Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

A set of facts from this post, on request from @littlestartopaz​.  “Kid Death, Soul Eater. Also Harry, from The Blue Sword”

Death the Kid

• Canon: Kid’s hair stripes apparently go all the way around his head once he’s a full-blown shinigami, and that’s adorable to me for some reason.
  
• Headcanon: I tend to imagine that Kid had a rough time adjusting to ‘normal’ people.  Like, the other meisters were reticent with him because of…who he is and who he’s related to, and he comes at everything with a very arrogant perspective, especially early on, so I tend to think that he has a horribly rough time learning to make friends.  Like, Patty and Liz were probably his first close friends.  I’m pretty committed to that.
• Heartcanon: Oooohhh, I dunno, I was pretty pleased with stuff.  I feel like Kid actually has a devious side under that wide-eyed anxious exterior, would’a liked to have that pan out more fully.
• Soulcanon: Kid becomes a shinigami and replaces Death and has a few conversations with various people who protest that it’s just not traditional for the Grim Reaper to dual wield pistols.  They make lengthy and detailed arguments against his actions, there are sources, there is, on one memorable occasion, a PowerPoint.  And Kid nods and ‘hmm’s and he continues to dual wield pistols.  I don’t fucking care how it happens, he makes Patty and Liz immortal somehow.
• Crotchcanon: I actually have no idea.  Because every time I sit down and try to think about Kid and sex, I inevitably end up wondering about the logistics of sex with a shinigami.  Like.  How does that shit even pan out?  Do you need to worry about condoms, or are death gods naturally infertile?  Or in control of that sort of thing?  Does Death have a body under that robe?  Do the weird black shadow-tentacle things come into play?  HOW DOES THIS WORK.  So, as you can see, I have never made enough headway on this train of thought to have an opinion.

Harry (Angharad, Harimad-sol)

• Canon: Harry Crewe is canonically good with any and all (non-demon) animals.  Giant ill-tempered warhorse?  Sure.  Loner hunting cat?  No problem.  Harry Crewe is also a stone-cold badass, and all of you should read The Blue Sword and appreciate her.
  
• Headcanon: Harry definitely causes small-to-middling disasters as she learns to use her massively powerful kelar for things other than bringing down mountain ranges.  And as handy as that ability to fucking wreck an opponent is, it’s a little hard on Corlath’s City, and they all look on with a sort of benignly exasperated affection.  Kelar tends to cause problems, but even Corlath never 'fixed’ a stone door and accidentally melded it with the frame.
• Heartcanon: Damarian weddings have some kind of family-of-the-bride aspect and Mathin gives Harry away, or whatever the equivalent is, as the Daughter of the Riders.  He cries a little and she cries a little and no one ever says anything about it.  Also, Corlath very very quietly slaps Mathin with some kind of title, whatever he can get away with, as the father of their new Queen.  Mathin isn’t informed of this for almost an entire year.
• Soulcanon: Aerin and Harry meet.  In the flesh.  At some point.  I don’t give a fuck who argues with me on this.  And Aerin visits Harry in her dreams and at first Harry’s very deferential and nervous, but she lightens up over time, and Aerin gives her advice on being a queen and being a legend and being a mother.  (At some point, when Harry is just exhausted of everything and frustrated with everyone and ready to ride off into the desert just to get away, Aerin turns up and tells a story about a very vain girl named Galanna who got her eyelashes shaved off and could have been rolled out a window, she was sleeping so heavily.  Harry laughs herself sick in the dream and wakes up smiling for the first time in weeks.)
• Crotchcanon: Okay but we can all agree that there was definitely some desperate, maneuvered-around-wounds, I-can’t-believe-you’re-alive-and-here sex in Corlath’s tent after that reunion scene, right?  And once everyone was recovered and back in the City, there was definitely a day where Harry was just like “Update: I moved all your meetings and acquired snacks” and they just literally spent an entire day having sex in the blue stone garden.  I can’t be alone in that assessment.

Anonymous asked: I wanna know more about the Hero and the Crown! i picked up McKinley's the blue sword one day but got distracted and for one reason or another never finished and now i'm trying to track her stuff down again

Oh, BABE, I’m actually jealous, I totally want to read Hero and the Crown again for the first time.  Buckle up, this is going to be quite a book rec.

