ARE YOU A SOLDIER OF THE NEVERWAR? A DISILLUSIONED, ADVENTURE-HUNGRY ACADEMIC? DO YOU HAVE A WORLD-ENDING PROPHECY WEIGHING HEAVILY ON YOUR SHOULDERS?
TAKE YOUR CHANCES IN THE FORESTS OF GWENAR AND RISK IT ALL FOR GLORY, WEALTH, AND POWER BEYOND YOUR IMAGINATION!
A prequel to my main series, Masks and Madness.
SUMMARY.
FOR LLEVAN AND ZIRA, THE POWER SOURCE DISCOVERED IN THE DARKEST CORNER OF GWENAR IS THEIR ONLY HOPE. JOINING FORCES WITH THEIR BEST FRIEND RIL, ZIRA’S SISTER ERZSE, AND ONE LONG-SUFFERING BANDIT DOMINI, LLEVAN AND ZIRA HEAD FOR THE KINGDOM THAT PROMISES A POWER STRONG ENOUGH TO BREAK THE PROPHECY THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM — AND THE WORLD — APART.
BUT THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS, AND THE JOURNEY TO GWENAR PAVED WITH CHALLENGES. BEHIND THEM, THE NEVERWAR RAGES ON, AND A DANGEROUS FIGURE FROM THEIR NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST THREATENS TO DRAG THEM BACK TO THE FRONT LINES.
LLEVAN ISN’T SO SURE HIS BOYFRIEND KNOWS WHAT HE’S DOING. THEY’RE IN OVER THEIR HEADS, AND THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE ENDS ARE VICTORY OR DEATH. ONE THING HE KNOWS FOR CERTAIN IS THAT FATE HAS ALWAYS PROVEN HERSELF UNKIND TO THOSE WHO DEFY HER. FOR THE FIRST TIME, LLEVAN KNOWS ZIRA’S ARROGANT NAÏVETÉ IS GOING TO HAVE CONSEQUENCES THEY MIGHT NOT SURVIVE.
INCLUDES.
An all-queer main cast; Found family turned found tragedy; Self-fulfilling fate; An unsettlingly desperate hunger for power; Four fantasy languages, Ambition & corruption, Outrunning destiny, fantasy horse girls, and unhappy unending endings.
THE RUNAWAYS.
LLEVAN ADEJ is twenty four years old and a recent graduate from Eirfin. Barred from the front lines of the Neverwar because of his parents’ villainous background, he works instead as a healer, saving the lives of those around him through his Hand of Theory. He is determined to break the prophecy that hangs over his and Zira’s heads at (almost) any cost. Llevan is quiet, but stubborn, and has (as expected) a serious complex about villainy.
ZIRA XAROSEN. Born to two of the kingdom’s most renowned war heroes, Zira wishes his life was as easy as people believed. The subject of a nasty prophecy, destined to bring an end to the war, and his rapidly increasing fear of dying, all lead him to some desperate — and dangerous — decisions. At twenty four, he already has the most powerful Hand in Life Magic ever seen, and Zira is entirely oblivious to the broiling consequences he is about to face.
ERZSE XAROSEN, on the other hand, has a Hand of Death, and at an angry nineteen years old, she’s not afraid to use it. Desperate to join the war and desperate to join her friends, Erzse knows following Zira to Gwenar is the first step on her path to greatness. Experiencing the world for the first time out of the safety of her kingdom leaves her rattled and uncertain—but it’s what happens after that changes her forever.
RILAN BRECCH has been followed by tragedy since his fifteenth birthday. Eager to please and even more eager to help his friends, he abandons his position as the first openly transgender soldier to make the journey to Gwenar with them. Rilan is Zira’s best friend, Llevan’s confidante, and possesses a powerful Hand over the Elements. Only twenty years old, he doesn’t think much about changing the world. He has no idea that he’s about to.
DOMINI LEROY is fucking tired. They didn’t ever imagine joining forces with the enemy, but as a Neverwar deserter, they know both sides would be willing to hang them for treason. Twenty-two, gifted with Illusion, and more street-wise than the rest put together, their resourcefulness proves invaluable in the journey to Gwenar. They might, however, have changed their mind if they knew what it would lead to.
