I think everyone has “that” Disney movie that they love. For me, it was Beauty and the Beast. It was my movie growing up – I bought the collector’s edition DVDs, lithographs and posters, saw it on Broadway thrice before it closed, and the soundtrack has a permanent place in whatever device I hold in my hand today.
Needless to say I am really excited for the live action movie, so here’s Belle and the Beast, aching for each other, and the Beast too afraid to touch her.
Lots of light/dark elements here, with the Beast emerging from the shadows and Belle sparkling in the light. I combined the designs from the live action film, the animated movie and my own imagination to create this piece. Hope you enjoy!
Thanks to @papiertrail for her valuable feedback :3
NIGHT’S MASTER (Tales from the Flat Earth # 1) by Tanith Lee
NIGHT’S MASTER is the first book of the stunning arabesque high fantasy series Tales from the Flat Earth, which, in the manner of The One Thousand and One Nights, portrays an ancient world in mythic grandeur via connected tales.
Long time ago when the Earth was Flat, beautiful indifferent Gods lived in the airy Upperearth realm above, curious passionate demons lived in the exotic Underearth realm below, and mortals were relegated to exist in the middle. Azhrarn, Lord of the Demons and the Darkness, was the one who ruled the Night, and many mortal lives were changed because of his cruel whimsy. And yet, Azhrarn held inside his demon heart a profound mystery which would change the very fabric of the Flat Earth forever…
Come within this ancient world of brilliant darkness and beauty, of glittering palaces and wondrous elegant beings, of cruel passions and undying love.
Discover the exotic wonder that is the Flat Earth.
Check out this book on Goodreads: Night’s Master (Tales from the Flat Earth #1)
Reylo vibe recommendation by @k10c2
I strongly second this recommendation. 😍 I’ve decided that each of the ‘Tales from the Flat Earth’ books will get it’s own post.
Very sensual, reminiscent of 1001 nights, featuring a wide cast of characters over the course of 5 books but always returning to beautiful and casually cruel Azhrarn, Lord of Demons who occasionally has a soft spot for humanity.
While the reylo vibe is not as strong in the first of this series it will still make you fall in love with Tanith Lee’s creation and her characters.
Do you have a REYLO VIBE recommendation? Submit or contact me!💙💙💙
Many are called…
She alone can save the world and become Death’s bride.
Cobweb Bride is a history-flavored fantasy novel with romantic elements of the Persephone myth, about Death’s ultimatum to the world.
What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?
In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary “pocket” of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill….
Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness… Her skin is cold as snow… Her eyes frozen… Her gaze, fiercely alive…
While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war… A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father … Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court…. Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living…
Look closer — through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars…
And one small village girl, Percy—an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter—is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.
As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death’s own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North…
A determined young woman and a dark knight who will redeem himself try to save their world from total annihilation.
A dead princess and her murderer may find happiness together.
A many-faced Hades will try to win his twisted, mad Persephone back.
Three couples, many reylo feels…
Do you have a REYLO VIBE recommendation? Submit or contact me!💙💙💙
I recently rewatched my all time favourite movie as a child, Ronja Rövardotter (for the english speakers: Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter), and noticed some parallels that can be drawn to Reylo.
For those who haven’t watched the film or read the book by (awesome!) Astrid Lindgren:
Ronja is the daughter of Mattis, chief of a robbers clan, and his wife Lovis. She grows up in her parents’ castle in the woods with the robbers as her only company, until a rival robber group (led by their chief Borka) moves into the other half of the castle, exacerbating the longstanding rivalry between the two bands. When she meets Birk Borkason, the only son of Borka, the two start out as enemies, but once they get to know each other they become very close friends – but know that they cannot tell their families. When Birk is captured by Ronja’s father, she gives herself to the Borkas so she must be exchanged, but as a result her father disowns her and refuses to acknowledge her as his daughter. Birk and Ronja run away to the woods, where they live in a cave and experience several adventures. Ultimately their families repent of their feuding, and everyone is reunited, but the story concludes with both Ronia and Birk deciding that the robber’s life is not for them.
Character parallels
Both Ronja and Birk grow up quite lonely, as the only children among adults and find themselves on opposing sides of rivalling forces, namely their opposing clans of robbers.
After being abandoned by her parents, Rey grows up alone on Jakku amongst other scavengers. While Ben is surrounded by other children, he is singled out and different from a very young age, due to both his bloodline as well as his unique powers, and also ultimately alone. They also find themselves on opposing sides of a war, in their case the Resistance and the First Order respectively.
Ronja & Rey
There are obvious parallels between scavenger Rey and Ronja: She, as well as Rey, is self-reliant, spirited, kind, but a fighter who stands her ground and is not afraid to speak her mind and question authority. She cusses and insults Birk a lot. She also is very impulsive and often lashes out before thinking, she even bites him in the cheek at one point by mistake (but refuses to apologise).
