#asklilian

Pigs are a recurring theme in Lily's story. I won't get into them or what they represent in this post (if you've read her saga then you already know) I will just mention that Dario kept domestic pigs to help him dispose of his victim's corpses. Lily was often in charge of caring for the pigs, she made friends with them and especially loved the baby ones.

One day Lily tells Zov about the baby pigs, speaking about them with such fondness that it gives him an idea. He goes to the market in Taybiya, where ranchers sell their livestock, and sure enough he finds a man selling piglets.

He asks the man how big these babies will get. The man boasts that they will surely grow to a thousand pounds at least, and provide lots of meat! Zov is disappointed, mentioning that he was hoping to find something smaller to give his girlfriend as a pet.

As Zov leaves, the man suddenly stops him. He picks up a random piglet from his stock and tells Zov that this particular one is a "mini pig". It will stay small and cute forever, he promises! Zov buys the animal, puts a bow on it, and gives it to Lily.

Of course Lily falls in love with the adorable little piglet and names it Pinky.

1 year later, Pinky is a 1500lb behemoth. Zov was ready to drag her back to that conman and demand a refund 1300 pounds ago, but Lily had grown too attached by then, so now he's stuck with a giant farm animal sleeping at the foot of his bed every night like a dog.

Pinky is a sweet and intelligent beast...as long as she gets her daily PB&J sandwich. If she does not get that sandwich, Gaia help everyone in the temple...she goes berserk, breaking down doors, tearing up floorboards, and flipping people like pancakes until she gets what she wants.

Lily trains her to guard the temple from Crescent Cultists. Pinky can identify their wretched stink and she will gore them to death in seconds when she does.

Zov comes to begrudgingly accept the beast. She becomes Jennie's childhood pet and companion, and she's so big that Jennie can even ride her like a horse. The Karenzans use Pinky's cultist-detecting ability to find local hideouts and destroy them. This pig seems to have the unique ability to sense evil.

With Pinky's help, the Karenzans are able to weed out all the hidden cult hives in Taybiya. This becomes crucial later when they turn Taybiya into Azizaland, the kingdom of Etherea's second territory (the first is the Ethereal City).

They erect a big pig statue in Azizaland's plaza to honor Pinky for centuries to come. 🐖 Some of Pinky's offspring inherit her ability, and Karenzan beastmasters breed them to create a new breed of cultist-detecting war mounts.

Lily is canonically bad at cooking because she was raised by vampires, so she never had to learn how to prepare food. I want to expand on this idea a bit.

I think all her years as a vampire actually messed up her sense of taste. Flavors are too intense for her because she's still not used to anything but the taste of blood. She complains that ketchup is "spicy"...

Meanwhile Zov is scarfing down lemons, hot chili peppers, and raw garlic because his antipsychotic medication dulls his senses, and he can't taste shit unless the flavor is extremely intense. He has no sense of smell either because his nose was broken too many times.

Lily has tried to cook a few times in the series and it never turns out well. Other characters have tried to teach her how to cook, and she just can't seem to get the hang of it. I think her own poor sense of taste is the main reason. It's one of those things she keeps trying, but she'll never be good at it.

She starts cooking for Zov when they're dating, but that only makes matters worse because he gives her advice like, "needs more flavor" when it's already waaay overspiced. She eventually gets good at cooking...for Zov specifically. And any meal that tastes good to Zov is totally inedible to anyone else. She can't even handle his level of spice herself, so she sets aside a portion for herself with zero spices. Everything she eats is really bland. Like, a piece of bread with mayo on it. Boiled peas and carrots with no salt. A plain muffin. Crap like that.

In the future, she enjoys cooking dinner for her family, and Zov doesn't notice how bad it tastes because he can't taste much anyway. Jennie certainly does notice though. She can choose between Mom's unflavored slop, or Dad's overflavored slop for dinner.

She doesn't want to hurt her mom's feelings, but she just can't stomach these horrid meals either...so she sneaks her food to Pinky when Lily's not looking. Zov also agrees to eat off Jennie's plate and gives her money for takeout, as long as Jennie promises not to tell Lily her cooking is terrible, because it will send her into an emotional spiral.

Jennie is fae, meaning she can't lie. So she has to get really creative when Lily asks how dinner turned out.

"It tastes, uh...surprising!"

"I can tell you worked hard on this, mom!"

"How's dinner? Um, well, Dad's already finished half his plate! That says it all, right?"

Poor Lily, she has no idea lol

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When Lily steals Goryx's Staff of Agony, it amplifies her magic powers. She starts experimenting with her bat transformation spell and learns how to transform into a giant, monstrous version of her bat form. She uses her small bat form to flee and this larger form to defend herself when fleeing is not an option.

However, these transformation spells still come with a major drawback: she drops all her clothes and everything she's holding when she transforms.

