aria osguthorpe’s Substack

Overly Responsible Teens

aria osguthorpe — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:03:36 GMT

Harry Potter ended a war at age 17. The Fablehaven protagonists are 11-15. Percy Jackson is 12-16 when he and his fellow teenagers repeatedly prevent the end of the age of the gods/life as we know it. Katniss Everdeen is 16 when she starts a revolution.

Novels are full of children, prophesied chosen ones, tasked with saving the world. One might almost be excused for criticising the purveyors of prophecy for placing such a burden on idiot teenagers without fully developed brains or impulse control.1 However, criticising the purveryors of prophecy2 does rather bypass a few steps/leap over a veritable trench of logical fallacy, as it is entirely the authors who decide the age of their characters, and are therefore the ones responsible for making teenagers save the world.3

Thus, here are my reasons for making teenagers save the world and ruining their childhoods with probable PTSD:4

1. People generally read books about characters about their own age/in the same stage of life, or, for children, characters about two years older. Thus, to write for a twelve-year-old, your main character should be about 14. To write for adults, your main character will usually be an adult (these are vast generalisations).
2. The time I most read, and most needed, books was when I was in middle school—ages 12-14. Though I read (and continue to read) just about anything, the books that best helped me contextualise and understand my own experiences, relate to the world, and enjoy a respite from my own life contained characters ages 14-16. I once read something that said: we fill the gaps we fell through. I try to write the books I needed.
3. Teenagers are generally only responsible for themselves—they can leave behind their other meagre responsibilities in order to save the world and still be considered good people. If a parent left behind their children in order to save the world, it would be very hard to fully approve of their actions, thus the dearth of novels about middle-aged saviours.5
4. Teens can be wonderfully angry about the state of the world and be justified in that anger. Because they have no voting record or past failures yet have their entire lives ahead of them, whatever bad situation in the world is in, they are not responsible for, but have to bear the burden of.6

At the beginning of Fate’s Heir, Sirtia is 13. By the end of Fate’s Chosen, she is 15. By the end of the third and final book, she will be 16 or 17—I’m still working on a strict timeline. Though Sirtia is not a prophesied Chosen One, there are undeniably elements of the plot that would be better solved by quite literally any competent adult, rather than by a teenager. But, The Fates Books aren’t about responsible adults, that would be boring and preachy, so Sirtia will continue to have far too much responsibility for the remainder of the trilogy, and I will continue struggling to illustrate a character who is growing up as I draw.7

Deepest apologies to my younger (teenage) siblings, who are only occasionally idiots.

While deeply satisfying, especially if the purveyor of prophecy is a scrawny, manipulative idiot named Octavian (The Son of Neptune).

Or universe, humankind, wizards, etc.

Most YA books don’t really deal with the aftereffects of being a Chosen One ^(TM). I have various theories as to why other authors don’t address it, but personally, I need to do a lot more research into child psychology before I feel capable of writing Chosen One PTSD. I do think that the resultant story would be incredibly rich and a valuable mental health resource.

Though this explanation does not provide a reason as to why there aren’t more books about retired and grandparent Chosen Ones. I feel like Terry Pratchett could have written a really great grandmother Chosen One.

Greta Thunberg is an example of this. Her anger, her fury at the way the world has been treated and the consequences of previous generation’s actions that my generation will inherit is perhaps the most relatable political stance I have ever seen or heard.

Please excuse the difference in skill at illustration between the two images, they were created two years apart, during which I took several figure-drawing courses and got significantly better at drawing. One of the major annoyances of doing everything myself is that I inevitably wish I’d done everything slightly differently/better. I’ve already republished book 1 once, and I continually have to talk myself down from republishing again…

Miniatures as Funnels

aria osguthorpe — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:02:29 GMT

Large paintings, those twenty-foot behemoths, force you to step back in order to take it all in. Lean back on your heels, turn your head to see the far-away edges of the massive masterpiece, marvel at the scaffolding required to paint something so large,1 wonder what paintbrushes they used, step back again.2

Small paintings, however, pull you in closer. There’s detail that you put on your reading glasses in order to see, strain your neck forward, check the location of the museum guards, and lean in just a bit more. There’s a van Eyck painting, well known in intro to art history classes,3 that is exemplary of this—the amount of detail it contains could easily fill a canvas several yards wide, yet the painting itself is only 32.4x23.6in. The scrutiny required in order to properly see, analyse, and appreciate the painting makes me wish my glasses prescription were stronger.

