I had the honor of drawing @ta_teufel character Luna! Thank you so much for commissioning me, and for your patience! It was an absolute pleasure; she’s so stunning Truly a beautiful moon goddess!
Series: Second Sentinels. This is book 2 in the series. Book 1 is currently free as an ebook, or for actual money in paper or audiobook.
Genre: Near future scifi/ low neon cyberpunk/ superheroes/ small town mystery/ little bit Midwest gothic?/ YA into NA. Trust me it all works together I swear.
Status: Editing round 4! Almost ready for beta readers!
Tropes: Missing people, secret identities, found family, meetcute, meetugly, the monster within, dodgy government body, reunions
Synopsis Four queer teens on the fringes of the superheroing world head to a small town in Minnesota for what’s supposed to be a month off. Officially, they’re there for some stressful family reunions and to use the only full hospital for genetically altered people in the US. But, when they realize that the government beuro that gives the Sentinels their missions has been hiding the disappearances of missing alterds for years, it sets them in the path of a mission that has them questioning who they can trust.
Meet the characters under the cut!
Characters
(Age 18)
Opal hadn’t realized when she came to Chicago to join the Sentinels that she’d be joining an extremely complicated family. She certainty didn’t plan to start dating the former team leader’s fierce but fragile daughter. But how can she feel like she belongs here when she can’t pick a superhero name, every effort she makes to reform the corruption in superheroing blows up in her face, her superiors are mad at her, and her girlfreind is holding resentments Opal doesn’t understand? At least she finally gets to stay in a fancy, romantic Victorian manor house.
(Age 18)
As the non-superpowered oldest child of legendary hero LodeStar and medical technologies magnate Dr Melissa Tillman, Issac’s born the brunt of much of the worst of growing up embroiled in the world of superheroes. That’s included kidnapping, threats of torture, and losses he doesn’t know how to cope with. Now, he’s trying to set aside his resentment and focus on being a good adoptive dad to the world’s first feeling, sentient AI. But it’s hard to prove you deserve custody of such a powerful kid when you’re struggling to cope with a new disability and you technically have a felony hanging over your head for developing illegal brain-altering nanites.
(Age 17)
The middle child in Sentinel Plaza, xe may call a different superhero xyr father, but has always considered Issac and Jamie xyr siblings. Now that xe knows that some survivors of the genetic-engineering cultist that built xyr father’s first family are still alive, xe has to contend with the fears, connections, and obligations xe’s inherited. The worst injury of xyr life so far, and a growing fear that xe's a danger to the people around xyr isn’t making competing loyalties any easier to deal with.
(Age 17)
After years of very temporary fostercare placements it’s almost a relief to live full time in Coldwater Clinic Hospital, where nobody is paying that much attention to her anymore. When she met a retired superhero, and they saved each other, she counted herself lucky. But now that heroes old family are in town, with very mixed feelings about the new teenager in their lost family members life. Between the 7ft superhero trainee giving her palpitations and the potentially evil scientist suddenly hanging around her defacto home, her secrets- and her heart- might be in danger.
(Age 17)
Now that she’s no longer the youngest in the family thanks to her AI nibbling, Jamie wants to let go of her bitterness for all the ways she’s been left behind, and think about her future. It’s nobodies fault that she didn’t inherit her dad’s superpowers, even if she did get his temperament, and she knows that while Opal may appreciate her acerbic sense of humor, bitternes isn’t going to help her keep the girlfriend she doesn’t really think she deserves. When she gets an offer that would put dreams she gave up long ago within her reach, she has to choose. Will she follow other in other Sentinels footsteps- all the way to her own self-destruction?
