#s reads tlt

[adanseydivorce]

Ianthe referring to the elder Lyctors as duplicitous sluts… what a woman 💕

[happyk44]

The thing was Percy didn't like being a bad kid. Every time he got kicked out of a school or wound up in the counselor's office over some incident he wasn't completely blameless for, his mom's brows would pinch. The line on her lip dipped. He knew what she was thinking each time: lost wages, job risk, who was going to watch him if he got suspended, where would she send him if he got kicked out, and so on.

He hated that he did that to her. Being a bad kid meant being a bad son. He refused to be a bad son - not on purpose anyway.

Well, he used to. She wasn't here anymore. Her brows weren't going to furrow. Her lips wouldn't thin. Her shoulders wouldn't draw up and tense before the principal even opened their mouth. It was over.

He didn't have anyone anymore. Nobody at cabin eleven would look at him. Other cabins steered around him like he was carrying the plague. Grover was off doing whatever satyrs did - probably getting ready to infiltrate some new school, befriend some new kid, save their lives. He didn't need Percy. It’d only been a few days but they'd barely interacted. Older satyrs would yank him along into the wood before Percy could get close or even open his mouth. Even Annabeth just eyed Percy with scrutinizing eyes - like she was assessing him for something. But every time he tried to approach her outside of their lessons, she brushed him off.

No one wanted Percy around.

What was the point of being a good kid anymore? There wasn't anything or anyone forcing him to keep his head above water. He was tired of the murmurs. He was tired of the avoidance. Tired of the glares from the Ares cabin. Tired of trying to keep the quake in his stomach tamped down.

He was just tired.

He thumbed along the flat edge of his sword. His new best friend was the pervasive feeling of loneliness. With a miserable sigh, he tucked the sword into the holster on his hip. People barely wanted to spar with him now so he was stuck to sweating it out on the dummies by himself. At least only when Luke wasn't pushing him as hard as possible.

But even with Luke there seemed to be pause. The first time Percy felt his gut yank after being claimed had been in training with Luke, and as soon as the feeling caught him, Luke begged off. Like he'd seen something in Percy that unnerved him. Sometimes when Percy looked in the mirror, he saw something in his eyes that unnerved him. A foreign thing - like a contact lens put in the wrong way.

No amount of poking or prodding at his eyes was going to get it out though. It was inside him - in his blood. He was sure of it.

He was starting to worry that it was the very thing he'd been keeping back, the very thing his mom was trying to keep him safe from.

The clang of metal against metal was loud as he walked past other trainees. There were a couple people leaning against the wall near the water fountain. As expected, they shifted away as he neared. Mistrust was bright in their eyes.

He did his best to ignore it. Not the first time people had stared at him like they thought he was dangerous. Or beneath them.

The water sprayed for a moment before he lowered his head. It was clarifying. He'd noticed it before, a burst of energy with every sip whenever he was tired, but ever since being claimed, he'd noticed the alertness more and more.

As he let go of the button, he caught the tail end of the muttering nearby. His stomach dropped.

“... should've ditched him sooner,” one boy grumbled. His friend snorted. “Maybe then she wouldn't have died.”

“What did you say?” The two startled. Percy understood why. He barely recognized his own voice, the eerie coldness to it frosty on his own tongue. Still, he repeated as he twisted on his heels to face them. “What. Did you just say?”

Panic besot them. For a second, the barest of a second, he could feel it kick in - be a good boy for me, Percy, be a good kid for Mom.

But she wasn't here.

She wasn't here.

So what was the point?

He took a step forward. “What,” he snarled, saliva coating his tongue like froth, “did you say?”

The others shifted away but he just crept forward. “Nothing, man,” one of them finally bit out, but they were lying. He could see it in their eyes, hear in their voice, feel it in their veins.

“You're lying,” he said. A bitten off laugh echoed from his lips. “You were talking about my mom.” Another choked laugh. “You think it's my fault?”

One of them raised his hands - a mock surrender. “Hey, dude-”

“You think I wanted her to die?” A sharp sensation coiled through Percy's chest. It thrummed hot and heavy, piling, piling, piling on his lungs. “You think I asked for ANY OF THIS?”

Someone's hand came to rest on his shoulder and it was like the crashing of the waves against his bare feet. Cold, clarifying, clear.

Freeing.

His fist drove straight into the jaw of whoever was behind him. He could barely tell who he was seeing - it might've been Luke, or any other tall blonde guy. But as soon as whoever it was stumbled back, he whirled around and punched whichever kid was closest in the stomach. They went down and he clambered on top to wail. Fist and fist upon whatever body part he could reach. He wasn't the most elegant hand-to-hand fighter but there was something to be said for the voracious and vicious energy boiling through him.

Distantly he was aware of yelling around him, aware of people pulling at him, aware of the person beneath him crying, arms over their face, arms Percy was tired of hitting. He needed to get their face, get their tongue, rip his mom from their mouth. How dare they speak about her.

How dare anyone talk about her.

A dozen hands finally yanked him back. He screamed. Bodies toppled. He grabbed the closest one by their hair, driving his knee upwards over and over again until hands ripped him away again. Swung blindly and caught someone. The two of them fell. His stomach pulled back. They choked. They weakened. He swung himself over until he was on top.

I want you all to drown, he thought, grabbing at their jaw. Don't ever speak of her again.

Saliva smeared across his fingers. His stomach pulled back even more. What was that - blood, water? On his hands, on his knees, on their skin, on their faces, in their veins.

His free hand drew out. He wanted it. It was his. Didn't they get that? She was his, and she was gone, so he would take and take all else that belonged to him until the hole in his chest was gone. Until the water they had coursing inside them filled him up.

“Percy,” someone whispered.

Their voice was familiar, breath hot against Percy's ear. He twitched. The feeling of nearby water, nearby fluid, was clenched tight in his fist. He just had to pull back. Yank it. Make it his.

The voice turned pleading. “Percy.”

He froze as two hot hands came to clasp his cheeks, dark brown eyes and curly hair blurring into view. Grover's face.

“Grover,” he breathed. For the first time since he'd ended up at camp, he relaxed.

Grover's thumbs stroked his skin. “Yeah, it's me.” He leaned in closer. “Percy, you need to stop.”

“Stop?”

“You're hurting people," he said. “You have to stop.”

Why? Percy thought. He didn't care. He didn't care if they hurt, didn't care if they drowned where they laid choking, didn't care if they suffered. It didn't mean anything to him. They didn't mean anything to him.

But this was Grover.

And with his mom gone, Grover meant the world.

“You want me to stop?”

“Yes,” Grover said. His breath was warm, his skin hot, his body close. Distantly Percy remembered nights at school like this - Grover tucked up next to him, trying his best to help Percy study when most people would've bailed. “I want you to stop.”

His lips were wobbling. His eyes were thick with wetness. His voice was unsteady - trying to be calm and rapidly failing. Even his hands shook.

Percy grabbed at his wrists. “Okay,” he whispered as he clung. His stomach relaxed slowly, the crash turning into a tickle. “I'm good, I'm good.”

Shakily, Grover exhaled, pressed his forehead to Percy's, and murmured, “I know, I know.”

His hands pulled away from Percy's face, but not away from him, arms wrapping around his neck and pulling him in for a tight hug. Percy's breathing wobbled as he tucked his face into the crook of Grover's neck. He clung tight and desperate. Pleading.

No, he couldn't be a good son anymore. He didn't have to bother keeping in check to avoid the thin line of his mom's lips. But he could be a good friend. To keep the tears out of Grover's eyes, the tremble from his skin.

“I can be good,” he promised quietly, for Grover's ears only. “I promise I can be good.”

“I know,” Grover said. His cheek pressed against Percy's. “I believe you.”

-

The fountain nearby trickled quietly. The steady flow soothed the unease between Percy's shoulders. Still, he squeezed the pillow in his grip tighter to his chest as he watched Grover flit around the bunk closest to him. He snapped the final end of the sheet around the mattress. Hooves clopped quietly against the tile as he stepped back. His gaze flickered between Percy's bed and his own.

Then he grunted and began pushing it closer.

Percy hopped up. The discarded pillow slipped from his fingers and onto the floor. He nearly tripped over it trying to get to Grover's side. They pushed the other bunk over until it was pressed into Percy's.

While Grover unfurled his blanket, Percy stepped back. Awkwardness choked him. He didn't know what to do, what to say. So he picked the pillow off from the floor and pressed it into his chest. Grover didn't spare him many glances as he worked to make up the bed. Leaning across his bunk, he yanked Percy's blanket from between the seam where the two bed frames connected and began tying the edges of both blankets together. It was shoddy work, no way it wasn't coming apart just from them lying on the sheets, much less sleeping.

But Grover did it anyway.

As he shifted back, hooves scraping the floor, Percy held out the pillow. Grover dusted off the top then laid it against the headboard. With both hands on his hips, he admired his work. Percy stared at it too. It was nice. Joined bed. Grover within direct reach.

His palms itched.

“Are you scared of me?”

Grover twisted around. His brows furrowed, but the edges of his lips were quirked upwards. It was reminiscent of school - Percy stumbling over something he read and Grover, lost but amused, over why Percy thought it was a man-of-war that Theseus fought.

He was partially grateful Grover cut him off before he could finish what he actually thought the sentence was trying to say. It certainly wasn't fight.

“I mean,” Grover started and Percy's stomach drew back. Behind him the trickle of the fountain silenced. Like the water was holding its breath too. “I'm scared for other people, but I'm not scared of you.” He punched Percy's arm with a quiet smile. “I know you're not going to hurt me, Percy. That's why I stopped you.”

The fountain began to trickle again. “And that-” He faltered. The ghost Grover's touched goosed up his bicep and across his shoulder. “-that doesn't worry you?”

That you might have to stop me again went unspoken but Grover was always good at understanding Percy's unspoken words, at knowing his unspoken feelings - even the ones Percy wasn't even aware he felt.

He sighed. “It worries me. But not because it's you.” He shook his head. “And definitely not because I'm scared of you hurting me.”

His eyes scanted away, brows furrowing deeper. Then he relaxed into the bed. After teetering on his heels for a couple seconds, Percy joined him. He gripped the edge of his shorts so tight his palms burned. Grover reached over to stroke along the back of his hand.

He exhaled slowly and let go.

“You remember Pan?” Grover asked.

Percy paused. “The satyr god, right?”

“Yeah.” Grover pulled away to tug at his fingers. “He's been missing for a while. Ever since the industrial age took off. And no one knows where he is. It's the dream of every satyr to find him, so that nature can return to the way it was.”

“That your dream?”

He nodded solemnly. “You have to be a Protector first, before you can get your Searcher’s license. But I'm not like the others.” His gaze fell down. His hands sat in his lap, cupped around nothing but air. “I don't want him just so we can bring nature back to its peak.” He sighed. “We were a lot different when Pan was still around. More free. More wild. I want satyrs and nymphs - all of us to be us again!”

Percy leaned into him. “What's stopping you?”

