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[the-eternal-child]

As annoyed as I am at Xaden’s actions in Iron Flame, I can understand why he was so overprotective of Violet.

Imagine watching someone you cared about get stabbed and fall from the back of a dragon, then have to sit next to their bedside for three days not knowing whether or not they were going to wake up, wondering if they were going to die without ever knowing you were in love with them.

And then being separated from that person as they were almost assassinated, routinely tortured, pushed to burnout, and not being able to get to them when they were drugged and locked up, beaten and abused and deprived of food and sleep as a means to target you. Tortured for information about you.

So yeah, I can absolutely understand why Xaden would act like that in Iron Flame.

[the-eternal-child]

Honestly I loved this scene in the audio book so much!!

Xaden dips his chin once, then yanks open the door. Ridoc and Sawyer stagger forwards, then slam into the wards and fall to the hallway floor. My hand flies to my face as I smother a laugh. “It’s soundproof when the door is closed, assholes,” Xaden growls.

Iron Flame is honestly just a comedy masquerading as a romantasy

[the-eternal-child]

Irl this level of codependency is worrisome.... But somehow in a book with 2 hot characters and plenty of romantic poetic declarations - swooooooonnn!!

“I just spent eight hours terrified of what condition I’d find you in, and I’m telling you that I don’t just want you. I need you. There are your three words.”

I don’t think the significance of Violet telling Xaden she “needs” him has been talked about enough.

It’s more than just a substitute for “I love you”. This is Violet metaphorically baring her throat to Xaden, exposing her weakness to him. She’s not ready to tell him that she loves him yet, but she’s telling him how important he is to her, to her very existence, beyond the fact that if he dies, she dies.

In this scene in Iron Flame when Violet has left Basgiath without leave, Xaden acts like it’s a revelation to him how much Violet cares about him (never beating the abandonment issues allegations), and she recognises this in him and responds by telling him how valuable he is to her.

“I need you.” Maybe need isn’t the right word, but there’s no other term that captures how essential he is to my existence.

I don’t think we should act like needing him is just a stepping stone to loving him. Those are two entirely different emotions to feel about someone, and in some ways needing Xaden is so much more than loving him. Violet needs Xaden and vice versa. Telling him that proves more about her love for him than those exact words ever could, and I think Xaden realises that.

“I need you more, Violet […] However much you think you need this, need me—I need you more.”

I will never be normal about these two characters.

[the-eternal-child]

All of these!! My god! He went from 'one slip up could damn us all' which I'm sure was anxiety inducing enough for him, to then having the added feelings for Violet thrown into the mix, realizing how important she was to him, and now knowing one wrong move could also doom her.

I don't blame him for being reticent and paranoid! I sure as fk would be!

Depressing Iron flame spoilers

We don't talk enough about how fucking disturbing it is to learn Xaden was around 18 when he had to negotiate the lives of all the children of the apostates. He was still a teenager when he had to endure a mockery of his culture's customs since Lilith Sorrengail was the one to perform the cuts. Man had to negotiate terms that did not benefit him at all, completely alone, was essentially tortured with a piece of his own culture and would pay for the slightest inconvenience with his fucking life!

No wonder he's so fucked up in the head!

[the-eternal-child]

New Fourth Wing paper back design coming WITH new Xaden bonus chapter in September! SCREEEEEAAAAAAAMMMM!!!

I may just make it to January 21st yet!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-k9nblhA_n/?igsh=OWJnOGZlam1hYjJy

[the-eternal-child]

Rebecca just posted on IG and I'm kicking my feet giggling when I saw the song title and the little thunder cloud emoji!!

[the-eternal-child]

This is the most soft sappy romantic thing I've read all day and I'm convinced a modern Xaden would do this 🫠🫠🥰😂😂

Computer: Please enter a new password.

Xaden: *types* Violet.

Computer: Password is too short.

Xaden, smiling softly: I know.

[the-eternal-child]

I am quaking!!! This book cannot come soon enough

“You and I are not easy people. What we build together has to be strong enough to withstand a storm, a war”

XADEN TO VIOLET IN IRON FLAME.

ONYX FUCKING STORM.

[the-eternal-child]

Must make it til January somehow.... Fanfics it is!!

The empyrean series Masterlist

{Multi-chapter}

Liam's survival guide to being a shadow

{One shots}

Broken resolve (a Brennan one shot)

Survival (Liam survives resson)

From parapet to threshing - Tairn POV

[the-eternal-child]

How to make your writing sound less stiff

Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.

1. Vary sentence structure.

This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.

So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.

2. Vary dialogue tag placement

You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.

Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”

“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”

“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.

Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.

They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at

They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~

They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.

It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.

3. When the scene demands, get dynamic

General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.

Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.

Drip Drip Drip

Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.

You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.

Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.

4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.

The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.

If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

—

Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.

[the-eternal-child]

The way his trauma and pain just gets worse and worse the more you think on it 😭😭😭. Good god.

Now I'm just imagining him having had an older brother figure he lost. Or maybe even a group of slightly older guys he looked up to and trained with.... All gone now.

