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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 6h

Lora wakes after ten years in a cocoon to discover her kingdom dead, its last swordswoman going mad, and herself the only thing that can save her from herself. Then her mothers' confession arrives: they made the madness and left it to kill their only daughter. #DVPit #A #F #H

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

#DVpit - Diverse Voices Pitch @dvpit.bsky.social · 7h

Since bsky is an open forum, we can't control who posts under some hashtags, to ensure you're only seeing the #DVpit feed try a multisearch of #DVpit + category/genre 1) All in quotes (no #): "DVPit YA" 2) Individual quotes: "#DVPit" "#YA" (capitalization does not matter when searching hashtags)

bluesky search bar with a search for "#DVPit" "#YA"

bluesky search bar with the search for "DVpit YA"

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 8h

A shieldmaiden wakes after 10 years to save the woman whose madness quiets at her touch. But the curse destroyed the kingdom, and Lora's mothers created it. Now she must decide what she owes the people her family destroyed – and whether she can save Yaira without becoming like them. #DVPit #A #F #H

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 12h

THIS GILDED ABYSS + THE STARVING SAINTS Lora can quiet the madness consuming Yaira, the last swordswoman of a ruined kingdom. But the closer they get, the more Lora discovers her mothers caused the curse – and left her behind to die with it. #DVPit #A #F #H

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 14h

She was raised to protect. Yaira was raised to survive. When Lora wakes after 10 years and becomes the only thing that can quiet Yaira's madness, they fall in love – just as Lora learns her mothers caused the curse destroying Yaira's homeland. #DVPit #A #F #H

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 15h

To the dumb fuck claiming to be an "investigative journalist" as a reason for trying to "expose" Jane Doe's identity. 1. Fuck you 2. You are NOT a journalist because if you were, you would know that journalistic ethics codes prioritize PROTECTING the anonymity of survivors*

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 16h

THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE + THE STARVING SAINTS The kingdom is dead. Its last swordswoman is going mad – and Lora is the only thing that quiets her, but also the only person she wants to kill. Then Lora finds her mothers' confession: this was all their fault. #DVPit #A #F #H #LGBT

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 17h

After 10 years asleep in a silk cocoon, Lora wakes to a ruined kingdom and a swordswoman whose madness falls silent at Lora's touch. To save her, Lora must uncover why her mothers left her behind – and why the madness wants the rest of the kingdom dead. #DVPit #A #F #H #LGBT

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

Eric Smith @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Time for a new pinned post! Writer pals, I host query letters and nonfiction book proposals, free, on my site. www.ericsmithrocks.com/perfect-pitch Near Philly? I host free in-person AMAs with industry pros often. www.neighborhoodliterary.com/neighborhoods Hope these resources will be helpful.

ericsmithrocks.com

Perfect Pitch — ERIC SMITH

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Terrible news: what they say is true. If you write more, then you'll also write faster. This, brought to you by my newly-unlocked, honed-over-10-years ability to outline a full MS in a weekend.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Every time I outline a new MS I’m reminded that the outline is the most important tool in your arsenal when your goal is to draft quickly and well. …but I still get driven nuts by the process lol

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

Mike Chen @mikechenwriter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It never gets old hearing this about your art, please tell creators nice things

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

[rubs hands together] a new manuscript idea has landed Modern gothic horror with sapphic romance, anyone?

static.klipy.com

Herve's Elmo in Flames Meme

Alt: Herve's Elmo in Flames Meme

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

#askDV – When looking at short-form pitches during events like DVPit, what catches your eye? And what, if anything, would keep you from requesting a full based on a query prompted by a pitch event like this? (I know it's super subjective, I've just always wanted to know!)

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My cats make up their mind where the ROACH IS, challenge level impossible

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

E.M. Anderson | author & schism enthusiast too hot for Bluesky @elizmanderson.com · 24/09/2026

tl;dr: get a booster IF: you're unvaccinated you're not sure and can't find out whether you got the double-dose MMR vaccine you're vaccinated but were vaccinated between 1963 and 1967

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The marketer in me is totally jumping out: When I'm writing at the intersection of the story I want to tell and what agents can sell, how do I balance that with the fact that publishing moves slowly while trends move quickly? Where should I focus my research/energy for best results? #AskDV

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Love sending a query that can include a very specific anime comp because it's on her list of anime she really enjoyed heehee in totally unrelated news, read the Bungo Stray Dogs light novels and then watch the anime

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE x THIS GILDED ABYSS x SILKSONG A woman wakes from a decade-long cursed sleep to find a dying kingdom, one surviving swordswoman, and the unbearable possibility that her own people left her there on purpose. #QuestPit #A #F #W #AgentsGuide

An agent's guide cover slide for Child of Silk and Shield, a 90,000-word adult fantasy with horror elements querying June 2026. Black background with bold orange distressed typography on the left and three diagonal image strips on the right showing close-ups of two women's faces and a ghostly silk-wrapped figure.

