#gerald tarrant

[first-and-last-neocount]

I was talking to a friend about my DnD character, who is based on Vanyel, and it was pointed out that I have a type. I couldn’t rest until I had inflicted this on everyone else. 

(I’ve probably forgotten about others, these are just the ones that immediately sprang to mind, feel free to point out any obvious ones that I’ve forgotten XD)

#coldfire trilogy #gerald tarrant #world of warcraft #arthas menethil #the witcher #geralt of rivia #heralds of valdemar #the last herald mage #vanyel ashkevron #bloodborne #ludwig the holy blade #i don't have a dedicated tag for my own cursed memes #but between this and the castlevania monsterfucking post i might need to start one

[rukafais]

the coldfire trilogy is about a lot of things, but mostly it's about two men who get increasingly and obsessively intertwined with each other's lives and perceptions of the world while the author is completely convinced she's writing two straight guys being dudes. Truly the rituals are intricate.

#i cannot overstate the sheer amount of subtext packed into this relationship because its like #if the author had actually realized at any point it might read as gay it wouldn't be what it is #what a fascinating series. #coldfire trilogy #damien vryce #gerald tarrant #rukart #im not making up the like author comments or anything btw shes been on record repeatedly iirc #that she doesnt understand why or how people could possibly slash damien and tarrant together #a series where one of them drags the other out of their self imposed hell and believes continously in their redemption #and the other gets dragged kicking and screaming into moral change after 900 years of considering himself a monster #for mental self defense as much as anything else

[notwithstandingclause]

Gerald Tarrant is iconic for building himself a sensory isolation forest and leaving it for like a couple hours once a decade, half of Damien's internal narration is just "why is he being so weird???" and it's like bro there are more people in this one room than he's seen in the last 500 years Give Him A Minute

#coldfire trilogy #tbh the way Friedman described Adepts has always read very autism coded to me #and Gerald especially #tbh there's a longer post on this incoming at some point I'm passionate about this issue #gerald tarrant

[anonymouseeverything]

"Crown of Shadows (Coldfire Book 3)" - C.S. Friedman Astarion Bite Scene (Baldur's Gate III) - Larian Studios ------ I don't know what I have here, but I have something.

#I have this in discord but I want it on my blog so I can stare directly at this post forever #It's about the manipulation of another party into believing they should trust you. It's about knowing you're still at their mercy. #It's about coming to terms with the fact that you might actually really trust them this time #Astarion #baldurs gate III #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 astarion #coldfire trilogy #damien vryce #gerald tarrant

[geraldtarrant]

The Coldfire Shipyard is an 18+ unofficial discord for fans of CS Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy. If you're looking for fanart, fanfics, a place to shout your Gerald/Damien thoughts outside the tumblr void, or just a friendly Coldfire fandom community to lurk in, please join us!

#coldfire trilogy #coldfire #discord server #gerald tarrant #damien vryce #discord #coldfire discord

[4th-make-quail]

There is no heterosexual explanation for this!!!

(Don't mind the vastly different font sizes, my kindle doesn't like it when I try to highlight across pages so I had to keep making the font SUPER TINY to fit in as much as possible LOL)

#coldfire trilogy #The truest form of love: nearly missing your tide while u wait for ur awful immoral vampire man to arrive #Thank u for that comment spider haha #It's so perfect #Anyway I'm SO SICK ABOUT THEM #AHHHHHHFKFKFKFJFJ #gerald tarrant #damien vryce

[just-hunterthings]

I think it would be funny if Tarrant shapeshifted into a really really unnaturally large bird and just picked up Damien and carried him away, screaming, in his claws.

#most inconspicuous and dignified form of travel #adult man gets carried off like a mouse being hunted by an owl or something #the coldfire trilogy #gerald tarrant #coldfire trilogy #coldfire #cs friedman #coldfire shitposting

[ta-creech]

I love a great redemption arc. Someone coming back from the darkest pit of madness or rage or despair. That no one is really beyond saving. Hope is eternal. Just about all my favorite characters are redemption characters. I think there's maybe three that aren't.