Comment to let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list! Also, my askbox is always open to questions!
alright I’m rbing to add onto this bc it’s getting way more attention than I ever expected and people seem to be more likely to check the rbs than the replies. plus I want people to be able to rb this version.
the point of this post is not swords. it is not how well someone can fight w a cane. the point is I want to see more disabled representation and I want to see characters who use canes and I want them to use them correctly and I want them to be just as fleshed out and interesting as their abled counterparts.
my cane user friend and I were talking abt sword canes just before I made the post so I tossed it in. I collect blades—knives, daggers, swords—and I’m also a disabled cane user who collects fancy canes. so I think combining the two is cool. I don’t even think they’d be good for self defense, I just think they’re a fun thing to show off to friends!
but this post has always, first and foremost, been abt mobility aids. this is abt being a young cane user who doesn’t see rep. I’d love to see highschool dramas where a character uses a cane but it’s not used to make u pity them, it’s just a regular part of their life. I wanna see fantasy cane users where the animal head handle speaks. I wanna see sci-fi cane users and cane users in romances and cane users in main roles.
I know abt canne de combat and bartitsu and the other fighting styles u can use a cane for. that’s never been what this post is abt. I just want to see myself in media.
everyone who rbs this version gets a kiss on the forehead
everyone who rbs any version that makes my post entirely abt weapons while ignoring the mobility aid part owes me a kofi bc ik for sure there’s enough of yall for me to afford crutches
The boys have been Helping with the move in a variety of ways, none of which are actually helpful. But they are cute! https://www.instagram.com/p/CpTrqvlrR3H/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
I do find it fascinating how transphobia is like, the canary in the coal mine for absolutely rancid political opinions, like no one is ever normal about everything EXCEPT trans people, it's always like indicative of some utterly wretched comorbidities
Can I just say that as someone who was raised in a firmly working class household by a blue collar parental team… so many people on this website who try to translate blue collar reality into their fantasy worldbuilding are literally insane
Like I get it! I get wanting to take these fun ideas and bend them into magical shapes! But the fact that most of the ~innovative magic~ doesn’t actually… solve a majority of the problems in either industry or agriculture is so telling. It’s not all about increasing productivity or shifting aesthetics! That’s not any different than what the current mode of industry is doing, it’s just doing it with the power of fairy dust instead of fossil fuels.
Magic is supposed to be a boon, but if you still have people hand milking cows who?? Is receiving the boon here?? Automated milking and pasteurisation spells please!! A quicker and less dangerous way, for both person and animal, to dock lambs than having to hold them under one arm and take a sharp knife to their tails with the other! Or even spells to remove the necessity of docking at all, if you insist it’s cruel and not good hygiene practice! A way to check eggs for blood in the yolk before cracking them both because yuck and because it’s prohibited in certain dietary practices! Venting mechanisms for industrial pipe work to prevent bursts! Safe disposal of waste!! WATER FILTRATION SYSTEMS IN URBAN CENTRES!! HOW INHUMANE TO NOT HAVE YOUR SEWAGE SYSTEM MANAGED BY MAGIC IF THAT IS WITHIN YOUR POWER!!
Also, there’s still so often the Mage In A Tower and then just some schlubs who can do magic or whatever, but listen: those schlubs would unionise, and a good union with magic would be REALLY something to see.
I know this isn't your point, but we've had a "spell" for checking eggs for blood spots for hundreds (thousands?) of years. It's called candling: you go into a dark room and put a candle into a box with a round hole in the side. Place egg against hole so the light shines only into the egg and you can see the yolk or embryo through the shell. I checked and Wikipedia has an article and rather cool pictures.
My mother, raised on a small farm, was rather scornful about the hippy "back to the land" communes in the 1960s that never asked the "uneducated hicks" around them how to candle eggs, manage a septic system, etc. We lived in an urban commune at the time--it wasn't their politics she objected to, just their classism.
I think in a magical world there would be a lot of cantrips used by the common people. Some of these would be true magic that work, some of them things that work but aren't actually magical, and some that don't actually work at all. Academic mages are liable to be contemptuous of all of these.
And some of them will be Enthusiastic Researchers who bemuse the common people by being extremely excited about this egg-candling cantrip that their granny taught them (from her granny and - ) like it's not a totally ordinary thing everyone knows, and will then explain very earnestly that a) not everyone knows it, it is in fact totally local to this region and do you realize how cool that is, Bob? Bob this area has a unique thaumaturgical tradition! That is so cool Bob! and also b) even if it was it would STILL be cool because that would be evidence that a wide-spread thaumaturgical tradition was in use in this area and confirm the general theory that -
And so on and so forth.