Grover snorted. “People forgot. We were more than just Pan's disciples. We fought to protect the wild from mankind. We didn't just sit around waiting for him to tell us what to do. But nobody wants to do anything.” He scowled. “They think when Pan returns he'll fix it all and I-” He bit his lip, then shook his head. “The world has changed. And gods don't get involved like that. Not to the extent they want him to. It's not in their nature. But if he comes back then maybe…”

He faced Percy. His eyes were watery, darkening the already dark brown of his eyes into shots of black. The welled tears glistened ever so slightly. Like the night sky, free of pollution.

His lips wobbled into a gentle smile. “But that's why I'm not afraid. You’re like nature at its purest form - chaotic, wild, unburdened.”

Normally those words wouldn't hit Percy as compliments. Insults, degradation - things that would deflate him and make his mom frown. But Grover sounded so earnest, his heart swelled.

“You can't tell, but I can feel it.” He swung his arm over Percy's shoulders and tugged him in close. “Your demigod essence, this sense of the wild that I've been searching for my whole life.” He gestured loosely. “Even the Demeter kids don't have that. Their mom is all agriculture and farming and that's great and all, but it's not pure nature, it's not the wild.” He squeezed Percy's shoulder as best he could with one hand. “You remind me of home, Percy.”

The frog Percy hadn't noticed in his throat jumped out with a burst sob-laugh. He tried to tile away, but Grover just tugged him close, bringing around his other arm to keep Percy pinned. Nonetheless his hold was fairly loose, like Percy was a stray cat he didn't want scratching him if he felt like running.

Or like he knew that Percy was the ocean through and through, unwilling to be contained, wanting to flow wherever he saw fit.

Percy practically crawled into his lap, sniffling into Grover's shoulder. Warm hands stroked up and down his back. He laughed quietly - a half-distressed noise marrying the sound, but managed a breathy wheeze of, “You remind me of home too.”

Grover kissed the top of his head. For the first time since arriving, he shattered. All his twisted up emotions committed out in a tidal wave of tears and broken gasps. All the while Grover held him. As tight as Percy clung to him, he didn't complain. Just held on even tighter. Wetness from Grover's own tears smeared across Percy's skin.

Ever the empathetic. Like his mom.

Percy squeezed his eyes shut. “Please don't leave without saying goodbye,” he begged in a hollow, hoarse whisper.

“I won't,” Grover promised.

They held onto each other even as tears and cries faded away. Grover kept stroking his back with both hands. Percy continued to cling.

Shoulders shaking, Percy wound the fabric of Grover's shirt over his fingers. After a few minutes of toiling silence, he whispered. “I think I'm changing.” He pressed his forehead to Grover's collarbone. “I'm scared.” He pulled back and stared into Grover's eyes. “What do I do?”

“Be my best friend,” Grover said, like it was the simplest answer in the world. And as soon as the words fell off his tongue, it did. How silly was Percy not to think of it before? “My best friend is a good person, the best kind of wild.”

“I can do that,” Percy promised. “I swear, I can do that.”

“I know,” Grover said, squeezing Percy's cheek. His thumb swiped away at a still wet tear under Percy's eye. The stroke was soft, gentle. Kind. “I believe you.”

[mercyisms]

the other thought i am circling around, which this post by @facille and the tagged reference to terra nullius helped click, is reading the cataclysmic scene between john and M--’s nun as a (forcible?) conversion to catholicism. 

john discloses the religious backgrounds of several of his friends, but i don’t believe he confesses to any himself. (do correct me!) in any event, he explicitly says that “[he] didn’t want to believe there was a thing like a soul,” which sets him decidedly against the nun’s ideology at the start of his necromantic journey.  the nun’s martyrdom (which we are invited to read as explicitly violent, as we are so often in this series!) is a scene that i think we can very easily read as a coercion (to say the least) of a (catholic) idea of the soul onto john. through her suicide, he is converted to her cosmology and her logic becomes a key method through which he can make sense of alecto’s gift. it becomes the spine of his empire, this violent, core reinscription and redivision of the earth into (catholic/catholic-esque) selves. john stops seeing the soul as “too big” and despite seeing the soul as a method through which he can touch the vastness of alecto. through her suicide, he is still persuaded by the existence of individual (catholic) souls, and that the nun has offered him a useful, divisible unit of measurement. (also, as an aside, it remains interesting and tragic to me that this repeats, later, with cristabel being the catalyst to kick off, and inscribe, lyctorhood into the empire.)  i think a fuller reading along these lines would be greatly enriched by a deeper knowledge of the specific historic relations between Maori peoples and christian missionaries in ‘new zealand,’ but there’s a lot of nuance to this scene that strikes me as very much in conversation with dialogues between Indigenous peoples and the violent imposition of the catholic church in other parts of the world. picking one very obvious, but illustrative, example out of many: “’Because we didn't have souls, that gave the right for these explorers to do whatever they wanted with Indigenous Peoples — murder, rape, enslave,’ said [Kaluhyanu;wes Michelle Schenandoah].”  anyway, i may well be repeating ground the (very good!) aforementioned post already laid out very neatly. what i mean to add, i suppose, is that necromancy’s logic is a distinctly religious logic; the soul, as presented in and so fundamental to john’s empire, is an explicitly catholic idea. the ‘soul,’ here, is not a neutral unit, not without biases and assumptions. intentional or incidental, i think the scene between john and the nun is one of several interesting and rich negotiation around john’s identity as an Indigneous person + dramatization of (christian) colonialism. + one that might add some good texture to john’s subsequent treatment and formation of alecto et al and the way catholicism becomes ascendent in his empire.  edit: noting this under the read more so it stays with all reblogs of this post, but the reference to terra nullius was from @txttletale!

[ortustheninth]

real quick before I forget but now that we know about jod’s heroic attempt to save all of humanity by cryogenically freezing them tragically thwarted by funding cuts to the sciences (narrated to us of course, by jod)… was that post about ‘imagine just living on planet earth and then waking up 10 thousand years later on the universe’s most miserable goth and catholic planet’ actually correct?? the 300 people shipped off to the Ninth were the people the proto lyctor cryogenics team managed to freeze before the governments and elon musks of the world revealed they were ditching earth for kuiper 7??

if they were frozen preResurrection do any of them even have necromantic potential? is Jod no longer the last person who knows what none pizza with left beef is?

[hawkeabelas]

this isn't like a spoiler spoiler, I'll stick it under a readmore anyway

[ekaterinaroskova]

hii abbs how does it feel that all your dash is nonaposting. all the mabel girlies have momentarily turned their attention away.....but have they? how incoherent do we look

's fun, honestly! i feel a bit like a fish out of water who's still cheering for all the land people around them. you look absolutely bonkers it's very fun

[sunsetcurveauto]

got to the none pizza left beef joke. tamsyn ive got some questions for you

[kamaluhkhan]

THE GRUDGE (or: the 7 things luke castellan hated about you)

read part two GET HIM BACK! (or: the 7 reasons you want revenge on luke castellan)

pairing: luke castellan x child of nemesis!reader (gender not specified)

word count: 8.5k

summary: luke hated your guts. he really did. he just hoped that no one could tell how, even after all this, you're still everything to him.

warnings/disclaimer: luke's POV. spoilers for the lightning thief and season 1 of pjo. some heated make-out sessions but no actual smut - MDNI / 18+. mentions of blood + death + alcohol. luke is 19 during tlt but i wrote this with him + reader being 21 by the end of this (this is important for the next part lol). anyways, luke + reader share clothes and lots of intense emotions they maybe possibly don't process in the best way. lots of ANGST - it's a greek tragedy fr!

author's note: welcome to my new hyperfixation! this fic is LONG but i hope she's worth it ♡

♪: the grudge by olivia rodrigo

(i. you have a sharp tongue)

fourteen year old luke was overwhelmed when he first stepped into the hermes cabin. it was loud and overcrowded and no one really seemed to care that they had a new cabinmate. the head counselor showed luke to an empty bed at the back, told him to get settled in, and left without another word. luke dropped his backpack before collapsing on the mattress. it was so thin that he could feel the springs dig into his back.

"you'll get used to it."

luke sat up to see you climbing through the window. 

you had a band-aid stuck on your chin, chipped nail polish the color of blackberries, and leather combat boots that looked way too heavy to be wearing in the heat of summer. 

“the shitty mattress?”

“i meant the whole chaos of cabin 11, and the way things work around here in general. if you can get used to the shitty mattress, all power to you.” 

your tone was friendly enough, playful even. you smiled at him so comfortably it made luke nauseous. 

“good to know.” he tried to smile back at you, but his heart wasn’t in it. “i’m luke, by the way.”

“yeah, i know. i’m —”

“y/n!”

you seemed entirely unfazed as the blond who called your name stormed over to you. you rolled your eyes, something only luke could notice, before turning to her.

“someone stole my candy.”

“i’m very sorry to hear that, maddy. gotta be careful around here.” your voice dripped like poisoned honey, deceptively innocent and sweet.

maddy was not having it. she huffed at you. “it was you, wasn’t it?”

“that depends. did you cheat at poker last night? again?” 

some of the chatter throughout the cabin paused, heads turning to listen in. 

“what? n-no!” 

“then you have your answer, maddy.” you exaggerated a sigh, as though you had already won the fight and were annoyed that she came back for more. “now, if you’ll excuse me, i have a new camper to show around.”

chiron had already given them a tour, but luke didn’t protest when you grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the window with you. your hand was warm in his as you dragged him along to the corner of the cabin where a poorly made ladder waited for you. 

“come on.” you started climbing, and only stopped to look down when you realized luke wasn’t following you. “best view of camp. trust me.”

a shiver passed through luke. trust didn’t come easy to him. he also didn’t particularly want to return to a stuffy cabin where all he would do was count reasons he did not want to be there.

 so, luke followed you. he sat down next to you on the roof and looked out at the sun shining on his new home, but he couldn't help but be slightly bitter. the gods had gotten all of you into this life of endless danger and battles and monsters, and this was all they had to offer in return: a summer camp. 

it just didn't seem fair. 

there was something else he noticed then. what was it that chiron had said? camp half-blood was supposed to be a safe haven for all demigods. 

“i don’t get it. there are only twelve cabins, but aren’t there, like, a million other gods?”

you straightened your posture then, and turned to luke with a newfound interest. 

“camp half-blood only has cabins representing the twelve olympians. apparently, they’re the only ones important enough to have children worth recognizing, and they can’t even do that half the time,” you explained, impertinence laced throughout your words. it seemed like something you could never quite get off your chest. 

every  demigod knew that the gods didn’t appreciate sarcasm. they  didn’t particularly like being called out on their bullshit, either.

you didn’t seem to care; you even rolled your eyes up at the sky, as if challenging zeus himself. 

“anyways, that’s why the hermes cabin is so crowded. it takes in campers who are unclaimed or whose parent doesn’t have a cabin at camp. like me.”

“so, who’s your godly parent?”

you fiddled with the leather cord on your neck. it held a few clay beads like the other campers, but there was one silver charm he noticed only you wore — scales, by the looks of it. you clutched onto it.

luke realized that, despite your own advice, maybe you resented having to get used to the way things worked around here, and having to hide your resentment. maybe that was worse than having to sleep on an uncomfortable bed for the rest of your life.