I think one of the darkest characters with a redemption arc is Gerald Tarrant, one of the mains in C. S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy. If y'all haven't read it and you're a sci-fi or fantasy fan, you're missing out. So good!

Tarrant starts out this trilogy as a "Bad Guy". Not the villain of the story, just, a bad guy. He's called the Hunter because of the evil shit he gets up to in the creepy forest he cultivated as a hunting ground. His "wound" is one of the most basic, and the twist on it is one of the best. And he doesn't apologize for what he's doing. Not once the whole time. He never becomes the good guy in the story. Sure, he does the good guy thing and his reasons are altruistic, but in the end, he is who he's made himself. Tarrant isn't the good guy, or the bad guy, but he's closer to evil than he is anti-hero, even though he saved the world.

Complex characters like this so hard to find. A lot of them fit in a neat little box and are easy to digest. Yes, I like Tarrant as a character, even when I find his actions distasteful. He's got that suave charisma. But he doesn't hide his evil. And he doesn't shy away from doing the job when it comes down to saving his world.

I think we could benefit from more characters like this in the fiction world. The ones who are very messy. The ones who are unapologetically themselves. Complex and able to encompass whatever part the story needs, because that's just who the character is. You need a villain? Tarrant has you covered. A tragic, flawed hero? Covered. World-saver? Covered there too.

My hat's off to Ms Friedman. A character who can be all these things and still not seem contrived is a fucking feat. I hope I can one day write a character even a quarter as good as Gerald Tarrant. I love this badass.

(Also, I love Michael Whelan's work! Look at that cover!)

#c. s. friedman #writeblr #amwriting #gerald tarrant #scififantasy

[theobscurepotato]

The Knight & the Dragon (8770 words, complete)

When the young Neocount offered no introduction or explanation, Damien sighed. Apparently Andrys Tarrant also inherited the obnoxious quality of turning blankly inscrutable at the worst vulking moment. 

"What do you want, Andrys? I’m assuming this isn’t a social visit." 

Andrys bit his lip, and then nudged the child forward. "Gerald, say hello."

--

A birthday gift for @first-and-last-neocount. Published back in August, but @straysinfiltrator just created lovely cover art for this, so I felt obligated to make a tumblr post. <3

Read on Ao3.

#coldfire trilogy #theobscurepotatowrites #my fics #gift fics #gerald tarrant #damien vryce #kid fic

[redsixwing]

Gerald Tarrant for the bingo meme!

Failed the vibe check, terrible in every way, was repeatedly given the choice between good and evil and chose "f you" every time <3 I may have a thing for Magnificent Bastards.

#coldfire trilogy #gerald tarrant #my beloved #asked and answered #thanks for the ask! #sorry it took so long

[first-and-last-neocount]

Okay, apparently rambling in the tags of that post about Catholic heresies earlier cracked the seal and now I need to make a whole Thing about it.

The Church of Human Unification has incredibly strict dogma. That's pretty clearly established in canon. It's for good reason: the Church was created to exert a specific and focused psychic pressure on the fae, and you can't get the desired result if your worshippers are off inventing a bunch of new creative ways of interpreting your teachings. That's all well and good.

But you know what happens when your strictly dogmatic religion encounters a heresy? Especially one with a lot of appeal or one that appears to better explain observable fact than the official Church teachings?

Religious schism, baby.

The Church told its faithful that the Prophet was punished for his Fall by being condemned to Hell. That he died immediately after his transgression and was paying for his sins. If word got out that Gerald Tarrant was in fact alive, well, and happily profiting off his literal deal with the devil... I could see that causing Problems. Like the kind of problems that result in armed combat, the burning of various written materials and structures, and possibly the formation of entire new religious sects. Certainly, they would not have been in any shape to call the faithful together and form up into an orderly Crusade.

