Talon Trash Heap

My name is Wasp, and I have run a blog for five years that centers around the Talon Saga by Julie Kagawa. I am here for those who have also given their heart and soul to this book series, as a loud, ever-present, unrelenting voice with an increasingly impressive archive of art and writing. Ask Box is always open.

[talonsaga-trash]

Fuck it, pinned list of fanfics that I need to write eventually/fanfic wish list:

Longform fics, probably:

Dante and Ember are kidnapped as young children by St. George, pretend to be humans for half of their lifetimes to avoid getting slaughtered, accidentally develop a lot of loyalties to a cult

Wes previously worked for/currently works for the Archivist/has SOME SORT of shady connection with the Archivist and shit promptly goes sideways during the Vault Theft

Dante joins the rogue underground and immediately makes himself into a problem, joins Garret in London and accidentally cons the Patriarch into thinking he’s his illegitimate child, more at 7:00

Dante TRIED to join the rogue underground and was stopped before he could leave Crescent Beach AU that I started in October

Tristan and Dante are both independently realizing they need to get out of their respective shitty organizations and start the Worst Mutually-Assured-Destruction-Fueled Alliance Ever AU that @fj-is-a-dumbass and I talked about

Wes’ “Awful Time in Talon’s over-glorified human trafficking ring and under Roth’s Employ” Prequel Series.

Post-Canon, But Fucked Up: Ember tries to create a carbon copy of her brother with fabricated memories, because she might as well use the Vessel Project research for something, and Definitely-Dante-Hill has an AWFUL time about it.

Riley’s No Good Awful time where’s he’s not lucky enough to be Ember’s Salith’tahn. Instead he’s Lilith’s, and she’s less the “I feel like you are a part of me” Salith’tahn and more the “I want to kill your friends and keep you in my basement” Salith’tahn. Brought to you by the Talon Saga Discord Server.

Continuation of Trust Instincts: INSTINCTS BAD

Oneshots, hopefully:

Look, something awful happened in those hours between Tristan publicly defending Garret against the Patriarch and the Trial By Combat, I know it, and I want content about it.

Fallout of Riley having to pick Kain up from wherever he ran to after St. George killed his best friend in front of him

AU where it’s the Chief Basilisk that got to torture Riley and Garret in Legion because you know the Chief Basilisk can push all of Riley’s buttons (Bonus of their escape having Riley completely freeze up and Ember putting a gun to her own head to ensure their escape, Bonus^2 if Riley and Garret actually have an open conversation about some of the things the Chief Basilisk said)

Wes was literally branded while in Talon, has Talon’s mark on him somewhere, and has been trying to convince Riley to help burn/carve it off of him for twelve years and counting. No one is having a good time.

Horror-flavored Ember/Faith fic of Faith’s ghost haunting Ember

Horror-flavored fic of Faith’s ghost trying to drive Dante towards his Inferno suicide mission

Fuck it, horror-flavored Ember and Dante’s older sisters clinging to them in soldier when Dante’s working on the Vessels and Ember discovers the initial Vessel Lab

(If y’all wanna ask questions about any of them, ask box or otherwise, I’m always willing to talk about Talon, and I’m even more willing to talk about writing projects)

[j-marlowe]

I am once again thinking about Tristan St Anthony. The fact of all the saints he could have been he was given the name St Anthony by the order it picked it himself. The patron saint of lost things!

Thinking about Martin looking at this kid when he found him and gave him that name because he found something that was lost. That he like the historical saint was found in a terrible situation but could be saved.

If Tristan picked it seeing himself in that figure because he wants to help other people who were lost like him?

Also from a narrative lens, Tristan is Garret's guide so many times. He steps in when there's no way out and is the one to save the day so many times.

Another wonderful layer of this is Tristan role in the new order of Saint George is a fantastic mirror to St Anthony. The real life Saint himself took part in the newly formed order of the Franciscans despite the violence happening in the 12th century within the catholic church at the time. Great mirror to Tristan taking Garret side despite the risk.

All this to say the more I think about Tristan's name the more fitting it is.

[talonsaga-trash]

I do love Julie Kagawa's dedication to making Dante Hill kinda lame in the flashbacks, and carries that a little into the first book. Like, quintessential preteen lame. He broods into his orange juice. He makes really bad jokes in his head and then laughs to himself at them. He thinks Ember is the favorite because she gets yelled at more. He prides himself for being calm and in-control, and then nearly shifts in public the first time he sees Riley and takes up rock climbing as a hobby.

He's a lame preteen, a lame teenager, and has so much personality. (And then we get to see all of that stripped away as the series progresses.)

