#daanah

I wanted to draw *all* the Black asexual characters from Aros Against Fate but I ran out of time, so apologies to Taehogh, Mkera, Yna, Wnahé, Abhaonai, and Kjotar, who were further down on the list and didn’t get drawn in time.

[ID: a drawing of Lí, a dark-skinned Black teenager with curly red hair. They are wearing a dark blue sweater-vest with yellow stars and using forearm crutches. /end ID] Lí (they/them) is a main character and greyromantic asexual.

[ID: a drawing of Daanah, a Black girl with long locs pulled up in a bun. She has golden-brown skin and glasses. /end ID] Daanah (she/her) is a main character and alloromantic aegosexual.

[ID: a drawing of Fiitsãn, a Black boy with rosy dark brown skin and a big pink Afro. /end ID] Fiitsãn (he/him) is a main character and lithsexual.

[ID: a drawing of Līs, a Black teenager with blue braids and golden-brown skin . /end ID] Līs (he/they/she/xe/fae) is a main character and demisexual.

[ID: a drawing of Maaziariitna, a young woman-man with hairy blue skin and her hair in microbraids. /end ID] Maaziariitna (she/he) is a main character and lesbian asexual.

[ID: a drawing of Fiyavu Ozast, a young Black woman with dark skin and silver hair. /end ID] Fiyavu Ozast (she/her) is Rovian and Daanah’s older sister and aromantic greysexual.

[ID: a drawing of Juraji, a Black teenager with long black locs. /end ID] Juraji (xe/xem) is Halek’s queerplatonic partner and demisexual.

[ID: a drawing of Saafeera, a dark-skinned black woman with a very short Afro. /end ID] Saafeera is Rovian and Daanah’s mother and recipromantic recipro-demisexual and sex-repulsed.

Honorable mentions:

Taehogh (he/him), Halek, Lí, and Maaziariitna’s grandfather, aroaceflux.

Wnahé (they/she), one of Halek and Lí’s parents, asexual.

Kjotar (he/they), teammate of Kaelía, Līs, and Zhe’ārani, lithromantic and listed in my notes as “probably acespec.”

Abhaonai (he/him), teammate of Kaelía, Līs, and Zhe’ārani, alloromantic aceflux.

Yna (she/her), princess seeking to marry Jue and later Sei, frayromantic asexual.

Mkera (she/her), betrothed to Jue, asexual.

(image ID in alt text)

fanart for the fantastic @aromanticsky's series, Aros Against Fate, heavily referencing the author's art (which inspired me out of an art slump yayyy)

[ID: A (mostly) pencil crayon drawing of a teenage girl with light/medium brown skin and very long black locs. Her locs are fanned out behind her and are almost floor-length, with spiralling golden jewellery on them. She has golden eyes on her arms and brown eyes in the usual place. She is wearing a gold headpiece, glasses, nail polish, lipstick, and bracelets. She is wearing long yellow and white sleeveless robes and is surrounded by a golden halo. /end ID]

Artist's notes:

The little symbols on the yellow part of her robes is "Alteyr's Quill," one of Hir widely-recognized symbols.

This is. Extremely yellow. I love yellow and even I think this is a lot of it.

I wanted to give her some big awesome sceptre of some sort but I forgot about it until it was all outlined and mostly coloured in... Alas. Imagine it for me. In our hearts she can have a big awesome sceptre.

Stared at this for ages trying to figure out what's up with her mouth/chin (?) and I think it's that I forgot to outline the separation between her upper and lower lip so there's a weird blob-like quality there, combined with the lines of her slight double chin bleeding into the edges of her mouth a little and making it look like her chin might be her lower lip and her whole mouth might be her upper lip, since the gold is not as noticeably distinct from the brown as a more natural colour might be.

Her hair is supposed to be sort of floating behind her in a mystical ethereal kind of way but idk if that comes across.

I drew this for @creatingblackcharacters's Black Girl Magic May, since Daanah is quite literally very magical.

Used wax crayon for her hair to give it some texture, pen/fine-tipped marker for the outlining and her eyes, and pencil crayon (or coloured pencil, for those of you who aren't Canadian) for everything else.

Yes, the bracelets are irritating on the transient magic eyes. At least they're loose. She really doesn't like tight bracelets and she's not going to wear them.

(Trying something new with this "Artist's notes" section. Seems more coherent than dumping all my scrambled commentary in the tags.)

("Sky what the fuck happened to the end of this chapter and also the beginning of this chapter" it is what it is okay)

content notices: broken trust, body horror, romance mention, extortion

content notices: mention of ableism, hair-pulling/skin-picking, violence, body horror, mention of religious discrimination

Thousands of years ago, the Annals of Prophecy were delivered by the gods. They have never been wrong. They state that a Divine Era is coming. 