"nemesis. goddess of revenge."

"that's....hardcore."

you scoffed and moved on to twisting the silver ring on your index finger. "a lot of people take it that way, and i think it scares them a bit.”

“so that’s why you’re extra nice to new campers, huh?” 

“no, i was just in a good mood today.” you smirked.

“guess i was just lucky, then.”

luke couldn’t help but smile at your laugh — sharp, biting. you nudged your boot against his sneaker, which shifted you closer to him, shoulders practically touching. 

“what people don’t understand is that it's more about balance, you know? you do good things, and good things happen to you. at least, they should. you do bad things and….” you pulled out an outrageously big bag of candy, dropped it between you and luke, and winked at him. “you face the consequences.” 

“that makes sense.” luke leaned over to grab a handful of gummy bears. “like karma.”

“yeah. exactly.” 

you bit the head off a red bear, both of you chewing in silence before you added:

“by the way, i’m sorry about your friend.” you swallowed and caught luke’s gaze. 

chiron warned him that word would travel fast around camp about what happened to thalia, and luke had prepared himself for anything — anything but your reaction. there was no pity in your eyes; instead, there was a hint of rage, as though thalia had been your friend, too. 

“she deserved more.” 

luke’s eyes caught the glint of a knife strapped to your belt. he took another handful of the candy you stole, and he thought about the fire and fearlessness behind your words, and, despite everything, it felt right to be with you then and there. 

“yeah,” he finally whispered back. “she did.”

we all do. 

neither of you said those words, but the suggestion was there, and it felt like a promise. 

(ii. you hold on to every stupid, little detail)

“slow down, tiger.” 

your voice echoed throughout the arena, and if luke had been fighting a real opponent, it might have gotten him killed. instead, he just stopped mid-swing, sparing another straw dummy from losing its arm. 

“left hand,” you noted as you walked past him towards a bench. “you, my friend, are in need of a break.”

luke loosened the grip on his sword. the only time luke fought with his non-dominant hand was when he had overworked the other. he must have switched an hour ago, but judging by how heavy his arm felt, it could have very well been two.  

his curls were stuck to his forehead with sweat, his shirt soaked through. he could feel a dull pain behind his eyes, and luke was worried that if he stopped to catch his breath, he would pass out. or, even worse, have to face the reality of the shitty news he’d gotten early that day. 

“come sit with me,” you urged. “you’re exhausted, tiger.” 

luke bristled at your nickname for him. 

sure, luke loved that there was something only you called him, a secret kept between you in plain sight, but it was also a reminder that it was harder to hide behind the hero act when you were around.

everyone else at camp figured the nickname was a playful attempt at calling him strong and charismatic. the truth was that luke once told you that his favorite cereal as a kid was frosted flakes and that he would dream of playing sports as well as tony the tiger. for better or for worse, like most things, you wouldn’t let it go. 

case in point: if it was anybody other than you trying to get him to take a break, luke could have just brushed them off with a charming smile and continued swordfighting until his arms fell off, but in the two years since meeting you, luke had never met anyone as stubborn and convincing. like him, it seemed you were willing to fight and shed blood to get your way. luke was never really in the mood to make you bleed, even when feeling like he could burn the entire world down, so he usually gave in to your demands.  

as soon as he sat down next to you, you handed him an orange flavored energy drink — his favorite. anything other than water was hard to come by at camp without the enchanted goblets in the dining pavilion, or the right connection in the hermes cabin. he ran out of his stash the other day, but you must have noticed and gotten one of the stoll brothers to smuggle more in. 

“thanks,” luke said, ignoring the jolt of electricity that passed through him when your fingers brushed together briefly. 

 the two of you looked out at the sword arena, and all the straw dummies that luke had destroyed. you wait for him to take three big gulps of his drink before speaking again. 

“i guess chiron and your dad decided you weren’t ready for a quest.”

luke exhaled sharply. “how did you —”

“the only time you’d skip out on capture the flag is if something really shitty happened.” you looked down at luke’s clenched fists, and that seemed to be all the confirmation you needed. “you promised annabeth you'd be there, and it's not like you to let her down."

fuck. he had completely forgotten that tonight was annabeth's first time as team captain. this entire week, she had been prepping a winning strategy. it wasn’t like annabeth needed him to win, but luke was her big brother, and he should have been there. you were right — he had let her down. 

the realization made luke’s day go from bad to worse. 

"i told her you were helping a new camper with an emergency. she didn't believe it, but she adjusted her strategy and we still won.”

“well, thank the gods everything worked in the end,” luke grumbled. 

“don’t thank the gods,” you quipped. “thank annabeth chase for her brilliant mind, and me for covering for your sorry ass.”

when luke didn’t indulge in your usual playful banter, you moved closer to him and brushed some curls away from his eyes. your skin warmed his forehead, and the small gesture made him feel better than he had all day.

“look, i’m not going to give you some bullshit inspirational speech about how the gods don’t get to define what a hero is, or how you don’t need a quest to prove that you’re worthy of being one. we’ve each been through that before, and i have a feeling this won’t be our last time, either.”

“then why are you here?” the question came out harsher than luke had intended it to.

“because she’s trying her best to hide it, but annabeth is really hurt that you didn’t show up for the game. i figured the least you could do is suck it up, come to the campfire, and make her those signature luke castellan s’mores. you could probably use one, too, since you haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.” 

you were right, again. luke was exhausted, he was furious, but most of all, he was starving.  

later that night, luke sat next to annabeth and vowed to make her as many s’mores as she wanted. you’d gone to sit with the hephaestus kids, trying to convince beckendorf and nyssa to join your cabin’s post-campfire party at the beach, even though they had to work in the forges early the next morning. 

when chiron made his weekly speech, congratulating the winners of capture the flag and thanking the gods for keeping everyone safe, you and luke caught each other’s gaze from across the fire. you rolled your eyes and luke bit back a smile as you turned back to beckendorf. he noticed your knees were practically touching. did you sit that close to everyone? 

luke was looking at you for so long that the marshmallow he was roasting fell into the fire, despite annabeth’s warnings. she handed him another one. 

"you should tell her how you feel," annabeth said. "stop being a coward." 

whether it was the smell of burnt sugar, the heat of the fire, or annabeth’s comment, luke started to feel dizzy. he did his best to shake it off, asking annabeth for a play-by-play of her strategy earlier that night, but he couldn’t quite get rid of the thought of you. 

(iii. you don't care if your clothes are stained with blood)

“i just….i can’t fucking believe you, luke.”

“i don’t get why you’re so upset — you’ve never cared about quests before.”

luke was hoping to break the news to you after capture the flag. unfortunately for him, word travels fast around camp. 

annabeth had the two of you scouting the east side for the flag, while she and some other athena kids took the west. you hadn’t found anything so far, which meant that you’d spent the better part of an hour bickering over luke’s choice of companions for his quest. a choice that included charles beckendorf and chris rodriguez, and purposefully did not include you, much to your fury.  

before you could continue arguing, luke heard the sound of footsteps approaching. he looked over to you, and you already had your shield and sword at the ready. 

a few red defenders emerged from the trees. one charged at luke, but you stepped in so he could deal with the other two. one of his opponents went down fairly easily, but the other put up much more of a fight. metal clashed behind him as you kept fighting as well. you might not have been as skilled a swordfighter as luke, but he knew that you could hold your own, at least until he was finished with the person in front of him. 

luke parried his opponent’s strike, causing them to take a step closer. he was preparing to disarm them, just as he heard you yelp and stumble to the ground. it only took a millisecond of his attention, but it gave his opponent the opportunity to elbow him in the face. luke felt a crack upon impact, and pain radiated from his nose; he powered through. 

he had to finish this fight, and he had to do it fast. you needed him. 

his ears were ringing as he finally knocked over his opponent, kicking away their sword and keeping his foot on their chest. luke turned around to see you having turned the tides, the blade of your sword dangerously close to your opponent’s neck.

you locked eyes with luke, and you both understood — it was time to go. the two of you ran through the forest, as far away as you could before having to stop and catch your breath.

luke removed his helmet to get some air, and dropped his weapons. you did the same. you looked at him, brows furrowed.

“your nose.”

luke licked his lips, tasting blood. the triumph of winning that last fight overshadowed the ache of his potentially broken nose. in fact, he liked the image of a ruthless warrior emerging from the glory and gore of battle, that even though he did not bleed ichor like a god, he still had power. 

you, on the other hand, didn’t look impressed. instead, you stepped forward and offered the sleeve of your shirt to wipe away the blood. 

“you don’t have to —”

“i know you think you’re a badass walking around all broken and bloody, but you shouldn’t deny your admirers your pretty face,” you teased. 

it was no secret that luke had numerous admirers around camp, a fact you loved to tease him about. he was sure that you relished in how flustered that made him. all you had to call him was pretty boy, and luke could be reduced to a blushing mess. 

it was pathetic how much power you had over him.

“besides, i wouldn’t have gotten out of that last fight if you hadn’t taught me that disarming technique earlier. i owe you. it’s what we do. we take care of each other, right?”

he couldn’t argue with that.

a few moments of silence passed as you cleaned his face. something shifted as you worked, the flirtatious grin fading away. when you pulled away, your sleeve was stained a dark crimson. 

“just tell me honestly,” you finally murmured. “why don't you want me to join your quest?” 

luke was genuinely taken aback by the softness of your voice, now devoid of its usual fire. you wouldn’t meet luke’s eyes, but being that close to you, he noticed they were slightly glazed over.

he had expected you to be angry at his decision. he expected you to yell and argue and try to change his mind. luke hadn’t expected you to be so hurt. so broken. 

he hadn’t planned on it, but luke decided to tell you the truth then.

“look, karma, if you come with me, my heart wouldn’t fully be in the quest. i’d be so caught up in….well, you.”

a pause.

“is that a bad thing?”

“not usually, no.” 

you smirked a little at that, and luke’s heart skipped a beat. it also made his decision even clearer. 

“but i need to be focused for this. i need….” he let out a deep sigh. “i need to prove myself. this is my first real chance, and i can’t fuck it up.”

you met his gaze and smiled brightly at him, your signature spark of confidence returning.  

“you won’t.”

you reached a hand up to play with his necklace. luke hadn’t noticed how close you’d gotten until your fingers started tracing over those four clay beads. it made his entire body burst into flames.