I could imagine him thinking 'I couldn't save them... But I'll protect the ones who are left. '

here's a devastating thought!

xaden was 17 when he made the deal with lilith, which places him at the oldest end of the marked ones. he's at that age where he had friends who happened to be younger than him, like liam, but he most definitely lost more than just his father to the executions. it's likely some of his best friends that we will never hear about just happened to be over the age of 18 when aretia fell, maybe as little as a few months older than him. i can only imagine his survivor's guilt for it. the fact that he's the rebellion leader's son means he probably sees himself deserving of being executed more than any of his older friends did, but he was spared by being born when he was, something completely out of his control. so of course he would guard the marked ones with his life. they are not only what's left of the movement his father died for, but pieces of the people he loves, family friends who have probably known him before he knew them.

ow.

[the-eternal-child]

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Sad days

[the-eternal-child]

@she-whatshername I will gladly join the Tyrrendor Theories club because the way these books have taken over my brain 🤣😭!!

Honestly I think they thought the dragons would have executed the marked ones at all the weeding out processes - presentation and threshing. The top brass knows where their dragons stand, maintaining the lie or at the very least are indifferent about it.

But since the whole Empyrean is split down the middle on whether to take action or not, I guess they were hoping they'd butt up on other dragons that aren't for sharing wards or helping Poromeil over the safety of the Veil.

That plus the angry cadets who have been soaked in the disdain for the Tyrrish. I honestly think the brass thought they'd be picked off on several fronts and most wouldn't be an issue by graduation. Then they'd get to drop them off at an active border in their first year and they wash their hands of them.

What they didn't expect were sympathetic dragons, the absolute unit that is Xaden Riorson coming in and making it, as he said 'becoming the monster they needed him to be' - he probably came in and thoroughly humbled or killed anyone who attacked him or any of the other marked ones (as he did with the prince that attacked Garrick) and drove the fear of god within the other cadets 🤣🤣. That would've lent a buffer to the other marked ones after that, that at the very least if anyone wanted to pick off a marked one they had to be a bit more careful about it.

That and that the Tyrs themselves got that dawg in them!! They were already angry and ready to fight back too lol.

Just noticed something...

This part of Iron Flame noting how Riders are usually discouraged from politics and are discouraged from keeping their family seats.

Xaden's grandfather who was Sgaeyl's former rider was said to have died without making it out the quadrant. We know assassination attempts on students with powerful parents happens. So maybe this was an assassination carried out because of the power dynamics mentioned above. The future Duke of Aretia being a rider? Bonded to one of the strongest dragons out there?! It's what I'm thinking because why else mention the fact that he died while in the school? Info drops like these are purposeful.

My first question is timeline wise... WHEN did he have Fen 🤣🤣?!! I'm assuming he wasn't married since you can't get married until you leave... Unless he was married before entering the quadrant. Maybe marriages don't play that much of a part in the legitimacy of heirs for the Tyrrish 🤷🏾‍♀️.

Next question is, was this a case like Aaric? He found out what was going on and decided having a dragon would help the effort to fight the venin?

It brings me back to my questions in a previous post wondering about how much the Tyrrish know.

They're described through out the series as having been the last to join the unification, seen as troublesome or prone to unrest by Navarrian leadership, the Tyrs describe themselves as being 'loyal to their own' which makes me think of the kind of cultural identity people have when they're discriminated against...

It seems like the Tyrrish have been aware of the fate of the continent for a long time - or maybe only their leadership? They maybe have always had issues with Navarrian rulership decisions and being last to the party of unification and objecting to things would give them the reputation of being 'too proud' or 'thinking they're too good to submit to the king'.

Maybe Fen grew up being aware why his father died and decided to try another route to change. Let us become our own country so we can deal with this problem ourselves.

And the Navarrian top brass like Markham were just waiting to finally have a reason to drop the hammer on the Tyrrish people. Crushing a rebellion is one thing... But to raize a capital city to the ground?! A city described as having been beautiful?

Seems like a purposeful psychological blow to the people. Very publicly defame your beloved leader, take out almost everyone affiliated even loosely with the rebellion planning - Liam's father's execution even though he wasn't involved, and I bet he wasn't the only family member to get that treatment - they'd even wanted to execute the damn children! Cripple their financial centre by burning the capital, which would give them something else to focus on in the years to come, trying to rebuild their lives!

They humbled them, invalidated the claim they fought for, crippled them financially and painted a target on their back for the disdain of the rest of the kingdom. Amber Mavis was literally described as 'one of the good ones' because her family didn't take part in the rebellion!

Jesus fking christ!! Someone stop me! Cue 'make it stooooopp!!' screams like Jeremiah 😅😅

The more I think about this damn series the more insidious things start to look, the more glaring Navarre's crimes. The Tyrrish are entitled to freaking reparations man 😭😭!!!

