nonbinary, 21, they/them, bi-ace, unwanteds wiki staff, uhh I love the unwanteds series to death, marcus today is my comfort character 💕 sometimes I blog about other fandoms
Au where Nadia was Unwanted. Not as in Frieda's report is well received and she ends up Wanted, but as in they're BOTH Unwanted.
Justine still writes off Frieda's report and she becomes Unwanted, but then she remembers Emma's birds magic or something and decides to make Nadia Unwanted too just in case.
Maybe Owen can be Unwanted too as a treat. Just so the Stowe siblings have a reason to exist because I think it would be interesting seeing an Artimé raised Alex and Aaron and Thisbe and Fifer being raised by their parents and not their brothers.
But mainly I thought about this because I think the dynamic between Frieda and Nadia would be funny. Nadia actually fitting in and getting comfortable in Artimé, relieved to be around people that aren't brainwashed by Quill (or at least lesser so), maybe she tries to get back to Grimere, or maybe she takes up storytelling, or theater. All of this while Frieda hates and is actively hostile toward her for seemingly no reason (or no reason thar Nadia is aware of at least).
Both of them doing theater would be fun I think. A battle between two characters they're acting out turning into a real battle, Frieda secretly casting a spell or two on Nadia before she goes on stage, etc, etc.
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Thinking about the fact that Marcus left Warbler as a child and (presumably) never once went back to visit his family. I'm singling out Marcus in specific for this because it makes sense that Justine wouldn't visit, but it surprises me a little with him. He has the white boat which is able to get over to Warbler easily and as far as he knows it's still a perfectly nice place to visit.
It could have been just because of his Head Mage responsibilities but what about before Artimé was created? During all those years he said he was lonely (before he built Simber)?
I think he was supposed to go to Warbler for his vacation in Island of Silence if I recall correctly? I wonder what the plot would have been like if he actually got the chace to go through with that? The Marcus vs Justine conflict is over in the first book with Justine being killed but Marcus and Emma would have been interesting to see too, maybe not with her just killing him but capturing him like she did with Samheed and Lani?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Okay I'll go study for my exams now...in the meantime, have a scene that's lived in my brain for a few years now: Marcus and Justine debating what to do with Nadia!
aroace sky & alex: some thoughts on (my view of) skylex
hey guys. hey. hi. im thinking about them again so i need to immortalize my thoughts on tumblr dot com for all to see
discord people have already seen this and forever shoutout to anxiousasalex for opening my eyes to the wonderful world that is aroace alex!! you are my hero and hearing your thoughts on it has genuinely been amazing, thank you forever and ever <3
ive also already written partially about aroace alex in a few fics so sorry if this is redundant but i wanna talk about it in my own words without having to have the characters themselves explain it in terms they dont really have and wouldnt admit to. so. yeah.
both sky and alex are aroace to me, but their romantic relationship is, to me, still an important part of what they mean to each other. and i know that the books spin it in a very explicitly romantic way, but hear me out... (this'll be a long post. sorry.)
to me, alexander stowe is a character defined by how much he loves people, as well as his loneliness. his family pushes him away and sends him off to die, and still he tries to reach out and/or defend their decisions. he's always on the outskirts of his friend group, whether by choosing to isolate himself or through having to be the leader--and still, he longs to be close to his friends time and time again, and feels his best when he's part of the group again. he loves his sisters to death and back, and yet he smothers them so much that he ends up pushing them away.
alex is also a character who is abandoned time and time again. aaron tries to kill him, marcus tries to fake his death to get away, meghan and lani and samheed leave without him because he's too busy to follow, he loses simber and cole and carina and sky tries to save her mother alone and then his sisters leave him in quests, too, and he's so used to it that it feels like an inevitability. so maybe he'll do whatever anybody wants to keep them around.
and i feel like that interacts with his romantic relationships in a really interesting way. lani bullying him is part of what pushes him away in the first book, but he still kisses her on the cheek and seems to have crush-y feelings on her. he pushes sky away time and time again for a variety of reasons, and yet they continue to come back to each other, over and over, especially because they work together so well as a team and he feels as though he cant succeed, cant survive, cant live, without her.
along with this, alex is someone who struggles with saying no. he plays along with what people want from him often when it comes to his role as head mage; even after telling marcus no, marcus simply ignores him and insists that he takes the job anyways. and it seems to go well, everyone tells him that he's an amazing leader even if he doesnt always feel like it.