“i’ve been wanting to do something for a while. and, aphrodite save me, it might be really stupid, but —”

luke took a lucky guess as to where you were going, and crashed his lips against yours. aphrodite knows that he'd been wanting to do that for a while, too. 

he often got drunk on the adrenaline of battle, the glory of winning, but nothing was quite like the rush of kissing you for the first time. 

it was messy and urgent, both of you aware that, at any moment, you could be interrupted. your noses were bumping together, teeth clacking against each other. the metallic tang of blood lingered on luke’s tongue, but neither of you seemed to care. you even bit his lip slightly, as if you wanted more. armor sat heavy and cold between your chests, preventing you from getting closer. luke had never loathed the protective gear more. 

he made up for it by lodging one hand underneath your jaw, and snaking the other beneath the celestial bronze, beneath the cotton of your shirt, admiring how your pulse quickened under his thumb when he grazed the soft skin of your stomach. you tangled your hands into his hair, nails scraping against his scalp. he groaned and felt you smirk against his lips. 

luke had kissed a few people before, sure, but never like this: like a knife to the gut, and if you pulled away, luke would surely bleed out and die. 

it wouldn’t be a hero’s death, in the traditional sense, but at least he’d die happy. 

how many heroes could claim that?

when luke ran out of air, feeling like his lungs were burning, he had to pull away. 

you glanced down at luke’s kiss-bitten lips, then back to his eyes. luke flushed under the intensity of your gaze. 

“just promise me something, tiger,” you whispered, voice hoarse. 

“anything.”

“come back alive.”

luke leaned forward and placed another kiss on your lips, this one much gentler than before.

“i promise.”

(iv. you love like a scar that won't fade)

the nightmares were getting worse. 

luke woke up in a cold sweat, taking gulps of air in an attempt to steady his breathing.

“luke.” 

your whisper did little to quell the pit of dread growing in his stomach, but it did enough to bring him back down to reality. 

he was at camp half-blood (fuck the gods of olympus), in the hermes cabin (fuck you, dad), in a bed next to yours (fuck, if he could tell you what — who — was going through his head, he would).

“i’m…i’m fine,” he murmured back, voice catching slightly on the lie. 

like clockwork, you shifted from your bed to his, slipping under the covers. it didn’t matter that it was a hot summer night, and the minute your legs touched his, he could feel himself starting to overheat. 

your thumb brushed over the thick edge of his scar, up his cheekbone to the corner of his eye. it had been a year, living with this reminder. a reminder that he had failed, just as much as his father and the olympians had failed him. 

luke tried to pretend that he didn’t come back from his quest as a shell of who he once was. after all, it was meant to be his shining moment as a demigod, meant to gain him all the glory and father’s praise he once wished for. 

what a fucking joke.

every morning, luke would crawl into a different skin. he welcomed new campers and taught sword-fighting. he laughed with chris and his other siblings and strategized with annabeth for capture the flag. he would be the easy-going, charming, skillful senior counselor who respected the gods and honored them in everything he did. 

again: a fucking joke.

nights were different, though, with you so close to him, you who could always see right through him.

every night, luke was a fourteen-year old boy again, with so much rage and resentment he didn't know what to do with it. 

of course, you were always you - a bleeding heart underneath layers of armor. you didn't care about fate, or the gods, or the titans. you cared about justice, you cared about what was right and fair. 

most of all, you cared about luke.

“you were screaming,” you told him, voice barely cutting through the soft snores and sleeptalkings of your other cabinmates. 

“sorry,” he managed. looking at you in the dull moonlight, luke noticed the deep shadows under your eyes. 

“it’s fine. you just….you scared me, tiger.” 

your hand still rested on his cheek, and for a second, luke hoped you would kiss him, but you didn’t. instead, you told him to try and get some sleep, and sank further into his bed before closing your eyes. 

for the hundredth night in a row, luke hoped you couldn’t hear his heart hammering in his chest as you fell asleep next to him.

since coming back from his quest, luke didn’t have it in him to suggest being anything other than friends, and you didn’t push it. there had been a few....moments between you, sure, but nothing more.

luke thought you might have changed your mind, because who would want to be with a bitter, worthless, wannabe hero? then again, that voice haunting his dreams…. luke could change that. 

but, at what cost?

(v. you protect people as ruthlessly as a starving dog)

luke could hear you talking to percy jackson outside. though he couldn’t quite determine what was being said, as much as he tried.

you entered the bathroom and instantly caught luke’s eyes in the mirror. you were wearing your faded pyjama shorts with cartoon crows, and a flannel shirt that luke had a sneaking suspicion might have been his. you smiled at him before setting up at the counter, one sink between you. 

“what was that about?” luke asked after spitting out a mouthful of minty toothpaste.

“oh, nothing.” you were searching through your toiletry bag for something, and seemed to come up short. “hey, do you have any extra dental floss?”

luke threw some over to you. as you effortlessly caught it, he noticed your knuckles, bruised and bloodied.

“what happened?” 

you finished flossing and briefly examined your hands before pulling out your toothbrush. 

“it’s not a big deal,” you assured. “some ares kids were picking on percy, and then they started pushing him around, like, really pushing him around, so….” 

“....you decided to send them to the infirmary.”

you squeezed some toothpaste on your brush before continuing. “i don’t need you to lecture me about how i shouldn’t be fighting with other campers because i’ve been here longer and i should be a good role model. you know what a good role model does? not let kids beat up other kids and think the worst punishment they’ll get is no dessert for a week.”

luke watched carefully as you jammed the toothbrush in your mouth and brushed with such force, he was worried your teeth might dislodge. he knew that you would shed blood for someone you loved, and that you didn’t particularly care if you had to break rules in doing so, because you believed that what was written was not necessarily what was right. 

in fact, luke loved that about you.

no, it wasn’t the fighting that luke cared about — it was who you were fighting for. 

percy was a good kid, he really was. luke just didn’t want you getting attached. 

“i wasn’t going to lecture you. i’m guessing chiron already did?” 

you nodded and spat out what looked like a combination of toothpaste and blood. you rinsed your mouth until the water lost its pinkish hue. once you were done, luke continued his train of thought.

“i just didn’t realize you cared so much about him.”

“about percy?” 

luke could tell that he didn’t have your full attention. you were packing your stuff back up, accidentally tossing luke’s dental floss into your bag, but he had more pressing matters to deal with.

“yeah. the kid’s only been at camp for three days, and you’re already acting like his guard dog.”

you finally turned to luke and glared at him. 

“maybe. but percy’s sweet and he doesn’t seem like the type to put up with bullshit. he’s been through a lot, and annabeth seems to like him, too. as far as i’m concerned, percy’s one of us, and i’m not going to let anyone push him around.”

luke raised an eyebrow at you. “he’s sweet?”

“yeah. like, just now, he gave me some blue raspberry jelly beans as a thank you. said his mom used to work at a candy store. he also wanted me to apologize to you for him. he feels bad about beating you in sword-fighting earlier.” 

you scoffed, like you resented luke for having to apologize to him on percy’s behalf. you definitely did not appreciate that guard dog comment. luke clenched his jaw, seething over what you had just said. 

satisfied with his reaction, you gave luke that nauseating smile of yours, tilted your head towards the exit. a truce, because you never liked to fight with luke for too long, and a order, because you knew luke would always follow. 

the two of you began walking back to your cabin in the warm mid-june air. 

“i wouldn’t say he beat me,” luke huffed. “it was beginner’s luck.”

“sure, tiger. it was beginner’s luck that disarmed the best swordsman we’ve had in the last 300 years.”

you nudged luke’s shoulder with yours, but he recoiled from your touch. 

“are you trying to make me feel worse?” luke tried his best to avoid snapping at you, keeping his tone measured.

“i’m just saying that maybe the kid has natural talent and that doesn’t make you any less talented. there’s no need to get jealous.”

luke resisted the urge to growl at your suggestion. 

to be clear, he was not jealous. it’s just that luke had spent years of blood, sweat, and tears getting to where he was then, and percy jackson had just gotten to camp. 

and, to be even more clear, luke was not jealous of how you were already defending percy with your whole body and your whole heart, the way you did for him. 

by then, you reached the front of the hermes cabin. luke could already hear the commotion of what he would need to deal with as soon as he walked in. the burden of being head counselor, one he approached with an elastic smile that could snap at any moment. 

you tugged on luke’s sleeve before he could open the door. 

“hey. are we okay?”

luke looked down at your fingers grasping the fabric of a sweatshirt he was just realizing was yours. your nails were painted a dark red, now chipped after a week of wear. you had begged luke to paint his nails then, and once again, he gave in. he even started to like the purple you had chosen just for him, so deep it was almost black. the same color you were wearing the first time you and luke met.

he smiled at the memory — a real smile, no plastic — and then smiled back up at you.

“we’re fine, karma.” and he moved to enter the cabin. luke could hear the threat of an argument bubbling up, what sounded like a petty one over a prank gone wrong.

“wait.” you tugged at his (your) sweatshirt once more. “there’s something i wanted to talk to you about, about tomorrow night—”

“annabeth called a meeting during free time.”

“yeah, i know, it’s just —”

“she’ll run through strategy for capture the flag then.”

“one of the aphrodite senior campers asked me to the campfire,” you blurted it out, and luke decided to ignore the sound of a fight breaking out from behind the wooden door.

what in the name of hades were you talking about?

“they asked you out? like…like a….” luke didn’t even want to speak the word, scared it would make it real.

“a date,” you said casually, as if that one word didn’t rip luke’s heart in a million pieces. “i said yes.” an admission that took all those pieces and set them on fire. 

sure, in the seven years since you and luke met, you’d each talked about boys, about girls, about dating and kissing them and going further. but there was something about this one that felt different. something about the way you told him.

“but, listen, i wanted to let you know it’s not —”

“good for you,” was all luke said through gritted teeth before someone started calling his name again, louder and more urgently, and he had to duck inside.  

(vi. you taste like burning cherries and righteous anger)

your team had won capture the flag, of course. the biggest news of the evening, though: percy jackson was the son of the sea god. 

he was a forbidden child, the hero of the great prophecy. 

everything was falling into place. 

all luke should be thinking about is kronos’ plan, and his role in it, and how a world without the gods of olympus was that much more in reach.  

unfortunately, for the time being, he was so consumed by you. 

you, from across the campfire, sporting cutoff denim shorts and fresh wounds from the game earlier. you, who had wrapped your knuckles in gauze, concealing their bruising, fixed the chips in your nail polish and stacked rings on your fingers. (for the record: luke had gifted you the one on your left thumb.) you, with dark lips that whispered too closely and laughed too loudly with a child of aphrodite— jordan li.

you hadn’t so much as looked at luke since congratulating each other on another win. when chiron announced his weekly gratitude to the gods at the start of that night’s campfire, you didn’t punctuate your resentment with your usual eye-roll or biting remark. you were too busy giggling at something jordan said.

luke wanted to be the one to whisper jokes in your ear. he wanted to be the one you left lipstick stains on later, along his jaw and down his neck. he wanted to be the one who kissed the blade mark on your shoulder and the bruises on your knuckles. 

and yet, hours passed and it seemed that the thought of luke had never so much as crossed your mind. he found himself at an after hours party with a few senior campers on the beach. a lethal recipe: a poorly crafted bonfire, some contraband drinks and you in jordan li’s lap, playing with their hair and pretending luke castellan did not exist. 

meanwhile, luke had katie gardner’s full attention. she was talking to him about the strawberry season, potentially leaning a bit too close into luke’s personal space, definitely flirting with him. 

luke could have done a lot worse than the head counselor of the demeter cabin, who always smelled like fresh lavender, whose eyes were the bright green of spring grass and whose lips tasted like golden honey. 

the problem was that luke only wanted you, and his eyes kept sliding over to where you were kissing jordan’s cheek, and he accidentally called the girl he was kissing by your name, which did not make her happy. 

katie threw her drink in his face, told him to wake the fuck up, and walked away.

a chorus of gasps and chuckles erupted as luke stood there, diet coke and vodka seeping into his shirt. the commotion seemed to capture your attention, because you suddenly appeared next to luke, an empty bottle of cherry soda in your hand.

