Penguin

The author of How Best to Use a Sword. He is known for his many adjectival prefixes, his being Canadian, and his being "super gay." Any more information on him is, for the time being, highly classified. He appears as a minor main character in his 18th story, Big Cliches for Small Faeries.

You can find Penguin on AO3 here. For other links, check the sidebar on the main page!

* **Dragons Don’t Give A Shit About Your Outdated Gender Stereotypes** about Owen and Gavin
* **It's Not as Easy as Just Wandering into A Forest and Killing the Witch** about James and Ron
* **Being a Team That Shares a Tent Means That Certain Rules Must Be Observed** about Cal, Wes, Mick, Sully, and their friends
* **If the Chosen One Can't Defy Heteronormative Social Structures, Who Can?** about Isaac
* **If Stowing Away is the Best Idea You've Got, You Need to Have Better Ideas** about Pax
* **The Noble Traditions of Knighthood Are Absolute, Regardless of Personal Relationships** about Edwin
* **You Don't Have to Be Sadistic to Be the Villain, but it Helps** about Sam and Henry
* **Whoever Said Every Cloud Had a Silver Lining Obviously Never Endured Slavery** about Daniel, Greg, and Roderick

* **Princes Marry Princesses; That Doesn't Mean They Don't Love Their Best Friends Instead** about Franz, Boey, and Gabrielle

Short Stories:

* **Not All Dragons Kidnap Princes; Some Just Want to Make Friends** about Travis and Joey *[Completed]*
* **Life Is Rarely Easy when You’re Companion to a Queen** about Cordelia and Isabella *[Completed]*
* **Usurping the Throne Is Easy; Keeping it Is the Hard Part** about Stephan *[Completed]*
* **Is There Anyone More Ambitious Than the Servant Who Seeks to Rise in Station?** about Drew and Lyren *[Completed]*
* **It’s Not Uncommon for A Wizard’s Apprentice to Be Burdened with A Terrible Destiny** about Iggy and Gus *[Completed]*
* **No Matter What You've Heard, Angels Aren't Any Better at Solving the World's Problems than Anyone Else** about Jude and Tam *[Completed]*
* **Rebelling Against the Throne Means Being Willing to Do Whatever It Takes** about Cyrus, Sawyer, Sean, Gino, and Cassius *[Completed]*
* **Belonging to A Noble House Means Putting Loyalty to Your Family above All Else** about Geoffrey and Giacomo
* **Small Faeries Having Big Problems May Be A Cliche, but it's Also True** about Juniper and **Penguin** *[Completed]*
* **The Life of a Renegade is Hard, But Not for the Reasons You've Been Led to Believe** about John
* **Princes and Paupers Have Different Problems and Switching Places Only Solves Some of Them** about Niall and Russ

* **Everyone Is the Main Character of Their Own Story; Some Just Get More Attention than Others** about Extra Characters

Histories of the World are Written One Soul at a Time (One-Shots):

* **Let's You and I Walk to the End of the World** about Aaron and Seth *[Completed]*

* **Tell Me My Truth, My Future with You** about Jesse *[Completed]*
* **The Turning Point Comes in the Empty Tomb of a Child Soldier** about Klaus *[Completed]*
* **Concerning the Matter about Which You Wrote** about Scripture *[Completed]*
* **The Funeral Dirge for the World’s First Martyr Is the Most Beautiful Song Ever Sung** about Amy and Meryan *[Completed]*
* **The Potency of a Monster’s Hope in the Dark of War** about Charlene *[Completed]*
* **Whisper Terror into the Minds of Children Who Dream** about the Black Witch Clan *[Completed]*
* **There Is Simply No Such Thing as a Free Decision for Anyone Wearing a Slave Collar** about Theodore and Ian *[Completed]*
* **Under Every Name and Costume Is an Actor Trying to Survive** about Winston *[Completed]*

* **The Future of the Seer Is the Most Sublime of Tortures** about Giles *[Completed]*

Other Stories:

* **We Modern Men Don't Fight with Swords** about the Modern AU
* **The Moments in between the Moments Are Just as Important** semi-canonical requests for what is happening throughout the universe
* **How Best to Hear A Sword**: select chapters read by our beloved god

Extra Stories:

* **Rules May Be Rules, But Some Are Destined to Be Bent** by HighQueue about Silas and Frederick *[Completed]*

**Biography:** The oldest son of a family of ten, Penguin was born in a small city in central Canada. His family moved east when he was very young and he grew up on the east coast. He started writing as soon as he was old enough to write and kept doing that his whole life. Homeschooled for most of his life, Penguin eventually went to university, where he vastly overstayed his welcome and is currently finishing his PhD in religious studies, a field he also teaches in. In his spare time, Penguin moonlights as a porn writer and author of How Best to Use a Sword, the web’s most popular gay erotic fantasy serial.