[astronomical-bagel]

god it’s so sad living in an allocentric world. There are so many relationships that are so complex and nuanced that are all put under the label of ‘romantic’ and immediately all the intrigue is taken from it. Like don’t you realize that these relations are actually ENHANCED by the fact that they are not romantic or sexual?

[quietwingsinthesky]

the dynamic between two people who love a third person so much and come to understand each other because of that is so important to me. you would put them first, and so would i. you understand why we have to save them from themself. i trust you with their life, and so, that means more than if i trusted you with mine. the love doesn't have to be the same, but it's powerful enough that you understand why you're not the only satellite drawn into their orbit.

[talonsaga-trash]

It’s not that I want Wes to suffer (<- lies) but I am constantly thinking of what could have been if Wes had managed to get captured along with Riley and Garret in Legion, because we see through the rogue flashbacks that Wes was significantly more reckless and outspoken when he was in Talon. His caution and self-preservation we see in the present timeline is a sign of growth, but in Talon he genuinely didn’t care if he was hurt.

And that means I really want to see him back in Talon, back around specifically Roth, and have the switch flip back to reckless bastard mode. Riley and Garret are used to Wes as their voice of reason, and are planning on protecting him as their weakest member, while Wes’ entire life goal has shifted from “run an underground to take Talon down” to “make everyone’s lives as unpleasant as possible before they kill me.”

[talonsaga-trash]

“Just because I’m not good at human things doesn’t mean I’m not willing to try”

What Ember heard: something deeply romantic about Riley’s desire to be with her on her terms, even through complicated situations that didn’t leave them in their comfort zones.

What Riley meant: that, but also a blaring warning that most human things he learned from close proximity with Wes and it WILL show.

[talonsaga-trash]

Jet ATLA and Riley Talonsaga would get along great. 10/10 characters to stick in a jar together.

[talonsaga-trash]

The sheer angst potential of Wes, twelve years removed from Talon, still calling the dragon who bought him Mr. Roth.

It's Wesley Higgins in messy clothes and uncombed hair even within Talon, a teenager who was the only human in a room of three powerful dragons and still stayed caustic and lacking in manners, who refused to buckle to convention. Who had seventeen years outside of low-income London to learn to speak "properly" and refuses to lose his accent. A rebel in every way he could afford to rebel.

And still, through all of that, using Mr. Roth, because of how deeply that sign of respect was ingrained in him. One form of rebellion torn out of his throat, that even now he can't bring himself to touch.

[talonsaga-trash]

Now that I’m re-reading Legion, I’m wondering the circumstances in which the Archivist learned about Wes.

Mist only refers to him as Riley’s Hacker Friend, which could mean 1 of 2 things: either Wes is the shady person behind Riley’s back who acts as an underground puppetmaster and was never connected to the disappearance of eighteen-year-old Wesley Higgins, or Mist was warned beforehand that there is no way better to make the terrifying Ex-Basilisk angry than to breathe towards threatening his friend. Or, somehow, a combination of the two.

Which is to say, the Archivist knew Wes. Talon did not.

Kind of hard not to take note of the newest part of Roth’s hoard, because the Archivist hoards knowledge and Roth hoards talent. Wesley Higgins was skilled enough at age fourteen to be stolen from the birthplace of St. George, the one place that Talon cannot go. Wesley Higgins only stayed in the dark about Talon’s true operations until he was sixteen, and then began working under a Talon Senior VP because keeping him in the dark any longer would be a waste. Wesley Higgins also made it no secret that he did not want to be here. Wesley Higgins managed to collect blackmail on Talon, the organization that specializes in blackmail.

The Archivist, specifically, specializes in blackmail.

There’s no way he wasn’t aware of Wes. As someone running a parallel secret organization within Talon, having a talented hacker who has no loyalty to Talon would be incredibly appealing to the Archivist. He was probably trying to poach this kid ever since he turned sixteen, but it’s hard to steal from another dragon’s hoard. It’s even harder when the thing he’s trying to steal is making it pretty damn clear that he doesn’t take kindly to dragons. Who, like most humans, wouldn’t see the difference between working for Talon and working for the Archivist when neither are human. So acquiring Wes would take time, and the Archivist has a lot of patience, but all the patience in the world doesn’t matter when Wesley Higgins was only under Roth’s employ for another two years before he dropped off the grid and was never seen again.