This power to draw you in, to pull the viewer closer, is one of the great advantages of small artworks. The space in front of the painting acts like a funnel for museum goers, summoning them in, closer, closer, nose bumping up against the glass until the alarms go off.4

With some of these paintings, there is the feeling that the glass won’t appear, that the alarms won’t ring, that you can keep leaning, in and in and in, until the painting swallows you whole.5

_{Murmur; piece 2 of 3; 3.5x2in}

Michelangelo used copious amounts of scaffolding in order to paint the Sistine Chapel, hated every moment of it, and almost went blind from paint dripping into his eyes.

Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy : A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo (Signet, 2007). (Yes, I am aware that this book is not entirely historically accurate. I, however, choose to believe every word; everyone needs some blind faith in their life).

You can imagine any large piece, but I’m thinking specifically of Monet’s Waterlilies, the ones in the Musee D’Orangerie, which had a room specially built to house the masterpieces that stretch across the walls, filling rooms with the scent of a pond at dawn (metaphorically, not literally, although they really should buy a diffuser or something).

The National Gallery, ‘Jan van Eyck | The Arnolfini Portrait | NG186 | National Gallery, London’, in Nationalgallery.Org.Uk (2019), https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jan-van-eyck-the-arnolfini-portrait.

and the security guards come running

Can you tell I grew up reading Katie’s Picture Show and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and getting told off by guards in the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art for blowing on the Calder mobiles to get them to move?

Paid by the Word

aria osguthorpe — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:16:05 GMT

Victor Hugo was paid by the line.1 Dickens was paid by the word.2

Jane Austen included a sentence with 179 words in Pride and Prejudice, and it’s an excellent sentence.3

Unfortunately for the amount of whimsy that the English language is capable of, authors publishing today are definitely NOT paid by the word. Due to printing costs, industry standards, and g…

The Cost of Art

aria osguthorpe — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:04:27 GMT

Frida Kahlo painted from her bed, lying prone with her canvases attached to a specialised easel that hung above her. Her bright skirts concealed the brace she wore to correct the physical effect of a polio infection she had as a child, a brace that she decorated and painted until it shimmered with life.1

When Monet began to lose his vision, he leaned into…

Time is Amoeba-shaped

aria osguthorpe — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 18:59:15 GMT

Time isn’t linear. Or, rather, it is, but just for humans. For the god and goddess of the world of the Cycle of Fate, time is amoeba-shaped,1 which is to say, ineffable.2 The gods alone are capable of skipping to the good parts, and, occasionally, they change their minds or dislike the result (the goddess is much pickier than the god). In such cases, they…

Selkie's Sea

aria osguthorpe — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:01:39 GMT

The sea is no respecter of persons.1 Its depths are untamable; its secrets unknown. There’s a pull to that mystery, secrets concealed in “the deep marvelous rhythms of sea and land.”2

The sea’s mysteries conjure up stories like tide-tumbled glass sprinkled across the coast, wave-polished and salt-stained.

The selkie folk are one of those stories. Shapeshift…

Symbols and Cymbals

aria osguthorpe — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:03:49 GMT

As I have expressed in a previous iteration of this newsletter, I am mildly obsessed with symbols. There’s an incredible amount of depth that can be contained in a single word or idea simply due to its status as a symbol—a cross is never just a cross, the yellow walls are never just yellow.1 Whether any use of a symbol is intentional or not, the connotat…

Minding the Gap

aria osguthorpe — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:03:22 GMT

Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.1

There is a small black space there, stretching down to kiss the tracks below, a sort of abyssal depth.

A similar gap exists in art: the ‘taste-skill gap.’2 It is the difference between what the artist knows is good, and what their current amount of skill allows them to achieve.

The longer you dwell in …

Inadequate Worldbuilding

aria osguthorpe — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:03:43 GMT

I have a 70-page word doc on my computer titled “worldbuilding (condensed).”

I have a notebook dedicated to worldbuilding1—sketches and thoughts and ideas and plot outlines. It’s nearly full.