Jue is the Younger Emperor of Rāmia. Hir uncle and guardian the Elder Emperor Raiqiongshē has proclaimed the support of the goddess of conquest, Corysecli; the empire's expansion will therefore bring the Divine Era. The empire is now at war and Jue can no longer put off betrothal. Ze would rather die than get married. Ze must escape betrothal, even if that means abandoning everything ze has ever known. 

Daanah is a Divine Scribe, able to manipulate the world with her words- at the eventual cost of her life. When she uses magic far more powerful than should be possible, it sparks the interest of several parties, including the empire, the Temple of Corysecli, and a powerful religious leader with an alternate interpretation of the Annals of Prophecy, and becomes embroiled in a conflict between religious factions that has enormous political ramifications. 

Halek is a revolutionary. When the empire declares divine support and goes to war, things get a lot more urgent, and two of Halek’s comrades kidnap Jue, which Halek is not at all prepared to deal with. Things get complicated fast, with the revolution kicking into high gear, and Halek has to balance the world’s freedom with his family’s safety. They can’t get involved in this- but the empire must fall, and it must fall now. 

Zhe’ārani is an Initiate at the Temple of Corysecli. She doesn’t remember her past, but does remember that this isn’t really her religion, and she is serving the temple out of a life debt. The other Initiates have become her family, but she has never really felt comfortable with the violence of it all. As the Temple gets ever more involved in imperial politics, she must decide what’s most important- stability and repaying her debt, or following her conscience and doing the right thing?

With the empire teetering on a knife's edge, will it rise, or will it fall? And what will that mean for Jue, Halek, Daanah, and Zhe’ārani?

:>

hello mystery mutual-in-law (via Sami I assume? My one extremely dedicated fan). I will do my best to sell it to you funstyle and also here is the detailed logically-progressing explanation :)

ok so imagine this place that is heavily religiously built on a set of prophecies. A good 80% or more of people across the empire believe they're true. Coming up soon is basically the end of the world, but in a good way because it means everyone will stop reincarnating and be in their true soul forms in the realm of the gods (until the next world-cycle of course). But for that to happen the world has to first 'be united,' which is up to interpretation as all prophecies are. The empire's like "oh well obviously we'll expand across the world and in a couple generations the world will be united and everyone will ascend! Sounds great." This interpretation is heavily supported by the powerful Temple of the goddess of strength (mostly the aspect of conquest is emphasized right now). This interpretation is NOT supported by various political and religious rebels.

The empire is a diarchy, so it has two rulers at any given time. Jue, on of the main characters, is technically one of them- however, ze is underage and has intellectual disability, so hir grandmother is currently serving as hir regent and a significant faction think hir throne should be under a regency forever because ze is not mentally fit. Jue's grandmother and hir uncle- who is the other ruler- are very much aligned in the conquest thing and Jue of course has no say. The main issue Jue is currently facing is that hir grandmother and uncle are arranging marriages for hir and ze soooooo does not want to get married (ever, to anyone) and will do just about anything to get out of it (including but not limited to running away from home with no plan and no world experience outside of the palace). Hir guardians have also tried very hard to isolate hir from outside influence, but they have not entirely succeeded and Jue has at first reformist and later straight-up revolutionary leanings.

Another main character, Daanah, is an established user of divine magic but turns out to be way more powerful than she thought when she semi-accidentally resurrects her colleague (with whom she then develops a fairly obsessive relationship, though it won't get quite to the *most* obvious and destructive point until book 2). This is very exciting for her religious leader, who has a different interpretation of 'uniting the world' that leans more on a united faith than a united government and wants to use Daanah to help promote it. Daanah is happy to avoid the empire conquering more of the world and is dazzled by being Special and wants to explore her power and bond with the resurrected colleague more, so she gladly goes along with this, despite it putting a target on her back. In the next draft there's gonna be more sciencey stuff about figuring out her power (let's run Experiments on blorbo!) but there's not so much in this one, alas.

Halek is very chill and normal, trust me, he has no anxieties or conflicts or struggles with identity and relationships or panic attacks about leading a double life as a rebel. He's fine. It's fine when the empire decides that their religion is a great reason to try and expand more. It's fine that he has to come home from school. He's even fine when his comrades jump the gun and kidnap Jue when they see hir unguarded in their city and the revolution is in no way prepared to deal with that. Everything is fine and he is managing it all wonderfully. This entire paragraph is a lie.

Zhe'ārani is kind of committing heresy all the time because she believes in a different denomination of this religion but is an Initiate at the Temple of the goddess of strength, because she owes them a life debt. She doesn't remember anything before them anyway, which is not suspicious at all even though she was fifteen by then, because she almost died and trauma can do weird things to the mind right. There's a lot about the Temple she doesn't like, like all the violence, but they saved her life and anyway she's become really close with the other Initiates and they're all the family she has now; she can't really remember who she had before and is pretty sure they all died in the fire anyway. Oh no now they're asking her to kill someone.

