yes i logged back into this account for the sole purpose of reblogging that coad post,,, can u believe that’s rly happening holy shit

a mood yet again, turns out i’ll only log into this account for coad huh

Vipers daughter

So Michelle just revealed that Vipers Daughter is going to be about Renn discovering that Torak is in danger, and that she is the danger. They've been happily living in the Forest together for two years, as mates, and now they have to defeat the new evil. They're going up north, beyond the Far North, and are going to see mammoths. I don't know if they're going to meet new people though. We don't know yet why Torak is in danger, but I guess it will be revealed when the book comes out...

sketches for next tarot idea

The Big Announcement!

reasons to read The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness 

… so I’m probably going to regret writing this, but I saw the same idea implied on another post, and I take issue with it a bit: the idea that COAD is awesome because of the strict delineations between its good and evil characters. That grey areas are unnecessary and you need to avoid them if you want good literature. 

I could make the argument that there are areas of grey in COAD. And it seems like Michelle brushes over them a bit, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Torak’s father’s on the white side, right? I mean, he’s the main character’s role model and everything, he defeated the Soul Eaters the first time - but he’s still a murderer (if you don’t believe me, here’s the Canadian Criminal code). He sells his child to a god in the full knowledge of how sucky that will make the child’s life, and then proceeds to withhold from him all the relevant information. And he doesn’t ever think to get his kid away from the certain danger that follows him. That’s irresponsible parenting, that is. Also, I would like to point out that what we see of him in Ghost Hunter implies that redemption ain’t a thing in Michelle’s presented worldview.

Fin-Kedinn’s on the white side, right? He orders Torak killed in the first book and cast out in the fourth. He also turns his best friend and pregnant wife out into the wild. (To me, that was, and still is, viscerally horrifying. Almost everyone in this series practices sacred hospitality, and that is an outright violation of it.)

Tenris is on the black side, right? Well, he screwed up my carefully-considered Cain-and-Abel dichotomy by being the Abel.

Nef’s on the black side, right? Except she’s never cruel to anyone or anything, really, and she believes - truly believes - that she’s doing what she must for the sake of giving everyone a better life. And when she realizes , she puts her “don’t hurt people” values where her mouth is and saves our mains.

Aki’s on the white side, right? He kicks off the entire conflict of Outcast and is just an outright jerk to all the protagonists.

Hord’s on the black side, right? Except he and Torak have the exact same goal. He just thinks that since he put everyone in danger, he should do the dangerous quest, instead of this strange confused boy he has no reason to trust. His flaws come from prioritizing his clan and place in the world very highly.

All-white stories are aspirational. All-black stories are cautionary. But stories with grey in them are the ones that illustrate the reality that morality is sometimes messy and sometimes hard to judge. That approaches the questions of how to make the right choices when it’s hard, and how to go on after making the wrong choices. My interpretation was that the lesson in the books was never supposed to be “this is good and this is bad”. It was more about how to develop one’s own principles, to be used to judge between good and bad. How do you make a choice when none of the options are good? How do you go on when you’ve messed up? In a world that is a messy moral patchwork, where do you walk?

Maybe this is just personal for me, because most of the material I want to write on COAD is about finding and expanding those grey areas - the light character’ dark sides and the dark characters’ light - and I thought this would be a safer fandom to test that in. But… do people really think there’s no nuance in these books? And that that makes them better? I don’t get it. I simply don’t.

Okay so I don’t use this blog anymore really so this is a super belated reply. Better late than never I guess? (My original post is more than 2 years old so I’m cringing reading it yikes.)

So I believe that the base of your argument is based off this point in my post? 

To clear things up, I’m absolutely certain that I was thinking solely about Eostra, Seshru and Thiazzi. Not Fin-Kedinn, or Torak’s father or any of the others you listed. I was referring to the evil dudes™ as it were, perhaps I should have specified but I don’t think I ever intended for ‘evil dudes with no grey ground’ to be interpreted as a blanket statement for any character that had done anything wrong. 

There wasn’t any point in the books that I sympathised with Eostra or Seshru or Thiazzi if i recall the books correctly. They weren’t portrayed as morally grey characters nor as characters you were meant to want redemption for. At least, that was my take on it. And the impression I got from the (albeit very small) fandom on here, when I was active, was that no one was defending those characters’s evil actions. There wasn’t any of that Snape bullshit in the fandom where people defended and excused some of his pretty nasty actions and paint him as some hero. That was what I wanted to address. Not the moral depth of the books. 

Hopefully that clears up where I was coming from and all the best with your CoAD writing! 

Literary quotations that sound better when yelled, presented without comment.

i am all about gray foggy mornings in late autumn when there’s a chill and a shiver in my body. mornings that call for large sweaters and rain boots. standing in the woods with pine and rain and smoke in the air. or standing at the edge of the ocean with salt in your mouth and the wind in your hair. the feeling of being both lost and found at the same time. the promise of returning home in your hands. a lick of winter at your heels.

Resurrection stone idea

GUYS.  WE’RE GETTING A HARRY POTTER GO APP!!!!!!!

What will/could be included in the game:

I’m so excited!! Reblog to tell a friend!!!!

is this my dream closet? yes, yes it is.