#‘no fucking way’ and his first question when arthur introduces himself is ‘as in king arthur of camelot?’

[justaz]

im not a fan of modern merthur but the idea of them meeting in modern times and introducing themselves to each other and them laughing and bonding over their names being connected to the myth of king arthur and camelot is just so cute

[woodsfae]

B5 s03e13 A Late Delivery From Avalon table of contents - previous episode

B5 has money problems now that they're semi-independent from Earth. They should consider bringing back the merchandising. :P

Interesting dream sequence. Vision? I suspect we'll find out who this dream having person is in this episode. If he's been introduced already in the show, I can't recall it.

Oh. OH! I'm here for Marcus being friends with Dr Franklin. They seem sweet together. idk what it is about these actors in this show, but their emotions absolutely radiate sincerity.

Ah, the dude having a vision claims that he's King Arthur! If we're about to dip into the high fantasy side of B5 then we're in for a good time. What a hilarious concept, though - King Arthur in space!!

Hm, Marcus is very good with King Arthur. Who speaks perfect modern english and is 1700 years out of time and place. It could have been the Vorlons like with Jack the Ripper, but he knew where he came from and had a reason to be speaking modern English - the Vorlons kept him educated.

Arthur escaped the medical bay and went straight for the saddest, oldest lady in the Down Below. I'm inclined to like him! And to think that he is, somehow, Arthur, even if only in spirit.

G'Kar is so awesome. See someone kicking the shit out of assholes, join in when asshole reinforcements join up. One of King Arthur's new 23rd century knights? And he is! G'Kar is so socially intelligent and so charming. What a great duo they are: King Arthur and Sir G'Kar the Red Knight!

Dang, mental note: make a gif of G'Kar standing up then passing the fuck out. That was funny as hell. Also, I appreciate that Arthur said Gawain used to do that, because I had thought to myself that G'Kar could be the 23rd century Gawain!

Dr Franklin found Arthur's dna match in an Earthforce soldier! And he doesn't recognize a photo of himself. He was at the Battle of the Line, got a medal for valor, and was honorably discharged. But he was on the first ship to encounter the Minbari, the Prometheus. The one that started the war with Minbar, and by the cut of the flashback, Arthur was the person manning the gun who fired on the ship. And then fought in the war all the way through, survived a suicide mission and was discharged.

This begs the question: where did he get the armor and sword? Was he coincidentally a really big Arthuriana buff or did he have to study up?

Marcus was right: confronting him with the information did great harm. And also, Dr Franklin isn't a psychologist. I'm pretty sure that wasn't best practice for such a sensitive topic. And now King Arthur is catatonic! But we need him more than ever in these divided times. :(

G'Kar as Gawain, Dr Franklin as Bedivere, and Delenn as the Lady of the Lake. That's pretty beautiful, actually. Which knight does Marcus get to be? He seems like a Galahad to me.

This is more proof of my Delenn-as-a-telepath theory. She's just involved in so much telepathic and mystical shit, it seems like she must have at least some low level skills.

I can't take any joy in Garibaldi fucking with people when he's such a dick in the first place. He's just a petty asshole who's nice to the people he likes. And that's not the type of person I get along with.

I fully support King Arthur joining the Narnuan resistance. Seems like a place he'll thrive, whether or not he can remember his Earthforce memories very well.

ngl I think he is Arthur. Reincarnated, maybe.

Bester is back in the next!

[elizabethsharmon]

reblog if you feel disrespected by skam france and demand official apology

below a full list of all the offenses:

Manon going back to Ch*rbage after he emotionally manipulated her to not testify against his brother (who got her drunk, took nudes of her, and kept blackmailing her) because “after all nothing happened = he didn’t r*pe her”

Making Arthur and Alexia a couple in the first place just so he could cheat on her with Noee and lie to her for weeks and then having her break up with him, only for them to suddenly being good friends in s6 and kissing in the last clip (which ngl almost made me throw up)

Bringing up Lucas’ insecurities and abandonment issues but never letting him talk about them with Eliott; posting some damage control posts on instagram instead and pretending like Lucas is fine with Eliott kissing Lola for the film (which he clearly wasn’t, the writers seem to not know him at all)

Wasting time to edit Tiff’s head onto different animals and posting things on that cyberbullying account that no one cared about instead of posting something from the grew + the worst social media ever

Not giving us a proper goodbye to the grew and not really saying anything about their future

Lying to the fans about god knows what we will see in s6 and baiting them to watch even though legit nothing of it happened

Not continuing Arthur’s story in s6 (fine, I don’t really care about that but we were supposed to see it so ???? )

Treating some fans more privileged than the others, giving them spoilers about the new seasons, inviting them on set

FranceTV Slash and SkamLaSerie instas mocking fans in their stories - saying stuff like Lola will cause the break up between Daphne and Basile, “addiction can be useful for flirting” (yikes), creating a ship war between fans in s5 by posting two photos of Alexia/Arthur and Noee/Arthur with a caption “we love them both, we can’t choose”, the host of the live of s6 calling people on tumblr “obsessed” and not apologizing when people said they’re offended by that, blocking people who were asking questions about why the SA was never mentioned again during the live

Liking all the praise but constantly ignoring fans when they were asking questions about writing choices and then blocking them

the rest of 50 offenses under cut cause turns out they really disrespected me more than I thought

feel free to add whatever you want if i forgot about something

None of the girls really apologizing to Imane at the end of season 4 after all they’ve put her through and after they took the side of the racist (who already had a history of drama with Emma) instead of their friend

Taking away Noee’s integrity and making her say “I love you” out loud (which was totally ooc cause an episode earlier she said LSF is her language and she doesn’t like her voice) after Arthur (who was leading her on for weeks) told her they can’t be together

Male gaze in s5 because even though the sign language is a body language, the way camera was lingering on her flat, bare stomach, a few times showing a close up on her boobs during the “song-dance” scene was male gaze

Lack of beautiful, slow-mo, piano music scenes for Alexia with Arthur staring at her awestruck because apparently she’s not worthy enough

Completely sidelining the deaf/hoh storyline in favour of cheating/love triangle plot

Reducing Camille to a translator and randomly making him Mika’s boyfriend because why the hell not

Completely forgetting about Mika and Lisa after s5 (did they ever find that roommate????)

