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Chapter 4 of A Complete Education is up at the Hugo-Award Nominated Archive of Our Own, featuring logistics and somewhat less suffering than previous chapters, but extra blushing. (oh the teaser snippet I was gonna post is one I posted already– so there’s context for that one now– so I’ll post this one instead, where the household staff all gently rib Csevet for acting his age in his free time.) 

*

Nemer patted Beshelar on the shoulder. “Thou lookst like thou wast reverse-fucked, mate,” he said. “Anti-fucked, mayhap.”

Beshelar rolled his eyes. “I slept poorly,” he said. “Who fucked who?”

“Aisava fucked somebody,” Nemer said.

“Oh let him be,” Echelo said, coming back with Beshelar’s tea. She put it into his hand and paused to look at him. “He’s right, though, thou looks’t terrible. Art thou coming down with aught?”

“No,” Beshelar said crossly.

“Thou’rt early,” Csevet noted, eager to deflect discussion from his putative state of satiety. “Is aught amiss?”

“No,” Beshelar said, giving up on crossness. “I came to speak with thee, if anyone would leave off hassling me for an instant.”

“Let’s to the dining room, then,” Csevet said, “I’ll be needing to go over the day’s agenda anyway. What’s thy concern?”

“Mayhap thou canst get him laid too,” Nemer said with false earnestness.

Beshelar bore it with much better humor than Csevet had expected. “Oh, mayhap,” the nohecharis said, deadpan, “gods know that’s just what I need, in my copious free time. Maybe he can save us both time and fuck me himself directly.”

Nemer cackled in wicked delight, and betook himself out of the room, mercifully. Csevet tried studiously to meditate his ears back to their proper color, as he made his way out to the dining room with a precarious plate of toast.
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idk, i think this is chapter 8? It is long and all one POV and also it is the wedding, so. this story is now earning the hell out of its Explicit rating, so do be advised.  This chapter also features a truly horrifying proportion of run-on sentences and chains of comma-punctuated subclauses, and it’s not fixable, so just ride it out if you can. It’s uh a stylistic choice, ok.

A Joyous Union, on AO3, chapter oh, actually it’s 9. see, it’s good that AO3 counts things for me. Chapter 9 of A Complete Education. 

*

He tilted his head to look up at her a little bit, and it was absurd how beautiful he was, with his great silver-bright eyes in his slate-dark face and his fine sharp features and cheekbones to cut glass with. “I am the Hobgoblin,” he said miserably, “Edrehasivar Half-Tongue, a misbegotten blot of a thing, but we must make do with what we have.”

“Don’t speak so of my husband,” Csethiro said, masking her real anger at whoever had put those words into his mouth under a pretend indignation. “Or I shall have to duel thee, cur, who speaks so– must I fight thee, for thy uncouth words?”

His eyes had shuttered, a little, at her first exclamation– she had not masked her real anger well enough, and he had seen it– but she had curled the last question into an obvious flirty joke, and he looked warily almost-amused. “I am not much of a fighter,” he said.

“Then thou hadst better stop thy mouth,” she said. “I did not bring a dueling-sword to bed but I will not hesitate regardless.”

“What wouldst thou duel with, in bed?” he mused.

“Fear not,” Csethiro said, “I am very resourceful, when it comes to trouble.” She gathered her courage, and took advantage of his loosened grip to pull her nightshirt up by the hem and remove it entirely, discarding it. Now she was completely naked, and he was at eye level with her breasts, which she was rapidly beginning to appreciate as the weapons of distraction that they were. “There,” she said, and boldly gave herself a little shake. “They aren’t anyone’s philosophical ideal of perfection but they are right here, which I expect makes up for many shortcomings.”

Maia had nothing to say to that; he gazed at them in a kind of wonderment, and after a moment she took his hand in hers and put it against her breast, since he wasn’t going to think to do it on his own. “Oh,” he said, as if surprised, but then he brought his other hand up, too, caressing over her back, and she had always read descriptions of heroines overmastered by simple touches but they hadn’t conveyed how good it felt just to be touched, someone’s hand open and gentle and curious.

*
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heartofoshun:

The Goblin Emperor Kindle Edition on sale for $1.99–highly recommend it if you have not read it.

RELEVANT!!
It’s a SIGN now you all can READ IT so you can READ MY FANFICTION lol

ETA: double-checked, this is true in US at least, here is link!
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chapter 5 of A Complete Education, Misunderstanding, at AO3

This one is long and also contains action. Listen, I had to inject drama, I can’t help it. No Maias are directly harmed in this chapter update. The length was inconvenient; it’s two longish sections, neither of which is long enough to stand alone but together they break my neat pattern of how long these should be. Honestly it wasn’t that neat a pattern so I’m not that sorry. I console myself it’s extra exciting so it’ll go fast. LOL. Hold on through the drama and we get to the earlier snippet I posted with Beshelar the nursemaid, there’s your prize at the end.