[the-eternal-child]

Thoughts on Spy x Family: Family Portrait

I finally got around to reading the SxF light novel, Family Portrait...and I mean "finally" because it's literally been sitting in my shelf since it was first released in English back in December of last year! I was distracted by Code White and the SxF video game which came out around the same time, but even long after that, I was having trouble getting motivated to read it. For some reason, experiencing SxF in novel format instead of in anime/manga just didn't appeal to me, plus the fact that it's not written by Endo himself (these weird preferences of mine are also why I'm not into reading fanfics either). Don't get me wrong, in general I love reading stories in prose form too, but for a series like SxF that already has such an established visual identity, it doesn't feel as "authentic" to me if that makes any sense. But I did want to read it eventually, since it is an official part of SxF media and Endo did the illustrations and does acknowledge the book (he wrote a nice afterword at the end). So I finally sat down and read it in sections over the course of this week! I'll share my brief thoughts on each of the contained stories:

Novel Mission 1

Since this was the first story in the book, it took me a while to get used to experiencing the world of SxF in novel form. There were some things I felt would have been better conveyed in anime/manga, for example, one of the very first gags about Yor misinterpreting Anya's nature class as some sort of hardcore outdoor survival trip. As I was reading that part I was like "I get the joke, but it would have been funnier if I actually saw these images and the characters' expressions with Endo's comedic illustrations." It was also a bit jarring to hear the characters thoughts and feelings from third-person narration, but I got used to it. As for the story itself, it was Damianya focused, something I'm not particularly into, but I don't mind it either. I liked the rare, soft Damian moments, and the thing with the squirrel eating Anya's peanut trail was funny. I also liked the scene at the beginning where Loid and Yor feed Bond together while Anya watches.

Novel Mission 2

Oddly, this was my favorite of the stories! Of all the characters, I think the author nailed Yuri's unhinged thoughts the best - as I was reading, I couldn't help but hear every cringe thought in his voice, which is a good sign of how well the author gets the character! I actually chuckled at a few parts too, both from his insane Yor-obsessed and anti-Loid musings, as well as from his banter with Anya. The police interrogation scene was great and would be even better if it ever gets animated! I also found it interesting that this story has the first instance where we find out what Yuri thinks about Bond (that he's fat and useless - rude!) Also his first time hearing about Franky apparently...makes we wonder if Endo will make him feel the same way if these things ever come up in the manga.

Novel Mission 3

I liked this story a lot too! I think it worked the best in novel format out of all of them, probably because it was more focused on drama and emotions than comedy. It's ironic that the two official SxF stories that feature the deeper side of Franky's character - this one and the omake chapter from volume 13 - are both not even part of the main canon! Alessa would have definitely accepted Franky's job as an informant, but he felt that someone like her should only be surrounded by "beautiful things." The poor man really needs to see that inner beauty matters too, and he has that! I also think he should have swallowed his pride and told Loid the real reason why he wanted the disguise...not that it would have changed the outcome. Poor Franky.

Novel Mission 4

This was a cute Forger-focused story, but like the first one, I felt it had parts that would have been more effective in anime/manga form, for example, "hair monster" Yor and whatever hideous painting Felix ended up making! But despite that, it was still funny and cute. Though I do think the author went a tad overboard with Yor's flustered antics...they just kept going and going, lol. Also, like the movie, we have another scenario of Loid getting flung into the air by Yor but landing gracefully on his feet (though this instance was much tamer since she wasn't drunk and only pushed him instead of hit him). Again, maybe I would have appreciated the humor in this story better if I saw it in anime/manga with Endo's hilarious designs and expressions, but for what it was, it was enjoyable enough.

Short Novel

This extra short story would be perfect as a reintroduction story for a future anime season...maybe one day!

-----

Overall, the Family Portrait novel is a nice addition to the Spy x Family universe. Even though I feel the humor in the series is most effective in illustrated form, it's still nice to have more stories in the canon, especially ones that show new sides to the characters, like the Franky and Yuri stories. Like the movie, it's debatable if this novel should be considered true canon or not, but personally, I don't find anything in it that contradicts canon, at least not yet. So yeah, definitely check out the novel if you haven't already! 😁

[the-eternal-child]

Me blowing up @lantur inbox for her Fic Delicate like 2 years after the fact 😅😅😅😅

I got a comment today that said smth along the lines of "I didn't wanna be weird commenting on a four month old fic"

Baby, bless your heart but four months isn't old by any means and ao3 isn't fucking instagram. Comment on fics you like, regardless of how old they are! The worst that could happen is you make an author's day. Writing is art, not content.

[the-eternal-child]

Suddenly becoming active online feels pretty weird yet I can't stop 😅.

I'm one of those people who read fanfiction for years but never really knew what to say to the authors I adored. Recently I made it my duty to comment and tell them what I love about their work and show my excitement every chapter.

Similarly I absolutely love reading people's character analyses and theories in the fandoms I loved. I never felt smart enough to analyse things myself and didn't think I had much to add to the discussion.

I'm very surprised about the absolute brain rot I've fallen into from reading Fourth Wing and Iron Flame. I love the series, love Xaden in particular (been a long time since I've had such a book bf crush) and I suddenly have ALL the thoughts!!!

I'm an introvert on and offline so it's a very strange place to be in for me 😅. I hope I'm not speaking completely out of my ass and it'd be nice to be proven right about anything in the future lol.

[the-eternal-child]

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Jack Barlowe to anyone else. Jack Barlowe passing Xaden and Liam 🤣🤣.