Pitch slide for Child of Silk and Shield. Orange italic tagline reads: Survive the madness. Preserve the kingdom. Salvage your savior's sanity. Three paragraphs of white pitch copy describe protagonist Lora awakening from a decade-long cursed sleep in a dying kingdom, making a vow with a maddened swordswoman named Yaira, and confronting the possibility her own people are responsible for the destruction. Three diagonal atmospheric strips on the right show a ruined castle, a crumbling stone mask, and a spiral stone staircase descending into darkness.

Comps slide with a dark textured silk background. Large orange distressed header reads FOR FANS OF. Three comp images are displayed side by side: The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard, captioned WLW main pairing, forced partnership that evolves into romance; Hollow Knight: Silksong, captioned haunted world, sword-and-shield battles, learning about the world as the protagonist does; and This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne, captioned haunting and possession as suspense and danger mechanisms.

Excerpt slide for Child of Silk and Shield. Large orange distressed header reads EXCERPT. White and orange body text presents a passage from Chapter One in which Lora, newly awakened, assesses the armed and grinning swordswoman crouching over her and concludes that madness can sustain someone in a way no training can match. Three diagonal image strips on the right show a close-up of a woman's silver eyes, a swirl of white silk threads, and a second woman's face partially obscured by windswept hair.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE x THIS GILDED ABYSS A cursed sleeper. A swordswoman losing herself to madness. A vow that may cost them both everything. (Adult fantasy with horror elements, 90k words, querying June 2026.) #QuestPit #A #F #W

A five-image gothic fantasy moodboard for Child of Silk and Shield. A large black and white photograph of a spiral stone staircase descending into darkness anchors the left side. On the upper right, a close-up of hands pulling apart translucent silk or web-like threads. In the middle right, a pale figure in white lies unconscious in dark grass, hands reaching toward her from the shadows. On the lower left, two hands clasping gently, one in a white lace-cuffed sleeve and one in dark fabric against a green background. On the lower right, a pair of ballet feet in pointe shoes standing in dark reflective water, with black liquid trailing down the skin.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

What if the girl who woke you from a cursed slumber not only tasks you with saving the kingdom's sanity...but also wields madness as a love language? CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD, adult fantasy with horror elements. 90k words, querying summer 2026. Get ready! #QuestPit #A #F #W

A square excerpt card for Child of Silk and Shield against a dark textured background showing faint silk threads. In orange text, the opening line reads: "I calm the madness when I touch you." Below in white body text: It's not what Lora means to say, but she never says what she means to when it comes to this woman. Instead, she does things like kneel in half-dead grass with her blood under her nails. She's still holding Yaira's hand. Her skin shivers at the closeness. At the bottom left in orange distressed display font: CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD. At the bottom right in the same font: QUERYING SUMMER 2026.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Presenting my #agentsguide to CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD, featuring: 🩸 a madness tied to blood 🕸️ adventures through the remnants of a ruined kingdom 🗡️ tenuous partnerships born of survival and sarcasm + my personal fave: 🏳️‍🌈 reluctant-allies-to-lovers yuri! #QuestPit #W #A #F

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

In addition to PosterPit, I'm also watching my phone like a hawk because I made an offer on a house and I REALLY want it...so that's been fun!

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

🕸️ remnants of a ruined kingdom 🗡️ partnership born of survival 🏳️‍🌈 reluctant-allies-to-lovers yuri 🩸 a madness tied to blood 💀 the enemy is home #PosterPit #F #A #W

Movie-poster-style pitch image for the fantasy horror manuscript CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD. The poster has a black background with bold orange typography. The tagline reads: "Survive the madness. Preserve the kingdom. Salvage your savior's sanity." Three horizontal bands of photography are layered across the center: the first shows a close-up of a woman's eye with dramatic liner, the second shows pale spectral hands wrapped in cobweb-like threads, and the third shows a woman's jaw and mouth partially obscured by wispy hair. Comp titles at the bottom read: THE RED SCHOLAR'S WAKE by Aliette de Bodard, THIS GILDED ABYSS by Rebecca Thorne, and Hollow Knight: Silksong.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Woken from a decade-long enchanted sleep, Lora finds a kingdom drowning in madness and a warrior losing her mind to it, who says Lora is the only one who can save her. Lora doesn't know this (absolutely infuriating) stranger. She makes a fatal promise anyway. #PosterPit #F #A #W