so what about him being aroace? well, here's a boy who's been told time and time again that he just doesn't fit in, no matter how hard he tries. even in a world of misfits, even in a world where he's finally seen as talented and amazing, even in a world where he's allowed to be himself, he doesn't quite fit in. but he's so desperate to! he's always been desperate to be loved, to be part of the group, to not miss out on things, even when he gets pushed away over and over. everyone else is feeling all these romantic feelings, samheed and cole have crushes on meghan, lani's got a crush on him, etc. etc. and he wants to be just like them, he wants to fit in, so it's not that hard to just play along with what people want, right? he's already doing what marcus wants, even though he doesnt like it, so what's one more thing? if this is what keeps the people he cares about in his life, then shouldnt he play along and try to feel the same way?
side tangent: to me, quill is a society devoid of romance. strong feelings about anyone, or really anything, aren't something that's really allowed. parents don't even feel strong love for their children, and i doubt they feel strong love for each other, in almost all cases. however, artime is a world filled to the brim with feelings, with love, with care, with art of all kinds and color and magic, where those feelings are allowed and encouraged. along with this, artime does have access to records from the outside world--works by shakespeare and ovid, along with books like moby dick, are all canonically available in this world, and all feature strong romances that literally discuss our world's feelings on things like marriages. they take inspiration from our world in the fragments theyre given, and, well, those are fragments they canonically have...so i can see that being part of where artime gets its views on romance from, and thus, i can see it being something they encourage as well.
and, again, he's surrounded by it in his close friends. carina's already been married and had a child; sean's got a crush on carina; samheed and lani end up getting together; the list simply grows as the series continues. this is all normalized for him. this is something he should want, right? this is what it is to be normal?
enter sky. sky, who latches onto him quickly, who gives him a shoulder to cry on time and time again, who's caring and intelligent and helps solve his problems and never complains about it. sky, this girl he feels as though he has to help, once she helps him; sky, adventurous and willing to fight for what's right, who understands him and will be by his side no matter what.
and, like, obviously he should love her, right? isnt that what he's meant to do? he's supposed to kiss her and hold her close and do whatever he can to help her, right?
along with this, alex is an artist. he sees the beauty in everyone and everything around him, all their little quirks and mannerisms and the way their hair falls and...you get it. and that kind of aesthetic attraction is really, really easy to confuse for a romantic one.
(i also do view alex as someone who experiences attraction and romantic love sometimes. i think it's closer to demiromantic/sexual than grayromantic/sexual, but i dont want to label him that closely, especially if it's not really words he would have access to. but i could see him, somewhere beneath all of his other feelings about sky, of obligation and trust and care and understanding etc., loving her, at some point.) (he's someone who craves affection and attention, so romantic relationships are something that i think he does enjoy, even if he doesnt necessarily feel the same way. he doesnt mind sharing his life with someone.)
now, onto sky.
sky is different from her unwanted peers because she's not unwanted, a fact that she brings up time and time again. she's not creative, she's not magical, and she knows that she doesnt really have the same context of a quill upbringing that everyone else does. at first, she doesnt really know anybody else; theyre all closer friends than she is, and she hovers at the edges of the friend group, not really getting close to anyone besides alex.
another side tangent: i dont think warbler has traditional families or parental pairs, let alone romance. again, this is a form of control by eagala; let people feel strongly about each other, they might pair up against you. obviously these kids know their mothers, but fathers are never mentioned by any of the warbler characters, so i wouldnt be shocked if parents just dont stay together past, yknow, making a child. along with this, i view warbler kids as being raised moreso by all the adults underground, allowing most parents to go back to their normal jobs at a certain point. it's not fully giver-esque where birthmothers and babies are fully separated, obviously sky and crow still love copper and scarlet knows her mother, etc., but it's not like quill, either.
so, along with missing out on the literal experience of being unwanted, she feels like she's had so many other things stolen from her, including this idea of romance. what's one more thing for her to learn, you know? she's surrounded by it, so surely she can pick up on it easily enough.
and alex is her closest friend in the world, someone who looks at her like an actual human being rather than just another cog in a silent machine, who listens to what she has to say and chases her down to help her and theyve been through so much together. she knows him so well and cares about him so deeply and theyre already so close--if she has to be in a relationship with anybody, then he's her best option, and she doesnt mind it. she can already see herself spending the rest of her life being close with him, so what difference does this make?
their relationship is still founded on so, so much love and trust and care for each other, i just dont necessarily think it's romantic. at the end of the day, they really are a pair, through and through, balancing out each other's weak points in some places and amplifying each other's flaws in others. but they saved the world together! i genuinely dont think the two of them could ever be just normal friends about each other, if that makes any sense. they are best friends at the very least, no matter what.
not the end of the world if you dont view them this way as well, i just think it's a fun way to play with the worldbuilding and their characters at the same time!