“rough night, tiger?” your voice, that nickname, made luke sick, his face twisting into a frown. you don’t seem to notice or care. instead, you switched your bottle with luke’s and took a sip.

“looks like you were having a pretty good time,” luke practically sneered. “where’s your date?” 

 “they went to bed.” you swallowed a mouthful of beer, grimacing at its bitterness. “gods, this is terrible. you and i should go on the drink run next time — we have better taste.”

“so, are you and jordan like a thing now?”

you gave luke a smile he didn’t quite understand, but made his stomach churn in ways only you could. “would that be a problem?”

“of course not.” he answered way too quickly for that to be true. 

“let’s get out of here,” you suggested. “i think katie is about this close to strangling you with a tree branch.”

luke glanced over your shoulder to where green eyes glared back at him. 

nowhere could luke find it in him to care. he wasn’t even sorry. he just shrugged, took the bottle back from you, took his first sip all night. luke almost gagged (because of course you were right, and the stoll brothers had better fake ids than they had taste) but he suppressed it. 

“no. i’m good.”

biggest lie he ever said. like there wasn’t anger caught in his throat and jealousy swelling between his ribs.

“go find jordan,” he taunted. “kiss them, show them a good time! isn’t that the reason why you got all pretty?”

you narrowed your eyes at him carefully. your nostrils were slightly flared, and luke took a bit of pride in being able to rile you up.

“look, we haven’t really talked lately, and i think we should.”

“go find jordan,” he mocked once more. “almost all the aphrodite kids are here, and i’m sure you can be quiet enough to sneak into their cabin and if you want a quick fu—”

“luke.” you clipped his name, obviously getting to the limit of your patience with him. “if you want to stay here all night and be an asshole, you’re welcome to. you should know, though, that your happy-go-lucky hero mask is starting to crack and i don’t know if you could deal with the fallout from it shattering completely.”

you leaned in close and whispered that last part, very aware of the chattering that stopped and the eyes that watched the pair of you anxiously. luke was usually good at hiding that part of himself who wanted to burn the world down. 

in ways you didn’t realize, you were right: he couldn’t risk revealing it, not now.

not yet. 

“do whatever you want, castellan,” you spat out his last name, the combination of letters foreign in your mouth.“i’m leaving.”

luke should be proud of himself. he waited a whole two seconds before following you like a stray dog. 

luke didn’t know if he’d ever felt you that enraged by him, and it horrified him. it also made him hungry for more. 

“i’m not sure that jordan would want the two of us alone together at night,” he shouted after you, words echoing into the starless sky.

“gods, enough about jordan!” luke practically ran into you with how fast you turned around to confront him. “i was helping them with that stupid aphrodite tradition!”

“you….” luke faltered, all the snark leaving his body. “what?”

luke remembered silena beauregard once explaining the rite of passage to him: to prove themselves, a child of aphrodite had to make someone fall in love with them, and then break their heart.

“why…why would you agree to do that?”

you had reached the dining area by then, and you sat on one of the steps leading to the pavilion. luke stayed a few feet away, looking at you cautiously. 

“jordan and i are already friends, and they figured a fake relationship would be the way to avoid anyone from actually getting hurt in the process.”

“you seemed so…so into it, though,” luke stammered, the memory of you in jordan’s lap, laughter bubbling from your lips, still fresh.

“it’s called acting, dumbass.” the camp didn’t rely on electricity, but there were enough torches around that luke could see you roll your eyes. “anyways, i was trying to give you a heads-up last night, but you wouldn’t listen.” you took a deep breath. “and, honestly, i didn’t push it because….i figured i should test a hypothesis.”

a hypothesis? you’d known annabeth for too long.

“what hypothesis?”

you hesitated. 

“it doesn’t matter. fuck, this was stupid,” you muttered, and without another word, stormed through the dining pavilion, a short cut to the hermes cabin. your footsteps fell heavy against the marble, and luke’s not far behind. 

“what hypothesis?” he asked again.

nothing but rushed footsteps.

“what hypothesis?” luke finally yelled.

third time was the charm, because you stopped in your tracks and faced luke once again. a fire burned in the bronze brazier, where campers were forced to offer up portions of your food to the gods at every meal. its roaring seemed to captivate you, and the flames danced across your face, illuminating all your curves and edges.

“i’m angry at the gods,” you stated. 

this caught luke off guard. from the day the two of you met, luke knew you shared that feeling. you’d gotten quieter with your rage as you’d gotten older. luke supposed he got better at hiding it himself, as well. 

“i’m angry at the gods for letting bad shit happen even if they can stop it, and for building this world in the fucked up way they did. i’m angry at your dad for the way he’s treated you, but — you, luke castellan.” you finally met luke’s eyes with a gaze so sharp, luke almost felt himself bleed. “i’m also angry at you, and not just for your bullshit tonight.” 

your admission felt like a punch to the stomach, and luke was left with no air to breathe.

did you know?

“you haven’t been the same since your quest,” you continued, words slow and deliberate, the way you spoke when you were worried your voice would shake. “and i’ve come to terms with that in the past few years, but you….you’ve never tried to ice me out before. you’ve been acting distant since december, and it’s been driving me insane. do you realize how much i miss my best …..” you swallowed the word friend. “how much i miss you?”

luke hesitated, because what could he say? i know i’ve been distant, but i’ve been busy trying to start a war between the gods. sorry babe! 

would you hate him, if you knew? 

you had to have known that, despite the distance, luke missed you. for tartarus sake, in the last two days, he’d driven himself mad at you calling a fourteen year old boy sweet, and he was about to combust at the image of you dating someone else, with little care as to the collateral damage. 

"you can't just avoid me, makeout with katie fucking gardner, and then….” you trailed off, hiding your face in your hands. whether it was to hide embarrassment or tears, luke wasn’t sure.

a smirk spread across luke’s face at the revelation that he hadn’t been the only one jealous at the bonfire that night. it lit luke up with the confidence he needed to not completely fall to his knees in front of you, beg for your forgiveness for everything he’s done.

“why do you care if i make out with katie fucking gardner?” 

as he waited for a response, luke walked towards you until your back hit one of the marble columns. 

“why do you care if i’m with jordan fucking li?” you clenched your jaw and looked right through luke. a clear indication that you wanted him to break down first; it wouldn’t be you who yielded this fight.

“because i want to be the one you’re with.” at that point, luke was so close to you that he swore he could hear your heartbeat. he reached out and played with the hem of your shorts. “why do you care if i make out with katie gardner?”

“because.” you drew in a sharp breath when luke’s fingers brushed underneath the denim, across the warm skin of your thigh. you closed your eyes. “don’t make me say it, tiger.” 

the desperation in your voice made luke want to do unholy things with you, to you. luke knew you didn’t think of him as a saint, and you never expected him to be one. the reality was that you weren’t much better, either. what was essentially an altar to the gods burned bright next to you, but it seemed neither of you had ever cared less about it than in that moment. 

luke would watch olympus fall. he would dethrone the gods and watch their glass castle shatter and find glory in a new world. in the grand scheme of things, he was willing to lose this battle.

in fact, he would have rather betrayed the titan lord himself than waste another second not kissing your lips. 

so, he kissed you, and you kissed him back with such force, such hunger, it was ungodly.

no, you certainly weren’t a saint — but you were divine, in the most brutal, intoxicating way. in the way you shuddered when luke lodged a leg between your thighs; in the way you threaded your fingers through the belt loops of his jeans to bring him closer; in the way the metal of your rings burned through the skin of his hip, right to the bone, which made him shudder, and you smile triumphantly against his jaw.

the more he tasted your smirk flavored by cherry soda and the ashes of nearby flames, the more he felt your feral teeth against his neck and your wicked nails digging into his shoulders, the more you tugged on his curls, the more luke thought: maybe. 

maybe you would give into your seething resentment, live up to those eye-rolls and snarky comments that got you in trouble with chiron, on the edge of hot water with the gods. maybe you would join the titan army. maybe, just maybe, this time, you would follow luke.

and yet — maybe wasn’t enough if it meant he could lose this. luke wouldn’t risk it, not until he kissed every battle scar and bruise on your body, and you did the same to his. 

“wait.”

it was the last thing luke wanted to do, but he complied. he took the opportunity to appreciate the chaos he created: your shirt in disarray, your lipstick a mess, your chest heaving and desperate to catch a breath. 

“i promised jordan that we’d keep up our charade for a week, two at the most. do you think we could keep this…” you tightened your fist around the fabric of his shirt. “a secret until then?”

luke responded by pressing his lips to yours once more, because there were definitely worse secrets to keep.

(vii. you wouldn’t hesitate to make him bleed)

luke had just left percy jackson to die.

he should be leaving camp, now, but he needed to see you one last time. 

the universe works in mysterious ways, because you were out on a run through the forest, and you crossed paths before he even had time to wonder where you were.

“hey, tiger.” you smiled as if this was a regular afternoon. the two of you would teach your afternoon activities, sneak away during dinner so luke could kiss you in that spot that made you gasp. “wanna join me? i was just wrapping up, but i could be convinced to go longer.”

for a second, he was tempted to. very tempted. 

“i don’t have much time.”

you seemed to notice luke’s sullen mood and you dropped your playful demeanor. 

luke explained: the messages from kronos in his dreams, him stealing the lightning bolt and helm of darkness to start a war between the gods and framing percy. the plan to destroy olympus that luke had pledged his life to.

percy was surprised at what luke had done, and luke could imagine that the rest of camp would be, too. luke was the golden boy of camp half-blood, everyone’s big brother. 

you, on the other hand, didn’t express any sense of shock. 

“luke.” you said his name like you weren’t quite sure it was poison. “i’m going to give you five seconds to tell me that you’re joking.”

five seconds of silence passed. you took a few steps back from luke.

“i….i should have told you sooner.”

“yeah,” you scoffed. “you should have. but, you didn’t. did it feel good, having the titan king whispering sweet nothings in your ear? all the lies about how this war is the only way to get the glory you so desperately want? it’s fucking delusional.” 

“it’s not delusional—”

“yes, it is!” you glared at him. “you’re on the wrong side of a war you made the mistake of starting.”

luke straightened his posture, thinking about how hypocritical you were being. 

“isn’t this what you’re all about? revenge, karma. your mom will probably join us, too. don’t you want to see the gods finally get what they deserve?”

“not like this. i can’t believe how desperate you are, to believe that kronos is going to make everything right. it’s pathetic,” you spat. “i’m not saying the gods don’t deserve to be taken down a notch. their fucking obsession with power and glory….it’s sick and twisted, but i don’t think your titan king is any better. i don’t think you are any better.” 