And sure, Roth knew where he went, because Roth knew who stole that file from St. George that so mysteriously went missing, which was then used to start Cobalt’s underground. And Roth definitely knows who blackmailed him. Wes wasn’t exactly slick in where he went. But for Roth, losing part of his hoard escaped was bad enough. He wasn’t about to admit to the rest of Talon that said part of his hoard blackmailed him and then started stealing hatchlings, because that’s how you lose your job. So Wesley Higgins stays missing. Maybe a body that looks like him mysteriously washes up in a river somewhere. And Cobalt gains a shadowy puppetmaster, shrouded in even more mystery than the ex-Basilisk itself.

The Archivist assumes that Wesley Higgins is a lost opportunity. A shame, a waste of potential, but potential doesn’t mean much, and it’s not like he would have been any more agreeable to the Archivist than he was for Roth, when the Archivist is just another dragon.

Twelve years later, Talon sends one of his lowercase-a archivists on a suicide mission to kill Cobalt. She is, to the shock of everyone including herself, left alive. About two months later, Cobalt breaks into his Vault with the Elder Wyrm’s daughter and Dr. Olsen’s son. Oh, and his little human hacker friend, whose mention made an ex-Basilisk so pale and stiff when it came from the Archivist’s mouth, which means that Cobalt actually cares about his puppetmaster. His very skilled puppermaster, considering he was able to cut a hole through his electronic security as efficiently as any of Talon’s elites. It takes hours before his own technicians can recover enough from the security cameras to get a picture of him.

And apparently the Archivist misread Wesley Higgins, because he’s been working alongside a dragon for twelve years with no issues. He’s older now, as he watches the grown man on the camera carefully leaf through the Archivist’s electronic information and steal even more company secrets than he already has, but it’s unmistakably him. The human that outran Roth, outran the Archivist, and ran straight to Cobalt.

The best thing to do for Talon, of course, would be to inform the Elder Wyrm who Cobalt’s puppermaster is. It would certainly give the Archivist more credibility with the Elder Wyrm, what with making the underground easier to pin down, and would serve a nice bonus of destabilizing Roth’s power— maybe even enough to keep him from trying to bring Dante Hill into his hoard, because the Archivist would love the chance to collect the second son of the Elder Wyrm.

The Archivist instead files this information away for a rainy day. He’s sure it will come in handy.

[talonsaga-trash]

I think my ideal vision of Riley's relationships is finding a twin flame in Stealth (high-maintenance machines, cogs in Talon's empire who egged each other on), a soulmate in Ember (feeling an intimate knowledge of each other despite not knowing each other, entirely against either of their wills), a romantic partner in Mist (both of them want to prove they're more than what Talon made them, and this is the only way they know how to do it), and building his entire life around Wes (they live together, they have kids together, they trust each other with every secret).

And then all of these relationships conflict horribly in his psyche.

[aconstellationcollective]

dehumanization as horror is great and all but what about humanization as horror. Being forced into a role that was not made for you. Being forced to fulfill expectations that you can never achieve. Being made to exist in a society that so cruelly expects you to act in a way that is against your nature.

[talonsaga-trash]

Rogue, also known as the book where, due to time constraints, Garret is wearing Wes or Riley’s spare clothes for the whole book.

[soap-is-an-artist]

california girls we're unforgivable, sins so grave they can't be absolved!

[talonsaga-trash]

Local punk uses his bad boy charm to trick cult members into critical thinking, gets shot about it: more at 9

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

love that part in gottfried’s tristan when smiling lost baby little tristan meets some guys from cornwall and they are like what a sweet little kid!!!! so nice to meet you! what’s your name buddy? and he’s like oh my name is literally sorrow :) and the guys are pretty rightfully like hold up why the fuck would anyone name a child that

[talonsaga-trash]

Here’s the thing I don’t see the main love triangle working out via polycule, because the entire point of it is that Ember can’t have both freedom and a soulmate so she’s going to pick freedom. If she could have both that would ruin the message of “sometimes freedom means giving something up but it’s still worth it to make sure your life is your own”. That, and for all Riley and Garret grow to trust each other, I don’t think they can truly get over how Garret killed Riley’s kids. Garret will always feel guilty and Riley will always feel a helpless rage that is not conductive to being in a polycule. Some things can’t be overcome, and that’s okay, too.

On the other hand, the much more subtle love triangle (aka it was brought up twice in a five book series) could 100% be solved by polyamory. This is Ember and her boyfriend Garret and his boyfriend Tristan. But when Garret is busy and tries to reschedule a date Tristan and Ember fuck off to engage in Platonic Bastard Time (be bad influences on each other.) Everyone is thriving.

[j-marlowe]

Ember and Tristan will be getting matching piercings when Garret isn't looking.

[talonsaga-trash]

Garret turns around for ONE SECOND and then both of his partners have lip piercings which are so impractical and bad for combat. But look. Look. He is a weak man and they are SO hot.