So, Lily tries to find a way to transform without losing her stuff. What she ends up with is a spell that only partially turns her into a bat. She only intended to have bat wings so she can fly away from danger, but she usually botches the spell and ends up with other bat-features too, like furry ears or weird claw-hands.

She gets annoyed every time this happens, but ultimately it doesn't affect her ability to flee. It just makes her look a little silly. Zov and Buddy tease her when she botches it (but you know that deep down, Zov suddenly realized he's a furry lmao)

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So, I've said previously that I think Zov would be too psychologically damaged to ever have a romantic relationship. If you saw that post, then you're probably confused about the plot of "Crazy in Love", so I just want to explain why I changed my mind about this.

As I wrote the drafts for Zov's saga, I got to develop him more as a character. He started to grow on me, and I felt like I got a better understanding of where he's at mentally and what kind of person he is. I felt the same way about Lilian early on, and now I feel differently about her too. Previously I've said that she probably shouldn't be in a romantic relationship because she's too damaged, and there's no way a relationship with her could be functional.

I changed my mind about both of these characters, and strangely enough, I think they're a perfect match for each other. They've both been imprisoned, used, and abused their entire lives. Neither of them knows how to behave in normal society, yet they're both highly motivated to learn and grow.

However, I do want to clarify that if left to their own devices, no, I don't think these characters should be involved with anyone romantically--especially not each other. That's obviously an abuse scenario waiting to happen. But in the case of "Crazy in Love", they're in a unique situation where they're both being coached and supervised by their mentors while they learn how to be in a relationship.

Like, they literally build a lesson plan around courting eachother and turn it into a classroom experience. It's funny and awkward, but it's the only way they can make it work because they are both so far behind in their social development. In the end it actually works well for them, as unconventional and weird as it may be.

Zov has to learn how to interact with people properly and express emotions in a mature way, rather than using violence. Lilian has to learn how to stand up for herself and not fawn over men who abuse her, because she is unfortunately drawn to that behavior after being conditioned by Dario for so long.

Without someone there to coach them, I believe Lilian would end up in another Dario-like scenario with Zov. Not because Zov is evil like Dario (he's not), but because he truly doesn't know how to interact with women beyond abusing them, which Dorzlaf forced him to do to arena slaves for all those years.

Zov truly loves Lilian. But he's never been in love before, he doesn't know what to do with that emotion, and he was conditioned to see women as nothing but brood mothers his whole life. He doesn't see Lilian that way and he doesn't want to hurt her, he simply does not understand what else to do with her. He has no idea how healthy, happy couples express love.

He just knows that he feels strongly for her, and at first that manifests as this aggressively possessive behavior. He doesn't want her to talk to other men, to do this or that, and his first instinct is to hit her when she disobeys him because that's all he knows. It's the way his "loving" master, Dorzlaf, treated him as a father-figure. Of course Patience steps in to correct this behavior immediately, and Zov is willing to open his mind to learning new ways from her because he genuinely cares for Lilian. He learns that he can express love with tenderness rather than violence, which he previously did not even realize was an option.

The very same thing can be said for Lilian. She was conditioned to believe abuse = love for her entire life. Dario taught her that women are inferior to men and must serve them like slaves. Even though she knows better now, she's still learning to break herself out of those habitual behaviors of cowing to men, especially ones that treat her like trash. Patience corrects Lilian when she catches her fawning over Zov while he's being an ass. As difficult as it is, Lilian is just as motivated as Zov to change her ways because she genuinely cares about him, and wants this relationship to be successful as much as he does.

So anyway, that's why I changed my mind about these two. I think they actually can make a romantic relationship work, they would just need extra help to do so. They will always have rough moments between them, simply because they are both quite mentally ill, but with their mentors' guidance I believe they could work through these moments safely.

While their mentors deserve a lot of credit, this relationship wouldn't be possible at all if Lilian and Zov weren't so damn motivated to be with each other. So the point I want to make with this story is that where there is a will, there is a way. Even if something has to be done super unconventionally, it still counts. Their will to be together is stronger than their dysfunction, so they are able to overcome it.

And, quite frankly, I just think these two deserve to be happy after all they've been through. They deserve love, and to deny them that because they're "too fucked up" seems cruel in retrospect. It's just not a good message, so I'd like to shift that into a more positive message about overcoming the things that got you fucked up and thriving despite it.

That's my reasoning, I hope it makes at least a little bit of sense. As I wrote the rough drafts of their saga, they became one of my favorite ships specifically because of how much they had to overcome to be happy together.

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Zov: They don't call me elf-eater for nothin ;)

Lily: ...

Zov: ...

Zov: Talkin bout cu--

Lily: I know, Zov. 😑

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As stated in this post, Zeffer dies in the upcoming story "For Goodness Sake". His own escalating madness becomes his downfall, driving him to attack Lily in order to goad Evan into killing him. But in an unexpected turn of events, Lily actually defends herself for once, thanks to Alaine's training "Pig Bait". She is forced to kill Zeffer in order to protect herself, and this haunts her for a long time afterwards.