*

Inwardly, Deret prepared himself to be murdered. It would be best, he thought, not to give resistance, and just let it happen. But then he thought of the inevitable scandal. It would probably be inferred, he realized with horror, that he himself was having a doomed affair with Aisava that had somehow gone wrong, and the scandal of it would be far worse for Himself than if he just killed Aisava. No one would believe a nohecharis had gone down in a fair fight with a secretary, because already nobody remembered that Aisava had come up as a courier, and the rough-and-tumble life of couriers was the sort of thing people only remembered in novels and didn’t really appreciate in real life.

*
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The chapter is not capslocked, don’t worry. 

Chapter 5, Brotherly Advice, of A Complete Education, up on AO3, still just teasing the as-yet-unearned explicit rating with discussions of masturbation, as ever. We’re up to 26,000 words, is it a novelette yet?

* 

Maia laughed, at that. “Thou hast a very specific imagination,” he said.

“If one is to adhere to one’s principles in a hypothetical,” Deret said, “one had better be damned sure of all the details of that hypothetical.”

Maia laughed again. “Only thou,” he said again.
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Chapter 3 update on A Complete Education, featuring Deret Beshelar: Disaster Bi, and his Inevitable Opsec Freakout Over Ciphers. 

(To be fair Deret’s more of a Disaster Demi but the meme usually says Disaster Bi so I’m rolling with it. Nobody does alignment charts for the grey-As, we just have to deal.)

*

Deret stood, desperately uncomfortable. In a moment, he finally blurted, “Cala, what must I do to earn back his trust?”

Cala blinked up at him, as if he hadn’t been expecting the question. Well, perhaps he hadn’t. “What must– I’m sure I don’t know, Deret,” he said. “He thinks thou wilt judge him because thou judgest everything that passes before thine eyes. I’m sure thy expression will never give away aught that causes him harm because that’s all thy expression normally reveals, that thou dost disapprove of everyone and everything thou ever didst see. Honestly it is a useful quality in a nohecharis and indubitably why thou wast so easily chosen for the job, but it makes thee not the best suited to the attendance of a nervous and abused youth facing so massively potentially embarrassing an ordeal as losing his virginity in more or less public spectacle.”

Deret had earnestly desired honesty from Cala, and now that he had it, it felt rather like he’d been kicked in the gut. He managed a breath, nodded blindly, and left the room, stumbling into his bedroom and sitting down heavily on the trunk that served him as a chair.

He breathed for a little while, shakily, then collected himself enough to get his boots off. He knew he’d been given this assignment to get him out of his commanding officer’s hair. He knew he hadn’t been popular; he’d never been good at making friends, and a large part of climbing the ranks of the Guard was in making connections with other officers in a way he’d just never been good at. But he’d been foolish enough to think none of that mattered here, that his devotion would be enough–

Well, it didn’t matter. His lord didn’t have to like him. Edrehasivar had more options now than he had when he’d needed Cala and Deret to accompany him during his coronation vigil.

Deret stood up and undressed himself efficiently, putting his outer clothes away and the inner ones into the laundry hamper where the staff would collect them. He took his robe out of his trunk and put it on, and went out, intending to go to the household’s bathing room. Cala was still sitting in the anteroom.

“I’m sorry,” Cala said awkwardly, “I said that more harshly than I meant to.”

“But thou toldst the truth,” Deret said, “so I thank thee.”

“It was needlessly unkind,” Cala said.

Deret looked at him. “Apparently, so am I,” he said. “I reap as I sow.” And with that, he left.
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A Complete Education, on AO3, WIP, The Goblin Emperor– first chapter is up, more to follow soon once I’ve banged them into shape. Rated explicit but it isn’t really, yet. 

Preparing for the Emperor’s wedding, everyone has some things they need to learn about.

“You don’t have to tell us what it is,” Csevet said fondly. “You’re allowed to have private correspondence, Serenity.”

Edrehasivar opened his mouth, and Csevet shook his head. “Serenity,” he said, “do not explain yourself, please. Take your interesting packet and go and we will have everything in order for your review on the morrow.”

The emperor considered that a moment, looking very young and a little guilty, like a schoolboy contemplating skiving class. “You wouldn’t... mind?”

It was absurd, and sweet, and Csevet blinked at him for a moment. “Serenity,” he said, and then paused. Chiding the young man for being who he was wouldn’t be productive. Edrehasivar knew fine well he was the emperor and could command whatever he wanted, and he didn’t want to at the moment, and that was fine, in this private moment. Csevet leaned in and said quietly, warmly, “This once? I wouldn’t.”