If Gerald had revealed his identity on a public scale during Crown of Shadows, I think he would have immediately cut the legs out from under the Patriarch's attempt at forming up a Crusade. However, it might very well have also endangered the fundamental integrity of the Church he founded and spent nine centuries watching from afar. Which, I'm pretty sure, is exactly why he didn't do that: it might have solved a couple of very serious problems, but even with his life in danger, Gerald would have been very reluctant to endanger his own beloved work like that.

Laying out exactly what I think that sequence of events following a public reveal of Gerald's identity would look like is something I'm going to reserve for the moment, because I think I might actually like to turn this into a proper fic, but oh man. The chaos.

#coldfire trilogy #the neocount rambles #gerald tarrant #just. please. imagine with me the patriarch's face #when he heard what had happened #i am fucking cackling already

[rukafais]

yeah sounds about right

thanks to @harukami for this idea

#gerald tarrant #damien vryce #coldfire trilogy #rukart

[notwithstandingclause]

Insane about Gerald Tarrant hours because okay okay on the surface of things he can't be party to the god he created because it would mean dying and he has chosen this half life for 1000 years, but it runs so much deeper.

Insane that in this cosmology lucifer created god and Still fell from His grace and suffers eternally at the memory of a light for which he himself drew the blueprints.

Is it about fearing the loss of power that stepping away from darkens would necessitate or is it about fearing what your very presence would Do to the god you've created? Is it about forcibly separating yourself from your creation because You are the only thing you can't fit into the paradise you're constructing?

But no it's so SO much worse for him because the thing is the one genuine miracle we see, the only time God appears in the books, it's because Damien is protecting Jensenny from Gerald. Does god Need an opposite to exist? Is falling the last step, the big sacrifice that Gerald needs to undertake to bring god into existence for everybody else? How much of the Unnamed exists independently of Gerald, and how much has the fight against that evil contributed to the spread of belief on Erna?

CS Friedman really popped off with the whole Belief Begets Being part of the worldbuilding is what I'm saying and BOY is Gerald not having a good time with it.

#gerald tarrant #coldfire trilogy #he makes me physically ill guys #you ever just think about Gerald Tarrant? #what being visibly autistic as a child does to a bitch #he's so meow meow #none of this was coherent somebody else say something

[anonymousdormhacks]

I'm finally reading in 2024, with a fun little goal of 12 books by the end of the year (currently at 3 finished books)

Having said that I'm halfway through the Cold fire Trilogy book #1, and surely the author knows that constantly describing how pretty Gerald Tarrant looks from the perspective of Damien makes the man look like he's pining 24/7

#coldfire trilogy #I usually hate shipping but like dude #Damien does so much casual thinking about Tarrant it's insane #I only realized it was a Damien thing when I realized Senzei doesn't do it in his POV chapters #Senzei is too busy making out with the concept of magic in the corner to have thoughts #anonymous book reviews

[geraldtarrant]

“He was an idealist who had swept her off her feet, caught her up in his dreams of Revival and then set her by his side while king and church jockeyed to do him the greatest honor.”

- CS Friedman, Black Sun Rising

Image generated in Midjourney.

#young gerald #gerald tarrant #coldfire trilogy #fanart #my coldfire fanart #ai images

[rekishi-aka]

10 fandoms 10 characters

Nabbed this from @this-is-a-love-story-isnt-it and it looked fun!

X-Files: Dana Scully

Farscape: Aeryn Sun

Malazan Book of the Fallen: Fiddler

The Coldfire Trilogy: Gerald Tarrant

The Untamed: Lan Yuan

Highlander The Series: Methos

Good Omens: Crowley

Saber Rider And The Star Sheriffs: Fireball

Inception: Arthur

The Winternight Trilogy: Olga

(Did I very intentionally not pick in some fandoms? Totally 😂)

#meme #spread the fandom joy! #(feel free to ask about anything you're unfamiliar with)