#ithotb

[benehvolent]

Someone or something PLEEEASE give me the motivation to write today i miss them

[benehvolent]

is ITHOTB your work in progress? Sounds cool from your tags :3

ohhhhhh my god thank you i can't believe someone asked about it!!! here is my massively long explanation. In the House of the Beast is a youngish adult fantasy novel i've been writing since i think 2020?? when it felt like @bluemourning and I had read every single (decent)queer fantasy book over the course of lockdown. so, the answer was for us to write stories for each other. ITHOTB started in this way as a very different story but at it's core has always been about the same basic characters and conflict. It's a story about magic and violence and most importantly, dependency and love. I wanted to explore the limits of codependency and see how long term, devoted PLATONIC love between friends and siblings gets transformed in the face of horrific magical ailments, warfare, and growing up and learning that the people you loved aren't just carbon copies of your own indoctrinated belief system. Then, how introducing a newcomer into this group who is even more insane would alter the dynamic. There is a queer romance element but it's not the main plotline.

So. SO! Lennox and her stepbrother Jude are well respected, wealthy highborn teens (18ish) in a kingdom called Kaska. Their best friend is the crown prince of Kaska, Damien. Two years before the story begins, Damien leaves on a mandatory religious pilgrimage to a holy fort where he is not allowed to leave or see anyone for two years while he undergoes a spiritual process to prepare him for his eventual ascension to the throne.

The story begins with Damien coming back from his two year seclusion with a classic case of Came Back Wrong. He is cold and dismissive towards his friends and displays unusual paranoia and cruelty, in addition to fits of illness that seem magical in nature. Lennox grows to resent this new Damien while also searching for clues to figure out what happened to Damien and what is wrong with him.

Mara, the other POV character, is a foreigner who has been sent on a mission to infiltrate Kaska's court and protect the life of Prince Damien by her adoptive guardian, Grun. Grun has trained Mara from a young age for this specific task, but given her very little info about why she needs to do this. Mara has been raised much like a soldier for Grun's cause without even really knowing what it is. Mara also can do a type of magic that is illegal and punishable by death in Kaska, so Grun has gotten her addicted to a drug that suppresses her magical abilities. Once in Kaska, Mara meets Lennox, Jude, and Damien and begins to question what the purpose of her mission is and why she is so loyal to Grun.

It's got politics it's got war it's got magical weapons it's got feral wet cat failgirls it's got young men with complicated feelings about honor and chivalry it's got homoerotic combat lessons it's got blood magic it's got "keep your dog on a leash" it's got destructive codependency it's got good stepparent representation it's got a catholic-coded theocracy and it's got one girl raised in the woods with deeply rooted issues with shame and a competency complex who is reeeaally good with knives meeting a stuck up bitchy highborn noble girl with soft hands whose entire external personality is her performance of what she thinks she's supposed to be and boy do they. have feelings about each other.

[benehvolent]

worst part of creating and writing a fantasy world is that there is no made up phrase that has the same gravitas as the "Jesus fucking christ"

[benehvolent]

(Foaming at the mouth, flailing around) wait WAIT no it’s about…. It’s about…. twins who aren’t twins they aren’t even related by blood but they fit together like two sides of the same coin and they cannot move through the world without each other and they constantly CHOOSE each other again and again and it’s about. their friends and their hearts and how their best friend is cursed and is scared of harming them so he pushes them away. but the three of them LITERALLY cannot stay away from each other even when they hate each other they will DIE for the others they will serve each other to everyone’s demise and cannot cut off any diseased part of their own being because they might risk wounding one of the others’ own entwined limbs… and then and THEN an outsider comes in and looks at the situation and says “what the fuck” and the three of them hiss back but then the outsider is even CRAZIER than the three of them and falls in love with them and and and and AND

[benehvolent]

Ohhhh something about characters who want to be chivalrous and honorable and gentlemanly and but are secretly disgusted and frightened by their desires yes you are your own worst enemy yes you are afraid of your own insides