I made a little captive prince dustjacket for myself hehe ✨️
I was a little frustrated that I couldn't get the polish captive prince special editions 😔 (And the new US covers weren’t out yet, but I will definetly get those now!!)
So I went: 'Fine. I'll do it myself."
I don't know what got into me, but I started to add more and more to this and it ended up taking me 60 hrs 💀
Still not satisfied with everything (especially the font and frame) but it's ok, maybe I'll come back to that a little later ✨️
!Not everything is super accurate since it has been some time since I read the books and I (again 😭) didn't have them with me, while working on this!
The look on Pacat's face while sitting there all chill in Poland while dropping on us once again that the enemies to lovers element in the Dark Rise trilogy is going to be:
More intense
More disturbing
Even worse than it was in Captive Prince
Oh, we are so in the right hands with Pacat! Book 3 is going to end us.
Source: this Studio GJ interview
Full quote:
"I really like these tense relationships between characters…
"And I remember when I was building the relationship between Damen & Laurent and I wanted an enemies to lovers story, and I thought: ‘What’s the worst thing that you could do to someone that would really make them your enemy for life?’ And at that time I thought: ‘Well, what if you killed their brother and then that act left them in hell?’ And that was what I came up with for Captive Prince.
"And then I was coming up with the enemies to lovers backstory in Dark Rise and I was like: ‘Oh, I have to come up with something WAY worse than that.’ So I would say, yeah, the connection between the characters is like even worse, even more disturbing, even more intense than the one between Damen & Laurent in Captive Prince."
(And this is so similar to what Pacat said in Sydney last month too! Squee!)
The bright star holds, even as the darkness rises.
more
Justice had been the greatest fighter in the Hall, and his attacker had torn the room apart, shredding tapestries, splintering furniture, even shattering stone in an attempt to get at him.
From the sheer extent of the destruction, Justice had lasted against his attacker for some time. His eyes were sightless, fixed on some distant nightmare. His hand was still on his sword.
Justice had always seemed to know what was right. A lodestar. Someone who would guide you throught the night.
Sooo, I had the amazing experience of attending a panel C.S. Pacat was part of during the Sydney Writers’ Festival on 25th May 2024. The panel was called “Creating a Monster” (with two other YA authors).
And finally a week later (because adult-ing is hard), I had time to actually go through my notes and write up some of the fascccccinating things Pacat had to say about: monsterous heroes, and villains, and enemies-to-lovers deliciousness, and queer identity!
I didn’t want to forget some of the interesting things said in this panel and thought others might be interested in hearing about them too? Please indulge the splurge. :)
(Please note that all bold headers are just my thematic summary of each section for people to jump to, not the actual question asked.)
WHAT APPEALS ABOUT ‘THE MONSTROUS’ TO PACAT:
From a technical writing standpoint, the ‘Monstrous’ is appealing because a villain will often do an act and the hero reacts to that. It gives unconscious clues to the reader that when the villain turns up, something exciting is going to happen. In that sense, villainous characters have a special sort of ever-present attention given to them (possibly because human nature is to always keep one eye on the dangerous thing that could harm you).
On a personal level: A) When queer characters are awesome but also ‘Monstrous’, Pacat says it can feel really ‘electric’ and empowering to reclaim/allow yourself to embrace the monster role that you’ve been told you fit into by society. Like in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles where queer people are allowed to be beautiful/glittering & powerful & witty & have existential conversations about good and evil while fitting under the Monstrous label. Like heck yeh, that’s cool. And B) as an author, you can feel a ‘minority pressure’ to have characters be Good all the time and be the perfect ambassador for that minority, but sometimes you just want to be a vampire and take over the world, you know?
THE EXISTENCE OF ‘PROTAGONIST-CENTRED MORALITY’ WITHIN THE DARK RISE BOOKS:
When pondering whether it is hard as a writer to convince readers that a Monstrous protagonist is a likeable character, Pacat pointed out that the funny thing is that the question ‘How am I going to make readers like this monster?’ never really ends up being an issue because people actually really like monsters! The thing you might not expect is that the struggle is actually: ‘How am I going to make these readers who are barracking for the protagonist feel that this ‘monster’ is actually monstrous?’
Pacat explained that when a protagonist is also a monster, it brings into play something called ‘Protagonist-Centric Morality’ -- where you bond with that protagonist and want the best for them etc, so much that it can obscure when the protagonist is actually doing something bad. Pacat mentioned that he has found the Protag-Centric Morality fairly striking in the case of the Dark Rise books because people have said to him things like: ‘The Dark King Did Nothing Wrong Ever In His Whole Life’ and Pacat questioned whether the moral centre of the story was landing somewhere different than intended. He was curious whether the other authors had experienced that with their ‘monstrous’ protagonists too.
IF A HERO IS ALSO MONSTROUS, HOW ON EARTH DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE THAT FROM THE VILLIAN?
When pondering over the distinction between a Monstrous Hero and a Villain, Pacat shared some thoughts from his lived experience. He said the times when he has felt most threatened by the ‘Monstrous’ is when that person isn’t clearly identifiable to others around you; where there isn’t a shared understanding between everyone that ‘yes, that person is a monster’. Extending from that, the Truly Monstrous is when that person has some kind of control over you and control over the narrative as well; if the monster is the one telling the story but casting you as the monster. Essentially gaslighting via ‘narrative control’.