Next draft I will also get to centre Rovian, who is Halek's best friend and Daanah's older sister (and! Zhe'ārani's half sister, though they haven't met yet) and will suddenly be thrust into a leadership role she is so not ready for when her mentor, the primary union organizer of her factory, dies. The employees are all either kids, disabled, and/or non-citizen immigrants (Rovian is two of these and her mother is the third), since they don't have the same protections, and Rovian's closeness with her late mentor and previous organizing experience (assisting said mentor) and social associations and five-year tenure there lead to everyone looking to her.

Halek: went to public school, dropped out completely at fourteen after he was arrested because when he tried to go back he just couldn't handle it. Learned the basics of math, science, history and geography (as told by the empire, plus for geography Moghrlai Gurodstadit schools include things like river charting and navigation), Standard Lowlands Rāmiloq and very basic Standard Rāmian Sign and Southern Ðíúharlaesoghk (native language), physical education (dyspraxic and did not enjoy the active part of this), and possibly at some point religion (meaning Dac Senki, not remotely his). (Rāmia seems like the kind of place that wouldn’t care enough about the arts to mandate them as part of the basic primary curriculum, alas.) He did fairly well for the most part until later in his last year, when things started to get really stressful in his life and he couldn’t focus as well or put as much energy in. He is now at a school in Meelasugaado that focuses primarily but not exclusively on the broad field of magic; due to lacking several years of lower-level education that his peers there have, as well as the fictional learning disability dysmagia, he is in mostly remedial/extra-support classes, and for the most part he’s fine with that and generally enjoying school except when he starts to feel especially insecure about his identity and gets upset that he’s not living up to Beri gender expectations by being very scholarly. Right now the classes he has in his schedule are probably: languages (Meelasugaadic and Collective), art, biology, chemistry, physics, basics of magical theory, basics of practical magic, and foundational social sciences (next year he’ll be able to split up social sciences into more specific disciplines, which I think he will enjoy). Eventually he’d like to go to medical school and become a doctor.

Rovian: public schools in Rāmia are not required to provide signing interpreters so Rovian couldn’t go there. She went to a Deaf school run by a partially-municipally-funded nonprofit, which could only provide the mandatory six levels of education, so she was out of school by the time she was twelve. She had some struggles, but the school was fairly accommodating of her (relatively mild) learning disabilities and it was a really good community, and she wishes she could go back to school at get at least a high school (equivalent) education. She wants to be a city councillor one day and that will be a lot harder, if not impossible, to achieve with such a low level of education. She has tried to do some independently, but with her learning disabilities it’s difficult for her to do without a real teacher, and at this point she’s put it on the backburner and is working full-time (as she has been since she was about fourteen, because if she can’t go to school anymore maybe she can at least bring home a bit of money).

Jue: Jue has been educated by private tutors hir whole life. After all, Raiqiongshē’s not going to send hir to school to mingle with the lower classes, and given hir intellectual disability and the attitudes surrounding that, it’s better for hir to have one-on-one attention and not to be even at a private school around other people who will notice that ze is nowhere near the same level as the other students hir age. There is also the safety concern with sending hir to be educated outside of the palace. Ze “should” be deeply immersed in learning detailed and intricate politics and governance and international relations and oration by now, but they are still working on the basics of addition and subtraction, Standard Lowlands Rāmiloq writing and reading and speaking (ze has a speech impediment and a lot of work goes into trying to ‘overcome’ that), formal dancing, manners, very basic history and geography, memorizing family trees and official factions, etc. Ze also gets to do music, initially because learning to play the ehru was supposed to help with hir dexterity and continuing because it’s something ze can truly say ze’s actually pretty good at and that’s very rare and Raiqiongshē’s not about to get rid of hir one decent skill for no reason (it’s on thin ice though if it ever starts to distract from hir other, more ‘important’ studies). Ze has mild intellectual disability and struggles with pretty much all of it despite the specially-trained tutors, and is very ashamed of that, which the disappointed attitudes of everyone around hir contribute heavily to.

Daanah: went to public school like Halek. She’s still in school, but only part time now, to make room for her duties as a Divine Scribe. Really the only good things about school for her were that she got to read sometimes and her friends were there, but she’s having a slightly better time now as she has learned to manage her ADHD more effectively and gets more choice in what classes she takes, and she wants to take advantage of the opportunity she has that her older sister Rovian was not given. As a Divine Scribe, she was also given classes in writing Ancient Norvian and the collected knowledge of previous generations on how her magic would most likely work, and nowadays she was able to leverage her position as a Divine Scribe into becoming a member of the Senci order of Scholars in order to pursue her passionate special interest in theology. She really likes learning, just on her own terms, and mainstream school isn’t really built for her as a neurodivergent person. She’s actually really good at math, just not at doing homework or studying, and finds numbers and statistics and probabilities comforting. As her divine magic gets stronger and weirder, studying it becomes something she is very invested in.