someone loves me very much

Yonah, she/her, 30s. a place for assorted fandom blogging. Queen's Thief now and for my life, with occasional bits of A:TLA, Death Note, and Ghost Hunt.

[casual-haterism]

sad girly girl who wears white dresses and curls her hair and puts on no makeup makeup every morning who gets a butch makeover montage at the end of the movie and everyone goes wow. also they replace his contact lenses with thick stupid nerd glasses. is this anything

[whocalledhimannux]

I read this and thought "haha good post" and then realized. this is almost literally the rule 63 Comet fic I just wrote. literally the only thing missing is that Kamet doesn't have glasses by the end, which is particularly hilarious because we all know he needs them.

[artino-c]

In The King of Attolia, one thing we learn almost immediately about Costis is that he owns three (3) books, all of which were confiscated when his rooms were searched for evidence of treason. (I don't think we ever learn if he gets them back!)

Which of the following books is most likely to belong to Costis Ormentiedes?

Collected Works of Melinno and/or Archilochus (both discussed with Gen in KOA)

History of Attolia (contains no mention of Klimun of Kathodicia)

History of Attolia (does mention Klimun, Costis just missed that part)

Archaic-Demotic Dictionary

Swordfighting or other battle-related treatise

Financial Advice for Dummies

Some type of religious literature (tell me more)

Other work/author named in canon (Enoclitus? the Eponymiad? tell me in the tags)

Other book we're NOT told about in canon (tell me in the tags!)

Voting ended onFeb 16

[rslashrats]

[whocalledhimannux]

@romelette I am Very tired and I just took melatonin so dont ask me for citations on this but Relius spends his entire retirement sitting on a verandah, eating cheese, grapes, and bread, drinking red wine and listening to the Attolian equivalent of Leonard Cohen. This is just fact.

[whocalledhimannux]

Teleus “retires” but literally cannot comprehend the idea of not doing any work all day. He putters around the yard gardening and building fences and chopping wood and whatnot. Relius, from the verandah, comments that it’s very hot out and helpfully suggests that he might be more comfortable shirtless.

[whocalledhimannux]

@costis: do you mean to suggest to me that teleus isn’t feeding the grapes to relius?

Teleus has a quota of physical labor he needs to meet each day to convince himself that he isn’t whipped (he is)

also your url makes this comment 10x funnier because it suggests that Costis, who WOULD feed Kamet grapes all day every day (Kamet does not want him to do this), is incensed that his mentor is insufficiently gallant.

[kareenvorbarra]

kamet:

costis:

[whocalledhimannux]

so. just out of curiosity.

do we think costis's nipples are pierced?

yeah that's hot

yeah that's logical; if eddisians get tattoos, attolians get body piercings

no i hate fun

no but kamet's are

Voting ended onJan 16

[whocalledhimannux]

Very curious to see my throwaway joke suggestion in first place 🤔

[whocalledhimannux]

#regretfully voted no but i have to speak my truth#if costis’s nipples were pierced kamet would have told us

you know what? I do have to concede the point

this man would have told us.

[whocalledhimannux]

See, my thinking is that virtually all of the practical arguments against nipple piercings are basically as applicable or even more applicable to ear piercings, and we know for a fact that Costis has at least one of those. (Granted, we don’t know for sure if his ear was pierced prior to Thick as Thieves, but I think I’m correct in saying that the fandom has wholeheartedly embraced the concept of earrings for the men of the Little Peninsula in general.)

If you’re in a fight, it’s a LOT easier to grab the lobe of someone’s ear than their nipple, even if they’re fighting topless. A soldier who is fighting in armor most of the time has no reason to expect his opponent will be able to rip out his nipple piercing. And as for the armor itself… I mean, I will say that nipple piercings take longer to heal than ear piercings, and that does pose a legitimate challenge. However, in my experience the day-to-day pain or discomfort of having headphones on pierced ears hurts because the pressure of headphones is like… bending and contorting the ear, which causes the earring to tug against the piercing site. The pulling itself hurts a little, and it can cause or worsen inflammation.

