What Lives in the Lacuna

What happens when we revisit familiar legends and ask who really holds the power, who gets to be a hero, and whose stories have been left untold?

In this episode of What Lives in the Lacuna, we welcome our very first guest, author Victoria Mier, to discuss her dark, feminist Arthurian retelling Between the Rival Courts.

Together, we explore what makes a retelling more than a familiar set of names, the complicated morality of Camelot, feminine rage, terrifying fae (the only acceptable kind of fae), doomed romance, and the beautifully messy characters who refuse to fit neatly into the traditional roles they’ve been assigned..

We also pull back the curtain on the writing life, from the challenges of drafting and the magic of editing to navigating indie publishing, and balancing creative fulfillment with the business of being an author.

Along the way, we consider why darker stories can be unexpectedly comforting, how art helps us process difficult realities, and why imagining a better world matters even when the path forward isn’t easy.

Plus, enemies to lovers, toxic yearning, twenty thousand words of discarded scenes, and three writers who would apparently rather edit anything than draft a first chapter.

Find Victoria Mier and her books here: www.victoriamier.com 

Books and Literary Works:

• Between the Rival Courts by Victoria Mier
• Beyond the Aching Door by Victoria Mier
• Holy Wrath by Victoria Mier
• Welcome to Blackbird Hollow by Victoria Mier & Allison Carr Waechter
• Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
• The Mabinogion
• The Other Faces of Arthur: Chivalric Whiteness in the Global North Atlantic by Nahir I. Otaño Gracia 
• Ninth House, Hell Bent, Dead Beat (Alex Stern series) by Leigh Bardugo
• Bunny by Mona Awad

From ancient mythology and folklore to modern adaptations, remakes, and reimaginings, humans have been telling and reshaping familiar stories for thousands of years. But why do certain narratives endure, and what happens when we challenge the stories we think we know?

In this episode of What Lives in the Lacuna, we explore the role of retelling stories in human evolution, cultural identity, and survival. From the Ghost Dance movement and Irish mythology to feminist retellings, literary archetypes, and modern pop culture, we examine how stories evolve alongside the societies that tell them.

Along the way, we discuss the differences between retellings and reimaginings, why familiar stories continue to resonate, and whether changing a character's perspective can fundamentally change the meaning of a story.

Coming up on the next episode of What Lives in the Lacuna!

We're continuing our conversation about retellings and reimaginings with special guest Victoria Mier, author of the Arthurian fantasy Between the Rival Courts.

Want to read along before our conversation? Between the Rival Courts is available on Kindle Unlimited, or you can visit https://victoriamier.com/pages/books to learn more and purchase a copy directly from the author!

Research, Folklore, and Further Listening:

Origin Stories, The Leakey Foundation

This Podcast Will Kill You (Episode 198, Sleep Part 1: Sleeping with One Eye Open & Episode 199, Sleep Part 2: Predictably Unpredictable)

The Lakota Ghost Dance and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, PBS American Experience

Oisín and Niamh, Irish mythology. The story of Oisín's journey to Tír na nÓg, his return to Ireland, and the importance of preserving cultural memory. 

Carl Jung's archetypes and collective unconscious. Discussed in relation to recurring narrative patterns and recognizable character roles. 

Books and Literary Works:

• Wired for Story by Lisa Cron
• Hagitutde by Sharon Blackie
• Between the Rival Courts by Victoria Mier
• Medusa’s Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear
• The Lost Book of Lancelot
• Lilith by Nikki Marmery
• Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
• Hades x Persephone Series by Scarlett St. Clair
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
• The Vampyre by John Polidori
• Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
• Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
• The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen
• Wicked by Gregory Maguire
• The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By Jon Scieszka
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
• The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
• Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman

SPOILER WARNING: This episode contains major spoilers for Yesteryear, including its central reveal and ending.

Welcome to the first unofficial meeting of the Lacuna Book Club.

This episode we dive into Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, a beautifully written, compulsively readable novel that left us with one very important problem: we could not stop talking about it.

We unpack Natalie Heller-Mills as an unreliable and deeply unlikeable narrator, the novel’s portrayal of Trad Wife culture, and the uncomfortable question we kept circling back to: can a feminist critique of women succeed without asking us to empathize with the women it critiques?