This may or may not be preferable depending on Bob's personal feelings on this kind of thing, but it's worth noting that the image of the academic that ends up in fantasy fiction isn't even totally accurate to the Old Archetype of academia (there's all KINDS of olden days naturalists who were running around doing exactly this) and is sure not the only way modern academics works out.
Being queer isn’t supposed to be palatable to non-queers.
We don’t tick little squares on a checklist of “queer enough”, we obliterate the checklist.
We defy societal norms that say our bodies, families or relationships have to look a certain way.
Queer is the insult we took away from oppressors. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.
The people who hate us will hate us regardless of how palatable we make ourselves.
Stop licking fascist boots by policing queers who are queer in different ways than you.
Oh, someone is bi/pan trans lesbian with he/him pronouns? So what! They’re welcome on the rainbow. Their identity doesn’t have to make sense to you, it has to make sense to them.
Our identities don’t make sense to non-queers. They see us as unnatural and disgusting, so why are you turning around and crapping that same garbage out at your own community??
Once you drive the visible queers underground, the same people who hate us all will target you next. Nobody will defend you because you drove away everybody who would have.
BLEH BLEH BLEH. Before we wound up in the ER last weekend, Chris and I were taking a weekend to the Olympic Peninsula. We were so close to Forks that I couldn’t resist the chance to go visit somewhere I spent so much fictional time as a teen. I’m not a twilight fan anymore, but I had to get this picture. And a truly terrible lunch 😂 #twilightsaga #stephaniemeyer #forkswa #books #bookstagram #romancebooks #romancebookstagram #tbt #throwbackthursday (at Forks, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpBfIKJPoEV/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
This week has been one of finishing projects, and I am a Huge Fan of this, tbh. I started this when Chris and I went on vacation last weekend before his gallbladder attacked, and I finished it with the buttons from Kabooco on Etsy this morning! It was the perfect project for a hellish week. Pictured is the Venetian Carnival Cowl designed by @mydailyfiber in Malabrigo Mechita in desert and gothic! #crochet #slowfashion #cowl #mydailyfiber https://www.instagram.com/p/Co8BqDiS8R8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Isabel needs a refund on this sucky year. No health insurance for her insomnia meds, just barely paying her bills, an outing threat by her ex...
But then she meets Derek. Gentle. Caring. Out & okay.
Kindle & KU: books2read.com/tell-me-anything
And here's the complete blurb in case you find it intriguing:
Isabel meets Derek at exactly the wrong time… or is it exactly right?
Freelance editor Isabel needs a refund on this sucky year. Her blackmailing ex-boyfriend is threatening to tell her bigoted family she’s bisexual, and she’s running on fumes trying to meet his demands. Sadly, she hasn’t invented time travel to un-make the mistake of trusting her ex that created this mess.
Derek is an out bisexual man with his own history of family rejection. These days he has a successful business and a caring queer found family, but his personal life stalled after a breakup from his long-time boyfriend. Living alone is getting stale, but will dating just prove he’s too dull to interest anyone? Maybe he should get a dog instead.
When they connect by sheer chance, Isabel discovers that Derek’s so-called boring life is the calm harbor she needs, complete with moral support and pancakes. For Derek, Isabel’s growing affection and genuine interest in his hobbies help him see himself in a new light. As mutual tenderness turns into attraction, Isabel can’t believe this gorgeous, gentle man could want to be part of the disaster she’s made of her life. Even if he did, she can’t trust anyone with her secrets.
But as their connection deepens, Isabel will have to choose: risk it all by taking the helping hand Derek’s offering and also confessing her feelings, or give in to her ex’s extortion and keep her family’s love.
A high heat contemporary queer M/F romance novel with a guaranteed HEA.
Tropes: found family, age gap / May-December romance, kind and protective hero, cinnamon roll hero, angst but soft, hurt-comfort, slow burn.
yousharknotpass
jbbartram-illu
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
origamiaround
andulkaphoto
2087