**Notes:**

* There was never a time in Penguin’s life when he didn’t know he was gay. He planned to marry a boy even as a young child
* Penguin wrote stories his whole life growing up, but didn’t start working on his first novel until he was sixteen. He finished it when he was twenty-one, though it remains unpublished
* Penguin’s moniker comes from an inside joke he used to have with his longtime partner; it was his safeword for getting out of boring conversations
* Penguin is visually impaired; he has very low peripheral vision and no depth perception
* Prior to his current career, Penguin worked as a fundraising co-ordinator for a local charity, and then as a medical transcriptionist, where he briefly managed the transcription of medical records for a hospital
* There is a twenty-one-year gap between Penguin and his youngest sibling. He has a great deal of experience with childcare
* Penguin is legitimately afraid of Scott
* Penguin plans How Best to Use a Sword with a hybrid planning/freestyle approach where he knows the overall strokes of the plot, but often comes up with the content of individual chapters as he writes them and if those change the plan going forward, he adapts to that
* As an instructor of religion, Penguin primarily teaches about religion and sexuality, as well as religion and disability, with a specific focus on the Bible
* Penguin’s decision to insert himself into How Best to Use a Sword was made only after a long discussion with himself about shark jumping, privacy and of course his own personal safety from centipede demons
* Penguin works on How Best to Use a Sword every night, usually writing a whole chapter in one go
* Though Penguin is an autocrat and a megalomaniac, he is also genuinely grateful to all of the people who have helped him with the world of the story including producing extra content for or with him. He is also profoundly grateful to his audience for sticking with him for this long

**Quotes:**

* “Look, I’ll narrate, you just sit there and wait until it’s time for you to fall out of the tree, okay?”
* “Next chapter you’re going to get high at an orgy and fuck someone you don’t know.”
* “What, I’m helping!”
* “Speaking of, do you want to make the joke about him being a pain in the ass, or should I?”
* “If I mention right now that it exists, that counts as foreshadowing.”
* “I told you, knowing his parents’ names might have been important.”
* “Hold on, have to get the dick quota in…okay there it is.”
* “I’m just appealing to the various kinks out there.”
* “The fact that it doubles as a pun was a consideration, yes.”
* “It’s not about literary convention. It’s about all our safety.”
* “I picked you, Juniper. I picked you because I know you can do it.”
* “I can only take you somewhere where you already exist. A version of you has lived in this world for his whole life.”
* “You know me, I love a reveal.”

**Trivia:**

* Despite his moniker (and nation of residence), Penguin has no cold tolerance and is uncomfortable in even mildly cool temperatures
* Penguin’s literary output exists in an interconnected multiverse. Characters from Penguin’s other works have made occasional cameos in How Best to Use a Sword, and vice versa
* Most of Penguin’s earliest sexual experiences were with his neighbours, starting when he was about seven years old
* Penguin is profoundly uncomfortable around birds and is afraid of snakes to the point where he can’t look at photographs of them
* Both mushrooms and tomatoes make Penguin gag as soon as they’re in his mouth
* Many years prior to How Best to Use a Sword, Penguin used to write Dragonball Z fanfiction
* Penguin generally has to be forced to watch TV shows or movies; most of the things he reviews were watched at his partner’s behest, and most of the video games were played by his partner
* Penguin and his partner met in graduate school. They went on to doctoral studies together and now teach at the same university
* Penguin doesn’t drink coffee or tea, but does drink a can of Coke every day
* Penguin never does anything without being extremely ambitious about it. This usually works for him

**In-Story:** Penguin operates in the story as the narrator of How Best to Use a Sword, though most of the time he steps back and lets the characters’ thoughts speak for the narrative. He does not and can not take a direct hand in guiding the characters’ actions, though he tries on occasion to nudge them in certain directions, generally to no avail. Those few characters he is able to communicate with benefit from such narrative-bending abilities as foreknowledge of events, the ability to interact with the audience, and in extreme circumstances the ability to transport part or all of a character through time and space to a different location. Penguin is in an ongoing conflict with a cosmic horror named Scott, but is also fighting a number of other battles, mostly indirectly, in an effort to save the universe that he claims not to have created.