#kotlc society

[crymeariveronceagain]

look okay i just realized something about the guilt stuff

it not that its the guilt that breaks them more of the idea of being human if that makes sense like what brant did was a very human thing to do.The Neverseen is fine because they believe the doing the right thing.Juline mind should have broken after freezing of Ruy's nails.

look and the idea that ALDEN said what he to keefe in flashback just my heart hurts.

mmmmm that is an INTERESTING TAKE, ANON

i like this idea a lot, and i think it requires more discussion

first, my refutal to this point is that Keefe Sencen's mind seems to be mostly intact. He's not like other elves. Likewise, Sophie. They both have been absolutely and completely fine with the idea as being percieved as imperfect or human. It hasn't seemed to do much mental damage to them.

However, I really really love the idea that guilt and violence cannot entirely be what causes broken minds....also i think in the case of Alden and Juline there is a level in which elves can shut off the desire to be guilty. It's difficult but it's definitely there.

To support your claim, I'd bring up Grady, tbh. He's willing to commit murder for the people he cares about, and at times he gets really really close. However, his mind seems to be intact. Forkle has done violent things, Linh, Keefe, Sophie, all of them have done horrible things.

And yet.

There is sanity, and there is unbrokenness to them.

That most definitely cannot be ignored.

[lizzie-dude]

I cannot with the Keefe wiki page. What is this.

WHY IS HIS HAIR LISTED UNDER RELATIONSHIPS

[camelspit]

neverseen missed out tbh. as soon as they heard that someone accidentally flooded atlantis and got banished, they should have snatched up the song twins FAST. two powerful twins cast out by society with nowhere to go and no love for the government?? your recruitment office needs to get their shit together!!!

[myfairkatiecat]

KOTLC fans with Tam Cam really be making dashboards so unusable you’d think we were the mysterious Benedict society fandom on a Saturday

[best-childhood-book]

Welcome to the Bracket of Childhood Books!

Hello! Welcome to the Best Childhood Book bracket, reminiscent of many going around on Tumblr right now, that will decide what this userbase thinks is the best childhood book.

Since we need some clarification, the definition of childhood book in this competition is as follows: a book people read in childhood that must be for a YA age group or younger and has chapters. I developed this definition to keep it as open as possible while making sure picture and adult books were excluded. There are a lot of books that skirt the line between middle grade and young adult, so I figured it best to play it safe and include all YA books, especially for those of us who read at a much higher level. There is a difference between “children’s” book and “childhood” book. ANY book that met those requirements could be submitted, as I am striving to keep my personal opinion out of this competition for the most part. This definition will not change for the foreseeable future.

This masterpost will be updated with links to all the polls regularly, and each poll will last 7 days. If you vote, reblog if you can so more people can vote, and feel free to campaign for your personal favorite if you want!

SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED FOR CHILDHOOD BOOKS (320/320)

SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED FOR CHILDHOOD WORLDS (192/192)

SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED FOR FANTASY BOOKS (320/320)

Please submit with the name of the book and the author. Check the lists to see if anything has been submitted before trying yourself. If a book is part of a series, it will be listed under the series name (i.e. The Lightning Thief > Percy Jackson and the Olympians or The Golden Compass > His Dark Materials). You can find the current list of childhood books here. A world will be listed with its series, and you can find the current list of worlds here. You can find the current list of fantasy books here.

Poll links and rules under the cut

Help decide parameters for submissions with some fringe cases: recently published YA, adult books lots of children/teens read, retelling worlds

First Competition (here)

Second Competition (here)

Third Competition (here)

Fourth Competition (here)

BCW First Competition (here)

Rules/Guidelines

Submissions for Childhood Books

Must be a middle grade or young adult book

Must have chapters

Must be able to be found on Goodreads

Submissions for Childhood Worlds

Must be the setting of a middle grade or young adult book.

