#swhbla

But I have literally been writing In The Shadow of the Sun for seven years. I have a complete plot. I have scenes that make me want to throw up from the emotions. I have an intensely complex multi-cultural world and there is so much I love about this story. It's just that my wonder and sense of expectation are beginning to wear off and while I'm in love with the character relationships I don't love the characters themselves. 

And that's what I want from my angels. I want to see creatures so beautiful you can scarcely breathe when you look at them. I want angels that inspire adoration to the point of blind obedience. I want them to seem like the only untarnished thing on earth.

And then I want them to rip people limb from limb, slowly, unheeding of their screams. I want them to mass murder without thought, to kill children alongside murderers, to rain fire upon entire cities.

basically idk the exact details yet but Laren (who I guess goes by Meita in this version) is her usual princessy self and she has a palace and sisters and a loving father and has not been the victim of a genocide yay. 

And the others - probably still Oya, Samael and Sairaus but maybe also Zita - basically take sanctuary in her palace because they're all being hunted to high hell and are so lost and afraid. And like DRAGON PALACE. what is safer than a DRAGON PALACE??? 

Then IDK some stuff happens probably? I'm presuming there is a lot tension between Samael and the dragons because like ANGELS AND DRAGONS ARE NOT FRIENDS. And y'know Anubis keeps sending people to kill Oya, and Samael has to keep sneaking Sairaus out of the palace to eat, and Oya and Samael have smoochies. 

anyway, i like this one because it makes Laren such a cool character. For one thing, I AM USING THAT DRAGON THING. Like, Laren's mother is a full-on scaled winged fire demon thing, who kidnaps girls in dangerous situations, makes them semi-immortal and teaches them to be princesses and warriors and politicians and sometimes just bakers because some people want to bake. And the "princesses" are the girls who have been kidnapped by the actual irl dragon but their entire little nation is full of demons and monsters and sometimes just people who go around helping girls from around the world who are in fucked up situations. And the king is really just this pretty nice sharjah guy who fell in love with a literal dragon and is happy just kinda raising her little army of rescued girls and sometimes kinda running the country, when the prime minister needs help. 

Also I'm thinking Zita is worried that these people really won't get it her but then it turns out that so many of the princesses were enslaved at some point, and they help her with her ptsd and with recovering and trying to make her miss her home less and feel less survivor guilt because they know ALL ABOUT survivor guilt.

She is eerily similar to the later ones. That might not seem weird, but she has gone from being a white girl with metallic blue hair to a probably arab girl with black hair and I looked at the image and didn't realize it wasn't Laren until I saw what it was called. SAME SHOES, SAME PANTS, SAME TATTOO, SAME HAIRSTYLE, SAME EYES AND LIPS. Everything is just different colours.

Right now she had a sand-coloured hijab with bright asymmetrical patterns, and a blue face tattoo influenced by arabic script (i think i might make it a version of draconian script but idk), and this cold half-mask type thing that fits to her face and covers the bridge of her nose, most of her mouth and chin, and part of one cheek.

A straight up monster. Like not even a specific type of monster. Just a "yep thats a monster" monster. And kinda ugly and alien looking, especially compared to the other three. B/c like Sammy is temptation incarnate, Laren's just a dragon but she a sex worker so presume pretty, and Sairaus is all genderless, inhuman beauty when shes not like decaying.

Monster is eyeless. They can find their way around almost perfectly, but they need to cross the desert and when the only way to determine direction is like the sun and the horizon, its kinda hard to navigate without eyes. 

And the monster doesn't really talk much and isn't very responsive when spoken to, so they think the monster's super rude, but then one day Samyaza hears the monster mutter something in Urhaqsy and it turns out the monster just doesn't speak much English, so then Sammy spends the rest of the trip teaching the monster English and they're chatting in Urhaqsy and stuff, and monster keeps asking Sammy to translate things she says in like Enochian and Sumerian and then is the only person who knows that most of Sammy's super hardcore swears are variations upon "go eat dirt" and they're all cute and falling in love and stuff.

And Monster has been a beast of burden most of their life, and since they escaped, anything like that sort of work really triggers them and stuff. So when they're all trying to find a way to carry Sairaus, they don't ask Monster to do it. And just no one ever expects them to do anything triggering because they were literally treated like an animal for a long time and that's fucked up. i swear to god there will not a be a "dramatic getting-over-your-triggers moment" because fuck that shit, monster don't need to get over their trigger now or ever, and it's no one's business but theirs if they do or don't.

Also I love that Sammy's true form is just plastered with eyes like eyes everrwhere, so in her physical form she keeps freaking the fuck out about how she cants see. But also I love how Monster can't see but that's perfectly normal for their species, while Sammy can see but she's used to being able to see everything, so she feels blind.