separated then throw back together by fate, they discover how they are more powerful together than they are apart.

Chapter Five: Meeting of the Minds

[writeradamanteve]

Daemon Bound

by Adamant Eve 

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Tags: Major Character Death, supernatural themes Soul bound, ghosts and spectre, Possession,Tragic Deaths, Prostitution, mentions of paid sex, mention of cadavers

Relationship: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones

Fandom: Riverdale TV Show

Summary

The Kin hold the keys between the realm of the living and realm of the dead. It is the Kin who ensure the borders—Peace Dealers that lay souls to rest. Betty and Jughead are Kin, and in their respective worlds, nothing is as it seems. Separated then throw back together by fate, they discover how they are more powerful together than they are apart.

Chapter Four: The Talented Mr. Smith

[writeradamanteve]

Daemon Bound

By AdamantEve

Summary: The Kin hold the keys between the realm of the living and realm of the dead. It is the Kin who ensure the borders—Peace Dealers that lay souls to rest. Betty and Jughead are Kin, and in their respective worlds, nothing is as it seems. Separated then throw back together by fate, they discover how they are more powerful together than they are apart.

Fandom: Riverdale

Genre: AU, Victorian Steampunk, Supernatural, Soulmates

Read the Prologue.

[writeradamanteve]

Daemon Bound 

Pairing: Betty/Jughead

Fandom: Riverdale

Genre: AU, Supernatural, Victorian Steampunk

by Adamant Eve

Chapter Two: Deathly Inconveniences

There was a melody, faint like cobwebs, whistling through the cracks and nooks of the house.

As Betty stood at the threshold of her bedroom door, staring down the dark and chilly hallway, a copper coin lay, Britannia side-up, at her feet.

She picked it up and examined it. It felt colder than ice.  

Betty wondered where this Queen’s halfpenny came from, as her mother was not in the habit of leaving currency--even foreign ones--lying around just for anyone, ghost or living, to take.

The trace sounds of a birthday song hung then waned in the air and Betty looked around the otherwise empty hallway.

“Laura?”

The faded image of red silk and black lace bled into the darkness. The translucent mottled skin of the woman wearing it gleamed atop the low collar. It was riddled with brown veins and the trace mark of the rope that killed her just around her throat.

Laura’s blue lips hardly moved. “It was all I can manage.”

Read the rest.

Authore’s note: This setting is VERY fictional.

[writeradamanteve]

Credit and Inspiration

(Please get comfortable, as this is going to be a long one)

I had a discussion with a friend last night, and it was riveting, upsetting, emotional, funny, and caring. It had to do with my latest work, Daemon Bound, and how it had similarities to a novel called Disenchanted & Co. by Lynn Viehl and that it would be appropriate if I credited this novel as inspiration for Daemon Bound. 

Specifically, in the interest of full disclosure: Victorian Steampunk America, a heroine that is a private investigator who specializes in spirits, how her investigations are impeded by a sexist society, she dressed up as a boy once, she impersonates a prostitute, a ward was placed by a dead family member, a netherworld that only the magic wielders can see, she carries her dead father’s magic pocket watch, her love interest is dark, brooding, magic wielder.

A couple of things immediately happened when she pointed out the similarities of this novel to my story:

1) I was truly upset. My head started pounding. My neck felt like it was expanding and blowing up. 

2) I was incredibly mortified. It sounded exactly like I copied this story and did not give credit to this author. 

But there are also a couple of things that are true as I was feeling all this:

1) I have never read Disenchanted & Co. Last night was the first time I ever knew it existed. 

2) The Daemon Bound story you are reading now is a reworked version of itself and nothing else. It was not based off another fandom. It is not material from another fandom. Everything about Daemon Bound--originally titled “Marked”, at some point “Lost”, even--was 100% from my imagination. I can produce all 21 chapters of it right now if you ask me for it.

So my friend and I, we kept having this conversation, and she mentioned how I had left in the name Lucien and this book happens to have a main character with the name Lucien, and I seriously wanted to die. I did write in Lucien by mistake, mainly because in the first version of this story, Lucien Armentiers is a “cousin” in Jughead’s new household, whom he suspects is not his cousin. I had taken a snippet from my original version (Chapter 5), where Betty is already in New York and Lucien is there, causing mischief. 