I have four different folders on my iPad with about 125 different artworks across them, each related to the world of Fate’s Heir—magic languages, floor plans, the clo…

Safety in Imperfection

aria osguthorpe — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:17 GMT

Human hands are imperfect.1 They slip—forget a stitch, miss a thread, smudge a line. Across times, across cultures, these errors became protection.

Navajo culture holds that when a weaver works on a rug, they entwine part of their soul in the cloth.2 Imperfections in the borders of the rug (called ch'ihónít'i, or, translated, the spirit line/path) allow t…

Equinoxes

aria osguthorpe — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:03:08 GMT

Today is the spring equinox.

Today is the midpoint between winter and summer, the day that the daylight is equal to the darkness.

Today is the day that Fate’s Chosen, the middle of the end, is published.

I enjoy the parallelism. Fate’s Heir was published on the summer solstice. Fate’s Chosen, the spring equinox. Fate’s Cursed, the final book in the trilogy…

Apple Blossoms

aria osguthorpe — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 15:02:53 GMT

The stories speak of a world adjacent to ours—just out of sight, just out of reach.

The home of the dead, the realm of the fairies, the world of magic and immortality.

Sometimes, it is a kind realm, a healing haven,1 a “far green country under a swift sunrise.”2 Other times, it is perilous and mercurial, governed by inhuman beings who care little for the sa…

Grey Ethics

aria osguthorpe — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:02:16 GMT

I think in book1 quotes. Whether they just live in my mind for free, or if they take up digital space in my notes app, or physical space in the scribbled margins of my notebooks and much abused paperbacks, they have an inevitability to their presence in my life.

Several years ago, I read a book in which one of the characters said the line, “You didn’t mak…

Wick

aria osguthorpe — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 16:02:41 GMT

I spent a lot of time in trees as a child—they make excellent perches, if poor reading-nooks. If you got high enough, you emerged from the everyday and climbed into the sky-world, where birds nests hid and the wind never stopped.

I remember all my trees. There was a holly tree with strangely pruned branches, a weeping cherry tree with a smooth trunk tha…

Kill Your Darlings

aria osguthorpe — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:06:08 GMT

One of the first pieces of editing advice that I ever received was to “kill your darlings.”1 This phrase means that just because you love a character/plot point, doesn’t mean that it helps your book, and you should kill it or cut the scene/character to make your writing better.

Although I have found myself un-naming secondary and tertiary characters in t…

The No-longer Angels

aria osguthorpe — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 16:03:07 GMT

Angels are immortal (or a-mortal).1 They do not live; they do not breathe.2 Once they do, they leave the realm of angeldom forever, for a deceased person’s soul is a ghost.3

If the line between angel and ghost is mortality, then the spirits that surround me in Utah are but benevolent ghosts. For, in the slopes of the mountains and the shadows of my grandmot…

Dialectical Difficulties

aria osguthorpe — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:14:19 GMT

For those of you1 devastated by the delay of Fate’s Chosen, I offer an appeasement: I am republishing Fate’s Heir and it is available on Amazon today!

The reasons that I am republishing Fate’s Heir are threefold: I dislike the previous cover,2 I have learned more about dialects and thus think some of the choices I made in regards to the Moyette’s dialect …

Tannenbaum

aria osguthorpe — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 16:02:35 GMT

In December, when frozen tree branches reach like skeletal fingers towards the clouds, evergreen trees alone retain their verdigris.1 Their thin spines form brushes of green,2 painting mountainsides with colour—vibrant against white snows and grey rock.

Evergreen trees have long been symbols of life.

The Romans decorated with evergreen during their winter c…

Supply Chain Issues

aria osguthorpe — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 17:06:52 GMT

In a move that came as a surprise to no one (except myself), the unachievable deadlines that I set for myself will not be achieved. In other words, Fate’s Chosen will be available on Amazon and my website on March 20th 2026 instead of a week and a half from now.

On the positive side, know that Fate’s Chosen is being delayed because I am making it better,…

Failed Escapism

aria osguthorpe — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 16:02:13 GMT

I grew up half-buried books. I still remember how much my back would hurt from the weight of my backpack on library days in elementary school and the intense indignity of only being allowed to check out fourteen books at a time.

As I got older, my reading pace slowed down only slightly. I mixed reading assignments for middle school with Pride and Prejudi…