DRAFT PROGRESS.
I started writing this novel in 2020 after developing the idea in 2019 (right after writing draft one of The Hero’s Protégé!), but it’s been on hiatus for two years since! Now, however, it’s a different story. I’m back and willing to grind to get it finished (hopefully this year).
I’m currently tidying up what I’ve got of the first draft (40k~ words), and then I plan to continue writing every day! You’ll be able to find my writing and development of this novel on my blog, probably under the #wip; fate’s protégés tag.
So SO excited to share this with people: if you want to be added to the Fate’s Protégés taglist, please let me know!!!
My favourite books that I read in 2023! (In no particular order!)
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo (M/M, codependency, Supernatural Dark Academia vibes)
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland (delicious little YA horror!)
Vampires, Hearts and Other Dead Things by Margie Fuston (A lover letter to vampires stories and grief)
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi (Got me in my fairytale loving heart. Exquisite writing style.)
Fraternity by Andy Mientus (M/M, 90s dark academia, demons)
Yellowface by R.F Kuang (Tense, fascinating)
Once Upon A Broken Heart/The Ballad Of Never After by Stephanie Garber (JACKS!!!)
In The Lives of Puppets by T.J Klune (M/M, Pinocchio retelling)
Honourable mentions go to:
Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson (I love the dynamic between the protag and their demon companion), What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher (retelling of The Fall of The House Of Usher, got me obsessed with this writer) and Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day (thought-broking, memoir style non fiction, about how we talk about friendship).
In preparation for NaNoWriMo next month, WelcomeToWriteblr invites you to join our Ghost Gala! For each day in October, we have chosen themes and prompts designed to help you flesh out your WIP. The calendar can be completed in any order and you’re free to do as much or as little as you want. This event will run for the ENTIRETY OF OCTOBER.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Tag your posts as #WTWEVENT and #WTWCOMMUNITY
Format your posts like this: WTW GHOST GALA - DAY #: THEME
Wait for your post to be added to the queue.
NSFW content will not be posted to the blog.
OPTIONAL: Join our discord server if you would like to ensure your post makes it onto the blog! Tumblr’s tagging system can be unreliable and we want to make sure everyone’s creations are shared! Please note, you must be 15 OR OLDER to enter our server!
PROMPT LIST
Pumpkin Carving - You have to kill off a character: Who do you choose?
Raven - Create a tagline for your WIP
Crystal Ball - Outline a scene, act, or your entire WIP
Fallen Leaves - Create a playlist for your WIP
Jack O' Lantern - Share an interesting fact you found while doing research for your WIP
Vampire - Tell us where you find motivation and inspiration
Skeleton - Have a favorite plot structure? If not, share how you plot!
Trick or Treat - Set some writing goals and milestones for your WIP
Candy Corn - Tell us how you chose the title for your WIP
Witch - Write or brainstorm the opening paragraph
Bats - How would your WIP change if a minor character became the protagonist?
Candles - After naming all of your characters: Tell us the meaning behind their names
Coffin - Where's your favorite place to write?
Haunted Mansion - Describe a setting in your WIP
Black Cat - Flesh out your antagonist: Who are they? What are they? What do they want?
Pumpkin Spice Latte - Write a basic plot synopsis for your WIP
Zombie - Who is your supporting cast and what are their roles?
Spiders - Outline a scene or chapter from the middle of your WIP
Snakes - Plan the plot twist
Apple Cider - What's an old tradition from the world of your WIP?
Werewolf - What was the most important day of your protagonist's life?
Corn Maze - What is a common misconception about one of your characters?
The Woods - Outline your protagonist's development: How do they compare from the start vs the end?
Owl - What are your characters' thoughts on the setting of your WIP?
Graveyard - Which character has a secret they'd take to the grave?
Harvest Moon - Create a timeline for your protagonist
Grimoire - Create comps for your WIP
Hayride - Describe your protagonist's fatal flaw: How will it play out in your WIP?
Final Girl - Write or plan the final scene of your WIP
Bonfire - What changes the status quo in your WIP?
Ghost Gala - Take the day off, tomorrow starts NaNoWriMo!
