Be Crime, Do Gay

[chaos0pikachu]

Shane: having a whole ass bottomed out existential crisis after coming out to his parents and having thoughts of the future

Ilya:

[sassyqueeny]

I thought about some Laurent-quotes, and one of the most intense quotes is this one to me (Of course there are many more, but this one always gets me):

I hated you. I hated you so badly I thought I'd choke on it. If my uncle hadn't stopped me, I would have killed you. And then you saved my life, and every time I needed you, you were there, and I hated you for that, too.

It somehow includes all Laurent's feelings...

his hatred for Damen

Auguste's death and what has happened after that and how he blamed Damen for it

but also that he started trusting and valuing Damen and how much he must have tried to keep that from happening

and how much Damen has surprised him by not being the cruel barbarian monster Laurent has imagined him to be...

That he actually needed Damen

Of course the feelings he has developed for Damen

the simple fact that he is able to express this and put it into words shows the developement of his character

the "I thought I'd choke on it" can also be interpreted on how determined Laurent has been to kill Damen to revenge his brother and reminds me on another very intense quote

...

Sooo many feelings...

To the last point, that's the quote I meant:

Damen: You would have come for revenge, and I would have killed you. That's how it would have been between us. Is that what you would have wanted? Laurent: Yes!

Ahhh, there are so many of those quotes... I think I should make a list...

[s0ym1lk]

Guys not to fanboy AGAIN over Captive Prince but the conversation about languages in CaPri is SO GOOD.

The language you speak holds so much significance in political discussions. Pacat added all these details when Akielos and Vere sign their agreement about having the verbiage translated into both languages, exactly side-by-side, so it's clear that neither side is being advantaged. THAT IS SO REAL. That's a real thing countries do when they sign political agreements, because language is a tool of soft power and capitulating to another country's language is a sign that you're letting them exert influence over you (Britain loved to do it when they were colonizing the entire world, Russia did it during the Soviet Union, and China does it now. All of the Chinese language study they sponsor in other countries is not out of the goodness of their heart.)

And the entire section in Prince's Gambit about Laurent keeping Damen up night after night to talk troop movements in Akielon, saying that it's for 'security purposes' because he's afraid there are spies in his forces that might overhear - only for Laurent in King's Rising to speak fluent Akielon to Makedon and Nikandros when he's planning their invasion of Akielos with them. It's both a concession and a show of skill to do such a thing - speaking your ally's language to them is a real sign of camaraderie and trust, it's 'giving in' to their influence a little bit, but also Laurent is showing off his super niche vocabulary to make himself seem ultra-competent and impressive. He's in a position where his allies actively don't trust or want to work with him, and he's using his language to change their minds.

I love that Pacat didn't just make Laurent magically, suddenly good at Akielon, that he took the time to write in the weeks of practice it took for Laurent to get there, because authors do not realize how hard foreign language is. Particularly the nuance of being able to speak a language relatively fluently but still lacking the vocabulary for a specific topic. And it reinforces Laurent's character so well - showing how far he's thinking ahead, but also how devious he is that he doesn't trust Damen enough to tell him the real reason for the practice, BUT ALSO it's my personal opinion that Laurent has been Big Mad about his language skills since Damen got that "I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart" off in the beginning of the first book. Laurent heard that and went, 'well fuck you, I'm going to learn Akielon so hard it'll knock your socks off', and then he did. 10/10 writing.

[cheekseareads]

— The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

[cheekseareads]

[cheekseareads]

[cheekseareads]

𝐇𝐞 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐢𝐦. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐦, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 𝐢𝐭. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐫í𝐠𝐚𝐧—𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧’𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐫, 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐢𝐦.

—𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘯 𝘉𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘚𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 by @skellygraves

This is a bit different than what I’ve done before, but I am so happy with how it turned out!

[the-sparrows-providence]

Jean’s first character trait is being French. His second is being scandalized.

[cheekseareads]

I’m teaching myself how to draw. This is my first ever piece of fan art.

[c3rvida3]

Hey, no homo, but I am sitting on the broken swing set out back in the perfect, quiet, 2:00am blackness and picturing the softness of your voice and the darkness of your eyes with such perfect and terrible clarity that it feels like I'm choking on my own heartbeat.

[c3rvida3]

Now I'm eating croutons straight out of the bag.

[le-panda-chocovore]

Still no homo ?

[c3rvida3]

I'm gonna level with you, friend: I am eating these croutons gay style.

[kevinslefthand]

Has this been done yet? If not, I’m doing it

And “that” ends up being public defamation of a sworn enemy or a 5’0” blonde goalkeeper

[joejhang]

obsessed with how neil and jeremy are both unreliable narrators but in vastly different ways. neil gives the reader all of the information he considers important and quite literally nothing else. so you get play-by-play recounts of exy games, gruesomely detailed descriptions of his trauma, live-commentated accounts of his conversations with andrew but you have no idea what his real name is. or what he looks like. or what any of the characters look like, for that matter. most of his narration is literally just internal monologue and like 20% of it is actually what's going on in real time. jeremy, on the other hand, only gives the reader unimportant information. hell, not even unimportant just blatantly obvious. it's like you're just standing right next to him as the events are happening cos you have no fucking clue what's going on in his head. he'll comment on jean's good looks, team relationship dynamics, give exact replays of conversations, tell it like it is except you have no idea like the context of any of it. like he recounts his conversation with his sister word-for-word and you still have no idea what any of it means cos he just says that she tells him he ruined her family and then doesn't bother to elaborate at all. iconic behaviour.

