#*iphigenia thought exercise

he sure do :•) (and his mother, of course! but neither of them need to acknowledge any resemblance there.) goddd yeah the praise kink of it all. one that goes both ways too! eris because he had to work so hard to earn his father's approval and that was only ever earned through becoming worse and worse and worse, so for him to be praised for pleasing someone is like a jolt to the system—iphigenia because she only survived beron at all by being pleasing and pleasurable and still feels such toe-curling delight to know she's doing a good job without having to ask. with beron, she always had to work for it, then outright ask for it—have i pleased you, high lord? are you pleased, high lord? did i please you, high lord? and it made her glad for him to say yes! but it never quite felt good or gratifying because his fixation with her was never really about her. i think because of that, part of it for her with eris too is like . someone who looks like beron finally being actually pleased with her for who she is. even better—eris resents how much she looks like amalia; he loves her in spite of that, where beron only ever lusted after her because of it.

so it's just like. god it hits so good. i think the way eris praises her is a lot more overt. look at you, how pretty you part for me, how well you take me, open your mouth, just like that, such a good girl. she gets literally so hot over it and doesn't mind him knowing how much it affects her. it's part of the play for them. he's even a little taunting and teasing with it sometimes. he never makes her earn it—he tried that one time and the way she receded into herself was almost nauseating enough for them to stop—but he likes to work her up with it as they're getting started. it makes her like . frantic for him. and he likes it best when there isn't any sort of performance from her, so getting it out of the way early is optimal. he wants her genuine. but when iphigenia praises him, i think it's a lot more subtle and covert. he begrudges the vulnerability that his response to praise reveals in him—that he wants it at all. hers is less you're doing so good for me and more there—right there, yes, you feel so good. just sort of woven in.

i wish i could properly express the synaptic event which occurred after receiving this ask my god!!!!! there are a few fixed factors at play to make this bond just absolutely diabolical for both of them: beron having had sex with (and having uhhh enslaved) iphigenia, beron having abused eris (while simultaneously molding eris into his image), iphigenia looking a lot like loa, eris looking enough like beron. because of these there are many many avenues to pursue with this bond but i think there are two overarching onsets to them: eris is young and so he leaves iphigenia to beron for a while before liberating her because he 1) doesn’t have the means to intervene 2) thinks it’s better/safer to have her close by than somewhere he can’t monitor her 3) knows he’s his mate and his match and so must be as resilient and hearty as he is; or eris is older/post-utm timeline and intervenes as soon as he is realistically able, but even that isn’t enough to spare iphigenia of beron completely.

i’m sitting here lubed up (two glasses of wine) and you drop my favorite barbies into my lap like this…………,..i’m like in lucy (2014) when scarjo accesses 100% of her brain or wtvr

ianthe who prowled around eris autumn for a time and as such occassionally glimpsed beron, who did not respect ianthe as a priestess who wasn’t in his pocket, with his pet whore—thought nothing of iphigenia beyond that bright surge of jealousy she gets whenever a female garners the attention from a powerful male that keeps them from focusing on her. ianthe who did not die in the weaver’s cottage but [hand wave] managed to escape—went to ground for years and years—reemerged in a dying spring court, her hand mangled, her beauty flawed. thought: now that he is at his lowest, he will have no choice but to take me. except … there is a vixen in the hen house. worse, ianthe knows tamlin well. well enough to know what his budding love for another looks like even before he does—because so often did she try to snip it before it bloomed. there, it buds, near to bloom. as is spring. because of this female.

a female ianthe has seen before, once when her jealousy surged.

how many high lords has ianthe sought to ingratiate herself with? how many heirs? how many of them went willingly, if at all? (none.) how much did she have to lower herself? lords reeking of untouched desperation. high fae without title at all. just to work her way into the high courts—just to weave her seductions without purchase. yet this female, no more than a pet whore, entrapped not only beron—who even she knew better than to try for—but now tamlin. no two high lords more distinct than they. iantha could not draw comparison if she tried, save that they both hold the same title. the same power, divinely bestowed. the power withheld from her by the mother time and again. so what is it about this female to make her so special?