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seriesofnonsequiturs replied to your post “goblin emperor”

sorry don’t mean to blast your page but OMG THE GOBLIN EMPEROR seriously one of the best worldbuilding fantasy books i’ve read - i also love the biracial dynamics like when he walks into the goblin embassy and he almost cries because he finds people who look like him - and also his realization that FRIENDS ARE GOOD and he’s allowed to mutually care about his guards - and his whole thing about his mother and his faith -the question of radical anarchy and THE WHOLE BOOK

omg, that aspect of Maia being an unreliable narrator and reading through the lines to his trauma was so f*ing well-written in the book - not to mention Csevet’s competing trauma too omg

— yes the scene where he’s nearly crying in the goblin embassy was so lovely, all of that is like– *chef’s kiss*

don’t feel bad about blasting my page, i don’t post enough anymore to have so many notification’s that i’m not delighted for more. 

And yes– Csevet’s trauma also is like, a layer there, I’m not super articulate at the moment but I am In Agreement.

seriesofnonsequiturs replied to your post “yet more goblin emperor wittering don’t worry it’s almost out of my…”

omg that sleeping system bothered me as well!! i’m like dude, on duty for 12 hours does not an effective guard make

I have now had very serious conversations about this on at least three different social media platforms with like five different people, it seems to me that there’s literally nobody who read the book and was like “seems rational” so like. should we start a letter-writing campaign? “we want the nohecharei to unionize” 

Although as I pointed out on Dreamwidth in the last iteration of this discussion, I mean, how many shifts are you really going to want in a job where if your coworkers fuck up even during a shift you’re not present for, you’re expected to commit ritual suicide? It’s gonna keep your pool of applicants small, I think. So like. Balance that. 

But what gets me– even if you assume they really do nap while the Emperor’s sleeping, so like, ok, if they do an overnight shift every other night, they can get 2-3 hours sleep apiece while he’s out depending on whether they’ll sleep concurrently or not, and while it’s just a light doze, still it’s not like they’re breaking rocks for 12 hours, and if you assume kind of a monk-like devotion to their work where leisure time becomes important, you still run into a separate issue: you want your guard to have good reflexes, right? and good weapons and fighting skills? that means ongoing practice. When is that supposed to happen, when the vast majority of his shift guarding you is spent standing motionless as part of the scenery??? how are they supposed to stay sharp? even if maza skills are largely mental, they need to be fit, and the guards are gonna really suffer if they can’t work out sometimes. so like. When! When is their cardio! I must know.

girderednerve replied to your post “have you read the queen’s thief series? your goblin emperor posting…”

beshelar is So Adorable, oh my gosh, your goblin emperor posting has brought me sheer delight

I don’t know why I’m so into Beshelar but he has accidentally become my Relatable Everyman here. He’s just so… like, he’s an uptight kind of jerk, and I Get That, ok. 

This whole fanfic I’ve written has literally 0 Maia POV, I decided that was my weird trope that I was gonna stick with, and so it bounces around but it’s got a lot of dear Beshelar realizing he’s in a little bit over his head and attempting to Deal With It.

Also I just wrote Maia semi-losing his virginity from Csethiro’s POV, and it was enormously satisfying, so. I mean, for me, I don’t know how he felt about it, we haven’t really gotten to the reaction part. (cut for slightly nsfw text, describing a male orgasm, and i love Csethiro because she is a fkn nerd, so this is maybe less sexy than you’d think but she is definitely enjoying herself a lot. no this is just a tiny snippet, i promise the rest will be worth waiting for.) I don’t think I could write it from Maia’s POV, I think he’s so shy he’d fade to black even to describe it to himself. But Csethiro has never really balked from anything in her life and isn’t about to start now. 
( now improved with actual cut )

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s-leary replied to your post “listen”

I am here for it, but saving it for a day when I’m not too worn out from painting to remember who the hell everyone is.

I don’t know how much longer it’s gonna take me to post it, so. It’s grown way beyond my expectations and now there’s a semi-plot. All I really wanted was to write cute first-time wedding night smut but that keeps getting pushed off… Maybe someday. You’ll probably have finished painting your house by then.

s-leary replied to your post “goblin emperor”

I’m so glad you enjoyed it! I love it. The multiplicity of names was a lot, but still slightly easier than Sherwood Smith’s Inda series, which has an even larger cast of people with given names, last names, titular names, and nicknames… some of whom are namesakes. ��

ohhh boy.

Yeah I just. Finally I started writing down everyone I thought was important so I could refer back. I think a large part of it was that there were so many featuring phonemes that are rare or unused in English, and so I’d be like ah that’s Cso-and-so and then there were like eight Cso-and-sos so that didn’t work.

I have to keep the bookmark of reference names close to hand while writing because even fifty pages in I’m still forgetting whether it’s Telimezh or Telimazh, and Csethero is Csethiro? I’m not sure. 

C’est la conlang, really. I’ll keep this in mind when worldbuilding, myself– I <i>have</i> been keeping this in mind, actually, and have been conscientious about giving characters pronounceable and distinct names, and it’s sort of freeing to consider that, well, not everyone does that and you can still kind of make a choice about it. 
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(more goblin emperor wittering, i know i said i’d stop but listen.)

I don’t know how much fandom is left here but I’m going to probably throw a bunch of this up on AO3 at some point whether anyone still cares or not. 
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