Must be either a whole other world (i.e. Narnia, Panem), a setting largely separate from our own world (i.e. Hogwarts, Camp Half-Blood), or a specific setting within our own world that is invented for the purpose of that book (i.e. 221B Baker Street, Ferryport Landing)

Main characters have to have visited this place

Cannot be somewhere that already exists in our world outside that book

Submissions for Fantasy Books

Must be listed as 'fantasy' or some fantasy subgenre within the first three genres on Goodreads or Storygraph

Must be able to be found on Goodreads

Must have chapters but can otherwise be for any age range

Polls

Be respectful (no hate, no harassment, I will block you)

I'm totally okay with spam reblogs; if you want to subject your followers to seventeen copies of a poll, you do you

If you're trying to get my attention about something, @ me or submit an ask, there's no guarantee I'll see all the reblogs

Propaganda

Submit it to me as an ask; I won't be reblogging personal posts or reblogs of the polls

Promote the book you're supporting; it's okay to poke fun at the other books, but please don't attack them or the authors

Only ONE (1) propaganda post per user per book. I really don't want to clog people's dashes with sixty posts about voting for a single book

Asks

Be respectful, not just to me but to all the people who will end up seeing that ask when I post it

If you're asking about a poll or a rule or anything else, please check and see if it's in this post or elsewhere

Try to keep things focused on the competition/books

Competition Hall of Fame

First Competition: Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

Second Competition: Animorphs by K. A. Applegate

Third Competition: Lockwood & Co. by Jonathan Stroud

Fourth Competition: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

[bookwyrminspiration]

hey wait we’ve never seen an elf with a tattoo. what the hell man. why aren’t we doing anything about this

actually upon further thought Shannon has somehow made an entire cast of people who would not get tattoos. how would practically no one want cool body art this sucks

upon even further thought tattoo apathy is endemic to their entire world, what the hell man that sucks. a world built without cool body art people in a world that values beauty and art…what are we doing…

[figure-skating-avocado]

Just made some book title poems for school which is something that I saw on tumblr once but didn't actually think much of until I got the assignment to make book title poems myself.

If you're ever bored and have tons of books I would definitely recommend trying to make poems out of the titles!

(P.S. Keepers of the Lost Cities and The Mysterious Benedict Society books came in very handy for finding some interesting topics for the poetry)

[lucyshypemaster]

"my roman empire in kotlc is keefe sen-"

no. MY roman empire is the endal family.

[the-oracle-at-delphinitely-not]

yall I need fic ideas. I will write for kotlc, pjo/hoo, tmbs, and Harry Potter. I’m not comfy writing smut just yet, but you can still request it!

[crymeariveronceagain]

kotlc reddit knows what's up

[lizzie-dude]

I think the sort of psychological horror aspect of kotlc is that all the terrifying elements are only ever implied. On the surface it's a kids fantasy book with some darker themes, stuff like government corruption and terrorism and magic powers. But if you follow some of the plot points to their natural conclusions, it becomes a literal dystopia. There are spyballs that can show you any elf at any time, implying that there are cameras in every elvin room, easily accessed by members of the nobility. The matchmaking system is created to make the best possible children, meaning people with serious disabilities likely don't get to reproduce, and gay couples are almost out of the question. But the elves live for such a long time that they've lost track of who's related to who, so if you go outside the eugenicist system, you're risking incest. The registry files have information on everyone's personality, love life, and even stuffed animals, meaning the registry pendants not only track your location, but can also hear your conversations. The reason crime is so rare in the lost cities (excluding violent crimes that could cause mental breaks) is because it's a surveillance state. You'd be caught instantly. People who wanted change had to completely control their own minds to avoid being found out, faking insanity to avoid suspicion or gaining complete mastery of acting so they could live a double-life.

[camelspit]

quick maruca drawings 💙

@skylilac @callas-pancake-tree @arson-anarchy-death @steal-nightmares-leave-dreams @neverseen-nevermore @abubble125 @purplesoup-lad-le @gay-otlc @thefoxysnake @keeper-of-the-lost-dadwin @ravs6709 @corruption-exe @kamikothe1and0nly @that-glasses-dog @presidentroarie @even-if-in-another-time @nyxpixels @slozhnos @katniss-elizabeth-chase @sofia-not-sophie @moontoastt @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @three-bunnies-in-a-trenchcoat @purpleunicycle @just-a-honey-badger @loverofallthingssmart @antisocialdork @tamsong @cutebisexualmess @tastetherainbow290 @gayupstraight @myfairkatiecat @famousinfamous @kale-of-the-forbidden-cities @oroshka @tw-5 @squishmallow36 @iggydancebreak @cosmxc-ars3hol3

[myfairkatiecat]

If I had a nickel for every fandom I’ve been in that had side blog shenanigans leading to unhinged red string and many accusations and changing allegiances and polls….