CALL THE SPIRITS, JOIN OUR SERVER HERE! (discord.gg/earlgrey)
when you die, all the processes in your body slow down and come to a halt before starting to decay. which means if you were to revive someone from the dead, necromancer-style, you'd potentially have to kickstart their entire system back up from a state of inertia. which means it almost certainly would not be pretty. i'm talking coughing up clots of blood, nauseatingly intense migraines and muscle cramps, and all the sensory overload that would come with firing up the body's engines from frozen cold to fully functioning all guns blazing in the matter of seconds it takes to cast a resurrection spell.
People in badly written fantasy stories will usually talk about the major historical events of their world and how magic has affected the lives of everyone, but ask a person in the real world to describe the effects of WWI and the invention of the combustion engine on modern life and they’d probably couldn’t tell you.
Broke: every character seems to know everything about the history and lore of the world
Woke: most characters can’t tell you much besides the basics but there are some that can tell you more complete but specific parts
H Y P E R W O K E: Every character tells you a wildly different version of the past and what effects it has on the present, ranging from the government is an imperialist, colonizing body obsessed with power to the one true ruler was sent by the gods and has smote down anyone who got in his way to “Oh you mean Jeff, the quote unquote tyrant of the west? I knew that guy! He was alright, never did anything wrong really just wanted some soup.” And there’s no way to tell what actually happened
More people need to read Animorphs, where an alien child ends up on the team of human children and sometimes they’re like “oh there’s weird alien stuff, Ax explain the weird alien stuff” and a good half of the time he’s like “I can’t, I was distracted by a cute girl in class that day”.
This is a comment someone appended to a photo of two men apparently having sex in a very fancy room, but it’s also kind of an amazing two-line poem? “His Wife has filled his house with chintz” is a really elegant and beautiful counterbalancing of h, f, and s sounds, and “chintz” is a perfect word choice here—sonically pleasing and good at evoking nouveau riche tackiness. And then “to keep it real I fuck him on the floor” collapses that whole mood with short percussive sounds—but it’s still a perfect iambic pentameter line, robust and a lovely obscene contrast with the chintz in the first line. Well done, tumblr user jjbang8
I went back to dig up this post because I was thinking about poetry.
This is one of those non-poem things that are among my favorite poems.
As the OP stated, the use of alliterative consonants is aesthetically just great, especially the placement of the strongest use at the end: “fuck him on the floor.” The use of “chintz” is indeed great word choice.
Because I’m insane, decided to scan the poem:
Not only is the second sentence, indeed, perfect iambic pentameter, the entire poem is perfectly metered, though the first sentence has four iambs rather than five.
There are further things I love about this poem, though: I like the casual connotations of “keep it real” juxtaposed with “chintz.” It causes me to interpret the “chintz” more strongly as meaning something fake, a facade. There is also of course the coarseness of “fuck,” which is a contrast with “chintz” but a different kind of contrast, gutsy and carnal where “chintz” is flimsy and inanimate.
And then there is the storytelling: there is SO MUCH storytelling in just these two lines. To break it down: The speaker is having sex with a married man, in the house he shares with his wife, which is “filled with chintz”—something that here connotes fakeness, in contrast with “keep it real.”
The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.” That’s a story, and it’s just two lines.
This is EIGHTEEN SYLLABLES, y’all. The amount of meaning condensed into these eighteen syllables is stunning, and it is so elegantly done.
From a technical standpoint (and ive taken 300- and 400-level poetry classes so I can say this) this is damn near flawless as a poem.
Ah dang to go further; the floor is framed as a refuge. As if there is literally no other space in this house that hasn't been populated by his wife with flimsy inanimate fakery. There is no space for this man in this house save for the floor. There is no space for him on the sofa, oon the counter tops, and most notably, no space for him in the marital bed.
I’d also like to point out the use of the word “has.” The wife has filled the house with chintz. She isn’t filling the house with chintz. She doesn’t fill the house with chintz. She has filled the house with chintz. Use of the past-tense makes the wife a subtly removed element in the story, someone whose presence we see in the environment, but who is blissfully distant during the actors throes of passion. There is an element of physical as well as emotional separation from the wife that is catalyzed by being fucked on the floor. Use of the past tense is an end to the wife presence in the actors life, a carnal catharsis amid cold fragility and emotional distance.
