Okay, But Can We All Just Appreciate How Fluffy And Soft Sanguine Looks Even Though He´s Drawn In Red

SP CHARACTER STUDY 4/? - VALKYRIE CAIN

for one so young, she already carries a lifetime of regrets

genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

@sierralafontaine said he looked soft on my to do board and it fueled me to draw him again!

Nef, put that back where you’ve found it before you lose a finger or two

redraw of an old thing from a deleted blog

Well, thanks for tearing my heart out all over again. This is beautiful. Dexter and Saracen deserved some closure.

Me writing fanfic in 2020? More likely than you think.  I wrote a short fic about Dexter and Saracen in seasons of war so if you guys would give it a read that would be very nice thank you. I haven’t written fic in years so let’s hope I’ve remembered how to write

"You know I have a bad habit of being attracted to redheads who are mean to me..." - Tony Stark, A.X.E.: Avengers

Back to the Saracen mentoring Val au and here’s Saracen introducing Val to Dexter

Dexter: so this is your new partner?

Saracen: yep. This is Valkyrie and I’m moulding her into a fine, upstanding citizen

Dexter:

Dexter: so Valkyrie what’s your magic

Saracen: *winks and nods at Val*

Valkyrie: I know things

Dexter:

Shameless self promotion, but I´m about 50k words deep into a (German, sorry to all of you British folks) story about what could have happened if Valkyrie and Skulduggery had joined Dexter´s team during TM7... the main POVs are Dexter´s, Val´s and Saracen´s and the focus is on the mission as well as on the characters´ feelings / relationships. 

I can't stress enough how much I miss StumbleUpon

What do you think China’s childhood was like? Every book, her view on it seems to change..

tbh it’s actually quite interesting seeing China’s different takes on her childhood, because in a way I don’t think she’s ever really recovered from it unlike Bliss, who got out at such an early age. Indeed, often when discussing her past, China always compares herself to her brother, portraying herself as weaker, slower in escaping - but the interesting thing is, she never really mentions what it was they escaped from, rather than just the mentioned indoctrination of all believers.

But the first time she really mentions her opinion of her childhood, and not just her general experience as a worshipper, she brushes it off, saying:

It had been a happy childhood. Completely insane, but happy. - MC

What’s even more interesting is through the rest of this extract, China keeps making jokes about her questions of faith + the general situation

True, she had generally had more fun in the old days... and she didn’t have to spend half her day praying. She’d never been able to understand why the Faceless Ones weren’t praying to her. - MC

But then, what I find interesting is the subtext in any of her memories of her childhood - they’re awful and yet she almost normalises them. And even when she admits to some of her troubling memories, they’re pretty watered down:

All though her childhood she’d had trouble sleeping, plagued as she was by the stories her parents would tell her of the Faceless Ones.

Doesn’t that make you feel happy? And China had said, No, Mother, it gives me bad dreams, and her mother’s face had changed in an instant and China had spent the next three days on her knees, praying to the Faceless Ones, begging for their forgiveness. - B

It’s a pretty horrifying image, a young girl (which China is very much implied to be in this extract) being forced onto her knees for three days straight because she dared to voice her fears.

Idk if it’s a coping method or something, but in a way, I see it as China almost blocking out the trauma of her childhood - we see her mention it occasionally, but most of the time she just laughs it off (which is really worrying)

I think something people often forget is that unlike some worshippers of the Faceless ones, China didn’t choose to be one, she was born into it - she had no choice, she was practically indoctrinated and it’s clear that some traumatic things happened behind the scenes that enforced her to stay obedient

What’s even more interesting is that when China leaves the church of the Faceless Ones, she doesn’t go straight to the good guys, she isolates herself and she also has some very interesting conversations about myths/fantastical elements in the world, with this being one example:

“I’ve heard nonsense. I’ve heard something that doesn’t even deserve to be called a rumour. - SP

Seems like another one of her coping methods up until TFO is to deny the existence of these gods, these legends, because in a way China never got over the indoctrination of the Church - if she fled and the gods were real, she’s damned. So if she brushes it off, just like her childhood trauma, pretending it’s not real, then she can cope - she’s not damned, which seems to be a prominent fear of her childhood

untroubled by half-remembered visions of doom and damnation + she had hidden her fears from her parents and suffered those nightmares in silence. - B

It’s interesting to see the relapse of faith in this most recent book - I’ve discussed my predictions for China in this post but I think it’s pointing towards an unraveling mind in many ways, as we also see China having a lot of flashbacks to her past as if she’s starting to relieve a lot of her repressed trauma - that could be because of Solace’s influence or something else, who knows..