Behind the Door: Maleus is not allowed to say he loves her
He can want her. He can keep her. He cannot name it. So he says horrible things instead
Okay so I have a rule for Maleus that I wrote down around chapter eight and I’ve been obeying it ever since like it came down off a mountain.
Maleus is not allowed to say he loves her.
Love is forbidden knowledge.
He doesn’t have the word. I’ve never let him borrow one either, and the entire back half of this book is him losing that argument one noun at a time.
This is the one where I show you the nasty inner workings and misbehaving machinery.
Two quick things first; You’re on chapter four and I know it, so nothing here goes past it, and where I had to hide something you’ll see me hide it.
What art Instagram got, and what it actually is
Here’s some Instagram ready art to really show what my poor sleeping beauty will be going through…without getting me banned of course!
There’s a block here you’re not being shown!
It’s got the two generations I threw out and why each one failed, plus the actual working file for the picture up there. The prompt, the LoRA stack, the negative, the seed, the settings. Everything you’d need to go make one yourself.
I give that away back here because I’m not precious about the method. $6.66/month or $69/year and it opens ;)
What Maleus does with the waiting
Everybody writes the villain’s centuries. The long patience! The eternity of it! Very grand.
Maleus doesn’t get centuries. He gets one childhood.
A pixie broke into his land and stole his flower, the flower healed a dying queen, he turned up at the christening to collect, and what he took was a claim on a baby. And then he had to wait for her to grow. It’s such an unglamorous spot for a villain to be in and I love it. He thinks entirely in ledgers! And he’s been handed an asset that won’t mature on a schedule he controls. He can’t hurry her, he can’t spend her early, all he can do is sit there and let the debt accrue.
So he thinks about her the way you’d think about a property you’re paying taxes on. That framing is his, by the way. I just write it down.
Which brings me to the table.
This is the actual reference sheet I keep open while I’m writing his chapters. What he feels, then what he’s actually allowed to say instead:
Pull, fascination → coffer, claim, an anomaly worth keeping
Jealousy → stolen use, debt, no permission was given
Fear of losing her → an insult to permanence, maintenance
▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ → ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
▉▉▉▉▉ → ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
There’s two more of those! You’re on chapter four and they would ruin something, so they stay blacked out until you get there. Paying me doesn’t unlock them. Nothing unlocks them except chapter twenty. And yes I know this is worse than not showing you the list at all…that’s the point ;)
Ask him about any of the ones you CAN see and he’ll tell you it’s a debt. And he means it!
One thing that changes what you’ve already read.
Go back to chapter one. Somebody breaks into his land and steals from him.
I built the opening that way on purpose and I’ve never taken it back. He’s the wronged party in chapter one and he doesn’t stop being the wronged party just because everything he does about it is monstrous. The debt is real! He IS owed. He’s also going to collect it off a child. Both of those stay true for the entire book.
That’s why he’s so hard to just dismiss. If he was only appetite you could put him down. He’s got a grievance, and it’s real.
Why this fairy tale out of all of them
Sleeping Beauty is a story where every decision that matters gets made over a crib.
A king makes a bargain, a fairy gives a gift, another fairy curses the baby, and a prince turns up a century late to kiss a stranger. She’s there for all of it and part of none of it, then she’s asleep, then she’s married (in the Disney version. The real version…err…well…hmm).
The plot happens exclusively TO her!
So I took that literally. What is a person, once you accept that every important thing about her life got settled before she could talk?
The claim was made over her cradle. The name she got given, the lies she got raised on, the boy she wasn’t supposed to meet. She spends the entire novel trying to be the author of one single thing, and when she finally manages it she does it without a sword and without a spell.
I’m not telling you more than that!
It happens late, it’s very quiet, and she goes through hell before the story gets there.
The sleep is real by the way. She’s not secretly awake and watching. The sleeping happens, and chapter four is her memory from inside it.
Yeah, technically her sleep is the protection the fairies give her. The ignorance, the pretending…
The fairies are the second antagonist.
Eirlys loves her! Eirlys also drew a border around her entire life and built her a childhood out of arranged truth. Every lie in it was a kindness. She meant every single one.
In the original the fairies are the good guys.
In mine they built a nicer cage, out of love, at enormous personal cost, and it’s still a cage, and Lynneae still has to break it to become a person. Maleus is honest about what he is. Eirlys sang lullabies to her.
…Maleus is still a total shit stain tho’. Don’t get it THAT twisted.
He’s just an HONEST shitstain.
Next week
We’re on Victoria, which is a completely different kinda torture.
There’s a line in her first chapter where she refuses to think about why she picked that jaw, or that left eye instead of that right one.
She calls the question uncomfortable.
She goes upstairs and writes a letter to a three year old who’s been dead for one thousand and ninety five days. Like a normal person.
She never answers the letter, btw.
I will.
The door, since you got this far
Everything you just read is free and it stays free! I’d rather be read than paid, in that order, and it isn’t close.
What’s back there: Victoria and the rest of the novels chapter by chapter months before Kindle Unlimited gets them, the character files, the working prompt for every piece of art I make, and the art itself, the tasteful kind and the other kind.
$6.66/month or $69/year. Patronage, with teeth 🐺
Taming Malice posts on Fairytale Fridays. The prologue and chapter one, Thief, are free to anybody.