Okay, so so so so SO, first things first, I don’t blame you for getting distracted during The Blue Sword, it’s a little more political machinations and army tactics and training than Hero and the Crown.  They take place in the same country, Damar, and they’re a set, but Blue Sword takes place hundreds of years later–to put it in perspective, Hero and the Crown happens in a time that’s still horses and knights and swordplay, whereas Blue Sword is a colonization, guns n’ steel, not quite up to telephones era.  Aerin, the main character from Hero and the Crown, is a legend and revered folk hero to the Damarians of Blue Sword, because Aerin is AMAZING.

All right, so, Hero and the Crown is the story of Aerin Dragon-killer, first sol of Damar (first sol being the highest female rank except for being actually married to the king).  Aerin is daughter of King Arlbeth and his witch-woman wife, who was the object of much suspicion from the country before her death, and even more suspicion afterward.  So that suspicion all spills over onto Aerin, who is tall and gawky and not good at being a first sol–in fact, she’s so spectacularly bad at being a first sol that some of her cousins are fairly convinced she’s illegitimate.  She breaks dishes just by being in the same room, she perpetually brings her sword (which she’s not supposed to have) and her saddle (which is for a warhorse rather than a lady’s pony) back to her chambers, she prefers to punch someone in the face rather than scheme, and, just to boot, she exhibits absolutely none of the royal line’s hereditary magic.  Basically, Aerin sucks at being a first sol, which would be fine with her if everyone didn’t expect her to be a first sol all the time.

And then one day Aerin takes her sword and her second-hand warhorse and something called kenet that makes you fireproof and goes to kill a dragon, and she finds out that, while she sucks at being a first sol, she does NOT suck at dragon slaying.  Events unfold from there.  Aerin is stubborn and hot-tempered and snarky and willful, she is everything I ever wanted to be as a kid.  Her perspective on life of “well THAT happened” is an absolute delight to read, and the world of Damar is glorious.

Other things I can guarantee you within the book include:

• a Big Ass Dragon (as opposed to the smaller annoying dragons Aerin largely handles)
  
• not one but two excellently constructed romantic plots (this might be the only book I’ve ever read where the protagonist is in love with two people and it’s…just not an issue, at all, ever, she’s just like ‘that happened’ and carries on fighting a war, this book is probably why I hate love triangles so much)
• magic EVERYWHERE (they call it the Gift and it kind of does shenanigans on its own once it’s strong enough)
• the Blue Sword, Gonturan, which Aerin carried long before she appeared in the eponymous novel
• wizards and mages and small trick-magicians
• a demon army
• AERIN

Other important characters include:

• Talat, Aerin’s second-hand warhorse, who was her father’s favorite horse until a sword cut rendered Talat lame in one leg, and YES, Talat is a character, fight me
  
• Tor, the first sola (heir to the throne), who is called ‘cousin’ in the general sense despite no apparent blood relation to Aerin, and who is at fault for the sword training, the dragon slaying, and probably the army raising, he is also one of the romances and he is HEART EYES over Aerin, I ship it
• Luthe, who I’m not gonna tell you much about because SPOILERS, but yeah, Luthe, FUCK YEAH, you’re going to need to trust me on that
  
• Galanna, another (very vain) cousin, she of the illegitimacy rumor-spreading, who Aerin once drugged so that she could sneak into Galanna’s rooms and shave off her eyebrows, and yes I included her so that I could add that tidbit
• Arlbeth, king of Damar, who gets a mention because he’s king and Aerin’s father, he’s very good at both
• Aerin’s army of wild dogs and hunting cats, who get a mention because??? Why wouldn’t they, that’s awesome
• Gonturan, who gets a mention on account of being awesome
• Maur, the Big Ass Dragon, who gets a mention on account of being a Big Ass Dragon
• AERIN

Basically: Hero and the Crown is amazing, buy it on Amazon here, and I love Robin McKinley like I love lungs, I don’t always think of it because it’s just there, and if you’re in the mood for any other vehemently delighted recs for McKinley’s books, I got you, hit me up.