…I’d have two nickels.

Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice

[moonlarked]

congrats to kotlc for having one of the only depictions of goblins that I like

[tamsong]

bored and i have art block so i’m thinking of drawing a kotlc role swap au. same characters but they occupy diff roles in the narrative with some varying abilities.

sophie as the bio sister of jolie, who turns out to be a neverseen spy;

fitz and biana as the surviving siblings of alvar, who fell in love with brant and perished in a fire when he refused to join him;

tam and linh as twins from a powerful noble family who have to hide that they’re twins to protect their family’s reputation, all while tam is given a risky mission to find a lost girl in the human world;

marella as that lost girl.

what do we think so far

[bookwyrminspiration]

wait wait what the fuck. shannon set up the "immortality ALWAYS comes with a cost" thing with fallon's faulty memory + bronte's needing to keep himself involved so he doesn't lose himself + fintan and vesperas' instability and then just Did Not Talk About It.

Like what about how all of their individual falling aparts come from their abilities? Fallon is a telepath (I'm not bothering to fact check that correct me if I'm wrong) and his mind is wandering, his memory is faulty, he can't stay in the moment. Bronte loses control of himself, he's become cold and stubborn, he has to ball his negative emotions up in his chest to keep from feeling too much. Fintan is unstable like a fire, an infection, he needs to consume everything in his path and maybe or maybe not let something new grow from the ashes; fire is vengeful. vespera has gone numb and that's what happens when you feel too many emotions for too long! you lose yourself!

that's a symptom of being an ancient!! you lose yourself!!

exploring this as a parallel to fitz, sophie, marella, and keefe is interesting as well because you're seeing all these ancients fall apart and it's because of their ability. Keefe already is going numb. Marella can barely keep control. Sophie ties her emotions around themselves. Fitz loses his mind in his emotions. They know that this could happen to them. It will.

For some reason, it's never talked about how immortality (or indefinite life) is the perfect circumstance for a mind to break. Maybe elves don't die. maybe they're exiled because the weight of the years shattered them.

Oo and excellent observation and conversational topic. What really stands out to me about it is that's it's an inevitability. It's not you might lose yourself to your ability, it's not you might become unstable, it's not you might have to fight against it. It's that you live forever, so there is no escaping it. You live forever, so you will live long enough to experience the disconnect of a world moving on around you. You will live long enough that you will either have to fight to stay present--like Bronte--or distance yourself--like Fallon and other ancients. And if you chose to fight, then you will keep living, long enough that there will come a time you cannot continue to win. Perhaps you can stay in a stalemate for a while, but it will grow increasingly difficult and eventually will reach a point of no return.

And! It never ends! Elves live forever. Unless they die via unnatural means (fire, squashed, drowned, fell down the stairs bella swan style) they are going to just. Be experiencing that forever. There is no anticipated ending to losing themselves, they just continuously do so forever and ever. Some can hold on longer than others, are more present than others at the same point in time, but we're speaking in infinities! That dwarfs it all. Unless they finally discover a natural end to their lifespan, it's all practically inevitable.

But yeah, Shannon has not covered this. Likely because 1. it's horrifying, and 2. it's completely irrelevant to the battle's Sophie is facing. She has eternity in front of her, and eternity to come to terms with her lifespan. Right now she's got other things on her plate than contemplating how long she'll live and what she'll do with it and what'll happen to her. But also I think. It may have been unintentional on Shannon's part, to create such a consequence. Not that she's completely ignoring it, as she has separated the ancients from everyone else to an extent and characterized them differently. But the idea of losing yourself inevitably with time? Probably not what she meant, at least that's my assumption based on what she's intended with the rest of her world. However, maybe i'm wrong and not giving her enough credit! perhaps she knows about that, but just doesn't cover it because it doesn't fit the vibe of the series or her intended audience.

Who knows! Either way, it is a very interesting and also horrifying thought. Thanks for prompting it!