Yesterday I almost cried because my baby cousin ran up to my grandmother and was like. “Ha! Buhbuh ba ha.” And she said okay you want to show me something? And he led her over to the garden patch and crouched down and pointed at rocks and plants and was like. “Ah. Habah ba ah” as she listened attentively.
And I was like that happened 1,000 years ago. Probably 10,000 years ago. Maybe 100,000. The youngest human in a group went to the oldest one and said to the best of their ability “come see.” And the adult went.
this is such a beautiful post it doesn't need my dumb addition, but i can't fit this in the tags. at the archaeological site Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic there are a bunch of really really fascinating finds and I'm only going to tell you about one tiny detail of one of the most interesting sites in the world.
at this settlement 20-30,000 years ago there lived a person who appears to have been a sort of sorcerer-grandmother-ceramics artist and her workshop was preserved very well in the sedimentary layers. her hut where she had her kilns was full of little sculptures of animals and people that seem to have been made to explode in the kiln on purpose, we're not sure why but nevermind. the relevant detail is that when you sculpt something with your hands and then fire it, your fingerprints can be preserved in the surface of the clay forever, so we have fingerprints of ancient ceramics artists that have survived for tens of thousands of years. and one of the major artifacts from Dolni Vestonice has a fingerprint on it that is so small it could only have belonged to a child
so this shaman-grandmother-sculptor, who was buried with her pet fox by the way, had children running through her workshop and touching everything she made while she was at her mysterious work of creating the world's oldest ceramics, none of which appear to be bowls, bottles, pots, or any "useful" items at all, but rather a collection of animal and human and sometimes anthropomorphic figures, some of which appear to be self portraits. exactly the same as sandersstudios' grandmother being led to the garden by an excited baby. we've all been the same for 30,000 years.
friendly reminder that characters don't need to be saints to be entertaining. and telling a story does not mean endorsement. art does not need to be all about morally good people.
IDK if this was meant as hyperbole but it's literally true:
Adult literacy is low.
Child literacy is low.
Information literacy has shifted dramatically in the last decade, but reputable information sources like research journals and factual news reporting have been unable to keep pace.
We are genuinely in a crisis of media literacy, with ever fewer genuinely factual resources available in the style and language used by contemporary audiences.
It may sound condescending, but we genuinely need to remind people, or worse, explain to them for the first time that art is not evidence of real world behaviour.
So, thank you, for this reminder. Genuinely.
You're correct:
Art does not need to feature exclusively morally pure characters. Art is not proof of the creator's secret, violent desires.
ETA; Yes, the links are US American; no your country is not immune to propaganda. Be POLITE in asking, and I will help you find the data for your own country as well.
blood being frequently described as having a "coppery smell" in fiction is kind of funny considering that there is a metallic component to blood and it's not copper
in fact if your blood smells or tastes like copper you probably have more urgent things to worry about than it being outside your body. it's probably better that it's not inside you anymore actually.
story where blood is described as smelling or tasting "coppery" and it's actually early foreshadowing that all the characters are suffering from heavy metal poisoning
and if I get a tattoo for every book that I write. something small and sweet. just something to both celebrate it and as a constant reminder. I think that'd rock actually
So I just cleaned out my follows, which has left me with 61 blogs, a handful of which belong to mutuals who haven't updated in years but I won't unfollow because I am waiting for them to return from war.
Which basically means I barely follow anyone.
So any writers or artists who have active WIPs they post about, feel free to advertise yourselves or each other to me so I can fill out my dash and find some new folks!
I tend to prefer fantasy and/or romance, but I can generally do whatever if the concept intrigues me enough!
HELLO !! i’m sporadically low-activity on here but considering most of my wips are fantasy based with SOME aspect of romance in them, i figured i’d jump in 👀 new mutuals are always awesome!!
Hey writblrs - I’m looking for more active writblr friends specifically who play silly little writing tag games! My notifs have been barren the last month, and tag games really help keep me on track when my motivation is sagging at the end of the day (must write seven lines because random online person tagged me!)
I only write fanfiction, so you don’t need to actually read anything I write, just need friends to play games with!