ianthe’s time gone to ground serves her well. she learned a thing or two, out in the middle, where all let her memory die. she learned tricks of stealth and tricks of thievery. she learned where to tuck herself away from the beasts and the creatures and the haunts. a little hidey hole carved by a god of old, there no longer—its presence still lingering strong enough to ward away all but the worst, the most malevolent. there is where ianthe takes iphigenia after stealing her from deep in the treeline, just beyond the wards tamlin has erected, only just too weak to fend her off entirely. even drugged and visibly docile, ianthe can smell it of the female: the wild buck of her magic, spring musk beneath the autumn burnish, a signal, a call, a roar. is that what makes this one special? more special than she is?

am i armanding you yet

what do they call you? ianthe asks, a palm fitted to jaw. iphigenia, the vixen slurs. she nuzzles sweetly into ianthe’s touch. iphigenia belrose. ianthe divests her of her clothes. considers. a belle indeed. a rose, too. but nothing more special than ianthe is. something of her talents, perhaps. ianthe could learn if she sampled them—and with no one to see, there is no shame in not innately knowing. in not being the one who is Special and Chosen. ianthe can learn, as she has all her life, and she can snip the bud, and she can be the saving grace of spring, and she can fulfill her purpose. she can.

of all our canon cast, genia and nesta would easily get along best if given the opportunity to foster a relationship with each other—especially since this would be set after nesta has forged bonds with gwyn and emerie. nesta would immediately see a lot of herself gwyn and emerie in genia. depending on the flavor of neris at hand (i love a neris who are mutually using each other -> hold on . you're more than you seem -> fuckkk i can't just use you anymore because now i love and respect you) nesta is probably feeling at least slightly indignant that she's been the equivalent of sold off as her mother once planned for her, even if she and eris have developed some measure of closeness by the time the marriage actually occurs. i could one millllllion percent see her working through the loss of her own agency via tomas, the cauldron, the house of wind, the marriage, etc. by trying to free genia/abolish sex slavery in autumn. upon her prospective success i'm envisioning a very, very big emotional reckoning for her where she realizes Just Why it mattered so much that genia was freed and living on her own terms.

it would take a hot minute for them to get there though. genia isn't allowed a lot of mobility or even free time away from beron. they’re most likely to encounter each other in eris' kennels—could even see eris being the one to arrange a Chance Meeting because he can't do anything about the system that's in place but nesta, who beron values as an asset as a weapon, sure could cause a fuss and leverage its dismantling as one of the stipulations of her compliance with beron's plans. (which eris will never let come to fruition anyway so win-win.) anywho so they meet at the kennels. genia, as she is with any female she meets, is foremost wary ... and also she is night court racist ... and also she is just a teensy bit human racist ... and she would know that nesta was once a human and hails from the night court—but more than any of that she is so, so desperate for any kind of positive and genuine interaction in the forest house.

i could see them taking each other's measure at first. a little snippy. a little skeptical. definitely like two stray cats penned into the same alley. nesta is so fiercely loyal and feels so much but she's hard to read and defends herself with flippancy; genia is equally loyal and feels equally as much but she's in complete survival mode and can't risk her life by blindly trusting someone, let alone lord eris' new wife. but i could see genia helping nesta acclimate to autumn. nesta's well-equipped to be a lady, but she can't just be well-equipped in autumn. all the ladies are so. nesta has to work twice as hard to overcome the inherent prejudice so many in the high court have for humans and the night court. nesta complains offhandedly one day about some interaction with some courtier. iphigenia offers offhanded but extremely effective insight into how to handle it and come out not only unscathed but on top. this is how their friendship first blossoms.

(side note: eris is grateful because nesta is unyielding and he knows better than to outright correct or steer her if he actually wants her to do something—but neither can he manipulate her because she's too savvy for that. she has to actually just . want to do something for him to get her to do it. so how nice for another female to offer her aid.)

anyway it's stolen little moments like this over weeks if not months until genia feels comfortable enough with nesta to trust her, which fully solidifies nesta's loyalty to her. that had, of course, already been building because nesta is deeply empathetic, but nesta knows how hard it must be for iphigenia to trust anyone, knowing firsthand now how vicious the internal politics of the forest house are. the fact that iphigenia lets her in is like. okay. so now i'm in your corner forever. i'm going to protect you like i couldn't protect my sisters or the friends i had to leave behind. they probably hatch some sort of plot together to sneak iphigenia away. fake her death. frame emile probably. when iphigenia is assured of an option other than fawn, she's going to take it. she'll fight or flee with the best of em. she'll do whatever it takes to survive. and doesn't that remind nesta archeron of just so many someones?