Lucien is not scheduled to make an appearance in Daemon Bound anymore. I’ve scrapped Lucien’s character.  Hell, I scrapped the characters of two other ghosts that were supposed to be in Betty’s house--Martin and Francis, a thief  from the Brick Break gang who was murdered in cold blood and a little boy, who drowned in a river and whose father was driven to drink and ruination because of his death, respectively, because Laura did everything for Betty’s character that all three of them were supposed to do, combined. 

At this point, however, I was ready to throw in the towel. I contemplated giving up on this story, because what was the point? It seemed like someone had written something like it already. I wasn’t going to take it down, because I have nothing to hide. This story is 100% mine. I am willing to let people read Disenchanted & Co. and compare it to my story, and let everyone see that everything is different. But something inside me was dying and it was beginning to feel like writing this story is futile. 

Guys, the amount of effort I am putting into writing Daemon Bound--it is far more challenging than anything I’ve written. I take note of every line of dialogue, of whether the objects and occupations and technology--even the made up ones--can exist in this world. My original version sounded far more modern than the world I am writing now in Daemon Bound. I sit writing for a couple of hours and I realize that I’ve only written 500 words. It’s so hard to write this story, but I love doing it, and to find out that I’m not even that original--it’s painful. I was going to give this up. 

But you know, when a friend comes to you with these hard conversation from a place of caring and sincerity, and the lines of communication stay open, the discussion wasn’t going to end at that. In spite of my friend having papers to write, homework to finish, she kept on talking to me, and she said that these similarities were superficial details and that the core of the novel was different from mine. 

As a quick reminder, my friend’s aim wasn’t to shame me or catch me plagiarizing, it was to call out inspiration from an existing work.  

So if I hadn’t read the book, she advised that I do. I’m not gonna lie--I don’t want to read the book. I don’t. I’d rather give up writing this story.  But should I continue, I don’t want this book influencing me in any way, shape or form, because this book did not exist in my mind until my friend pointed it out. But because she is sincere and had no intentions of killing my inspiration, she offered to tell me the gist of the novel, and she did, and the points above are where the similarities to the novel ended.  The main characters and their personalities are different from Betty and Jughead, the main plot is different, the romantic development is different--everything else is different.  So at the end of our conversation, where Dawson’s Creek and Veronica Mars was brought up, even, my friend was wholly successful in bringing back to life what was on the verge of death. 

She is a true friend and I am grateful that it was she who brought this conversation to me.  If it were someone who didn’t give much of a shit, I think it might have been the end of my fanfic writing career.  Not exaggerating. 

ALL THAT SAID, this novel exists and I’m not going to pretend it’s not there. While I have never read this book, I’m going to point out that this novel and my story have these similarities. I can’t lie and say this novel inspired me, because I’ve never seen it before this, but I should be able to point to it and say, “Listen, you can think that I was inspired by this book, and that’s okay.” 

We all get inspired by tropes and similar material, whether it’s done consciously or some cosmic, collective ether of creativity. This writer and I--we probably worship in some similar cognitive temple, and I dig that. We were inspired by the same things--romance, daring, adventure. There isn’t a quarrel here and I don’t want anyone thinking that I am not giving credit where credit is due.  

Because truly--I have been writing stories for 30 years, and I believe that I’ve lived by the purest of fanfic codes, which is to credit the source material.  I don’t have to tell anyone that to NOT plagiarize is the barest minimum of writing. It doesn’t take a hero to do that. You don’t get a medal for not plagiarizing. But it does take a bit more effort to give credit, to call out what inspires a story, and to tag your work appropriately.  

So this is what I have to write and this is what I have to give.  Take from it what you wish. I respect everyone’s thoughts about this, good or bad. 

My promise remains the same--if I get Anonymous trolling, it’s going nowhere, buddy. I’m deleting that shit. Put your name on your comments and I’m more likely to reply to it as respectfully as possible. If you put your name on it and your comment is likely to hurt my feelings, you’ll just have to put up with the reality that I may not reply to it, but I won’t delete it. I don’t even think I can.

I don’t know what’s going to happen from hereon, but I want to be completely and utterly transparent.  I hope you all have a wonderful day.