#briar moss

[ace-artemis-fanartist]

Redraw of this 2016 drawing I did of Sandry and Briar from Tamora Pierce's Emelan series.

It's fun to see how far I've come.

[vampire-skunk]

So I saw this and it immediately made me think of Tris and Briar and how, now their magics are kinda linked, they might enjoy this moment a bit .

[comfortmediarambles]

Rereading Briar’s Book after living through a global pandemic makes it hit so much harder. Just like little things like Tris complaining about her glasses fogging up bc she has to wear a mask and them wearing the best PPE they have while trying to find a cure and the people working so hard to find a cure getting sick and not being able to help

Also a total tangent but how did I not realize lark and Rosethorn were together the first time I read this quartet???? Like Lark calling Rosethorn “love” and “Rosie” and literally no one else doing it??? My repressed middle school self was missing so much subtext

[spiritintheinkwell]

My book club is reading the Emelan books, and I'm shocked that I have no record of ever drawing all four kids together! Couldn't let that situation continue~

[gnar-slabdash]

Anybody else spend a lot of time thinking about how in Will of the Empress Briar’s taking home a different woman every night and then you find out it’s because he just came through a warzone and now he’s afraid to be alone at night?

No? Just me? Okay, well anybody else spend a lot of time thinking about Eliot Spencer and want to try that concept on for size? Yeah? I thought so.

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Favorite Book Quartets

Round 2

Sandrilene fa Toren, Briar Moss, Daja Kisubo and Trisana Chandler (The Circle of Magic) VS Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Haymitch Abernathy and Lucy Gray Baird (The Hunger Games series)

Sandry, Briar, Daja and Tris

Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Lucy

Show results

Voting ended onFeb 12

NO ANTIPROPAGANDA

Propaganda under the cut

Circle of Magic:

4 kids from very different backgrounds who get thrown together and become a family!

The Hunger Games:

The 4 Victors from 12, Lucy doesn't really interact with the other but the memory of her is there even when Katniss has no idea.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

no but that scene where kid Tris bluntly but PRIVATELY reveals to Briar that she KNOWS he can't read- she's known all along-

how he waits for everyone else to start doing their chores for the day before starting on whatever's left, instead of just checking the board where it all gets written up-

she never poked at that

never used it against him. even back when they didn't LIKE each other- him a kid from the streets and her from a merchant family, social oil and water, all their scuffs and tiffs. her temper is hot and her words are sharp

Tris never. not once. mocked him for not being able to read. didn't even mention it

and she noticed. this before the four of them all really grow into being foster siblings, back when they're just four traumatized and thrown away kids plopped down into a cottage with two women who weirdly enough won't stop caring about them-

even back then, prickly Tris paid attention

the offer to teach him comes later- in private- she is NOT embarrassing him in front of anyone else when she talks about it. it's after the four survived almost dying together, a quiet moment alone, when she finally mentions she could help if he wanted

he does. instantly- and it's not hard to see why he's so comfortable with saying yes, now. he wouldn't let on to anyone else, their teachers and guardians, but Tris saw and kept quiet and is asking him

her urge is to share this thing that'd given her so much comfort and strength with someone else who doesn't have that yet. and to do it just for him, no one else to see, just his thing to study with her, something she's happy to make time for

then years later, they are the family bookworms together. sister and brother with more academic interests than their other two siblings. they reconnect so quietly and easily even though they both are maybe the hardest to get along with in general, the sharpest and most likely to snap and lash out. but Tris taught Briar to read without making him feel stupid about it. he grew up and taught HIS student to read, using a lot of the same tricks Tris had used on him

i dunno. it gets to me, is all

[misscammiedawn]

ooh, actually, should I be mean? Maybe I should.

Briar and Tris.

Hi love.

So. You want to ask about Briar and Tris from Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series.

Two characters we relate to with and love enough that they are included in our Top 25 Characters list?

Briar, the heavily traumatized urchin city boy who identifies strongly with his poverty stricken upbringing and has to adjust to the relative comfort of his new walk in life and has to balance between who he identifies as (past tense) versus who he identifies as (present tense) and also has a sequence where his primary caregiver attempts suicide, leaving Briar to basically pull a "if you go, we both go" gambit?

and

Tris, the steadfast redhead who overheard relatives talk about who she could be pushed onto because no one wanted her. The one who refuses all forms of aid because she assumes it would be "charity" and the one who ripped apart her closest connections because living with them for a few months created such a stark power imbalance between them that pride and a lack of understanding destroyed all good faith and love that existed between them?

Basically you want me to explain what Craig and I's lies are.

...you're mean at times, you know that?

---

From our Core Lies ask meme.

Briar Moss (The Circle of Magic)

Briar was plucked up by Winding Circle during a trial. He was a thief and an orphan and would have either been used up by the gangs of his hometown or imprisoned for his crimes had Niko have not recruited him.

