A picture of my phoenix in armor tattoo
Yesterday I finished reading a book called “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” by TJ Klune. It is the second book in the “Cerulean Chronicles” series, the first being “The House in the Cerulean Sea”. These books were both incredible, reading them was truly the most fun I’ve had doing anything in a long time. If you were a Harry Potter fan, you will love these books, especially if you’re a former HP fan who disavows those books because of how awful the author turned out to be. The Cerulean books are about an orphanage that houses some truly amazing magical kids, the “master” of that orphanage, and the government official who comes to do an inspection of the orphanage. The books are both very queer, very heartwarming, very wholesome, very sweet, and very enjoyable.
If you have any intention of reading these books (which I HIGHLY suggest you do), I would advise you not to read the rest of this post unless you are okay with spoilers. The books resonated with me in a very particular way, and in order to describe how they resonated with me, I’ll have to reveal some big plot details. You may be a person who is usually okay with spoilers, but I want to say that I was truly shocked and excited when things were revealed in these books that I did not expect, so I want to give you the opportunity to experience that as well.
However, if you have already read the books, OR if you are not planning on reading the books, OR you are truly okay with getting some pretty significant plot details spoiled before you read the books, feel free to read the rest of this post.
Last chance - DO NOT read further if you don’t want to be spoiled …
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Okay, here goes.
The first book, “The House in the Cerulean Sea”, is from the perspective of Linus Baker. Linus is an awkward, high strung, particular, overweight, and peculiar gay man. He is very good at his job, very good at following the rules, and is very comfortable in his routine. His job is that he is an inspector for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), and DICOMY sends him to a very particular orphanage that is top secret, and that houses some very powerful, very potentially problematic kids. His time at the orphanage completely changes his mindset, reveals some truths he had needed to see for a long time, and helps him become who he was always meant to be.
At the time I started reading “The House in the Cerulean Sea”, the show “Heated Rivalry” was blowing up on social media. “Heated Rivalry”, if you don’t know, is a steamy romance on HBO about two star hockey players on opposing teams who hook up and (I think) end up falling in love. I only watched the first episode, but I was struck by how much more I related to the heavy-set, awkward, middle-aged, peculiar Linus Baker than I did the sexy, young, athletic, conventionally attractive protagonists of “Heated Rivalry”. I really liked spending a book getting to know the kind of gay man who isn’t usually the star of the show, and seeing him become a better version of himself.
The “master” of the orphanage is Arthur Parnassas, who is the focal point of the second book, “Somewhere Beyond the Sea”. Arthur is also a gay man, and has a long history of advocating for the unregistered magical population (as magical people are required to register themselves with the government), and has a very special relationship with the very powerful and challenging kids at his orphanage. By the middle of the second book, it is VERY clear that being magical is an allegory for being different - queer, trans, an immigrant, Black, disabled, neurodivergent, etc..
Towards the end of the first book, it is revealed that Arthur is a phoenix, the last of his kind. He was persecuted because of his magical status as a child, and it becomes clear that Arthur becomes the phoenix when he is feeling his most emotionally raw. Sometimes the phoenix comes out when he is enraged, sometimes it comes out when he is struck by how in love (with Linus) he is, sometimes it comes out when he needs to protect the kids at the orphanage. He had to hide the fact that he was a phoenix - even from his loved ones - for a long time, and only felt able to reveal the phoenix late into his adulthood.
You may remember from previous posts that I had a tattoo of a cross with the letters “AMDG” on my ribs, and that I had this tattoo covered up in October and November. The AMDG cross was from a time when I was trying to re-affiliate myself with Catholicism, something I eventually came to realize was not right for me. In the past few years, I started to associate that tattoo with an allegiance to a patriarchal, hierarchical, damaging institution, and I wanted that tattoo off of me. I finally decided to have the tattoo covered up, and I chose the image of a phoenix wearing a suit of armor (pictured at the beginning of this post), inspired by the feminist anthem “Armor” by my all time favorite musician, Sara Bareilles. The song has a lyric about how surviving the damaging “flames” of patriarchy ends up revealing the “phoenix” of the singer/women/oppressed people. It felt incredibly appropriate that my cross tattoo be covered by what I considered to be incredibly feminist imagery.
So imagine how I felt reading the “Cerulean Chronicles”, when the phoenix in Arthur so clearly was a metaphor for the parts of ourselves we have to hide away, but that make us powerful and special. Of course I thought of my queerness, but I also couldn’t help but be struck by how Arthur’s revelation of being a phoenix in his 40’s so closely mirrored my experience of revealing my neurodivergence in my late 30’s. The thing that makes me powerful and special, a thing that was always there, that wasn’t able to be understood and revealed until adulthood.
The books also talk about confronting oppressive systems, like the government and religious institutions. Arthur’s phoenix tends to come out A LOT when he is confronted with these oppressive people. As we are faced with extreme oppression coming from our government right now, I can think of no better tattoo to have than this phoenix as a symbol of fighting back.
So these books completely surprised me by how much more meaningful and relevant they made the tattoo I had already gotten before reading them. Now not only is my phoenix tattoo a symbol of feminism and rejecting patriarchy. It’s a symbol of embracing my neurodivergence, revealing my queerness and AuDHD to the world, and fighting back against oppressors who would squash those “phoenix” parts of my identity. And, bonus, the phoenix tattoo will now forever remind me of these beautiful books.
So, yup, I just think it’s really f***ing cool that I got this phoenix tattoo, THEN read these incredible books, and that reading these books made something I had already gotten so much more meaningful and relevant.
Thanks for reading!