“it’s time that the gods fall. this is the only way, even if it isn’t perfect,” luke countered. his voice was firmer now as he absorbed your anger. your mother was the goddess of revenge, but you clearly didn't understand the sacrifices, pain, and blood that was required to make the world a better place.  

luke just needed to convince you.

“we’ve talked about this for years,” he continued. “nothing is balanced! there’s no justice here, for anyone.  we can build a better world where we don’t have to burn our scraps and throw ourselves at monsters to get attention. we can fight together like we always have. y/n, i love—”

“don’t,” you snapped. “don’t you fucking dare. you should have died on your quest.” your voice laced with venom. one hand gripping the knife you always kept on your belt. “that dragon should have fucking sliced through you and saved us all the trouble.”

something pricked in the back of his throat, down to his stomach.

“you don’t mean that.”

“i do,” you promised. “at least you would have died with all of us thinking you’re a hero instead of the traitor you really are.”

you grabbed your knife, took a fighting stance. 

“i’m not going to fight you,” was all luke could say. he noticed your hand tremble, and you tightened the grip on your knife to prevent emotion from slipping through your invisible armor. 

in that moment, you have could slice through luke, and it would hurt less than everything you just said, less than the murderous look you were giving him, like he was just another monster you wouldn’t think twice about sending to tartarus.

luke didn’t even have a chance to unsheathe his sword before you charged at him, but he quickly had you pinned to the ground, the tip of your own knife pointed at you. he hesitated. the blade pressed harder against your cheek than he intended, enough to break the skin and let a few droplets of dark crimson escape. 

“please come with me,” he pleaded. you didn’t answer, but you did seem surprised by the softness of his voice. 

a few moments passed, the celestial bronze still between you. luke waited for you to see his way, to yield to his proposal.

you didn’t. instead, you took advantage of the situation. you wrapped your leg around his and flipped your position. in the process, you regained possession of your knife. without the hesitation that held luke back, you sliced through his cheek, deep. luke bit his lip to suppress a groan, tasting blood. your gaze set his whole body on fire as he waited for your next move. that was when you glanced down at his camp necklace, and the new clay bead added to commemorate this summer.

a turquoise trident.

“percy told me he was on his way to see you,” you realized. “what did you do?”

luke didn’t answer. he knew then that a choice ran through your head. 

and it stung, just a little, watching you sprint away through the trees in a last ditch effort to save percy’s life. 

there was a small, pathetic part of luke that wanted you to choose him, even if it meant you would have plunged the knife into his chest.

[wifegideonnav]

i love talking about the references and allusions in tlt and what it is influenced by and how. however i do think that sometimes the discussion in the fandom tends to get overly focused on how tlt is like other things and we can lose sight of the fact that it’s not just a conglomeration of influences. and of course putting a work in its context is a crucial part of literary analysis, and we can and should be examining the work for its influences, both for fun and in a serious way. but i think we should also make it a point to more frequently call out and celebrate specific ways that the characters and series are creative and original!!

so i propose that everyone reblog this and add your favorite element/s of tlt, big or small, that are pure tamsyn. your favorite line, a piece of characterization, a worldbuilding element, a joke, a cool moment, a bit that made you think differently about something, a thematic thread, whatever. im currently thinking about the way i went nuts my first time reading gtn and its revealed that harrow spent all night burying bone shards in the dirt because it so clearly sets up how insane about each other they are, and how hard i laughed at “but she’s only nine years old!” in htn.

[pretty--in--purple]

Rating the mommy issues of TLT characters in alphabetical order

contains spoilers technically

Abigail: can't have kids but clearly maternal as fuck. call her mother. 2/10

Aiglamene: she has inverse mommy issues - daughter issues. -10/10

Augustine: full offense but he has freudian vibes. fuck-hate relationship w mercymorn who is has the energy of a neglectful mother. 7/10

Camilla: clearly raised by incredibly competent parents - unclear if she had a mother. Even if she did her real issues are codependency with Palamedes. 0/10

Corona: unconfirmed but a girl like that did NOT experience maternal affection growing up. 5/10

Crux: yknow what. nobody whose mother held them enough is Like That. 10/10

Dulcinea: idk if she had a mother, but i get 'raised by gay dad(s)' vibes from her. possibly the best adjusted character of all 0/10

G1deon: man is obsessed with doing what God wants EXCEPT when it's not to fuck a terrorist. four parts people pleaser one part horny 5/10

Gideon: mum only birthed her to blow her up, died, then used her afterlife to terrorise Gideon’s not-quite-girlfriend; gave her a desperate desire for external validation and attention, especially from evil cougars. 11/10

Harrow: mum committed genocide to conceive her, never smiled at her, attempted to murder-suicide her. 12/10

Ianthe: unclear. daddy issues but no mention of mother afaik - might not even have one. no indication of mommy issues in her romantic life bc she didn’t attempt to fuck mercymorn. HOWEVER she’s such a freak she can’t possibly have had a positive female role model. 3/10

Isaac: born in a vat but had abigail as a maternal figure so 5/10

Jeannemary: same as isaac but she's definitely sapphic so bump that to 6/10

John: literally reformed the Earth in the image of his mum’s old Hollywood hair Barbie. Also, look at him. 100/10

Judith: 9/10 no questions

Magnus: so chill but also he has the vibes of someone into mommydom shit. he's sucked abigail's tits for SURE 3/10

Marta: idk i think she has 'estranged from family' vibes. 4/10

Mercymorn: her mother might have been good but she can't remember her, so 5/10

Naberius: he kissed his mother on the mouth DAILY and you know it. 10/10

Ortus: mostly daddy issues but you saw his mother. 8/10

Palamedes: I haven’t read Doctor Sex but I have his mommy issues on good authority. I hate to say it but camilla is his mommy. 6/10

Pyrrha: unknown. Loves a milf but then who doesn’t. 1/10

Wake: giver of mommy issues. she's the mommy that's the issue. unrateable

[ETA: @everyone making fun of me for saying he sucks tits like it's something special im SORRY i didn't say magnus sits on abigails lap and pretends to breastfeed but i thought it would be GROSS i guess i forgot what this fandom is. ily all be home for dinner]

[adanseydivorce]

Harryanthe and Mistynat are so similar to me like what if you took the worst blonde lesbian in the world and had her be absolutely obsessed with the brunette who’s sopping wet cat energy bewitches every sapphic nearby. Destined to hold those women in their arms while they hallucinate phantom bitches instead of said blondes

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 13/05

@garnetduodecim asked: I always assumed jack spent the first 4 hours in the troll session, before destroying prospit, destroying Aradiabots, there were A LOT of them.

Maybe one of the Aradiabots got in a lucky shot, and was able to tag him with a weaker, non-God Tier variant of her freeze ability. That'd certainly at least delay him.

@morganwick asked: So, you were talking about Aradia "injuring" Vriska (post/704357246751113217) and comparing Vriska to a fairy godmother character (post/722100305374986240)?

@manorinthewoods asked: Serendipity Gospels is by Tamsyn Muir??? Really? Um, that's… hoo. That was one of the fanfics that I didn't end up liking. Might need to revisit that. Side note: 'Doc Scratch's School for Supernaturally Gifted Adolescents' feels more like something Locked Tomb-esque to me. So that's really… ah. ~LOSS (3/5/24)

I do wonder how similar the Gospels are to TLT's writing style.

Actually, can anyone confirm at what point the fic will be safe to read? I could just wait until I'm reading panels from after its publication date, but if I can check it out before, I will.

@abysswarlock asked: Ooh I’ve had this hypothesis for a while now but you just said something that made me lock in my guess that your classpect is Prince of Doom

The classpect wheel continues to turn!

I'm married to Doom for at least one of my 'sonas, but my Class is still up in the air, since we know even less about them than aspects.

@manorinthewoods asked: As a sort of Part 2 to that sylladex comment - how do you think the Sylladex works? Do you think that Homestuck will go into more detail about Sylladices, or do you think they'll fade into the background as different aspects of the magic system come to the fore? ~LOSS (24/4/24)

I think the latter is a lot more likely. Most aspects (lol) of Homestuck's magic system are there to serve the story first and foremost. As much as I'd love the comic to turn into a treatise on Sburb deeplore, it really doesn't feel like something Hussie would be interested in doing.

The story won't really suffer without, say, a detailed explanation of every facet of alchemy - I just really like speculating, because I'm all about shit like that.

@heliotropopause asked: What are your thoughts on Homestuck's translation convention(s)? As an example, take page 2251, line "Arrivederci, Megido.": Is she writing in something close enough to Earth English to scan as such to the reader, no translation necessary? Is Vriska saying a word in Troll Italian, which gets translated to Earth Italian? Is she expressing a sentiment in her usual language that's best translated as the word "arrivederci" as it's used in English? Has Doc Scratch secretly been translating all cross-species communication we've seen so far?

Vriska's arrivederci seems diegetic to me. If we inherited English from Alternia, it makes sense that some of our other languages might come from there too.

tl;dr: Troll Italy is real 🇮🇹

Anonymous asked: im not one to dip my toes into The Vriscourse but this one piece of analysis i really liked is that vriska is jealous of tavros, that hes had a much easier life compared to her and that hes allowed to be more of a wimp while she has to be the toughest fuck alive or else shell die

It's only one piece of the Vriska-Tavros puzzle, but it's an important one. She'll refuse to acknowledge it to the end, though, because the idea of being jealous of Tavros is disgusting to her.

@obscureaeguran asked: Are there any current theories of yours that you want to be wrong about?

Confident as I am in my Vriska death theory, I don't actually want to be right.

I really like Vriska's character, and I want to see her grow past the worldview that's preventing her from finding peace. I just don't think that's likely, given her current trajectory.

Anonymous asked: 'In what universe are 13-year-olds the people most qualified to make universes?' well per the beta version of homestuck (when hussie wanted to make the whole thing in flash before deciding against it) they were all going to be 10 instead, i think this is the much better option!

How young can we go, anyway?

AU where the Homestuck Babies aren't sent to Earth at all, and just start playing immediately.

@manorinthewoods asked: Have you played Deltarune? ~LOSS (9/4/24)

I have! I was actually replaying it on day one of the liveblog - hence the several references I made to it at the time. That feels forever ago, now.

@bladekindeyewear asked: Jade changed pretty drastically as a person after her dreamself died, if you think about it— demanding Feferi stop using her quirk in chat, standing up to the trolls for the first time, getting angry, to such an extent that Karkat was so surprised that it turned his opinion of her around completely in a single conversation. Even forcing a password system to keep talks linear instead of using cloud visions to do everything out of order. This doesn’t just feel to me like dream Jade being a “different individual”, it also feels like a metaphorical confrontation between her NEW self and her OLD self…

I think it's both.

Jade's been through a lot in the last couple of hours, and she really isn't the same girl who died on Prospit.

Being an oracle of Skaia's visions led to disaster. They showed her that John's Dream Self would awaken, leading her to believe she was finally going to meet him, but neglected to mention that she'd die the moment he opened his eyes - or that Prospit would die alongside her.

As a result, the new Jade seems to have made a decision to completely reject all prophetic information. She'll supply the minimum possible intel to her past self, and no more.