once genia is gone from autumn though, i think she's gone from nesta's life completely unless nesta specifically seeks her out. genia doesn't want to be reminded of what happened to her. genia doesn't want to champion others who suffer under this system; she isn't like them—she was different, she was special, she wasn't a whore, she wasn't, she wasn't, she wasn't. so no way in hell is she venturing back into autumn. unfortunately even just speaking to nesta would remind her far too much of being a sex slave. it would take some major healing for genia to be able to be true friends with nesta after escaping without taking psychic damage. ideally, eris forces arranges for tamlin to take genia in, knowing they'll mutually give each other purpose and remind each other of what life can be again and that spring will flourish for it—but just as likely is genia taking refuge with the band of exiles, in which case her journey is much less optimized.

yes >:•) i wish we had more canon to work with for vassa but there is something so beautiful to be said for a blank slate. genia/vassa would be super interesting because whereas usually genia seeks to cut herself above other females who have similar trauma to hers in an effort to outpace the severity and pain of what happened to her, having another female whose autonomy has been horrifically violated but in a different way than her own would be a very comforting thing in the boe scenario. same would go for vassa. it would be a very #likecallstolike scenario. what’s cool too is vassa having ~magic~ even if it’s a curse negates a lot of genia’s human prejudice (weaker, more frail, etc.) — and vassa has much more interpersonal death god hatred than political/theoretical fae hatred in her.

vassa would have to initiate, and i don’t think she’d have any qualms doing so. something about being forced to be a firebird against your will really makes everything else a non-issue—sexuality, rejection, insecurity, etc. i imagine her mortal wound results in her having a very life is fleeting; you have to do what you want and pursue what you want while you’re able because one day, when you least expect it, you won’t be able. pleasure-seeking vassa… grasping after freedom wherever she can rip it back from the world vassa… suicidally reckless vassa… oh man. okay. FOCUS UP. so vassa has no qualms at all coming onto iphigenia. iphigenia is a bi icon. she just doesn’t know it until vassa comes onto her. (a little bit of general autumn comphet, a little bit of her foremost exposure to f/f being in the context of enticing a male in the forest house and fulfilling his fantasies.) and iphigenia is feeling much the same as vassa in this scenario. pleasure-seeking. reckless. a lot of her pursuits are quasi-self harm.

but then ! genia finds there is none of the pretense with a female that there is with a male. then she finds that there is none of the pretense with this specific female that there is with a male. with vassa, she stays in her body. there is no performance to enact. there is only the pleasure, giving, receiving—never ceding, taking. everything can be on their own terms. bonus: no penetration if she doesn’t want it, so she doesn’t have those reminders of beron while with vassa that she would with a male. everything is new. everything, too, is a reclamation. through each other, they find healing and support and refuge. even genia’s wariness of other females is addressed through vassa. of course … vassa is cursed. she withholds her emotions because she doesn’t have time for them. (not because she’s so, so afraid of dying enslaved to koschei. not because having someone love her might mean they try to save her. might mean they fail.) she isn’t really successful in doing so with iphigenia but. she still tries. and that still hurts.

including tamlin in the boe+genia polycule is making my brain BUZZ wow it shifts all the dynamics so significantly. i'm going to say that the most likely scenario for this polycule is a renascence-esque tamgenia eventually merging with the boe due to both tamlin and jurian/vassa trying to rebuild their respective realms and coming to the conclusion that an alliance with each other is their best bet at success. there would just be . so,,,, so many concurrent dynamics at play.

we have: tamcien ex-homoerotic situationship wherein lucien resents tamlin for his treatment of him AND for subsequently getting his shit together for someone else and not for lucien even though lucien tried so hard to help him; iphcien dummyyy exacerbating each other's beron wounds + extreme mutual jealousy over tamlin; iphigenia just generally being very jealous/insecure when it comes to tamlin with the others + resenting vassa for any attention she gets + the Whore Complex to come of so many partners; jurian and his Faerie Complexes; vassa and her overly blunt affect and life-is-short impulsivity; lucien and his unfulfilled bond with elain; Other Such Things.