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Lora has been trapped in a dying kingdom, bound by promise to a warrior losing her mind to a madness Lora's own people unleashed. She woke to find her way home. She'll stay because the kingdom needs her...and because Yaira is still fighting to remain herself. #PosterPit #F #A #W

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Last-minute decided to participate in #PosterPit as a late birthday gift to myself...but my graphic design skills are shaky at best so be prepared to be SICK of my single poster! Best of luck to everyone participating; y'all have some MAD skills!!

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

The sexual tension between me and my library holds queue could be cut with a knife... #WhereAreMyHolds #IJustWannaRead!!!

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I keep catching myself blasting through writing SilkWIP because I feel this pressure to get to the next section in my outline, then the next... And uh. Don't do this. Savor the storytelling journey. You can always make it better later. (This is me @ me. But could also be me @ you. YMMV)

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

Aasa T 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇵🇸 @rosgakori.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Anyways.

kill the imposter syndrome in you head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they're also using chat gpt to do it

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

"Amanda, why did you get an MFA?" Well, how else would I have the technical knowledge needed to mash up Western genre fiction convention with the kishotenketsu structure introduced to me by Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. ...that, and because it was fun. And fully funded.

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

This reminds me of something Toni Morrison wrote.

You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. "Floods" is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Sadly, my week ended on a really disappointing note (got treatment to alleviate chronic neck pain, and it worked! ...until I sat down in my car wrong, something in my neck shifted, and it all came roaring back) Trying to write this weekend to redeem the terrible ending to the week. :) #queerwriters

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Drove around in a tornado that hit the ground less than 2 miles from where I was driving. I was newly 20, had no life insurance, and only enough common sense to drive into a ditch until it was over.

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

E.D.E. Bell @edebell.com · 05/03/2026

I would add that seeking to erase any book that "involves gender dysphoria" also seeks to prohibit discussions on gender roles and hierarchy, including cis women, cis men, and in the necessary contexts of race. The only people this bill is for is those at and wanting the very top of the patriarchy.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

#WIPWednesday – aka how I remember what day of the week it is. Love writing little snippets that make me scream GAY GAY HOMOSEXUAL GAY at the characters I created.

Yaira raises her blade. The cleric nearest them in their slow advancement raises theirs in reply. Before Lora can find a voice to say anything – perhaps “what are you doing?” or “you cannot beat them!” – Yaira is sprinting forward, darting with an almost-ungodly speed, slashing and shouting wordlessly as one shadow after another falls.
She’s…skilled. That feels almost disrespectfully vague. Yaira isn’t just skilled, she’s well-trained, almost perfect in the blurry footwork Lora can make out as she moves. She’s brilliantly lethal. She’s…
Perfect.
Ugh.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Nothing like walking into the chiropractor's office and hearing, instantly, "I SAW YOUR TED TALK!!!" So delightful. Wild to have breached containment like this.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

The rules of food in my house are the same as the rules in SilkWIP: have food, will share. ...Even if the Tagalongs I'm eating now sound a lot better than the food they're eating. #QueerWriters

A screenshot from Scrivener. The full text reads:
“Is this enough to eat?” Yaira holds up small fabric-wrapped squares. Lora stares at them, uncomprehendingly, and Yaira sighs. “I will say that’s a yes.”
She tosses one to Lora, who catches it on reflex. Yaira makes a little whistling sound that’s likely meant to be appreciative.
“You didn’t have to–”
“It’s bad luck to have food and not share.” Yaira takes a bite of her own square. “Eat.
The food inside the packet in Lora’s hands appears to be some sort of bread-like wafer. She touches the tip of her tongue to the corner and Yaira laughs. “It’s not poisoned,” she says. “Just bland.”