The question opens a few doors. And then we kick down the rest of them.

We get into satire and whether Yesteryear pushes its ideas far enough, comparisons to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, the book’s time-travel-shaped marketing hook, mental health and narrative ambiguity, and our complicated feelings about the novel’s handling of sexual assault and queerness.

We loved some things. We struggled with others. We questioned what the book was asking us to feel, what it was asking us to see, and whether the thing missing from the story might be the very thing that could have made its critique hit harder: empathy.

Because sometimes the most interesting thing about a book isn’t whether you loved it or hated it. 

It’s the questions that are still hanging around after you close it.

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
• Why Yesteryear is Everywhere by Rebecca Rothfeld (The New Yorker)
• Yesteryear Author Caro Clair Burke on Writing One of the Most Buzzed-About Books of the Year by Daisy Jones (Vogue)
• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: an honest review by a real Trad Wife by Alena Kate Pettitt
• Wife Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill

Correction: During our discussion, we stated that The Handmaid’s Tale was banned when it was first published. More accurately, the novel has faced numerous bans and challenges in the decades since its 1985 publication.

What makes a fictional love interest a red flag or a green flag, and why are readers drawn to both?

In this episode of What Lives in the Lacuna, we take opposite sides of the red flag/green flag debate. E. Donohue makes the case for Team Green Flag, exploring characters who respect autonomy, communicate honestly, understand their own emotions, and treat the people around them as equals. From contemporary fiction to Irish mythology, Fionn mac Cumhaill, and the Fianna, she looks at the ways stories can create models for what we value in our heroes and even help define the standards a culture holds itself to.

Remy takes up the banner for Team Red Flag and asks why fictional danger, obsession, intensity, and power can be so compelling when those same behaviors would send us running in real life. Drawing on research into fiction as a kind of social simulation, we explore the distance between fantasy and endorsement, the agency readers have inside fictional worlds, and how stories can give us a controlled space to experience, question, and think critically about things we might never choose for ourselves.

Along the way, we tackle Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, dark romance, consent, content warnings, and the difference between a story that openly invites readers into dangerous fantasy and one that disguises unhealthy behavior as an ideal. Neither red nor green turns out to be quite as simple as the debate suggests, and we eventually arrive at the eternal question: what happens when the bear tells you up front that it’s a bear?

The conversation then comes back to where the episode began: the very different love interests we write. Remy turns the questions on E. Donohue to talk about Nine Waves, the first book in her historical fantasy trilogy, and Liam the extremely green-flag hero who may have convinced Remy that fictional men do not, in fact, need to be walking warning labels to be interesting. 

By the end, Team Red Flag versus Team Green Flag becomes something bigger: a conversation about what fiction allows us to explore, what stories can model for us, and the freedom readers and writers have to choose the stories that speak to them.

Resources & Works Mentioned

• Over Nine Waves by Marie Heaney
• The Fionn Folklore Database
• Encyclopaedia Britannica: Fenians
• “The Cognitive Science of Fiction” by Keith Oatley
• The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
• The Once and Future Queen by Paula Lafferty
• One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig
• The Ritual and The Sinner by Shantel Tessier
• Works by Elle Thorpe
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
• Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
• “Down by the Glenside” / “The Bold Fenian Men”
  

In this Lacuna Tangent, Remy Renard and E. Donohue explore Obsession (2026), a psychological horror film that asks a simple question: who is the real monster?

Using the film as a jumping-off point, we explore how horror can challenge our assumptions about violence, control, and the "nice guy" archetype. We unpack the symbolism behind the film's protagonist, Bear, discuss obsession disguised as love, and examine why the most visibly frightening character isn't necessarily the story's true monster.

Along the way, the conversation connects modern horror to folklore, the "man versus bear" debate, selkie mythology, and the unsettling ways stories reveal that monstrosity is often rooted not in appearance, but in the desire to control another person's autonomy.