i'd say tamgenia has the most established relationship in the mix. jurian and vassa have a lot of unspoken feelings between them—they could (and probably do) get to a more stable partnership between them but not with the curse actively in the way. lucien my beloved angel is a little bit of the odd man out between them all, but this is almost entirely because everyone involved knows about his mating bond; if it weren't for his mating bond, they'd be gobbling him UP. elain sort of comes to haunt the narrative of the group because they're all very aware of her presence and in a way she becomes their ghostly sixth just with how everyone considers her feelings about things.

i'm picturing The Merging happening before tamlin and iphigenia have the chance to like actually verbalize their feelings, which means they're acting functionally like a high lord and his lady, they're very obviously in love to anyone onlooking, probably to the point where folks are blushing just to see them interact—but they've never had the conversation and so they're Not Together. introduce boe: jurian and vassa immediately are down to fuck tamlin and genia, which jurian shows by being an asshole and vassa is very forward about—lucien also wants to fuck tamlin and genia but he needs to beat the shit out of tamlin at least one time first. once that happens and they achieve quasi normalcy ... bets? OFF

lucien is one thousand million percent fucking tamlin. right? right??? so so so much history and tension and resentment and love and fury that needs to be worked out. what better way do both of them know than sex? plus lucien fs wants to show iphigenia up. so they fuck first. iphigenia, naturally, crashes out. so hard. i'd say it's relatively similar to the jurian/genia one shot i wrote except genia is like actively seeking jurian out to fuck, which means he has no opportunity to slow her down and reciprocate. gal on a mission. i think probably she doesn't come at all. it's literally a spite fuck and he knows it but fuck if he's going to let a faerie use him again so he uhhh comes back that night and makes her come until she sees god....? instructions unclear. but vassa overhears and pleasure-seeking + pain of not being a normal girl with a normal life who can just normally ask jurian to be with her because she's cursed = jurian/genia/vassa threesome. lucien is also actively fucking jurian and vassa.

i think probably this is how things go down for a hot minute. genia feels rejected by tamlin; tamlin feels rejected by genia; vassa feels rejected by jurian; jurian feels rejected by vassa; lucien feels rejected by their communal dead wife elain—and all of them handle it by fucking or not fucking each other respectively. eventually, lucien, who is a good and honorable male, begins to feel guilty for how he's inserted himself between tamlin and iphigenia, especially now that vassa and jurian care for iphigenia too. he learns more about her—who she is as a person, how much tamlin cares about her, what beron did to her—and he feels bad. what's new! probably projects some of his own feelings not being able to be with his mate onto being the one to put a wedge between them. he maneuvers tamgenia into a situation where they reconcile and have sex and he's left out just like old times with feylin but tamlin, who cares about lucien, and iphigenia, who cares about tamlin who cares about lucien, say fuck that actually and pull him to bed with them

this is probably an ideal time in the tamgenia + boe polycule. tamlin and iphigenia have finally dtr, which affords iphigenia a good measure of security and assurance—which further means she isn't as jealous over lucien or vassa. iphigenia won't fuck anyone else without tamlin in the mix, but lucien and iphigenia squash the beef and get wily autumn court horny by playing off each other. smirking rake + batted-lash flirt and everyone else is fucking COOKED. there's no ddlg jurgenia because iphigenia feels protected and taken care of and secure with tamlin, so they never bond quite as deeply as they could. their sex is mostly fucknasty comfort when vassa is with koschei, and like i said it always involves tamlin. def becomes a pavlov situation where whenever jurian sees tamlin he gets doubly horny knowing iphigenia's going to be in the mix. vassa fucks all of them freely EXCEPT a tamlin/genia/vassa threesome because genia would accctually crash out the moment tamlin paid any attention to vassa and not her. all other combos are fair game.

it confronts pretty much every single prejudice genia was raised with in autumn :•) but weirdly i think the way beron amplified and warped these beliefs makes her really willing to attune to other ways of thinking. like microdosing acceptance. she wants to believe that beron can be wrong about things because if he was wrong about anything at all, then maybe he was wrong about her—wrong for what he did to her.