Noee kissing Arthur right after he shared his traumatic story with her and overshadowing domestic abuse with cheating

Absolutely no follow-up about P*trick and domestic abuse after s5 

Having P*trick cheat on Arthur’s mom with Emma’s mom because they’re all one big family

Random crackfic farm episode that didn’t make absolutely ANY sense

Killing Fifi rip [*]

Arthur getting hit by The Car and being perfectly fine the next day

The Boy Squad becoming cheating apologists, Lucas giving Arthur the same advice he gave to Emma in s1 and Yann (who got hurt because of it back then) supporting it

Character regression, especially for Lucas, and the whole boy squad acting out of character

Continuously trying to make Lucas look like a bad guy because they knew we would forgive him everything

Arthur suddenly liking art even though it hasn’t been ever mentioned before and his whole instagram was filled with space related posts

Parallels between Eliott/Lucas and Arthur/Noee

Catherine - or lack of her - aka the queerbait from s3

Completely ignoring character’s birthdays - Basile and Manon (second year in a row)

Not introducing Lola before and making s6 about a complete stranger but still expecting the fans to like her from the get-go and watch the show by baiting the fans with the promise of “unofficial mains” (Daphne and Eliott)

Forcing the Lola/Eliott friendship and selling it in the promo as sister/brother relationship instead of writing it in a way that would make it flow naturally

Making Eliott Otteli Urbex King only to forget the plot after more or less three clips; also having Eliott hide the truth from Lucas for months and then pretending to resolve it in a text to Lola ??? which didn’t make sense in the first place but then it turned out that it was just damage control

Making Lola hook up with much older guys than her over and over again and having one of them s*xually assault just so Eliott could play the hero and save her; never bringing that up again

Making Eliott punch people left and right - anything to protect the ladies, Sofiane punching Ch*rbage in s4 can agree I guess

Making Eliott Otteli Urbex King only to forget the plot after more or less three clips; also having Eliott hide the truth from Lucas for months and then pretending to resolve it in a text to Lola ??? which didn’t make sense in the first place but then it turned out that it was just damage control

Letting Eliott talk about his past and insecurities only so Lola could prey on them later and emotionally manipulate him into drinking

Also Eliott not letting Lola apologize and brushing off her apologies because apparently that was nothing at all and it’s okay to let people walk you over and manipulate you 

Not letting Lucas speak for himself

The whole Lux & Obscurus plot, having Eliott write the film about his and Lucas’ relationship and what his love means to Eliott only to have Lola play in it, not adjusting the script so that it would fit the change and still keeping the Eliott/Lola kiss as a big fuck you to the fandom instead of having it end with a forehead touch and fade to black especially that they haven’t even showed it to us again during the screening of Eliott’s film (but it made all the other couples turned on enough to kiss in that exact moment so maybe it had a purpose) (it didn’t what the fuck was that)

Also acting like Lucas can’t spare a few hours to film it with Eliott cause he has to sTuDy FoR tHe BaC when they were filming it in the middle of a night on Friday, how is that realistic

Not giving Eliott any friends of his own and pretending like he’s a lone wolf even though he’s the biggest sunshine ever and he’s naturally drawn to people; acting like there are no other studens at his film school who could help him film his project so instead he let Lola find random people who knew nothing about filming to help him; having a bunch of random people at the screening of his film and if they were supposed to be his “friends” from the film school then I’m gonna throw hands

Acting like we will see what “minute by minute” really means and “see Eliott like we’ve never seen him before” which never happened

Switching POV for two clips only and they all revolved around Lola because they decided to go with su*cide attempt in episode 9

Also ending that episode with a su*cide note even though the next clip was before midnight on Friday

Giving Lola the worst therapist ever and a really poor attempt at cheering her up from the nurse

Enforcing that “having a loved one” is “the real reason to change” instead of sending the message that you should change for yourself first and foremost and showing that reaching out for professional help is a good thing and can really help you

Acting like ED can be cured by italian cuisine and not mentioning it again for weeks; having Daphne ask Lola not to go to rehab because they have each other and a few clips after that she’s suddenly after her first therapy (love that for her but there’s something huge missing here)

Making Lola’s life a living hell and a misery porn for 10 weeks straight

Making P*trick, Thierry and Lola’s biological dads The Worst (men are trash but it would be nice to see some good parenting on the show)

Giving all the members of La Mif two or three personality traits and not fleshing out their characters

Giving Maya a girlfriend because a season without a love triangle is a waste

Not really developing Mayla well and having their first kiss right after Eliott/Lola cursed kiss as a preemptive damage control to shut us up

Never mentioning why Lola was doing

Wasting a good chunk of the season on Tiff and that insta account and ending it with “she’s addicted to social media”

Giving Yann like one line each season after s3

Reducing Sofiane to the background dancer in s5 and s6

Hating female characters

F/M friendships are only possible if the guy is gay, otherwise cheating always had to be involved

and you know. in general. pretty much everything they did after s3.

[popculturebuffet]

The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Mt. Fuji Whiz and Thanks a Camelot Reviews: Thank God, No Daisy (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Saludos amgios and welcome to the final sprint of THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS. If your wondering if this is a bit soon.. that’s because it is. While I planned to do the episodes as is before.. this bottom half of the series so far has been so good I couldn’t bare waiting days to get to the next episode just as things are getting really good, especially after the last episode’s cliffhanger. So today, I intend to FINISH the series, with an epilogue next week for my look at the cabs as a whole via a top 12 moments list. Plus i’m already excited for the next retrospective, so there’s that. And yeah Kev’s funding ANOTHER one and you can too.. serioulsy just shoot me an ask for any solo episode or arc you wan’t covered. But now’s not the time for shameless plugs, it’s the time for adventure and to sew up a cliffhanger! So come with me after the cut for some ghouls, ghosts and arthur won’t you?

PREVIOUSLY ON LEGEND OF THE THREE CABLLEROS:

And now the conclusion...

Mt. Fuji Whiz:

First off... let’s talk about the episode titles for the series since I don't think I have yet. 

It has bothered me for the ENTIRE run of the series how terrible most of them are. There all a pun of some kind on something involved with the episode.. but out of 13 episode titles the only ones I like are World-Tree Caballeros, No Man is an Easter Island, Stonehenge Your Bets, Nazca Racing and Thanks a Camelot. And most of them fit the theme of the episode with the exception of Stonehenge: World Tree is a clever pun they couldn’t NOT use, no man fits the theme of the episode as bad as that episode is, Nazca Racing is just another good pun and fits the race at the end, and thanks a Camelot while a very simple one, fits the story of that episode, i.e. everyone's dissatisfaction with Arthur’s training. More on that later. Point is the rest are just.. really cringe inducing puns. And I do LOVE a good pun.. but that’s a GOOD pun, not obvious ones about a “pyramid life-crisis” or a play on gee whiz in 2018 for god’s sake. And the finale title is just.. really awful as they gave up entirely and named it after square dancing for HOPEFULLY no adequate reason. And look the series is a comedy first with the action second, pun titles would be fine.. their just so bad it sucks all the pun out of them. See what I did there? THAT’S a pun. And not even a great one, but it’s still better than this. It feels like the titles were an afterthought and it’s obnoxious. and frustrates me every time I have to type them out. And with only four episodes left I had to get it out sometime. 