ENEMIES TO LOVERS TROPE:
This is Pacat’s absolute favourite romantic trope. And he elaborated that he doesn’t mean that in the sense of ‘these characters sort of don’t like each other’, but rather to the point where two characters really hate each other and for a very good reason. He likes when a path between two characters feels IMPOSSIBLE to overcome.
This trope was first explored in the Captive Prince trilogy and Pacat loved it so much he just had to use it again for the Dark Rise trilogy. The planning behind it for CaPri was brainstorming: ‘What is the worst thing I could think to use?’ (Answer: Killing a character’s brother, which lands the bereaved character into a set of hellish circumstances.) But that meant when Pacat decided to use it again for DR, he had to extend that to: ‘Now I need to think of something EVEN WORSE THAN THAT (CaPri)’ in order to separate the main characters. So Pacat had to spend ages thinking about what could be the absolute worst thing to use this time -- and he hopes that he came up with something that is ‘truly, truly way worse.’ Which essentially had everyone, including the moderator, laughing loudly in fear. XD
WILL KEMPEN: FOUND FAMILY & THE LONELINESS OF INAUTHENTICITY:
Pacat spent a lot of time trying to develop a really meaningful platonic friendship between Will and Violet. It meant a lot to see a friendship like that reflected on page for Pacat because some of the most important friendships of his life were across gender lines. The reception to Will and Violet has been so pleasantly surprising, so Pacat supposed he wasn’t the only one with a hunger for that kind of friendship within the romantasy genre.
Pacat also reflected on Will’s complex relationship with his Found Family -- that having the support of a Found Family can be so essential, but in Will’s case that lifeline is undermined by secrecy, turning that Found Family into a different kind of loneliness. Because the thing is: if something so immense happens to you that you feel you can’t talk about, or you feel some way about yourself but think you can’t share that with others, it means you can’t really be your authentic self. But if you’re not being you’re authentic self, who are your friends friends with? They can’t be friends with the true You; they can only be friends with a facade/with a performance. So as long as Will is scared to show his true self and remains hiding himself away from even his friends, he will be alone. It’s a hard step to take. (Note from me: so heavvvvy but poignant.)
NOT DR-RELATED, BUT PACAT’S FAV MONSTERS FROM POPULAR FICTION:
Pacat was so excited to namedrop his favourite monsters from popular fiction, he volunteered to go first LOL. The answers: 'The Brat Prince' Lestat (Lestat has been on his mind a lot recently because the AMC TV portrayal captures Lestat so well & has completely rejuvenated Pacat’s 12 year-old love of vampires. Total mood); serial killers such as in the Ripley series; and simply: American Psycho.
I'm wondering whether it is the YA label that discourages some CaPri readers from picking it up? Even though Pacat said he hasn't held back anything (that's for sure lmao. Shout out to horns & invisible hands & magic penetration).
It is mostly just the theme of identity that made it feel suited to YA for Pacat, right? And even though character ages also fit for YA, Pacat still found a workaround for complex, dark backstories (etc ;)) by creating adult versions of the characters in an older timeline so that things didn't have to be sacrificed. Like it really is all there to some degree if people give it a chance. <3
After my reread of Dark Heir and looking at people’s recent theories on what will happen in book 3 I’m more sure than ever in my hope that the collar is fucking with James’s mind to some capacity. Anharion turning out to be a sub who willingly gave himself over to Sarcean without any magical compulsion would be cute, sure, but it removes any and all narrative tension from the collar and by extension the dynamic between James and Will. It renders both Will’s horror at James being collared at the end of book 2 and James’s attempted suicide to avoid the collar unnecessary. I don’t think anything would be gained in the story and would in fact actively harm it if that’s the route Pacat decides to take.
This also ties into a similar topic I’ve seen get thrown around, which is the idea that Sarcean was a secret good guy and that the Light were the bad guys all along. I don’t know why anyone would want this to be canon. The whole point of the series is that the world and the people who inhabit it are shrouded in shades of grey. If Sarcean turns out to be an unequivocal good guy fighting against the Evil Light Monsters than that’s just the political dynamic of the first book in a different font, and I think most of us agree that the best part of that dynamic was the realistic subversion, not a complete 180 that keeps the dynamic but the colors are switched around.
Anyway uhhhhhh TLDR: hope book 3 is fucked up in a way that makes me giggle in fear
Heck yes! I love us a dark Dark King, please and thank you. That would make for such an interesting read for the reasons you mentioned and more.
And I actually think/hope that's what we're getting, coz Pacat kind of talked about this theme just last week on a panel called 'Creating A Monster' (25/5/2024).
It was fascinating coz Pacat talked about how the phenomenon/technique of 'Protagonist-Centred Morality' is so strong in the Dark Rise books that it sometimes obscures our perception, as readers, of how bad the Dark King's acts actually were. Will's as well (Pacat namedropped 'the Dark King' but also used 'protagonist' too).
I can only paraphrase, of course, but Pacat basically said that the Dark King's bad acts are an important part of the moral centre of the story that Pacat is trying to tell.
So after hearing that, I have high hopes that we will indeed be exploring some dark stuff by the culmination of the trilogy, and it won't be some easy black and white switcheroo. I love all the complexity Pacat has weaved into the story. It is so good!
I'm most looking forward to Will finally being able to explore his true self now though -- with all the good bits and not as good bits -- and just f stuff up for Sinclair et. al. >D
instead of finishing reading the book i spent the day drawing the sarcean and anharion hair touching in the garden scene which made me feel completely normal obviously
tangentwithtanner
stormborns
