#charles cornick

[peiorate]

a little something well in advance to see how close I can get to accurately predicting the new book lol

Honorable mentions that didn’t make the cut on my janky-ass bingo card:

-mercy as a child in aspen creek story mention

-asil dies

-fairy tale-esque prologue

-rehashing shit from the previous book that everyone already knows

-leah and bran are a happy couple now

-cover art of anna as a human and charles as a wolf and its winter themed

let me know what you guys predict

[paulcolorado]

[bonemarble]

love your thoughts on Leah! how do you think her relationship could develop or what direction would it go in regards to Anna and Charles after wild sign?

interesting question! i don't think i have a very good answer for a "direction" these relationships could take, mainly because that depends on the larger story pb wants to tell: is this a story where people deconstruct the social order that has generated them or one where they try to find some measure of peace in it? i'll explain better under the cut.

charles and leah, i think, are at a point where they are starting to come to terms with their rivalry and identify its true cause: they were two lonely children starved for affection fighting each other because they couldn't fight bran for it. at the same time i don't know that this modicum of understanding is enough to build a relationship. even seeing the situation with a bit more clarity, the material causes that pit them against each other are not going to disappear, they have centuries of ill feelings between them, and i think at this point they simply don't like each other very much. even more importantly, i think there's a very good reason they are so repelled by each other and it took them so long to see the other's distress: they are very good mirrors. they both spent formative years of their lives with bran as the only (if imperfect) parental (or quasi) figure in their lives and attached the majority of their sense of self to their usefulness to him. to fully recognise the pain of this in the other would come very close to recognising this in themselves. they both know bran doesn't treat them well but they have become accustomed to it, i think. they grow some thick skin over it, shrug it off and get on with things (that's how bran wants them after all). seeing the other's wounds would make their own much more difficult to ignore. there's also an even more convoluted contortion in place: if they each believe bran is somehow unfair only towards them while he is right when he mistreats others, they never need to really question bran's judgement. feeling isolated in this unfairness is preferable compared to confronting the life-shaking truth that the person that moves the sun in your world may be doing it wrong. many other thoughts along these lines but this is already long.

leah and anna also have a mildly antagonistic relationship but of course there's less history there. my main issue with anna is that the only way to give her some true tridimensionality would be to acknowledge with some seriousness the difficulty of her circumstances. she was turned against her will, abused for years, and then latched onto her only saviour. he is a man she knows little when they basically marry and he is violent and possessive. her new life revolves around him and his complex family, with which she lives and has to deal all the time. at the same time, her survival depends on their support and protection, as we have seen how much her 'omega specialness' doesn't really ensure safety without material power to prevent her exploitation. there's no need to turn this into a grimdark novel, but if this context is not always waved away, suddenly she is not an unrealistic fairy always untouched by events: she is someone making strategic decisions to craft the best life possible out of her circumstances, finding love where she can and fighting for it. she has no true interest in anyone besides charles bc she is rightly guarded and balancing her new relationship with him already requires a lot of her energies. + he is the only person she can trust to be in her corner, without which she should be as lost as when they met (she also truly loves him ofc but this hardly explains her isolationist behaviour). she manipulates others not bc she is some quirky genius: it's the only way she sees to obtain what she needs when she is surrounded by aggressive impulsive people that are more powerful than her and feels the need to forestall their worst reactions. when bran and charles start giving her some latitude, she relaxes around them, especially as she realises she has things she can leverage (charles's love and her omega powers) to ensure a better condition for herself. but she is still wary of their flaws and recognises how they impact leah. yet leah is unpleasant. she sometimes makes her life more difficult but not really with the gravity and frequency people seem to assign her. even on good days however anna, so so smart and crafty and sneaky in navigating her circumstances, is almost annoyed by her: how has she not learned to do this better? how has she not learned to make herself likeable and dance around people and avoid confrontation to better obtain what she wants? but there's something else behind it, imo: leah might be brash and crude but she is real. how liberating that must be, to not always feel like your well-being depends on how quickly you past on a smile! the reason anna doesn't like leah, is the reason most people don't: to acknowledge leah's reactions as sensible is to eliminate the displacement of blame that allows life under unfair circumstances. to see leah's anger is justified means asking herself: why is she not angry? leah is a great mirror for her too. she can recognise her pain if she imagines her to be in a much more difficult position, someone to help from a higher standing. to confront her from a position of parity would mean to confront that position of parity: that she doesn't have any more material power than leah and her current better treatment stems from a momentary lucky alignment of events over which she has little control. bran and charles are, in their own ways, as unpleasant as leah is, only 1) anna needs them to survive; 2) since they also need her + they are not threatened by her they generally choose to treat her better. i am not saying anna should roll over and let leah treat her however she wants: leah enacts a similar mechanism with anna after all. disliking anna for being treated better is the only valve available to release her anger: it's not like she can accomplish much by going against bran and charles.

necessary prelude for me to say i don't care if leah and anna become fast friends. much as i don't care if leah and charles do. i think this dynamic is interesting even if it remains antagonistic, as long as either immobilism or change follow some logical exploration of this setting. it can truly go either way i would be ok with both.

[slowlysointernet]

Okay so this is an old contemplation of mine that i forgot to post but why do Samuel and Charles have slightly different views of their father and Leah?

Samuel in Iron Kissed:

''Despise'' huh? That's a strong word. Is that how Samuel sees his father act to Leah?

Charles in Cry Wolf:

Charles seems unsure about it all compared to Samuel.

What's interesting about all of this, is that Bran felt the need to hide and twist the truth about his mating to his sons, the people he's closest and dearest to.

[kinesmanda]

Charles: Yeah, I can see why you'd be upset. That was my sarcastic voice.

Ben: Sounds a lot like your regular voice.

Charles: I've been told that.

[mercy-thompson-fanfiction]

I have read some hot takes (which I don’t disagree with but let’s not get into the weeds) and I’m so curious if they’re actually hot takes.

This is not regarding even the actual conversation I had with someone last night which is way more fun hot takes and not “well I think this character is actually a horrible person.”

But I’m curious where people draw the morally grey line in this series. I think I have to make this an actual survey monkey or something to be done completely anonymously with more deliberate questions but I’m not going to do that right now. I’m laying in bed 😂

Which of the following do you consider to be the most innocent action, assuming that killing is generally accepted as “wrong”:

Killing in self-defense (physical)

Killing/Abusing under order (or compulsion)

Killing/Abusing due to being a cliche statistic

Killing in defense of someone else (physical)

Killing in self-defense (abstract)

Killing in defense of other(s) (abstract)

Killing/Torturing humans for some form of consumption

Voting ended onMar 4, 2025

To clarify:

“Physical” means against physical harm.

“Abstract” means, in one case, killing to keep a secret. Like if Dumbledore goes and murders a muggle who saw magic. Idk why that was the example.

[browsingaround2]

Spoilers for Burn Bright, Alpha & Omega Series.

….

Patricia: Bran maybe has a repressed thing for Mercy.

The Entire Fandom: 😬

….

I’m rereading this book and I gotta say… I think I convinced myself we blew this out of proportion. We did not. It is very clear. What…. Whatcha doing there, Patty? 😅🙃

[aggiehufflepuff]

I really need the Mercy Thompson fandom to be a looooot bigger with fanart and graphics and the whole nine yards please and thank you