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

#UnhingedPit was so much fun yesterday — thank you all for the ❤️s! I hope that means you had a little bit of a giggle at my shitposting about Silk WIP :)

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

Theo Transcendragons @theodoresnapdragon.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Arcanepunk meets A GAME OF THRONES in MAGE BY BLOOD with fantasy prison, complicity, radicalization, cool tattoos and annoying siblings. No, there’s no incest. Also, there’s an OwnVoices trans MC, and GRRM could never. Literally, he’s not trans, it wouldn’t be #ownvoices #UnhingedPit #F #A #LGBTQ

A graphic of a metal fence over a photo of dark red liquid. Over the images are the glowing red words “The only prison I want to be trapped in is our love”

Image made in Canva

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Happy Sunday to everyone except the person sitting the next table over at the cafe who is shamelessly reading the words on my screen and occasionally shaking their head. I'm sorry my Silk WIP spreadsheet displeases you, ig??

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

Amal El-Mohtar @amalelmohtar.com · 28/02/2026

The only thing it feels worthwhile for me to say right now is pay attention to whether your feelings & the information you’re absorbing are paralyzing you or prompting you to meaningful action, whatever that is. Paralysis helps no one but the enemy.

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Preliminary reader reviews are in! Read CHILD OF SILK AND SHIELD! Who could turn it down after reading these endorsements?? Not pictured: "Tell me you're comping this to Aliette de Bodard" (I am) "Amanda wtf is wrong with you" (so much, narrow it down) #UnhingedPit #F #H #LGBTQ #WIP

A screenshot of a discord message sent by user alienwrites containing the text: "I simply love repressed yeeting
YEARNING."

A screenshot of a Discord message reading "this is so tlt coded oh my lord"

A screenshot of a Google Doc comment reading "we're two chapters in we can't be doing the six of crows glove scene this early this mens you have to find a way to go harder down the line"

A screenshot of a Discord message reading "loving silksong tier dykery"

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

"What'cha working on?" uhhhh THE GOBLIN EMPEROR meets TIGANA meets...well, see the image for more. #UnhingedPit #A #F #H #LGBTQ #WIP

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Reposted by Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️

Keir Alekseii @keiralekseii.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

👀

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

TFW you’re so irritated with your hot traveling companion that you have to crowdsource the gay crashout. Think Hollow Knight: Silksong but with way more yuri. #UnhingedPit #A #F #H #LGBTQ #WIP

"We've known each other for about 5 days but I've (26F) been watching her (25F) sleep for a good decade. NOT LIKE THAT, she was just trapped in a silkskein cocoon at the end of a cave and I was finally able to forge a weapon strong enough to break her free. She doesn't know this, though, mostly because when I try to tell her, she starts rolling her eyes and muttering about how I'm dramatic and/or insane.
When the madness she brought with her infected my town and drove everyone to insanity or death, I went to visit her and thought about breaking her out so I could kill her. Now, the madness takes hold of me occasionally and I do actually try to kill her. Last night, that happened, and I came to just as she was about to kill me...or so I thought.
I told her to do it, that I dared her to try, and she said she wasn't going to take my life before at least trying to save it. I bit her on the arm. I don't know why, so don't ask. Cuteness aggression? Anger? idk. Was I overreacting?

AITA for trying to go home
I (25F) come from a small country that forges weapons and shields as a main export. Somehow, an ancient madness was imbued in those exports, and now I'm trapped in another kingdom that has fallen almost completely to ruin.Apparently, I was kidnapped and held as the madness's ransom by way of being chained up at the end of a cave for a decade. A mad fencer (26F) woke me up, and now she's insisting she will help me get home if I free what's left of the kingdom from the madness.Great, okay, fine. Except I now know how to get home on my own power, so I don't need her help. She also annoys me, and keeps trying to kill me. And also bit me, then licked at the blood running down my arm???AITA for just bagging it and going home? I should probably be a good person and fix the problem I caused but also I'm tired of being threatened, almost stabbed, and now apparently bitten???? Hello???
EDIT: STOP ASKING ME IF SHE'S HOT. WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING??

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Honestly, I would just love to get an agent who’s interested in collaborating on future projects and merging the creative side of authorship with the business side whenever possible! And, also, I want to use my privilege and skills to move the needle on representation in my genres. #QueerWritersChat

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Lora wants to make it home to her mothers, but knows she can’t do that unless she can also stand before them able to say she did the right thing. Yaira is mostly going out of spite…and because she has some whimsy left in her. #QueerWritersChat

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Amanda Lien is querying! 🌈🩸🗡️ @alienwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I’m Amanda (she/her) and I’m working on adult sapphic fantasy with horror elements — basically it’s about what happens when your cursed slumber, and you have to deal with that fallout PLUS a really annoying swordswoman. And maybe she’s hot. That’s not important. #QueerWritersChat

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