[minnnoru]

Neil is an unreliable narrator TO YOU. I believe him.

[odafuckingoda]

How can Jeremy be an ex cocaine user, hated by all his family, blamed for his brother’s suicide, had his sexuality exposed for everyone in his freshman year and still be one of the most “normal live” characters cause his partner is a frenchman who was a victim of human trafficking and sold by his parents to a mafia and sentenced to years of abuse and torture in a sports team cult like in US

[frogpropaganda]

Thinking about how Damen does not even begin to comprehend the absolute life-altering trauma he caused Laurent by killing Auguste until like halfway through Prince's Gambit. Thinking about how their mutual dehumanization of each other led Damen to see Laurent as incapable of love or affection for anyone, he never even considers that Laurent loved his brother and was shattered by his death, never shows a shred of sympathy, his first assumption was that Laurent resented Auguste for being the golden child/crowned prince, and it's only when Paschal looks at him like he's crazy and says "no, he loved him." that he begins to realize the Laurent he's been experiencing is one that in many ways *he helped create* and that the purest form of Laurent was a sweet, shy little boy who loved his brother without a cruel bone in his body, he never wanted power or glory or anything, all he wanted was his big brother, and Damen killed that version of Laurent when he killed Auguste.

I think that is in part how Damen begins to come to forgive Laurent, or at the very least to begin to sympathize with him, realizing that in a fucked up kind of way, everything Laurent does to him, while still totally being first and foremost Laurent's responsibility and moral failures to atone for, is partially a consequence of his own actions, that he helped turn Laurent into the tangled ball of pulsating yearning in the shape of a man that he is.

I think realizing how wrong he'd been about the kind of man Laurent was, was what began his journey to coming to terms with the kind of man he, Damen, was at the beginning of the story. When he first meets Laurent he thinks he has him pinned and describes him as arrogant, self-absorbed, self-serving, spoilt, and "raised to overestimate his own worth", which in hindsight is definitely meant to be projection because those are all ways that Damen himself could be described at the beginning of the story, something he basically admits to at the end of Kings Rising when he reflects on the version of himself that existed before he was imprisoned.

[laurentspeach]

hi this is random but I'm obsessed with capri and want to talk about it forever!!! I was wondering what your favourite things are about the writing? like the craft, maybe the set up of the twists/reveals, etc? ilu

omg hi sorry if this has been in my inbox for forever, i didn’t expect to get an ask on this blog!!!

my favourite things about the writing are as follows:

1) Pacat trusts the reader to read between the lines. My favourite example of this (and probably the funniest of the trilogy) is the rooftop scene, where instead of just saying that Damen is getting an erection from Laurent shifting around, Pacat chooses to communicate that through vague dialogue and context clues. Other examples of this include:

Pacat writing “I would be, if the light weren’t behind you” instead of just saying that Damen could see Laurent’s figure because of the lighting.

Pretty much the whole blue dress scene.

2) Pacat makes Damen’s bias affect the whole narrative. Damen’s narration is intended to be accepted as truth at first, however as the trilogy unfolds you start to realize how (unintentionally) unreliable Damen is. Examples of this include:

Damen reiterates through the whole story how honourable and honest Akielons are, yet the readers know he was brutally betrayed by his brother + several of his men, akielons raided + massacred a village (with women and children) without remorse, etc.

Damen also reiterates through the story (mostly in book one) how Akielon slaves are given perfect treatment, but this whole narrative shatters in Training of Erasmus, although Damen is unaware (likely because he not only seems to assume the best in people, but also because he seems to base all Akielons off of himself, and he gave his slaves “perfect treatment”, so why wouldn’t everyone else?)

3) The pacing of Laurent’s arc. I feel like most modern authors who write enemies to lovers are too quick to give away that the “bad guy” is secretly good, but Pacat was NOT afraid to make us absolutely hate Laurent in the first book lmfao. I really appreciated that, because it made us fall in love with Laurent at the same time as Damen, instead of before or after. She made Laurent a good person at heart, who did some genuinely terrible things, which I feel like most authors think is impossible for some reason lmfao.

4) The sex scenes!!! Incredibly tasteful, contribute to the plot (not that I think 100% of sex scenes in media have to, but it certainly helps), well written, not so crude that it takes you out of the story, and also very hot. 10/10 no notes (other than there should have been a rimming scene but I’ll mind my business).

5) There’s a tasteful amount of fan service haha. This includes: size difference, Damen’s otherworldly strength, the pitcher scene, all of the short stories, etc. Thank you Pacat I would die for you

There’s also many more things I love about this series but that’s all for now!!

[bog-witch-4-mayor]

I'm yelling into the void and trying to manifest my deepest fantasies into existence the deepest fantasies in question: The game changers book series being chosen by one of the indie book subscription companies that will publish hardcover copies with beautiful art, end papers, painted edges, I want it all!