• Obsession (2026) 
• Horror and psychological horror 
• The "nice guy" archetype 
• Obsession versus love 
• Consent and autonomy in horror 
• The "man versus bear" conversation 
• Visual versus moral monstrosity 
• Selkie folklore 
• Symbolism in horror films 
• Performance analysis of Inde Navarrette

• Obsession (2026), directed by Curry Barker 
• Selkie folklore of Ireland, Scotland, and Isle of Man
• "Man versus Bear" online discussion

Hosted by author and humanities omnivore Remy Renard and author and professional horticulturist E. Donohue, What Lives in the Lacuna explores folklore, horror, fantasy, literature, mythology, and the stories that shape how we understand humanity and ourselves. Through full-length episodes and shorter Lacuna Tangents, we blend literary analysis, folklore, science, and pop culture to uncover what lives beneath the surface.

Remy Renard is the author of The Florilegium Cycle, an Appalachian dark fantasy romance series set in Lorewood, a town where monsters are ordinary, folklore is real, and every story leaves its mark. Drawing on a background in the humanities, education, and storytelling, she explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, folklore, and pop culture.

E. Donohue is a professional horticulturist and author of many works of creative non-fiction about ecology and our connection to the natural world. She is also the aspiring author of The Raun Cycle, a historic grounded fantasy trilogy set on the Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland and England at the time of the Roman invasion. Drawing on a background of ecology, anthropology, and creative writing, as well as a lifetime study of folklore, she explores the science and archeology behind the magic of folklore.

Podcast IG: @whatlivesinthelacuna

Podcast TikTok: @whatlivesinthelacuna

Remy Renard
www.remyrenard.com
IG: @remy.in.the.wild
TikTok: @remy.in.the.wild

E. Donohue
www.edonohueauthor.com/
IG: @e.donohuewriter
TikTok: @edonohuestoryteller

What does it really mean to be morally gray?

In this episode of What Lives in the Lacuna, Remy Renard and E. Donohue explore one of fiction's most enduring character archetypes: the morally gray character.

Beginning with trickster figures from folklore, including Coyote, Loki, and the Sídhe, we examine how stories across cultures have used morally complex characters to navigate survival, change, and uncertainty. From there, the conversation moves into philosophy, comics, dark romance, and modern storytelling, asking whether morality can ever be separated from context.

Along the way, we discuss moral philosophy, reader interpretation, Batman, Deadpool, Dexter, John Wick, Legion, and the uneasy line between hero, antihero, and villain. Rather than offering a single definition, this episode embraces the complexity of morality itself and asks why morally gray characters continue to resonate so deeply with modern audiences.

• What makes a character morally gray? 
• Trickster figures in folklore 
• Coyote, Loki, and the Sídhe 
• Moral philosophy and ethics 
• Consequentialism, virtue ethics, and deontology 
• Reader response and morality 
• Heroes, antiheroes, and villains 
• Batman, Deadpool, Dexter, John Wick, and Legion 
• Dark romance and comics 
• Why morally gray characters remain so compelling

• Coyote America by Dan Flores 
• Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman 
• The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec 
• Over Nine Waves by Marie Heaney 
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 
• John Stuart Mill 
• Jeremy Bentham 
• Simon Stern, "From Clapham to Selena" 
• Valentin Jeutner, The Reasonable Person: A Legal Biography

Remy Renard is the author of The Florilegium Cycle, an Appalachian dark fantasy romance series set in Lorewood, a town where monsters are ordinary, folklore is real, and every story leaves its mark. Drawing on a background in the humanities, education, and storytelling, she explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, folklore, and pop culture.

E. Donohue is a professional horticulturist and author of many works of creative non-fiction about ecology and our connection to the natural world. She is also the aspiring author of The Raun Cycle, a historic grounded fantasy trilogy set on the Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland and England at the time of the Roman invasion. Drawing on a background of ecology, anthropology, and creative writing, as well as a lifetime study of folklore, she explores the science and archeology behind the magic of folklore.