So moving onto the actual episode we pick up with the ending of last episode: Death killing the Cabs and Team Sheldgoose. And as we see shortly. he wasn’t bluffing. We pick up with them in the underworld in a dmv line. My god.. it’s even worse of a beaurcrcy than Beetlejuice. Feldrake informs the cabs where they are and Donald, being Donald, dosen’t have the patience to wait in line with the bilions of souls down there, especially since the take a number thing gave them a number that needed to be printed on both sides.. and their at 4. Good gag though. So Donald storms out the moment he sees and exit and our boys head into the city of the Damned. Sheldgoose meanwhile decides to do his best Karen and demands ot speak with the manager.. whose another Sheldgoose it turns out. Uh-Oh.  After the credits our boys explore the city and hoping not to get hit with more ghost cards, find shelter in a little tavern owned by none other than Clinton Coot, Donald’s Great-Grandpa and father of his grandmother Elvira Coot. Clinton initally mistakes the boys for their ancestors, and is disapionted in meeting donald, but once he learns their the ones that inehreted his Cabana, he’s exastic to meet and learn about them. We also learn he had a collection of fragile frontiersman figurines.. which cleverly, are all various versions of Scrooge from life and times. His second cowboy outfit from the side story “The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff”, his prospector outfit from “Terror of the Tranysval”, his klondike prospecter outfit and him finding the goose egg nugget from “King of The Klondike” and him bitterly hauling a sack of his loot into town from the same story. Also some palet swaps of all but the last one because animation is expensive. Panchito.. destroys them all while putting down his pIzza. “NOTHINGS BROKEN”. Clinton then invites the boys to have a sip of his memories, literally he drains some out and despite their relcutance the cabs take a chug.  They reveal prettty much.. every nagging question about the cabana. Clinton, after finding out about his ancestor Duego Duck, the original cabs version of donald, Clinton traveled the world and the 7 seas, everybody’s looking for something.. and he was looking for every trace of the cabs, and their mysterious ally, who we know as Xandra. He gathered all of it, hence the massive collection of books and magical treasures in the cabana, eventually finding their hidden lair and building his cabana on top of it, founding New Quackmore with Sheldgoose’s own great grandmother.. who betrayed him and took the institute from him. His consolation prize was finding Ari and the atlas but he couldn’t open it like the boys and is curious what they found. I absolutely love this and while I feel Clinton’s history would’ve worked better as an overaching mystery, there were seeds for all of this planeted throughout the season, with Sheldgoose being in charge despite the name and Clinton being involved, Shelgoose’s mention a sheldgoose has always been president, and the tease last episode. Still would’ve liked MORE exploration and build up to this , but what we got was facenating upgrading Clinton from a footnote on the duck family tree, to a throughly loveable character: A guy who was so fascenated by his ancestor’s adventures he became an adventurer himself and who lovingly catalogued eveyrthing the guy and his friends ever did.. and had some heartrending reasons why we’ll get to. 

 As Jose leads in with not what but WHO, and likely tells clint about their adventures, a clever way to get that exposition out off screen, we cut back to the world of the living. Xandra is beating herself up, if not literally over things, and while the girls just suggest going to the underworld via zoom point, Xandra points out that won’t work. There’s only one way in: Charon, the greek ferryman of the dead.. and she realizes that’s exactly how, while the girls try a seance.  I’ll just cover the séance stuff now. The girls hold a séance to summon the boys, finding some unfinished business (A piece of said pizza) and having ari dress like a fortune teller because eh why not. There’s some good gags and stuff, but it’s mostly plot irrelvant, only hurting Panchito’s brain at first, then summoning him just as their about to fight a Tengu, with humphrey eating the pizza finsihing the buisness. Not a bad plot at all and certainly refreshing after all the Daisy nonsense last episode, but nothing really important.  Meanwhile let’s also get to Xandra’s subplot, which is both mroe relevant and funnier and again i’ll be covering all at once for convience. Xandra finds that the horn to summon Charon... is now a sax.  Huh so THAT’S what pamela anderson’s character CJ was doing when she was introduced on baywatch. 

Anyways turns out Charon’s reinvented the old boat and since Xandra’s an immortal he offers her a free ride. It’s now a cruise ship with him as the captain, voiced by voice acting legend Jim Cummings who does a fantastic job. The reasonings also brilliant: he wasn’t getting many WILLING souls with his creepy old setup, so he reinvinted things and now has a packed house, plenty of coins and a nonstop party. He even gives us an add for the buisness... this whole thing is fucking amazing and deserves to be praised and is the series at it’s best: taking something mythic and giving it some wacky but still clever tweaks. Xandra eventually gets annoyed as he isn’t going into the city so she can’t look for the cabs and takes the wheel, cursing her to be the captain now, but she just uses that to get in and finds clinton who agrees to guide her to the boys... we’ll get to where he guided them in a moment. 

And that moment is now, Clinton tells the boys there is a way out, but it involves fighting the Tengu, which is misdentified as a falcon despite, even as someone with only a surface knowledge of yokai, I knew it’s modled after a crow, or at least some versions are as it turns out.. and so is the one here so how did they screw that one up?

Point is they need to get past it, and are on a timer as when the Creepy combination of jack skeltington and that moon from Majora’s mask that’s in the sky sets and night ends, their stuck. But first they run into a guard who says they have to fill out paperwork.. and his superior is intend on that, his superior being unsuprisingly sheldgoose, who got the gig since his family runs the afterlife. Oh goodie the rich also somehow run death....

But Donald decides FUCK PAPERWORK, throws it in the air and they run for it with Sheldgoose sicing the tengu on them, which looks awesome by the way. Panchito disappears as mentioned before just as they get a plan but returns in time to free his friends and they triumph.. only for Sheldgoose to not take this lying down and summon his entire family to kick their assses. So both sides power up: having learned the trick from clinton earlier, the cabs inflate.. part of their bodies while sheldgoose forms a voltron style fusion made up of his ancestor’s heads.. with the caveman as the crotch. 

So a fight insues that’s fluid and beautifully animated, and Xandra even arrives to provide backup, with Charon relieving her because he’ could loose his five star rating. I hear you man I struggled just to get my island up to a four. So it becomes a gorgeously animated and awesome fight with Clinton joining inn, finally able to be one of his heroes. He also reitarates something he told donald, that it’s not the journey.. it’s who you take it with and part of his love of the cabs was never having companions like that. Donald takes it to heart and our heroes take their leave, Clinton finally having achieved his lifes’ work. They decide to see japan because why not. Maybe they’ll run into hannibal there. 

And to tie things off, Shelgoose and Feldrake, whose spent the etnire epsidoe still in the staff depsite being dead and...