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i still find it bizarre that lisa confirmed that justine's eyes are black in the first book, then seemingly forgot by the time that quests rolled around. like...it fits in perfectly with emma's lore, especially with her dyeing people's eyes to mark them as belonging to her, and later with her wish to rule grimere but only being able to transform herself into a dragon; AND it fits PERFECTLY with her jealousy of justine, who was bossy and egotistical and a bully, and who ran off to found her own nation without emma. it all makes perfect sense if you add the context of justine having black eyes! but it was never outright mentioned in quests, and lisa probably didn't even think that far ahead when she confirmed it in the first book. it's just fascinating to me. works out fine, just strange.
I’m always amazed by YA fictions ability to evoke fascist imagery for their villains to signify they are the baddies while maintaining the most fascist eugenicist politics as the entire thesis of the plot the entire time
if you are not in the discord you perhaps are blissfully unaware of my gunnar haluki obsession. and. i just wanted to ramble about him and marcus for a while because there isnt enough about them out there
and it isnt even necessarily the romantic aspect of it. like the two of them as characters and the little bits we know about their friendship are fascinating. and i think lisa was especially good at this in terms of the early quill-related characters; you can see it in a lot of people (justine, marcus, gunnar, aaron, eva, gondoleery, liam, will blair, general blair, nadia, etc.) whether they try to escape that pattern or try to claw their way back into it, but i want to talk about these two specifically.
because marcus, as we all know, had such a big hand in the creation of quill. sure, maybe it was mostly justine's ideals, and sure, maybe he was her right hand first and foremost, and maybe he just went along with what she said. but it is far, far more likely that he really did believe in it, too, and that it was also his ideas, not only from justine. he helped draw people in, he hurt people, he killed people. he killed innocent children.
and while we know very little about gunnar's backstory, we know he was similar. that he believed in justine, too, became her second-in-command and next-in-line, and that he and marcus had a similar falling out with her ideals, and that they turned to each other.
and i think that's what fascinates me about them. the mutual guilt and shame over what they both did in quill. the fact that they have nothing left to hide from each other, since they both come from such similar places, and yet they still *do* because it's a horrific thing to admit to, even though they can't really ignore it. how long and how deeply theyve known each other especially when compared to other characters. gunnar is still hiding his true identity from quill and from artime; he is at home in neither place. marcus says he has no secrets but still keeps the museum of large closed, even to claire most of the time. theyre both still keeping up appearances but meet in secret and that's the only place they can really be themselves and have to come face-to-face with someone else who knows in detail the things they did?? like come ON. marcus is part of the reason why gunnar is the person that he is and gunnar helped marcus get to this position and do they regret it?? like putting gunnar's betrayal and devotion next to marcus's whimsy and repentance is just. so fun to me. there's something deeply wrong with these two weird old men. gunnar illegally taught his daughter to shoot a gun seemingly for nothing other than fun. marcus is over here planning on faking his death (also can we talk about how he told gunnar and not his own daughter. like. what is wrong with him. and how gunnar knows panther but claire has no idea she exists etc etc).
i dont know there's just something deeply wrong with them and this is my pitch. ponder them with me
i keep forgetting to post this but i spent 7 hours on it so...the evil awful family tree that consumes my every waking thought!
*note: marcus being nadia's father is only a theory, not explicitly canon; "owen" is the name i give to mr. stowe, also not canon; marcus, claire, and emma's eye colors are not canon; the white hair streaks and pure white hair are similarly headcanons
not entirely happy with how the stowe siblings came out but i draw them so often that it doesnt really matter. i was more focused on getting down the faces of the other family members to track similar facial features!
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just got reminded of the unwanteds... gonna be honest never finished quests, woops. but it's so nice to see the state of the fandom nowadays :,)
I remember getting hate for drawing alex with long curly hair... getting hate for shipping thatcher and henry even tho it was literally canon........ seeing unwanteds fanart where the main cast isn't all paper white is a LUXURY that im so glad the current fans have
and I still stand by my opinion that thatcher should've been the head mage after alex instead of them putting another CHILD in charge
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