Birk & Kylo Ren
Birk is born into (robbers’) royalty and very aware of that. When he is first introduced he comes off as a little arrogant and smug. He insults Ronja and mocks both her origin and her abilities. (To be fair, she does as well)
The First meeting
The first time Ronja and Birk meet is at the rift that separates both halves of the castle (fittingly called “the gorge of hell”). They immediately start to throw insults at each other. Birk jumps over the rift after Ronja tells him to “come over if you dare, I will punch you in the face so hard your nose falls off!”. To keep face she starts jumping as well. Birk is quite impressed. They then both start competitively leaping back and forth across the abyss. Finally, Birk slips and almost falls to his death, but is ultimately saved by Ronja, who pulls him back over the edge. When Birk tries to thank her and suggest that maybe now they belong together, she slaps him and tells him to go to hell.
Now, where might we have seen two antagonists insulting each other, then fighting on the edge of a cliff before… followed by an impressed boy offering a union and the girl rejecting him…
(I realise this post might be interesting only to a niche readership – assuming that most of your aren’t Swedish or German, where I know this book/movie is most popular – and this is pretty long already, so I’m putting the rest under a cut.)
I loved this movie as a kid (still do). It’s dark, creepy and magical. It’s definitely not the typical cutesy stuff Hollywood pumps out.
You are not the only one who saw parallels with reylo. Some time ago I also made a (very short) post about that movie. Of course this meta is something else. Thank you for taking the time to do this awasome in-depth analysis.
This book was made for me, I s2g. It’s cover is the worst I’ve ever seen outside of an MS paint doodle, but the prose is phenomenal and its like the Marquis de Sade on crack. Honest-to-god-monster angel meets Giger fever dream meets zombie apocalypse meets death and the maiden. Its the darkest, goriest, most existential erotica I’ve read in ages.
Spoiler alert: the protag, Lan, shacks up with Azrael, literal Biblical Angel of Death. He’s this 10ft foot tall grey-skinned motherfucker walking around like a strung-out Pyramid Head, complete with claws and eyes so bright they basically burn and a voice that makes your ears bleed. He wears a ram helmet–or has ram horns???–and wears a golden mask because his face makes people freak the fuck out, like actual angels do.
In between fucking Lan with a cock the size a horse, he opines about existentialism and the nature of pain and how he wishes he had a mother, so its oedipal too. Did I mention there are zombies???
10/10 recommend and I’m only 20% through this book.
I mean its so oedipal he’s literally creating “children” out of corpses because he’s lonely af. He makes them call him Father. He’s a goddamn tsundere with image issues that just wants to be loved, but he also has no earthly inkling of how do this because he’s going around impaling people and flaying them alive and creating torture rooms that put the cenobites to shame. So far he’s landed on earth–cast out, maybe?–and he’s set up some sort of sadomasochistic garden of Eden and started a zombie apocalypse in the interim. The dead rise because he controls the dead, and they cannot die unless he reaps their souls, so no one is escaping this pain anytime soon.
The motherfucking protag entered this underworld via literal ferryman in a pseudo-coffin. She paid the ferryman–who is dead–by sucking him off. So I guess there’s necrophilia too???
Fuck. This is going to turn into a liveblog. Spoilers, fuk. sPOILERS-
THERE IS A SCAR TOUCH. I REPEAT, A FACIAL SCAR TOUCH STRAIGHT FROM THE MOST HEATHEN REYLO DREAMS-
Add incest to the list of taboos this fic ticks off. I’ve got to the part where the brother and sister fuck like rabbits while they complain bitterly about their “Father’s” concubines.
oh my god. oh my gOD
This is the most sinful shit I’ve ever read. It is me. I am the new vanilla. My own words are dempster’s white bread compared to this cornucopia of eldritch horror erotica. I have found God and dug too deep in my quest for kink. I am undone and made raw
Day 2 of Liveblog:
This is either gonna end in redemption or tragedy cuz this cenobite-cum-angel just wants to be loved and has it bad for Lan, and she doesn’t get it at all. gOD MY SHIPPER HEART
Fun quirky linguistic fact about this book: zombies are called eaters and concubines are called dollies and Azrael has had exactly 483 dollies and is trying to work his way to 484. There’s a new dolly in this city of the dead he’s set up–this post-apocalyptic garden of eden–and her name is Cassius. Considering the historical significance of the name Cassius I’m pretty sure she’s here to kill Azrael and is gonna try to kill Lan in the process, because Lan is loyal to him.
The book has been making a big deal about how he rises up the dead like vampires to keep them preserved forever, but refuses to do it with Lan and gets straight up triggered by the notion. $10 says Cassius gonna poke Lan with the sharp end of a needle and he’s gonna be forced to rise her up, or something similar, and it’s gonna wreck him.
Seriously though, this book cover is a fucking crime to grace a goddamn masterpiece like this. Look at it. Not even a mother could love it:
It’s a combination of the worst typography impulses known to man, the sort of graphic design my first year professors would fail me for, and that bargain-bin Rey from the TLJ porno parody. Who the hell signed off on this. My soul is cringing into oblivion and crab-walking backwards out of my body
Ah yes, great book! The author is the queen of monster romance/erotica (complete with good plot and characterization).
I’ve put two of her other works on my list of books with monsters as love interests. I only didn’t include this one because I liked the other two on the list even better and I wanted variety.
Monsters and Villains 