It's clear her Dream Self's death was a catalyst for a pretty dramatic shift in her worldview. She's angry - at the trolls, at herself, and at the world that betrayed her trust. She's tired of being jerked around, and her tumultuous emotions are making her rather testy. Basically, she's sick of all the bullshit, and she won't take it from anyone anymore.

Jadesprite has experienced the same catalyst, and has also come to mistrust the clouds, but for different reasons.

Jade rejects prophecies, in part, because she doesn't want to be deceived - but Jadesprite rejects them out of sheer hopelessness. She just doesn't care anymore.

They both have the same trauma, but they're dealing with it in very different ways - and at this point, I really do consider them to be different people.

And then on a metaphorical level, Jadesprite represents the 'silly', absent-minded childhood self that got Jade into this mess.

I think this taunt from Karkat hit very, very close to home for her, and I'm sure she associates the traits he described with her idyllic days on Prospit. It's part of why Dream Jade is such a perfect target for her fury.

@spyril4132 asked: i beg to differ on the entry item similarities only applying to prospit. iirc, rose shatters a bottle, and dave hatches an egg; both involve breaking open some sort of "shell", and neither are associated with a larger object, which could be seen as similar types of items. (while jade does break a piñata, she does so by shooting it, not by splitting it apart)

It's true that Rose and Dave's object's have some physical similarities, but John and Jade are both summoning the same tree, which feels like a much stronger connection.

Rose and Dave's entry cards also summoned auxiliary items, but they were different - a cabinet and bird, respectively. From where I'm sitting, the link between the two Prospit items does seem unique.

@skelekingfeddy asked: what herptiles would sally and sahlee have as their consorts? i feel like a monitor lizard would fit for one of them…maybe losas has like, turtle or tortoise consorts, what with their long-livedness and the wise sagely vibe and all.

I was thinking pretty much the same thing for Sahlee. Let's say they're Galápagos tortoises, because the Sage gives me Oogway vibes.

For Sally's Consorts, I'm going to get really funky and say they're a type of pterosaur.

@sparten4ever92 asked: The HS version of Megalovania is slept on way too much, the Vriska guitar adds so much to it that the UT version just doesn't have. @sanctferum asked: Finally, MeGaLoVania by Toby Fox (feat. Joren "Tensei" deBruin on guitar)! Would you say that Tavros had an…unpleasant chronological progression? (btw I do love the bit of Spider's Claw that plays during the Vriska segment, which is (obviously) unique to this Megalovania) also, the audiovisual style of homestuck flashes is just really cool imo @mimescantscream asked: You have no idea how long we've waited for the Megalovania

This version of Megalovania was a great choice for Aradia's finest hour - or at least, her finest hour so far.

It's moments like this which are why I decided to stop listening to the albums in advance. If I hadn't first heard Aradia's Megalovania in this flash, it wouldn't have hit the way it did.

@elkian asked: MEGALOVANIA TIME BAYBEEEE! Also, let's go back to that theory you had about Aradia getting more alive, because you NAILED it. @iris-in-the-dark-world asked: i am so excited to see aradia again and finally as herself :33<

She's fucking BACK, baby!

Seeing Aradia smiling for real after all this time is genuinely heartwarming - and with her time-stop attack, she's almost unkillable. It'd take some absolute nonsense to take Aradia out of the picture again, and I think she'll be sticking around for a long time. Hopefully forever.

@grippingtraverse asked: notice any similarities during megalovania between aradia vs. jack & sans vs. player? 0u0

The best I can come up with is that Aradia and Frisk are both time travelers whose signature color is red.

Or maybe Jack is the Frisk analogue, since he's the one wiping out all life in the session, and Aradia is the last foe he faces.

@captorations asked: please consider, with this new information about aradia, what it could mean for her literary descendant dulcie septimus. please also keep considering this as you continue and see more of aradia. i am very normal about both of these characters

Ooh, they do have similar vibes, don't they? They're both doomed, they're strongly associated with death, and they both have a cheerful side that comes out when you don't expect it to.

@duorogue asked: "You have to give Nepeta some credit. The literal first thing she did after this traumatic murder was log into Trollian and report on Jack’s activities." To be fair to her, when I have a bad nightmare the first thing I do is log onto discord

nepeta hopping on mic at 2am to complain about the hat man (the hat man is doc scratch)

@absinthe-and-alabaster asked: when the writ keeper was introduced as fifth exile you mentioned that it was a little fucked up how the king was the only prospitian that was preserved - i just wanted to remind you that no, he wasn't ! on page 1974 we see all the other prospitians that were exiled with the white queen on her ship (including ms paint!) WQ just left them to go wander the desert

I'd actually forgotten about that. So much happened during the Act 4 ending that it completely slipped my mind. I even missed Ms. Paint!

Anonymous asked: Hey, as you noticed, the Dave Coin Split is a plot hole. We've never seen the timeline split because of someone's choice before. Compare to John flying to the seventh gate, there weren't two timelines based on his choice, the timeline only changed because Dave came back from the original timeline and changed it. And of course, like you said in the tags, Terezi shouldn't have been able to communicate with Doomed Dave, including to tell him the result of the FL1P. Have you noticed any other plot holes or things that don't seem to make sense?

While I see what you're saying, it might not necessarily be a plot hole! Certainly the Dave Coin Timeline was created in a different manner to Davesprite's - but that might just mean there are multiple ways to split a timeline, or that there are certain requirements that must be fulfilled for a decision to spawn one.

Because of things like that, it's hard to tell whether something's actually a plot hole, or if it'll eventually make sense in light of later reveals.

This is particularly true for aspects of the plot involving time travel, like the one you just described. Like, remember before I learned about Doomed Timelines, when I thought Davesprite broke Homestuck's predestination rules?

Anonymous asked: You said "God Tiering is just another way to inhabit your Dream Self," so do you think the things that Dream Selves can do (such as Jade growing extra arms) can be done by God Tiers?

I never really thought about that!

I think it's definitely possible. God Tier bodies can fly the same way that Dream Selves can, so other powers might transfer, too. Maybe the only reason Vriska, Aradia and John aren't shapeshifters is because Jade hasn't taught them to how to dream up extra limbs.

She might be one of the only Dream Selves who've learned how to shapeshift this fluidly. Logging thousands of hours on Prospit has its perks!

[olderthannetfic]

Okay, since there are multiple Locked Tomb fans hanging around OTNF´s blog:

How do you lot feel about the eternal "it´s just homestuck fanfic"?

Because I´ve never read Homestuck and while I know TazMuir used to be a homestuck-person who wrote some pretty influential fics, I do tend to believe that TLT is its own thing. (With some obvious nods.)

(But since I´ve neither read Homestuck nor her fics...)

To me it feels kinda dismissive, in the it´s not literature, it´s just fanfic thus it can´t possibly be good style.

Which: 1) I think we can all agree that there´s some high-fucking-quality fanfic out there 2) Doesn´t mean that someone who has written fanfic can never write anything original ever (or that they have to hide their background in fanfic to be taken seriously)

So I´d like some input/discussion, i guess ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯ because it does kind of rub me the wrong way.

Thank you and best wishes to OTNF for letting us hang out in her inbox :)

--

As someone who writes original stuff heavily influenced by the fandoms I've been in... yeah, I tend to assume authors picked up some of their tricks and tastes in fandom but not that a major original work is literally just fic with the names changed. A lot of things do start as fic plotbunnies (no clue about Locked Tomb), but they get reworked at the outline stage. It's a very different situation from people filing the serial numbers off of existing fic or even writing a bunch of blatant expies.

[llovelyclouds]

notes on cristabel oct

here's all the relevant info on cristabel i took note of during my tlt reread, in one place!

you can find the rest of the posts in this project here!

CRISTABEL OCT

titles:

Mercymorn’s cavalier, first gen, founded the eighth (with Mercy)

name meaning: in latin the meaning of the name Cristabel is: beautiful christian/follower of christ

notes from harrow the ninth:

The reason Mercy is the Saint of Joy (htn. pg. 177)

Mercy won't talk about her to Harrow, even though John thinks she would, and that her name would upset Augustine (htn. pg. 177)

Augustine doesn't mind talking about her though, and says: "A total delight. Effervescent. Kind to animals and children. A master of the sword. Did not have the intellect you'd ordinarily find in a sandwich or an orange, and was a sickening twerp into the bargain. The Eighth House will never see her like again." (htn. pg. 177)

“‘You know what I feel… you know I don't think she was the best influence on Alfred… you know I think they brought out the worst in each other, and I don’t think you disagree.’ God said, ‘They were very similar people.’ ‘No,’ said Augustine. ‘They weren’t, John. She was a fanatic and an idiot- yes, she was, Mercy- and he… was a man who regretted he wasn't. It took surprisingly little to lead my brother astray.’” - Augustine and John, discussing whatever happened between Cristabel and Alfred (double suicide, maybe?) (htn. pg. 274)

Augustine hated her for sure, but he’s ok with pretending he didn’t for dios apate reasons (htn. pg. 279)

"Cristabel always said I was tidy." - Mercymorn (htn. pg. 410)

"you picked the wrong man to enter a suicide pact with. I hate 'em. Cristabel might have undone all my good work with Alfred, but here comes the reckoning." - Augustine (htn. pg. 487)

notes from nona the ninth:

"The only other people I put through that damn trial were Mercy and Cris, because only Cris didn't mind being trepanned on the regular."- Pyrrha, about her and G1deon's trial at Canaan house (ntn. pg. 84)

Was Mercy's nun best friend pre-resurrection (ntn. pg. 128)

"I was worried I was going to get the Antichrist bit from her too, but she was just like: stop doing this! Read your Bible! This was Christ's whole problem! I was like, What are you talking about, Jesus cured the lepers and everyone was all, Hooray, thanks man. M-'s nun was all, Are you kidding, Christ never said no and never asked anyone to pay and got everyone to pay way too much attention and brought the heat down on everybody, Christ didn't keep to office hours, she said. Don't do that." (ntn. pg. 190)

“Me in my bedroom with a nun and a migraine, her thinking that if she pushed me enough we’d instantiate the Trinity and we’d all be saved.” (ntn. pg. 399)

“Eventually it was the nun who changed things. She knocked on my door and said very nicely, John, how are you doing? And I said, Not great, honestly. She said, John, how close are you to finding the soul? And I said, I can’t, Sister, It’s too big. I don’t understand why it’s so huge. I can’t find the soul inside the body, I don’t know where to look. I don’t know what I’m doing. She prayed over me, and then she went away for the longest five minutes of my life. [...] Then the nun came back and knocked on my door and said, John, I think I have it. I know you’re very scared right now, but I’m going to help you. Please let me in. He said: I let her in. She’d brought P-’s gun. [...] She just smiled at me. She said, John, don’t misunderstand. I want to help you. I truly believe that in our most terrible hours we don’t instinctively reach out to God; we push ourselves away from Him. Don’t feel bad for not rising heroically to the occasion right now, Fear doesn’t help us achieve a state of grace; it deafens the heart. John, I truly believe you can save everyone. So concentrate, please. She said, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for our sinners, now and at the hour of our death. And she shot herself.” (ntn. Pg. 404)

[familyabolisher]

Hi! I just wanted to say your deep readings of TLT are so smart! I've been thinking about all the genderfuckery in Nona the Ninth for ages trying to peel apart the layers behind it (the tower princes especially) and I was wondering if you have any thoughts on it?