And find.. a demonic version of Donald in a devil costume, from that short with the devil and angel Donald's.. okay I have some questions. 

He sends them back and we’re out

Final Thoughts for Mt. Fuji Whiz: One of the series best. It’s well paced, has an amazing concept and both sideplots have some form of relevance while being utterly hilarious, especially the charon one. Seriously best bit character of the series calling it now. Already headcanon him as part of the ducktales universe. Along with a lot of this actually. IT’s good stuff and despite the series falts episodes like this prove why it really needed, and still needs, a second season. 

Thanks a Camelot:

Our heroes return to the land of the living with Xandra and to the Cabana, and while Donald wants to relax a bit, Xandra being an ass shoots that down. Though her reasons are valid: Feldrake has been stepping up his game with every scheme.. which is true. HIs last two schemes, not counting his post mortem one, only BARELY didn’t kill them and actually did kill them, and him too but that wasn’t on purpose. They need some good old fashioned hero training so Xandra’s taking the to king arthur and camelot, which of course are still around, to get it and since his training involves leaving everything behind, they leave htier weapons and other stuff behind including their amulets.. which haven’t come up since but are now since their important to the finale i’m guessing and they’ve been wearing the whole time. The girls are tagging along too as they want to document things because the plot says so but their entertaining so fine and leaving Ari and the Bear to guard. And the barrier.. more the barrier.  So with our heroes off Feldrake decides they need to strike and Sheldgoose has a plan to get around the barrier to get Humphrey’s spark: hide inside a cake and have humphrey so overcome by his desire for cake he comes to them. Feldrake is unimpressed but it works.. and even better as he drags them in.. but apparently while Feldrake’s protections are keyed to our heroes bloodline.. coot’s only extneded to feldrake. Which makes sense: he was friends with a Sheldgoose and probably didn’t consider her an enemy till he’d already set the spells, and cleverly, and i’d forgotten this till writing this review: Sheldgoose has already BEEN on the Cabana grounds once and to the doorstep, in the first episode when he visited the yardsale and in the finale of the second when he showed up to give Donald his check. So the show even showed it.. we just didn’t think about it or assumed having the ring meant he couldn’t now. But nope Sheldgoose is inside and Humphrey’s knocked out. 

Back in merry old Camelot, I apolgoize for having a deficit of spamalot and Monty Python refrences, our heroes meet King Arthur, voiced by former star of said spamelot John O’ Hurley, who I was going to give a good treatment and go into his career.. then I found out he’s VERY conservative, pro trump even post riot and generally kind of an ass in how he conducts himself soooo instead a hearty

Does a good job here, still a weasel fiesta. So King Arthur trains our heroes.. via motivational statments, trust falls and what not with his knights who get the same traning, one of which is Gallhad, a frog voiced by the same guy who viced Kermit on muppet babies. Yayyyyy. The girls wonder off, finding Merlin, whose busy with spells and such and clarfying which one is which. They give him june’s phone as Merlin has a video game addiction but Arthur forbids it because well. he has a problem why wouldn’t he.  Ruined Todd Chavez’s life it did. I mean it’s exceptional now but it took a bit of living on a drunken horse with serious issues couch. 

Anyways, Donald soon gets fed up because.. hes Donald. And because.. Tony kinda leans on the more classic constantly angry donald in this one, since he DID help write the lines. It’s not BAD mind you.. but I prefer the melding of his comics and shorts self other works did, the smug ego and everyman desperation to be noticed and liked from the comics mixed with the ego but also tons of rage of the shorts. Kinda like how Daffy had his own egotistical smartguy version merged with his screwball version for the Looney Tunes Show.. which i’ve been rewatching lately. Even better than I remember, highly underated. 

My point is this Donald, as we approach the end .. isn’t for me. He’s just not as intresting as the cloudcuckoolander panchito or the smootha nd wise jose. He ballances them well, being the more direct angry one to panchito’s unpredicablity and Jose’s smooth compemplation. He’s not BAD, and i get why some would prefer this one over Ducktales, as he’s more in line with his classic characterzation.. but I just prefer a more nuanced Donald and this one isn’t it. He spends most of the series either complaning, pissed off, or pining for an ungreatful she demon. There’s not a lot of notes compared to Jose or Panchito, as Jose isn’t just a ladies man or a charmer but a fairly smart guy who has pretty damn good plans and Panchito isn’t just spacey but, kind brave and with his own moral code. They just got more fleshing out as things went and Donald didn’t and it’s disappointing. 

So Donald gets fed up with the training, and calls out it’s only motivatoinal, with the other cabs agreeing, if more tactfully, and the knights.. also agreeing, pointing out King Arthur dosen’t even do his own goofy self motivational exercises and abandon him.. at the worst possible time as the girls conjur up a super powerful magical dragon. So the knights leave him to it and Arthur is too cowardly to face it. So the Cabs do what he won’t and charge in to defend the holy grail, called the grail of immortality here for ..r easons, and fight the dragon.. and Arthur joins them, inspired to finally get his groove back and gives the knights a rousing speech and even reconclies with donald. So our heroes fight the dragon and nearly die, before the rest of the round table pitches in, and the girls find the dragons scroll and impulsively burn it.. which destorys it. So the day’s saved, and Arthur apologizes to everyone and decides to give the boys proper combat training as thanks. Also we get a really funny bit with Merlin, who throws the phone into the fire.. and much like the dragon, apparenlty it was tied to the employee who activated it because he suddenly and horrifcly burns up. PFFT. Dark but beautfiul

But of course what about the Sheldgoose subplot. Well I saved that for now to cover it all at once SO: Sheldgoose pokes around, being annoyed by a dart board of his face and what not and tries to find something to fish the spark out with... but Ari finds him and proves to be entirely useful, beating Sheldgoose down into the treasure chamber and getting inot a fight with him. Sheldgoose holds pace.. until Humphrey wakes up and with the odds against him they throw him out. Meanwhile Feldrake zaps a dog that was going to get peed on him but when sheldgoose is ejegted is surronded by dogs and clearly didn’t escape as he dosne’t want to taklk about why he smells to sheldgosoe. He is ABOUT to berate him for failure again.. but Sheldgoose points out he swiped something more important: The amulets. 

Proving once again Sheldgoose is the real power in the team. 

Final Thoughts on Thanks a Camelot:  This was a fun one. While finding out about John O Hurley was... unfortunte.. he does a decent job and the episodes a fun take on camelot with, as usual , really excellent gags, pacing and a hell of a fight scene with a dragon. Good stuff as usual

NEXT TIME; It all ends! It’s a visit to some yeti’s before one final dance betwen good and evil and one last set of episodes for this retropsective! Be ready! 