And that just doesn’t really happen with nipple piercings? When they’re new, most piercers actually recommend that you wear tight clothes for a while, because the pressure is fairly light and evenly applied, and you’re more likely to feel pain if you wear a loose shirt that gets tangled in the piercing and yanks it out place—which is more like the headphones and earring example above. Of course, this is equally problematic for anyone who wears a loose tunic under their armor, but my point is that this really only applies for the first few months when the piercing is fresh. Once they’re healed, nipple piercings typically do not cause day-to-day pain.

Granted, I’ve never worn armor, but I can attest that using a machine like this at the gym is quite painful for the first few days after getting a fresh piercing and mildly uncomfortable for the first few months (depending on how good your wound care is), and after that you barely notice it. Nipple piercings can certainly cause sensitivity and pain, but it’s significantly more intense with direct stimulation than broad, general stimulation. Kind of like if you imagine someone poking your arm or placing a hand on your arm with equal force—you feel the poke more intensely.

It is true that, in terms of pain after healing, piercings are inherently much worse than tattoos. Healed tattoo sites are not any more or less sensitive for most people—or if they are, it’s highly individual and often negligible. However, in a premodern society I would think that the risks of getting a tattoo are much higher than the risk of getting a nipple piercing. With both you’re inserting a metal needle into the skin, but with the former you’re also inserting some kind of foreign pigment, and you’re covering a much larger open wound that is then liable to infection… Granted I’ve only ever been the recipient of a body modification, not the practitioner, but in terms of the overall potential disadvantages, it lowkey feels like six of one, half a dozen of the other.

[whocalledhimannux]

so. just out of curiosity.

do we think costis's nipples are pierced?

yeah that's hot

yeah that's logical; if eddisians get tattoos, attolians get body piercings

no i hate fun

no but kamet's are

Voting ended onJan 16

[whocalledhimannux]

Very curious to see my throwaway joke suggestion in first place 🤔

[whocalledhimannux]

#regretfully voted no but i have to speak my truth#if costis’s nipples were pierced kamet would have told us

you know what? I do have to concede the point

this man would have told us.

[whocalledhimannux]

so. just out of curiosity.

do we think costis's nipples are pierced?

yeah that's hot

yeah that's logical; if eddisians get tattoos, attolians get body piercings

no i hate fun

no but kamet's are

Voting ended onJan 16

[whocalledhimannux]

Very curious to see my throwaway joke suggestion in first place 🤔

[whocalledhimannux]

so. just out of curiosity.

do we think costis's nipples are pierced?

yeah that's hot

yeah that's logical; if eddisians get tattoos, attolians get body piercings

no i hate fun

no but kamet's are

Voting ended onJan 16

[whocalledhimannux]

I may or may not be writing a lil wlw Comet 👀

“But that attitude severely limits your options, even in Attolia. Men are necessary for some things.” “Such as?” I was flabbergasted at her deliberate obtuseness, and I stammered as I said, “Love. Sex. Children.” The Attolian stared at me for a moment before bursting into laughter. I flushed, and she bit her lip against all but a few errant giggles. “Children, I’ll grant you. But what on earth makes you think men are necessary for love and sex?” “Definition,” I said. Her amusement confused me, too, and the word came out cold. “Whose definition?” “Well--everyone’s. Zartosht writes that the phallus is the source of desire. Women do not experience sexual pleasure except when they are in communion with men, because women lack the sexual organ. All the major writers agree with this.” The Attoian did not laugh at me this time, but she had to press her lips together very hard. “Zartosht, he was a man?” “Yes.” “A man who never brought a woman pleasure. What a sad thing to be remembered for.” I was flustered and embarrassed, and I wanted to change the subject. “Why was it so easy for you to kill the slavers?” That shut her up.

may or may not. impossible to say.

[whocalledhimannux]

The Queen’s Thief Timeline

I first sat down to make a timeline for this series in 2018. I was taking my first steps into the online fandom and wanted to have a timeline to reference for fic purposes, but I was no stranger to the series, which I had first picked up in middle school almost twelve years earlier. In the years since, it’s been tweaked a bit here and there, particularly after Return of the Thief was released in 2020, but I’ve always been slightly dissatisfied with the tumblr formatting and the typos and math errors that I was sure lingered in the text. 2026 marks twenty years (!) since I first dove into The Thief, and it seemed fitting to mark that milestone by giving this timeline a thorough update.