She does eventually work through her grief during her time with the Karenzans. Her relationship with Zeffer was highly complicated, because he was her savior as well as her abuser, and some of that abuse was not his fault because Dario forced him to do it. Lily claims she "loved" Zeffer, but the nature of that love isn't clear. Romantic? Platonic? It's probably not even clear to her.

Despite how he terrorized her towards the end, Lily forgives Zeffer, recognizing that he had good intentions but was deeply tortured by his own sickness. After losing her own mind and trying to resurrect Dario, she really comes to understand how trauma can make good people do despicable things.

In "The Aldfog Mystery", Zeffer becomes an unrecognized hero when he slays every major vampire clan in Noalen. The only vampires left after that are small gangs and lone stragglers, which are easily controlled by the Evangeline and Folkvar guards. No one realizes that Zeffer was responsible for this until many years later, when Lily makes it known.

She does not want Zeffer to be remembered for the crimes he committed in his state of sickness. She wants the world to remember him for the bravery and selflessness in his heart, and the good deeds he did in order to make the world a better place.

Because that truly was what Zeffer intended. He grew up in a rough, violent area that was oppressed by vampires and suffered depression because of it. He took inspiration from Evan and decided to put his vampirism to good use, by using it to eradicate other vampires, instead of succumbing to his bloodlust and joining their oppressive ranks, or simply taking his own life.

When the Karenzans create the Etherean territory of Azizaland, Lily contributes Zeffer's name to its history books, describing him as a benevolent hero. He is the reason that Azizaland (formerly Taybiya) is no longer terrorized by vampires, including the ones who victimized her. Zeffer is the reason she is alive and cured of her own vampirism. Despite his flaws, he made a tremendously noble sacrifice on her behalf by giving up his own mortality to restore hers.

He did this not because he loved her or expected anything in return, but because it was simply the righteous thing to do. Zeffer despised all the corruption around him, so he rebelled against it with honesty and goodness. He knew someone in this crime-riddled shithole had to make a change, so he started with himself. That's pretty darn commendable.

The Ethereans love statues (Karenza is a sculptor, after all) and use them to commemorate benevolent entities. There are statues all over Azizaland, everywhere you turn, depicting beauty and heroism. Wicked beings do not get statues. So, Lily sees to it that Zeffer gets his own statue in Azizaland's grand palace--which was once the Dusk's castle.

His effigy stands guard over the courtyard for ages, watching as this once hellish city becomes a place of healing and benevolence. That is all he ever wanted: for Taybiya to be a better place, for Gaia to be a better place, and for everyone to be happy and fulfilled in life.

Karenzans often meditate at his statue, as it reminds them never to succumb to dark temptations, and to keep fighting against darkness no matter the odds. It empowers them with the will to stay righteous-hearted in the face of cruelty and wickedness.

RIP Zeffer. :( Gaia knows you weren't a perfect man, but you were a real Good Guy.

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While she's studying with the Karenzans, Lily is also struggling quite badly with her mental health. She knows she shouldn't miss Dario, but she longs for him so much that she can't stand it.

Normally she talks to Patience about her troubles and they work on solutions together. But this particular issue is so embarrassing that Lily decides to keep it a secret, and her emotional state continues to decline.

Eventually, she loses it and begins secretly studying necromancy. She wishes to bring Dario's soul back from the cosmos and let it inhabit a corpse, so that she can be with him again.

She sneaks away from the temple at night and performs dark rituals in the Dusk clan's abandoned castle, where Dario's terrible energy still lingers. She finds an old sample of his blood staining the altar in the courtyard, where he fought with Bigbad decades ago, and uses it to summon his soul.

She fails and ends up summoning a poltergeist, a ghost manifested from his blood and lingering energy. It posesses her body and traps her in the castle.

That's the rough idea I have so far. Of course Patience, Buddy, and Zov will come to her rescue, but I want Lily to be involved in her own rescue as well. I think being (literally) possessed by Dario again after all she has learned will really drive the point home that this is NOT what she wants. The rose tinted glasses are off this time, she sees him for the ghoul he is now, and is forced to free herself from him.

I feel like this would also be a good opportunity to introduce Prudence into the series. Patience calls upon her to exorcise Dario's ghost, but she can't do it alone. He has such a stranglehold on Lily's soul that exorcising him could actually kill her, so she requires Lily to fight Dario off as much as she can first by making her body uninhabitable for him.

I'm thinking Lily is forced to do something that permanently scars herself, like burning or cutting, to weaken him enough for Prudence to yank him out and destroy him once and for all. I'm leaning towards burning, since vampires are afraid of fire.

I'm still thinking about it. Suggestions are always welcome!

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