[frankendykes-monster]

So probably the best way to start this is to mention the obvious and say that Joker (2019) has pretty much all of nothing to do with...The Joker.  I had mention to someone else a week or two back, but for as much as The Joker can work in a wide variety of stories, the character is inherently limited, my go-to phrase being “one dimensional.”  The Joker’s ongoing motivation is that he wants to defeat Batman, nothing more, nothing less.  “Killing Batman” is only a single part of it, “it” being proving that Batman is fallible and has some weakness.  There are characters like The Riddler that zero in on a single aspect of that such as, surely there are some problems that can be created that even The World’s Greatest Detective cannot solve, but The Joker is a convenient character in that he can be applied to any aspect of Batman’s character, which is why you get stories like Batman and The Joker getting into a surfing contest, because it all goes back to that theme of if there’s something that Batman is not the best at, Batman is ultimately doomed to fail (with regards to suspension of disbelief that is needed for superheroes to work, both creators and the audience have to commit to the concept that superheroes existing 100% makes the world around them a better place, and a major incoming failure on Batman’s part makes for greatest suspense in that it threatens that concept.)

But then, there lies the issue.  Joker does not actually have any driving motivation for WHY he wants to defeat Batman, he simply is.  It’s my theory on why no origin story has ever permanently stuck, because you can’t ever really make sense of that.  This compounds itself into Batman and Joker’s relationship and can never really evolve, it’ll play out in the same way every time just with new set dressing.  What you can do is raise the stakes, but with the back to back publishing of “The Killing Joke” and “A Death in The Family” in 1988, raising the stakes meant making The Joker a sadistic serial killer at the cost of everything else about the character, creating a Joker where everyone questions why he deserves to be alive to appear in another comic three to six months down the pipeline.  There have been some instances of trying to make The Joker more nuanced, like Grant Morrison introducing the concept of “super sanity” in their Batman work and addressing how The Joker reinvents his personality on the fly, but it’s ultimately set dressing that doesn’t alter anything.

So, that begs the question of why Joker, the film, calls itself “Joker” in the first place or why it takes place in Gotham instead of New York and blah blah blah the short answer is if they didn’t, Warner Bros wouldn’t have been able to rake in a billion dollars.  It’s on par with Sony deciding to make Venom (2018) and never addressing why Venom has those large white eye covers if his design isn’t based on Spider-Man, I’ll give Joker (2019) the compliment that it’s more interesting than that film at least.  I really did not want to bring up all this Batman shit while watching this but then they started addressing Thomas Wayne and I began mentally groaning.  I don’t want to dive into the concept of how or if the Batman mythos is impacted if you make Thomas (and Martha Wayne, who like in most Batman stories is more of a cameo than an actual character here) a shitty person, but then again I wouldn’t have to bring that up if the film didn’t cram it in in the first place.  I am...SO...SO THANKFUL I did not see any memes or theories or head canons surrounding “B-B_BUH JOCKER IS BEETMANS HALF BROTHER?????/???” which...whatever. Come to think I didn't see anyone bitch that he doesnt become The Joker until 90 minutes in either.  I think the majority of my goodwill (what turned it from, oh you know the good outweighs the bad enough for me to be able to tell someone this is watchable, to, oh you can skip this) was destroyed at the Waynes getting shot scene with, WHOOPS, The Joker was responsible (indirectly!)  That gave me BAD Batman (1989) flashbacks, and when you remind me of Batman (1989), you kind of do get on my bad side.  Fuck that movie.

SO.  In the midst of ALLL of this.  Let’s talk about the “““real source material”““ for Joker (2019): Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982).

I don’t think I’m ruffling any feathers by saying that that is the case and that both of those films are wayyy better than Joker (2019).  I mean, there’s a reason why Robert De Niro was not only cast in this film, but he’s second billed right under Joaquin Phoenix.  Those are two fairly different films but they’re, at their core, stories of men who are ticking time bombs of violence ready for someone to light the fuse.  It’s another point against Joker (2019), not only for reminding me of much better films, but forcing me to ask why another pastiche of this story needed to be told.  Martin Scorsese kind of made his career with a monopoly on men losing their shit and everyone around them being caught in the tornado.  Joker (2019) admittedly plays the material much differently, in that all the way through we are supposed to sympathize with Arthur Fleck and stand alongside him every step of this of his downward spiral, and even with where he ends up, I’ll admit I don’t have an issue with that, but the film struggles with making me care half the time.  Like, yes, when Arthur is alone at home trying not to go awol, yeah, I get that, but at other times there’s stuff like how Arthur’s relationship with Sophie is never developed in any meaningful capacity, like why is enamored with him, why is she not as disturbed by him as most other people seem to be?  When we discover she’s not real, that explains it from a logical perspective I guess, but it isn’t a shock or a gut punch.

Can I be real for a second?  There are a lot of moments in this film where it made me embarrased as a neurodivergent person.  The number of people who definitely saw this, because, once again, it made a billion dollars, and came away thinking oh so that’s what mentally ill people are like, even if they’re sympathetic about it, it makes me sigh.

Even though the crux of this film is Arthur’s descent, it desperately wants to be important.  I know I’m not the first person to make this observation, but it does read like, oh, what’s popular now?  Incels?  Better make part of Arthur’s character arc that he can’t hit up any actual real women so he has to entertain himself with fantasies.  Antifa?  Better make it so Arthur accidentally inspires a movement of nebulous anti-rich people who all wear masks.  And so on and so on with no actual commentary while simultaneously it’s not really world-building either because it’s so front and center to the plot. I gotta say, if the film is about people in general not putting up with things anymore after being shat on nonstop, why oh why is there a joke aimed at a little person pretty early on, even through some meta lense where “oh the person telling the joke is an asshat who dies later so it’s cool”?

Now I’m not sure what to say next about the film itself so I guess now would be a good time to discuss the film’s ~impact~ as it were.  If it weren’t for Parasite (2019) I’d have no problem saying this was the biggest film of 2019 in the grand scheme of things, like EVERYONE came in with every possible perspective on this thing long before it came out.  I remember how back in like, late-2017/early-2018?  A bunch of people were shitting on the announcement of this film and Warner Bros had to do damage control by releasing some on-set photos of the second subway scene two days later.  It’s surreal more than anything actually watching this film now and seeing, wait, this is what everyone was memeing about nonstop?  This is a mainstream film?  With the directions it goes in?  With the topics it brings up?  Well I’ll be damned.  This is probably the first time since Les Miserables (2013) and Man of Steel (2013) where a movie comes out and no two people have the exact same opinion on it, so I’m curious as to how Joker is going to age in like, a decade.  So fucking weird that this is called a “superhero film” in retrospect just because it shares a name with a comic book character owned by the same company that developed and distributed this.

