the reason why this is such a secure location, despite its appearance (wooded, easily flammable, etc), is that woodhouse is not just a location -- it’s also a magical entity. it basically is the valley and cares for the beings that it considers its things. to speak with it, one has to slip into a vague sort of otherwordly awareness -- and its more that you don’t speak to it, but you feel it, and it feels you.

julie: xayah: [answering scrape of knife being sharpened]

the old blood does not support war or killing... but ! should they require it, any person in the family can draw from all of the magic in their family and use it as if it were their own.

TROPES!

     write who you know: The easiest character to write is one who comes premade. For various reasons, an author writes themselves or their friends into the story, as themselves. Maybe it's an in-joke. Maybe it's a message. Maybe they're just seizing the nearest source of inspiration.

TROPES!

     ridiculously successful future self: When a series involving young characters skips ahead to the future it will rarely be more than a few years into the future (unless Time Travel is involved of course), which keeps the characters fairly close to the people we know, and saves on the age makeup. Such is the temptation to show where the character ends up however, that many writers show the character already well established and very successful in their chosen career, even if only a few short years have passed and logic would suggest they should still be somewhere at the bottom, working their way up.

     this is particularly prevalent in julie’s stark verse, where she finds immediate success following her debut in university and quickly becomes a well known conductor, composer, and flautist in the music scene by age 25.