I do! I did a post that kind of gestured towards my broad thoughts on what Nona does with gender/how it develops the groundwork around gendered relations that Gideon and Harrow lay out a couple of weeks or so ago, but I doubt I’ll be able to find it so this is a good excuse for going into more detail with the sorts of ideas I’m bouncing around.

What I was trying to get at in my earlier post about sexual violence in Nona is that Nona represents a sea change in the narrative terms; that is, the ‘rules’ determining which parts of the whole we are allowed to see at any given time are very rapidly altered such that we're pulled away from this wholly internal imperial perspective into a space which carries its consequences. Where Gideon is about crafting a narrative around a set of sociocultural paradigms, and Harrow is about digging further into both the purpose and internal consequence of those paradigms, Nona is about absconding from the limitations that those paradigms impose. Something of an autopsy of the inner world of the imperial core has taken place in the previous two books; we are presented with the dictates, expectations, and purpose of the necromancer/cavalier subject positions, and the bedrock upon which those positions are built (ie. the particular logics of power and imperialist consolidation and sexual violence), such that (almost) everything we meet with in the first two books ultimately circles back to asserting a particular form of internal/diegetic normativity. The difference in Nona is that, outside of the space where this normativity is the governing social currency and also necessarily socially enforced, the way in which social modes are articulated now begins to fall away from the anchoring of internal imperial logics. 

What this has to do with gender is that the kind of centrifugal force determining how gender & sexuality alike are received within the empire is one of what we might term homonationalism in contemporary parlance, wherein queerness becomes reconstituted within a nationalist imaginary such that queer people willing to meet with the state on the state’s terms can be incorporated into the fold of such a national articulation. As a result, we see eg. butchness (or broader strokes of masculinity expressed by women) as something legible to us as readers who bring our contemporary understanding of lesbian gender formations as counter-hegemonic (or at least, non-normative) to the table (and are expected to do so – the text v much expects us to read Gideon as a butch or functionally equivalent, Cytherea as a femme, etc etc, and proceeds from the assumption that we have picked up on such a signification), but diegetically that masculinity is hegemonically articulable. In other words, the reason we never get a sense of Gideon registering an internal conflict between her traditionally masculine gender markers (name, appearance, relationships, just about everything that’s used in-text to signal her as a butch to the audience) and her being a (presumably cisgender) woman is because those two things are not textually in-conflict, as there exists a normative articulation of womanhood that easily accounts for them. She reads to us as ‘gender nonconforming’ (imperfect term but you get the idea), but in-universe very much does ‘conform’ to the articulation(s) of gender available to her; to call her diegetically gender nonconforming (or even diegetically butch) would be meaningless. This is largely down to the “no-homophobia” premise (which is, ofc, a deliberately homonationalist premise in itself), but gets interesting when we start to see that masculinity articulated through the paradigms of cavalierhood, a subject position constituted around the conditions necessary to sustain imperialism.

My point is—across Gideon and Harrow, everything we receive in relation to gender, contemporary gender nonconformity, allusions to transness (as with eg. the androgynous Canaan House priest, the they/them in Doctor Sex, quiet suggestions that transness is an extant concept at some level), etc., has been presented to us in a format that circles back to the normative state of gender in the Nine Houses, specifically to the purpose of demonstrating the relationship that the subject holds to the imperial body. Gideon as a butch/as a woman/as a cavalier are three states that each make sense of one another and are able to exist harmoniously, and that harmonious existence is designed to tell us something about the internal imperial condition. That Nona is the text which divests from that wholly internal perspective and takes us into the social world of the imperial periphery + operates on a logic external to that of the imperial core is, I think, the reason that gender felt a lot more … like it was being played around with, or like it held less of a cohesive loyalty to particular background strictures that were shaping how it appeared on the page. Even with characters whose gender bears a relationship to that same imperial logic (Tower Princes, ofc; also Paul, Pyrrha, Palamedes), their presence in the text is altered somewhat by the fact that the text is no longer putting itself to the purpose of, like, demonstrating those internal strictures. 

And like, this narrative slippage—from something tightly delineated from which deviation is restricted into something more animate and buoyant and malleable—isn't limited to gender at all, but is happening all over. I flagged in the linked post how part of Nona hinges on the breakdown of John's constructed 'utopia' (his word!) such that things which worked to sustain it in the past no longer hold water in the present. You could even look at, like, the shift in presentation of the Dramatis Personae between the three; from Gideon, which offered this very … precise account of names, titles, ranks, with little diegetic narrative bearing, to Harrow, which mimics the style of its predecessor but manages a level of storytelling and diegetic presence in eg. the substitution of Gideon for Ortus, the establishing of Anastasia/Samael as outliers, and Gideon's name being entirely crossed out, to Nona, where it's … a birthday party invite list being transcribed in-universe. Like, even these minute changes are demonstrative of a shift away from a hierarchy that must be dissected into something of a far more humane texture. These aren't articulations of new gendered hierarchies, they're just … particular gendered modes, playing out with relative reference to a multiplicity of active norms. 

It’s interesting that a lot of the characters who we meet as, like, hotspots of textual gender-weirdness in Nona are failstates for genders that are made legible through the condition of empire as John arranges it. I think it’s fair to read Pyrrha as a trans woman in the same way it’s fair to read Gideon as a butch (in that these are not terms/subjectivities which would make diegetic sense to either, but they are subjectivities that are signaled for the sake of the audience, with the expectation that each will be read with that subjectivity in mind), but Pyrrha is also at once both a ‘failed’ cavalier and a ‘failed’ Lyctor. (A secret third thing, if you will.) So where Gideon’s butchness as we received it in the first two books has an anchor in empire, Pyrrha’s is more like the failure of an imperial gender configuration to fully realise itself, and where her gender becomes interesting & textured is through the production of dissonance (diegetically, her as an incomplete/failed Lyctor and by extension a failed cavalier; to us, as a woman inhabiting a body that we know to have belonged to a man but which is v clearly now being considered hers.) Similarly, the Camilla-Palamedes bodyshare (and then Paul, though I really don’t have a confident reading of Paul yet considering how little time they’ve had in the narrative so I’m going to gloss over them for now) is simultaneously a reversal of the Lyctorhood process (in that the disembodied necromancer inhabits the living body of the cavalier) and its reification (in that it relies on a portion of the process of the Eightfold Word, and you might even make a case for its being another form of instrumentalising and potentially exploiting the body of the cavalier); on either end, it’s definitely not what’s supposed to have happened, and it reflects something oppositional to the ethos with which the original construction was imbued. 

Past that, like, on Lemuria itself we see a multiplicity of gendered/familial arrangements that we can presume emerge as a result of the multiplicity of colonised cultures living in close quarters with one another; like, that multiplicity makes for a narrative expansiveness that I don’t think the tightness and discursive constriction of the previous two books would have allowed for. 

& the Tower Princes, similarly, are like … articulations of gender within empire, yes, but they’re specifically an articulation that can only take place once the old order (ie. Lyctors) is near enough gone, and we receive them through an external observer (ie. Nona) such that moments like Ianthe’s first introduction when we slowly realise that we’re seeing her possessing Babs’ corpse become a lot more fun. There’s a layer of ambiguity going into how Nona receives gender—from her switching between they/he/she pronouns for Ianthe-in-Babs to her they/themming a lot of characters before their gender is made explicit in-narrative, ie. not having a heavy reliance on visual cues to determine gender at a glance to the application of traditionally masculine descriptors to women (Cam, Pash, and Corona each get described as ‘handsome’ at some point)—that was nowhere near as present in the other two (as I explained above: there’s no dissonance in Gideon’s gender, there’s no sense that she’s anything other than a woman and no sense that her form of womanhood has ever been anything other than completely normal and legible in the social world she occupies). I think the Tower Princes would have made sense in any of the three so far, but they just feel a lot more fun in Nona thrown in amidst a book where gender is, in general, being treated somewhat playfully—with a lot of plasticity and malleability that I appreciated & that feels incredibly close to contemporary lesbian gender articulations.

(I keep returning, for example, to the implication that Pyrrha is passing herself off as a man in at least some contexts on Lemuria and the circles of identification and shared experience that that manages to draw between trans women closeting themselves in particular contexts and so-termed ‘passing women’ ie. butches who passed(/continue to pass) themselves off as men for safety. Like, I think it’s fair to say we can read Pyrrha as a butch or similar, and that we can read her as a trans woman, and that particular dimension is subtle but v compelling to me.)

(It’s also interesting how much we see the fixities of the imperial core echoed in the periphery in new contexts that kind of seem to extricate those behaviours from the violence they denote. John playing with Barbies as a child becomes the basis for the creation of Alecto, which of course is the inciting action towards the establishment of his empire & the social paradigms that sustain it; Kevin, too, is a boy who plays with dolls. Ianthe & Kiriona are women referred to with masculinised titles—ie. the Tower Princes—and both Pash and the Angel are women referred to as ‘sir,’ or like, Corona takes on a similarly masculinised title in BOE; you could even add an extra layer here about Kiriona and Pash and Corona and Ianthe each being related as cousins/sisters respectively, idk. EVEN something about Kiriona and Pash as, like, nepo babies to John/Wake respectively, except that the nepotism in question garnered them like vastly different levels of social rank/social currency. I don’t know that I can develop this take all that far, but like—interesting? The sense that like, queerness, gendered ambiguities, whatever else, can and should have a presence outside of an allegiance to imperialism, maybe?)

Anyway, like! These are very scattered thoughts, but hopefully they're of some use. I don’t know that I have an overarching argument besides just like, the changes present in Nona have a lot to do with how Nona moves our perspective out of the imperial core for the first time in the series and that includes how gender functions in the narrative, but hopefully you can see the arguments I’m gesturing towards at least lmao

[ambiguouswren]

TLT BRE Cosplay Progress Thread!

Between working Summer Stock I've also been helping organize and participating in the @tlt-big-resurrection event! One of my favorite things about this event is it includes cosplayers! When I was browsing fic summaries to find what I wanted to do I came across @incorrect-house-of-nine 's fic. Title pending but its a steam/chem/desert punk Locked tomb AU Mummyesque/Indiana Jones type adventure. (Yes I stole that description straight from them kfjjlasdjfsdf) It's been a blast learning about their amazing world building for it and I've REALLY enjoyed reading it as it unfold. Y'all are in for a treat. This is for Gideon's outfit so far. I ended up having to draft the harness thing from scratch after trying to alter patterns (just worked better) and I still gotta add the hood and strap and stuff. It's great to finally see it all coming together finally. I'll be making Gideon and Harrow for this event (and probably doing more after when I have more time/better locations/can maybe drag friends into this dfafd) Photos are: my progress, the inspiration, and a super quick sketch to get an idea of the pieces together for my own brain.