I wouldn’t be talking about this film if it wasn’t called “Joker” but then again hey nobody else would either.  I don’t hate this film despite how I’ve said nothing positive about and I was pretty prepared to call it “barely good” before the finale, so I don’t regret watching it, I don’t know what the fuck to say anymore.  Gang Weed memes are pretty funny if you haven’t actually seen any in the wild.  1940: “Let’s throw him into chemicals.”  2019: “Let’s throw him into society.”

[kyloswarstars]

Come on! • Part 3 – „Midnight Talks“

Peaky Blinders • Mini-Series

Vendetta had brought your family back to Small Heath for a while. As a Blinder you received orders from Tommy like everyone else did as well. Your current one: Keep eyes on Bonnie Gold. When you first heard those words you wouldn’t have dared to imagine this order would take a complete turn on you.

Pairing • Bonnie Gold x Shelby!Reader

Words • 1.8k

Come on! • masterlist

/////

Oh boy, had it been a struggle to get permission to leave the city. Tommy was immediately like ‚NO! The vendettaaaaaaaa‘. Arthur ran around the kitchen like a mad cat, expected you to stay sat at the kitchen table as he gave a list of instructions on what not to do. Including not to smoke any of the weeds they might offer you or – and the even funnier one – get knocked up. To complete the protective trio, you imagined John sitting with you and just casually pushing a gun over the table. ‚You never know, kid‘, he said in your head.

It was Aunt Pol who tricked your older brothers into agreeing. You hadn’t asked her about it afterwards, but you could feel that she helped you because she was craving the woods just as much as you were. „We can see how honest Aberama Gold really is. He will prove his sincerity by protecting her,“ she explained. And that worked because on Friday you arrived at the forest. Together with Bonnie.

Friday was the day where he introduced you to his sisters, his father – officially, because you had seen him before but that was rather business wise – and to all his relatives that were staying at the campsite. You had hoped to sneak away for a while and just stroll around, just be. You didn’t get a chance, though. Being the ‚new‘ one there, you were drawn into a conversation whenever you had ended the previous one. Later in the evening you found out that they speculated you to be Bonnie’s new girlfriend, which you denied immediately – exactly like Bonnie who sat next to you. It was a rather awkward situation but everyone just laughed it away – and found the two of you strongly unconvincing.

Saturday was when you were able to sneak away. Bonnie followed you. He scared the hell out of you when he jumped from behind a tree. „Didn’t think I would notice you leaving, hm?“ He had teased you. And again, you turned away because it was flattering. Usually people didn’t pay that much attention. Bonnie wasn’t like everyone else.

He joined you for a walk through the trees. You picked up small twigs, shared childhood memories and didn’t realise all of the memories you talked about had John in them. It wasn’t upsetting when you realised it. later No clouds were lurking. Just Bonnie who patiently listened and then shared one of his memories again.

Saturday night, just like the night before, Bonnie gave up his bed for you again and slept on the floor of his caravan. You had told him it wouldn’t be a problem for you to sleep on the floor instead. It was his bed after all. He insisted you’d take it.

„Y/N? Are you awake?“

His whisper was very quiet in case you were asleep. You weren’t. „Yeah,“ you answered. After sharing all those memories today and being fine with it at first, you had this weird feeling now. It was none of those you were used to. It was something else you couldn’t pin down and it was bothering you to the point where it was impossible to just fall asleep over it.

Bonnie got on his feet, wrapped himself in his blanket and grabbed another one off the pile at the end of his bed. „Wrap yourself in yours and follow me.“

You didn’t react first while trying to answer the question as to why you should follow him.

„Or are you tired and want to sleep?“

„No.“ Getting up and wrapping the blanket around your body, you followed him outside.

Not far away from his caravan, he spread the blanket on the ground where the trees were further apart. Laying down, you could see through the openings in the treetops and were greeted by the night sky and all its shining stars.

Bonnie laid down next to you with his arm touching yours. The blankets were still between your arms but it felt way too close. Also way too good to move away, though.

„You do this a lot?“

„I think I don’t because every time I lay down here, I’m blown away all over again.“ His voice was as quiet as back in the caravan. Something about his voice being so careful and relaxed made you feel warm. „Are you having a good time, Y/N?“

„I am,“ you smiled. When you turned to your left you saw Bonnie staring at you. How long had he been looking at you instead up into the sky?

„I’m glad to hear.“ Somehow, it was impossible to return to the night sky. His face, illuminated by the full moon, felt more intriguing to look at right now.

That’s when this strange feeling hit like a horse’s hoof in the face. It made you question why you were even here. Why you had accepted his invitation. Why did you bring a potential vendetta target, you, here to Bonnie and his family? Are you fucking mad? He was way too good to be pulled into this. He shouldn’t have become a Blinder, his father should’ve never accepted Tommy’s deal.

You turned away from his face, sat up and stared back up through the treetops. „You do know this cap doesn’t come without burdens, right?“ Him being a Blinder, the chance of being used by Tommy if he needed an idiot to do god knows what, was unsettling. Or more upsetting. There was a lot you didn’t care about but Bonnie wasn’t part of that. You did care way too much for him. „Sooner or later you’ll die because you’re wearing this cap.“

This was another proof that you had let this come too far: He caught your sudden change of mood and it would’ve surprised you if he didn’t.

„Y/N, just like you, I make my own decisions.“ His voice was still relaxed, maybe even more so now to try calm you down. „I’d rather wear this cap, accomplish my dreams and die young than scrape a living without ever coming close to follow my dreams.“

„And you couldn’t have looked for someone else to help you with your dreams?“ Because if he had you wouldn’t have to care about if he got hurt one day. Or killed.

Bonnie sat up as well. „If I did… I wouldn’t have met you.“

„Bonnie.“ A deep sigh escaped your lips while your heart had problems to continue beating. You didn’t really know how to handle the conflict you felt right now.

„Did I say something wrong?“ He laid his head on his knees, watching you in the moonshine and was once again way too understanding and careful to do the right thing.

„You’re not doing anything wrong. That’s the problem…“, you admitted, finally looking at him again. 

„Why would this be a problem?“

„Because–“ Yeah, why? „Because…“ Putting your thoughts into words wasn’t that easy. Why was it always so hard to form sentences? Why could you not just send your feelings and thoughts to someone else – if it worked that way misunderstanding wouldn’t be word in the dictionary. „My head is telling me that I’m not good for you.“

Silence spread. You couldn’t stop the thoughts repeating in your head that you should get the fuck out of here and slap Tommy in the face for making you keep eyes on Bonnie Gold. You were unable to estimate what was going through Bonnie’s mind.

He laid down again, arms crossed under his head. „I think you’re forgetting I’m a dangerous man.“

That caught you so off guard, it immediately made you laugh out loud. The exchange of the first day at King Maine’s together popped up in your brain. Never would’ve you thought Bonnie would have such an impact on you.

