#lizzie is not mentioned in this because she's an outlier

[chemdisaster]

secret life joel has seriously got me so fucked up

it's something about how in 3rd life he was all alone, he had his dogs and his all-consuming propensity for destruction and that was that. he had the taste of fire climbing up his throat, the smoke that clouded his vision and turned everything red, and that was all he ever needed, no alliance ever meant a thing to him beyond how it would eventually look when it went up in flames. then in last life he made attempts at something resembling genuine connection, but they fell through and so he fell back on what he knew, what was familiar. he made alliances that only went as far as the shared blood they could draw, willingly relinquished himself to the comfort of loneliness and death, and ended up being damn good at it. he had his fingers with the red dripping from them and not much more, and he never asked for more, either. all he really had was himself and the fire. and he was fine staying like that, everything was as it was meant to be, it was fine.

but then came double life and etho and the relation ship, and suddenly joel had something to fight for, a cause and a direction for the destruction, and when the relation ship burnt it was a conscious, purpose-filled decision to let his own blaze explode outwards and reduce everything else to embers and smouldering ash. joel said, "the ship burns, everything burns," and even when his words came true in the cruellest way possible, when everything burnt and he and etho followed, in the spills of swirling lava, amidst their sizzling remains that quickly dissolved into nothingness, something had changed.

and then came limited life and the bad boys, and at this point joel had known what it was to be wanted and to want, and maybe he never expected the bad boys to matter as much as they did in the end, but it happened before he'd even had time to notice, slowly and then all at once, and there was no denying now that he cared. and this time when he died, it was reckless and desperate and with one name playing on repeat in his ears until the sky came down and he heard nothing at all. he died wanting to stay alive, in a world where suffering and loss grew on you like fungi until it was all you ever knew how to feel, joel died with something to live for and something to die for.

and now here he is. in secret life. and you'd think someone like joel, someone who never really asked for connection, someone who knows how to stay himself with nothing but an army of wolves surrounding him, would get burnt once or twice and close himself right off, go back to doing what he knows and what works. but for someone so accustomed to loneliness that he wears it like a second skin, joel remains startlingly willing to put himself out there. he remembers the bad boys, screams when jimmy dies and gives grian hearts and tells him he would always help him out. he, despite the complicated nature of their relationship and the way they always seem to go for each other in fights, despite how he's made sure to put on an air of being unaffected when it comes to their memories, nevertheless gets in a boat with etho and openly tells him that he still cares, it's just - it's just. when pearl is green and he is yellow, he purposely throws away his guess to ensure that she is safe around him. joel, the character who you'd think would be most likely to spurn every alliance and go back to fighting for himself only because if he doesn't, no one else will - joel, despite all that, is actively trying to be more, more than what he is and what he already knows how to be.

you can see it in how he is as a red life, too. in every previous season, to the point where other lifers have made note of it, joel has become imprudent, excessively reckless and rash when he's gone down to red. in contrast to secret life, where he's more or less calmly completing tasks, gathering resources and preparing himself for possible eventualities. his actions this go around are step-by-step, organised and calculated in a way they weren't before. and obviously part of that is to do with the nature of this season, there isn't much room to be reckless when everything you do has to correspond with what's in your book. and tomorrow is life day, probably the last session, and who knows what's going to happen. but still, it cannot be denied that joel's demeanour has changed to be more collected this time - especially impressive if you remember that he's lost three people he loved already.

over the course of the life series joel has been learning what it is to love and be loyal and fully and unquestionably open yourself up to someone. despite getting hurt over and over again, something that by all rights should have warned him off from getting close to people forever, he's instead taken everything good about those relationships and carried it with him. in a world that pushes everyone to fall to the same character flaws, he's found space for growth and healing, and that is so beautiful it hurts.

[spinningprincess]

Book Recs!

I’m looking forward to Celia Lake’s upcoming Best Foot Forward SO MUCH that I’ve reread nearly all of the previous books, novellas, and short stories. Some of them twice.

Best Foot Forward, as the blurb tells us, is about Geoffrey Carillon and Alexander Landry, and the ripples of Carillon’s friendships elsewhere. Rereading with an eye toward setting myself a foundation for BFF, then, made constellations appear in the backlist, some of them rather neat.

If you’re new to Celia Lake, then I recommend reading in publication order first, although they’re designed to be read in (nearly) any order. But if you’re already familiar, then come with me on this journey.

Outcrossing, Ancient Trust, Goblin Fruit, On the Bias and Unexplored Territory (Ancient Trust and Unexplored Territory being free stories that fill in some of the background pieces) make a very lovely Carillon-shaped constellation. Eclipse and Chasing Legends (the last story in the book Winter’s Charms) give as complete a picture of Alexander Landry as we’ll get until BFF is out. In combination, we have a sense of these two men, a bit, and a sense of how they might be together on the page.

But there are so many MORE constellations. Eclipse sings well with Casting Nasturtiums, the first story from Winter’s Charms, and if you’re reading Winter’s Charms you probably want to read Wards of the Roses before reading Country Manners, and in fact Wards of the Roses ties back into Ancient Trust, and Country Manners makes sense of one or two things in Outcrossing. And then Magician’s Hoard is nice to have (along with Eclipse, and perhaps With All Due Speed, a free short about Thesan and Isembard) before reading Chasing Legends. 

It’s probably worth getting (re)acquainted with Cyrus Smyth-Clive as well, which means reading Carry On, Sailor’s Jewel, and The Hare and the Oak. That last is especially good as it delves into the Council’s role in Albion, and the running thereof. Alexander is a Council Member, but what does that mean exactly? The Hare and the Oak adds a little bit of context to what we may have gleaned elsewhere.

Carillon’s constellation includes the Edgartons, and therefore: Pastiche, to introduce Richard and Alysoun, Complementary, to get better acquainted with Gabe’s Aunt Mason, and then The Fossil Door, to get better acquainted with Gabe, and to meet Rathna. Rathna’s story is referenced in Eclipse, and Thesan turns out to be rather the thread that is tying this blog post together. It’s because of her that I’m seeing constellations, after all. 

Lizzie Carillon nee Penhallow is important, seeing as she’s Carillon’s magnetic north. Her story is in Goblin Fruit, On the Bias and Unexplored Territory, of course, but then we learn a bit more about her family by following her younger sister Laura in In the Cards. Laura returns to lend a supportive ear (and a bit of a wardrobe) in Point by Point, which deals with, among other things, the aftermath of Magician’s Hoard.

There are three books not mentioned at all so far: Seven Sisters and Fool’s Gold work well in concert, with Fool’s Gold being nearly a direct sequel to Seven Sisters. Both go deeper into the Pact, and the Fatae, and in general give us a deeper understanding of the world. And of course, Seven Sisters brings us around again to constellations. 

Mistress of Birds is the outlier then: only lightly connected to the others, but nonetheless connected by dozens of slender threads. It delves deeper into a different sort of land magic, more closely aligned with the magic of Thesan’s family than the grand rituals of the Council. What it does, however, is give many concrete examples of magical folk talking to non-magical folk, and grounds us in the background of THAT, which comes up in Best Foot Forward rather a lot. 

I rather suspect that I’ll pull out various of these clusters and write about them individually, but for now, in anticipation of Best Foot Forward, an overview of sorts.