i don't think she bats too much of an eye over tamlin having a sexual relationship with rhysand, in part because she feels the homoerotic tension between tam and lulu almost immediately. she knows faeries enjoy all sorts over their long lives and high lords are entitled to liberties others are not—but these are only sexual proclivities, passing entertainments, for autumn is a fertile and virile court, serving ever the mother and the father, and so procreation is expected of its folk. so it's the fact that there was love between them, or could have been love between them, that rocks her shit because to her, love is the future. the endgame. something to treasure. something to hold tight to.

she turns it over and over in her head. in autumn, such a thing would be taken to the grave. she thinks of outcasted faeries—faeries who found refuge in other courts to spare themselves of the trial by the people. she thinks of her assumptions of them and compares them to tamlin. tamlin, who is assured of self, even after such a thing is exposed/admitted. tamlin, who is broad and burgeoning with his might. tamlin, who loves so fiercely he fears leaving marks. tamlin, who loved a male in the same way he loves (or could love) her.

honestly i think she goes so uncharacteristically quiet that tamlin looks out from his contention surrounding his past with rhysand and over to her—is reminded starkly of lucien when he first found out. (lucien who knew well that certain faeries could be fucked at leisure but to love them spelled only doom and death and demise. and is not that what happened between tamlin and rhysand? but i digress.) his experience with lucien helps him understand what she must be thinking. you'd be surprised how many things are different outside of autumn, he says to her. she looks back to him, those round, shimmering eyes, always of a depth mismatched with the youthfulness of her face, and they soften. no, she murmurs, so warm, so fond, so encompassing. not anymore.

okay well now i'm just getting horny about tamlin (see: experiencing Emotional Love For Her and transmuting that into physical closeness) pulling iphigenia astride his lap and her sitting there with her fingers twining in the hair at his nape and asking him if it's different with a male, and how it's different, and how it's the same, and could he explain it to her, what it's like? and as he answers, tamlin is floored over again by how many experiences were taken from her and how he wants to show her everything there is to see and how much life he wants to return to her, and he asks if she'd like to see for herself. and iphigenia goes stiff and green and envious immediately—but also there's no disguising her arousal at the proposition. is that what you want? she asks him, which is her way of asking whether she's not enough, whether he'll have this male and dispose of her. he shakes his head. you, he says. you're what i want. so iphigenia has him detail what he would do to a male while he brings her pleasure, and at the end she very tentatively agrees.

ohhhh i think she’s really torn because she would want the comfort of the known but also the encouragement of a new beginning—which is why i have tamlin get her a hybrid blend of autumn and spring fashion from the summer atelier lucien frequented in renascence. but she’s not going to do something like that for herself because she innately views the courts as very separate and individualized entities that aren’t to be blended. (thank youuu autumn propaganda!) so i think she wears whatever the current fashions of the city are to best blend in, especially if she’s nesta-style operating independently, and feels extremely out of place for it. at first she would lean toward whatever the more modest and structured fashions were (corsets HIGHLY favored) but as she grew more comfortable and was able to separate her personhood and body from what beron did to her, she’d lean towards the freer flowing styles.

sex would beee interesting and very dependent on her mindset / whoever she primarily interacted with wherever she was. just for comparison’s sake, the reason she and tamlin work sexually is because he enforces her boundaries for her until she’s able to put them back up, specifically without drawing overt attention to the fact that he’s doing that. if he drew attention to it, she’d feel Bad because something’s wrong with her now, her life has been impacted, she isn’t who she was before—and if he weren’t so noble, she would perpetuate dynamics expected of her by beron, then become really depressed and really angry and not be able to figure out why because she refuses to admit her trauma.

SO without that in the mix, she could trend towards a hypersexual, intrinsically dubcon, sex-as-self-harm type arc just as easily as she could trend towards a getting extremely hostile towards anyone who showed her sexual attention arc. most likely it’s both jumbled into one. she accepts the attention she receives—because it makes her feel special, not sick to her stomach, of course not—and she drinks until she doesn’t tense at the touches to her arm—because she’s found a taste for the alcohol of this court, not because this male, unspecial and regular, is touching her the way only royalty once could—and she has sex with him—because she wants to, because she was once a girl who wished she could, and that has not been taken from her. but she doesn’t know how to say no or i don’t like that or not there, here, and the high lord always crowds her thoughts, so in the mornings she’s either gone or she’s absolutely scathing.