„Y/N, you said you don’t do anything you’re not enjoying. Sometimes you have to take risks for the things, or the people, you enjoy.“

„You shouldn’t be a risk taker. I don’t want you to get hurt.“

Bonnie tugged at your arm and pulled you down to lay next to him again. Facing his eyes, he locked with yours and keeping them fixed so you wouldn’t dare to look away again, you felt his arm move. His hand was searching its way into your blanket mess and when it found your hand, Bonnie intertwined his fingers with yours. „To be honest: at this point the only one who could hurt me is you. By backing away from me.“

Fuck. Your heart might just burst into a million pieces. But at the same time it couldn’t be true because it beat so rapidly in your chest. He did everything right. And that was the problem. How were you able to resist falling for him if he gave you the feeling that being unconditionally you was everything he wanted you to be? No chance.

Grabbing onto his hand like life depended on it, you noticed Bonnie’s face slowly coming closer. If he was willing the risk to get hurt, you couldn’t deny him to make his own decision. And you could decide not to shy away from his proximity. And you didn’t. Not now.

His nose slightly brushed against yours, his breath hot on your face in this cold night. For all you had done before, nothing had made you feel that anxious before. Not, because you were scared of actually kissing him – you anticipated it – but what it would do to you. It would be impossible to turn around after it. Bonnie would conquer your heart and you wouldn’t be able to keep away from his kind soul that made you feel welcomed anymore.

„You can still get away from the curse Shelby’s bring on the people around them,“ you tried one last time.

„Just, shut up, Y/N.“ It was the first time he eagerly wanted you quiet. Because this time, he pressed his lips on yours. Not lightly, not delicate – his body moved closer to yours and his lips moved against yours like it wasn’t the first time they touched them.

It all felt strangely familiar and so fucking warm. Your free hand, because the other one was still locked with Bonnie’s, moved into his hair. He smiled, when your fingertips were caressing his neck. „Tell me, you enjoying this?“

You were hardly able to answer because Bonnie’s mouth didn’t really let go of yours. Somehow you managed a simple ‚yes‘ through it all. And it was you who had to smile next. You had never felt something so intense before. You didn’t really know how love  would be but you didn’t expect it to be that way. And it to happen so fast. Falling in love with Bonnie had been easy.

Spending this night under the stars was easy. In his arms. With his lips on yours. Your fingers intertwined. It felt like you were at a place where time didn’t exist. You wished you could stay there for as long as possible. With him.

[geekydane]

Talk to me - Tommy Shelby x reader - chapter 3

Masterlist

It is weird how fast you can get into a routine. Yes, it did take some time for you to relax in the office because of all the new people that wanted to introduce themselves or wanted to have a conversation. But either Lizzie or Polly usually saved you before the anxiety could pull you down in one of your black holes. It wasn’t without trouble and lots of people called you crazy and talked about getting you to the mental house rather than getting you a job. It was harsh but eventually they just gave up and didn’t speak to you. You got there every morning, did your job without asking any questions and went home again. A few times a week you went grocery shopping with Lizzie. Eventually she went with you to find some things to decorate your very empty apartment. It wasn’t much but the few candlesticks, books and wooden figures carved by a street merchant really made it all much cozier.

Like everyone else, Tommy Shelby ignored you. He walked past your desk a dozen times every day but didn’t say a word. Most of the time no one else said a word to him either, but it was more out of respect than them thinking he was mental – like you. It continued like that for a while until one day when you were starting to get ready to go home a while after Lizzie had left. You stood up and grabbed your bag next to your desk when a man stepped into the room. With a gun in one hand and his other clutching his side with blood gushing out between his fingers. You stood there staring at the man and didn’t know what to do.

“Where is Shelby?” The man murmured. He walked further into the room with a limp. His voice sounded like he was weak. He didn’t look like the type of man who would fight though. His clothing was very respectable. Very high class and his hair was need and the beard closely shaved. You stepped back. Further into the room you noticed - not very smart if you wanted to escape out of the door.

“Where is he?” The man shouted this time and you flinched but tried your best not to just throw yourself down behind Lizzie’s desk. Luckily for you the door behind you opened up slowly and Tommy stepped out with a cigarette in one hand and the other resting in the pocket of his trousers. He took a long pull on his smoke while staring at the man like he had no care in the world.

“You.” Said the man simply and started to stagger forward to the two of you. Tommy stepped up next to you and with a swift movement he had grabbed you by the waist and placed you behind him. You were in shock by his action. Too many thoughts were going through your head to actually concentrate about what was happening in front of you with the two men. Tommy was protection you and put himself between you and the man with a bloody gun pulled out. But what shocked you the most was that you didn’t react to his touch. You had reacted every time anyone had touched you since that day. But without any reason you felt safe around Tommy, or rather behind him.

“You have no reason to be here.” Tommy said coldly to the man. The man sneered and stepped further towards you and raised his gun, directing to towards Tommy’s abdomen. You wanted to run away but as long as Tommy was calm, you felt that you could be too. Right?

“No reason? Your fucking lads took a shot at me! You got nerves to interfere with ma’ business here.” The man spat at you but as he took yet another step forward you could see his knees buckle. He was almost out.

“You have no business here. Birmingham belongs to the Peaky Blinders.” The what? What are these people involved with? This cannot be about limited companies. Could it? Your father had done business and with you watching from the sideline most of the time. You never saw someone point a gun at your father.

“Well then let’s say that I’m here with a greeting from Mick King.” The man smiled and let his tongue run over his nasty yellowing teeth before he lifted his gun to take better aim. But with an ear-piercing bang the man’s eyes widened. You hadn’t seen that someone else had entered the room behind the man but someone had shot him and the blood was filling his mouth. You would forever remember how his eyes rolled back into his skull and I fell backward so hard that the desks around you moved. Tommy was the first one to move. He crutched down to examine the now dead man and you saw Arthur in the door, brushing his hair back with a steady hand. He just killed the man. He bloody shot him! And here you were, not moving away from the murderers. They were your employees. Your employees were murderers. But in a strange way this felt familiar to you. You were shocked that you weren’t scared or grossed out. Most people might have ran away or thrown up by the sight. But you… You couldn’t look away.

“Y/n? You okay?” Tommy asked with am emotionless voice as he stood up again. He had taken some papers from the inner pocket of the man’s coat and was looking over the squiggly handwriting. He wasn’t looking at you but you nodded anyway. When you finally started moving again your first reaction was to clean up. Clean up the blood. You walked around Lizzie’s desk and towards the door were Arthur still stood and was lightning a smoke. He stepped in front of you when you tried to leave the room.