Podcast IG: @whatlivesinthelacuna

Podcast TikTok: @whatlivesinthelacuna

Remy Renard
www.remyrenard.com
IG: @remy.in.the.wild
TikTok: @remy.in.the.wild

E. Donohue
www.edonohueauthor.com/
IG: @e.donohuewriter
TikTok: @edonohuestoryteller

In this Lacuna Tangent, Remy Renard and E. Donohue use The Atlantic article The End of Reading Is Here by Rose Horowitch (July 8, 2026) as a jumping-off point to ask a different question entirely: if we truly care about the future of reading, are we focusing on the right problem?

Rather than blaming readers, we explore the pressures that make reading harder in modern life, from economic realities and education to accessibility and digital technology. Along the way, we discuss oral storytelling traditions, genre fiction, children's literature, disability access, and why creativity itself can become an act of resistance during difficult times.

Whether you love classics, fantasy romance, graphic novels, audiobooks, or folklore, this conversation argues for creating more readers, not policing what "counts" as reading.

• The Atlantic article "The End of Reading Is Here" 
• Reading statistics and literacy 
• Education and creating lifelong readers 
• Classics versus contemporary literature 
• Dark fantasy, romance, and genre fiction 
• Oral storytelling traditions 
• Accessibility and digital reading 
• Graphic novels and Dog Man 
• Creativity as resistance 
• Why joy matters in reading

• Rose Horowitch, The End of Reading Is Here (The Atlantic) (July 8, 2026)
• Shooting the Shit podcast (CeCe Lyra & Carly Watters) 
• Walter J. Ong and oral storytelling 
• Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak 
• Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros 
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess 
• Dog Man by Dav Pilkey 
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne 
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 
• Works by Toni Morrison 
• Greek mythology and Rick Riordan 
• Norse mythology 
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Remy Renard is the author of The Florilegium Cycle, an Appalachian dark fantasy romance series set in Lorewood, a town where monsters are ordinary, folklore is real, and every story leaves its mark. Drawing on a background in the humanities, education, and storytelling, she explores the intersections of literature, philosophy, folklore, and pop culture.

E. Donohue is a professional horticulturist and author of many works of creative non-fiction about ecology and our connection to the natural world. She is also the aspiring author of The Raun Cycle, a historic grounded fantasy trilogy set on the Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland and England at the time of the Roman invasion. Drawing on a background of ecology, anthropology, and creative writing, as well as a lifetime study of folklore, she explores the science and archeology behind the magic of folklore.

Podcast IG: @whatlivesinthelacuna
Podcast TikTok: @whatlivesinthelacuna

Remy Renard
www.remyrenard.com
IG: @remy.in.the.wild
TikTok: @remy.in.the.wild

E. Donohue
www.edonohueauthor.com/
IG: @e.donohuewriter
TikTok: @edonohuestoryteller

In this episode, we explore the multifaceted concept of monstrosity in folklore, literature, and pop culture, focusing on Irish mythology and modern interpretations in romance and fantasy genres. We discuss how cultural context shapes our understanding of monsters and the importance of acceptance and empathy.

Resources

What Manner of Man Is This Hound by Finn Longman

Ciarán Carson, The Táin, Penguin Classics, 2007

Cecile O’Rahilly, Táin Bó Cuailnge from the Book of Leinster, 1967 

Roland Barthes - Mythologies

Irish Mythology - Golems, Werewolves, Deer Woman

POINT OF CLARIFICATION

In the Tain, CuChulainn and Ferida are also foster brothers, a relationship that does not indicate blood relation but rather a relationship of connection and obligation between families. Ferida is parted from Cu because Ferida fights for Connacht rather than Ulster and CuChulainn ultimately kills Ferida at a ford using a very monstrous weapon called the Gáe Bolga which you should definitely look up. The death of Ferida may be a later addition to the text, appearing possibly in the 11th century. 

Welcome to What Lives in the Lacuna. We're Remy Renard, author of Lupines Bloom Where Blood Falls, and E. Donohue, author of The Raun Cycle. In this introductory episode, we discuss the books that shaped us, our different reading and writing backgrounds, and why we wanted to create a space for thoughtful, curious conversations about storytelling and the indie book community. Whether we're talking literary fiction, fantasy romance, folklore, publishing, fandom, or the people working behind the scenes to bring stories into the world, we're interested in what happens in the gaps between categories, expectations, and genres.