As part of this update, I have decided to officially move the timeline onto a google doc so I had more flexibility to play around with the formatting, and for ease of longevity. I know that this tumblr post has been circulated, so I’m editing the original directly in the hopes that people will still be able to access it if they click the read more button. Fingers crossed I haven’t just broken the post entirely.

Here is the link to the new and improved timeline.

Keep reading

[whocalledhimannux]

✨✨✨

[whocalledhimannux]

also, fun lore about me: I didn't publish any QT fanfiction until after I read Thick as Thieves in 2018, but I actually did start writing a fic somewhere around... 2012ish? Give or take a few years? I had loved Costis so much when reading KoA and was profoundly disappointed that he didn't make an appearance in ACoK--I honestly didn't expect him to become a main character again at any point, but I thought he'd at least have the occasional cameo, and I specifically remember thinking it felt like a missed opportunity to have Aris be the guard on duty when Gen and Sophos sneak out because that would have been such a good place for Costis's appearance lol.

so to make up for the lack of Costis, I sketched out a few paragraphs where, in addition to Attolia giving Sophos the gun, Gen also "gave" him Costis as a bodyguard. the fic never really went anywhere, and I'm not even sure if I ever wrote more than a page--Costis's presence just kinda felt superfluous, because realistically speaking anything he could have done to support the narrative was done better by Basrus, Ion Nomenus, and the other gun.

and then I read TaT, recognized Costis immediately, thought "oh my god this is a million times better than my bodyguard idea," and officially dunked my already-abandoned WIP in the trash. but one thing I think is funny about my QT reading experience is that I fully believed the series was only a trilogy when I first read it--not only because the fourth book hadn't been published yet, but because I found the ending of KoA so satisfying and complete--and was thus TOTALLY unprepared for ACoK, and then was TOTALLY unprepared for TaT but for very different reasons.

[whocalledhimannux]

I'm so close to finishing my timeline edit and I managed to not get distracted at any other point in my final proofreading but now I'm at the end of Thick as Thieves and I just keep wanting to stop and talk about how much I love Costis and Kamet. the pure "they're fighting, and they're holding hands because they get sad when they fight" energy of the dungeons. the moment Kamet says his name for the first time--I still remember how that moment Got Me the first time I read the book even though of course it wasn't really a reveal by that point. I love that Kamet slips up a little bit and says "I don't care that Costis mocks me" when he hasn't actually gotten to the point where he and Costis have reconciled yet. it's SO good.

[whocalledhimannux]

god, the scenes on the dolphin are just pure concentrated Costis/Kamet brilliance. they truly are an idiot4idiot couple. martyr4martyr. dramaqueen4dramaqueen.

[whocalledhimannux]

Confession: I've never read much Eugenides/Irene fanfiction or felt tempted to write it. I enjoy them in canon, but as a ship they just don't have some of the particular characteristics that make for interesting fan-type engagement for me, if that makes sense.

HOWEVER. There's that one paragraph in Queen of Attolia where Irene wakes up at night and stares at the shadows in her bedroom and has a "perverse" wish to call someone to banish them, "perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not." and I've always thought that scene was just beggggggging for a fic.

specifically, a dubcon-ish fic wherein the shadows aren't empty, where she says something like "I know you're there" and Eugenides steps out, and they have sex where he suggests this is something he's doing To Her as revenge for her cutting off his hand and she suggests she is allowing it because she does in fact Owe Him something and they both tell themselves it's hatesex that means nothing. it's not aggressive, per se, but it is callous and businesslike and neither of them have any particular personal feelings about it.

OR DON'T THEY??

[whocalledhimannux]

I’m still chugging along on my timeline rewrite, and was just idly thinking that it takes Costis and Kamet sooo much longer to walk between cities than it does people on the peninsula—it’s pretty consistent that a healthy person could walk the entire distance between the Attolian and Sounisian capitals in about two weeks on foot—and then I remembered this two maps and the different levels of intentional distortion between them.

Peak worldbuilding.

[whocalledhimannux]

I’ve been meaning to edit my big QT timeline and am finally getting around to it as part of a general “pick up old fandom projects” effort having finished two Big fic assignments last year

And on the one hand this is good because it’s to pick up old fandom projects.

But on the other what do you mean I’ve been working on it for two and a half hours straight.