His specialty is in life magic, particularly with plants. Above all others in the circle he latches on to relationships and has by far the strongest connection to both his mentor and apprentice during the books.

He's a bit reckless and gets in over his head, particularly in the 1st series but most notably in the 3rd. The books are released out of order and in the first of the not-yet-finished 3rd quartet he has returned from war a changed man. Suffering extreme PTSD that he refuses to open up about. We don't see what happened to him for another couple books.

Poor boy.

I would say a lot of his character is born from the contradiction of his upbringing in extreme poverty and his current life of middle class comfort. He's caught between worlds and has a fairly unsure sense of self due to it. He sees himself in his apprentice, Evvy, for instance. Tammy Pierce is good at writing the discomfort of those raised in poverty navigating up the caste system. Beka Cooper from the Tortall books also contains elements of it.

On the surface he's an even tempered kid, especially when compared to his siblings. Sandry has her family and is a contradiction when dealing with her orphaned siblings because she has a home to return to. Daja was forced to select between her culture and her new found life at Winding Circle as she cannot be both a trader and a crafter. Tris is bitterly abandoned, knowing she is alone because people did not want her.

Briar was not abandoned or excommunicated and has no "home" to return to. He escaped from a life of being a gang thief. He was rescued. Rosethorn is the only mother he has ever known. It's why he's so attached to her.

The other siblings maintain some connection to their former lives (albeit with Tris it is mostly a chip on her shoulder and bitterness that haunts her), Briar let that past go as soon as he came to trust Winding Circle was legitimate and he had an honest future there.

So... if he's so well adjusted? What is his lie?

I'm not confident on it. But given how he acted in Will of the Empress, I'm going to say that he sees the uneven nature of his relationships with his siblings the clearest (albeit he sees himself fairly even with Tris). In WotE he grinds against Sandry who he feels is acting too much like a noble and is looking down on him.

and so...

Even if it's just a little bit.

"I am gutter trash." lives with him, even long after it has been dispelled. I think he has willed past it, but on some level feels like others still see that in him. That he cannot rise past it. If the lie is not that he believes he is then it is that others see him as it.

---

Trisana Chandler (The Circle of Magic)

Where Briar cultivates life and weaves power in by nurture and care, Tris is flooded with raw power that escapes her as lightning. Her mentor book shows that her primary skill in wielding this raw magical energy is bottling it up.

Shatterglass is a story of glass blowers and where Sandry delicately weaves her magic into her art, Daja pounds it into hers... Tris essentially traps it in glass. Lightning in a bottle, so to speak.

As Dawn wrote in our top 25 characters post:

Magic is emotion, it is passion, it is a connection to life and the world and with Briar his is not giving shape to his creations, it is cultivating the growth of things that cannot be tamed, he communes with the wild of the world and aids it and heals it. Daja and Sandry give their power shape and form as art. Tris tames the raging storm inside and eventually scries the winds to connect with the world without letting it break her, Briar's power is in love and nurture[...]

In the 3rd (and sadly unfinished) quartet she also begins to delve into scrying magic (which mixes in well with her glass blowing for making crystal balls) which is wild and uncontrollable and typically leads to people who attempt it losing their minds.

We often view Tris as a BPD projection character due to this. She overheard her biological family discussing how to be rid of her and took a long time to open up to her family at Winding Circle. On some level she never fully learns to trust. Hence when she moves into Daja's home at the start of the 3rd series she is constantly working to pay her way, do chores to be of use. Tension brews when it becomes clear she is only treading water there until she can find something more permanent. She never feels at home within that house. That she expects to be ejected at any time and is bracing for the fall.

In contrast to Briar, Tris grew up in well to do families and is now orphaned. She takes her banishment from Winding Circle the hardest because unlike the other siblings her magic is not profitable.

She cannot make a living on being a wild lightning child. She views herself as inconvenient. A burden.

She and I share a lie.

"I'm worthless and people do not want me. No one needs me."

Tris just puts a lot of work into trying to shape herself into something useful and needed.

Alas, her book in the 3rd quartet remains unwritten.

---

Daine (Tamora Pierce's Tortall series) and Susan (Terry Pratchett's Discworld series) Bruce Banner (Hulk) and Jesse Faden (Control) Elliot Alderson (Mr. Robot) Evangeline Morgan (Of the Devil) Juri Arisugawa (Revolutionary Girl Utena) Master Aqua (Kingdom Hearts) Rei Ayanami (Neon Genesis Evangelion) Devil Hulk (The Immortal Hulk) Beatrice the Golden Witch (Umineko) The Venom Symbiote (Marvel Comics) Jesse Pinkman (Breaking Bad/El Camino)