“Let her pass.” Tommy said. He was still not looking up from the paper that made him look a little tense. His Jaw was clenched. It was so clear when it was so marked already. Arthur stepped aside but not without eyeing you suspiciously. You went to the kitchen area and found a floor cloth before returning to the crime scene.

“Mick King? That’s what the bastard told ya?” Arthur asked angrily and Tommy nodded once before finally turning to you. You hold up the cloth the signal that you wanted to clean when they were ready and for the first time in the weeks you had worked at Shelby Limited, you saw your boss smile. Not a huge grin but it was definitely there.

“You want to clean up the mess?” He asked you and you just nodded. He looked like he was suppressing a laugh as he threw out his arms.

“Well, then we have to move him first, don’t you think, Arthur?” Arthur looked at you with a raised eyebrow and he didn’t make a move to help Tommy remove the man from the floor.

“Go get someone. Be discreet.” Tommy waved his hand to signal Arthur to leave and he scuffed before leaving the room and closed the door behind him. There were now a weird silence in the office. You didn’t know if it was just something that you imagined, but you thought you could smell the blood in the air. Tommy looked at you, like he couldn’t quite figure you out and it was bothering him.  

“You are tougher than I thought.” He finally said after some time. You just shrugged. You thought the same. You couldn’t believe you didn’t run away screaming. You just straight up witnessed a murder and your reaction was to find a fucking cloth to clean up the crime scene. Though you were sure that the reality would hit you later, when you came down from the shock you had by Arthurs actions. But at the same time, you were not surprised. You had a lot of questions about what was going on in the company, but it really didn’t concern you. But because of this event, you had a feeling that it soon might start to concern you too.

“Polly sees something in you. There might be more hiding in that head of yours after all.” He said like it surprised him. You didn’t know if you should feel offended. It was kind of an insult, but you had a feeling that when this came from someone like Tommy, it might be a compliment. You didn’t react to the comment though. It was hard to figure out what he really wanted you to do, as his expression was hard to read.

“Let’s not get any more blood on your hands. I’m sure that Arthur will find the right lads to clean up his mess. He always does.” The way he said it so lightly only showed you that it wasn’t god’s best children you were working with. Tommy took the cloth from you and threw it on your desk before he grabbed your bag from the floor and handed it to you. You were on your way to leave when Tommy called your name to stop you.

“Wait for me. I need to grab my coat.” What? Grab his coat? Was he going with you? Tommy disappeared into his office and returned the moment after, rolling his shoulders to get the coat easier on. He was now wearing his sixpence and you understood now why all of the people the Shelby family surrounded were wearing it. It was kind of intimidating the way that he was look out from under the cap. The shadow falling over the eyes made him look dangerous.

“I’m taking you to the Garrison. I think you and I have a lot to talk through.” He nodded his head to signal that you walked out first and he shut and locked the door behind him into your office. You were going to a pub? What? Was that really the best time he could think of to go to the pub? You didn’t dare resist but you had to admit that you were damn curious now that he said you should talk. Was this closed up man going to spill all his dark secrets to you?

You stopped up in the door as soon Tommy opened up the door before you and signaled for you to go first. There were so many people. It wasn’t the most diverse place. The pub was filled up to the roof with men in cheap clothing and one was yelling louder than the other. The air was think of smoke and the smell of strong spirits. You flinched when one particular angry man at a table near the door slammed his fist down into the table and stood up in a rush. Your heart started pounding aggressively and the curiosity you felt before vanished immediately. You were not going in there. You simply couldn’t do it.

“After you.” Tommy said. He must start to lose his patience with you, you imagined. A normal woman would stroll in and enjoy the attention she might get, because she was almost the only woman in the room. The angry man that had scared you the moment before finished up yelling at the people around the table he was violating and headed towards you. But as soon he saw the two of you in the door he stopped in his tracks and the angry expression on his face vanished and was replaced with something that looked like horror.

“Mr. Shelby. Sir.” He murmured and as soon the words left his lips it was like a chain reaction of stammering and scared faces around the pub. In the end the whole room was silent and everyone’s eyes were on you. This made you wonder for the millionth time if you should be scared of Tommy too. But that thought left as fast as it came, because in the next moment Tommy placed a hand on the small of your back. At first you stiffened. You wanted to remove yourself from him but he started to push you very gentle forwards and you couldn’t do anything else than start to move your legs. You tried your hardest to breath while being stared at from every possible angle.

“Harry, are anyone in?” Tommy called out to the man behind bar. The only man in the room that didn’t stop dead in his track, the moment you stepped in. He was a skinny looking man with very little hair left on his head. He was wearing an apron that once must have been white and he was drying off huge beer mugs with a cloth.

“No one’s here.” Harry said and lifted his head to look at you.

“Bring in an Irish and I believe… something less… Strong?” He looked questioning at you but you just lowered you gaze to the floor.

“Gin Rickey?” The bartender said with a lifted brow. You just nodded, not knowing what you just agreed to drink. As long as you could soon sit down in a corner somewhere and hide away from all the curious glances. You almost panicked when Tommy’s hand disappeared from your back. It was like his hand was an anchor you had clung yourself to and you now had to swim for yourself. Luckily for you he walked towards another door and opened it up for you. The room looked empty from where you stood so you hurried inside and breathed out heavily.

“You are not much for people. Or is it just men?” He asked gesturing you to take a seat at the dark wooden bench that was built into the wall. He sat down opposite you at the table on one of a screaking chair that matched the rest of the interior with its dark wood. He immediately lightened up a cigarette and blew out the smoke to the side. You shrugged your shoulders at his question.

“Communication is a hard thing.” He said thoughtful and leaned back in the chair.

“I have an idea and I hope you want to cooperate.” He started. Oh no. Cooperate? What did he want you to do? Kill more people, because you didn’t scream when you saw a man take his last breath in front of you. He was silent for a bit before he reached down his pocket and drew out a piece of paper and a pencil.

“You write numbers all day for the company. So I thought that writing was the easiest way to communicate for you.” He folded out the empty paper in front of you and pushed it towards you.

“You can write down your answers here.” He said and looked at you with lifted eyebrows and folded hands. You picked up the pencil like he wanted you to, but you were quite nervous. You hadn’t really talked with anyone since the incident. This was as close to actually talking you could get without falling apart. Some of the alienists had used a small blackboard but it was too hard back then. That’s why you had just accepted Mrs. Langston as the one speaking for you instead. Then you didn’t have to form an opinion about anything or held accountable for things you said.

“So, miss y/l/n. Do you like your job at Shelby Company Limited?” He started out. That was fairly easy to answer. You grabbed the paper and wrote in the top left corner, and turned the paper around for him to read it.

“Yes.”

“Good. You are very reliable and gets in earlier than anyone. You get the job done.” This time you just nodded. It was a compliment but you really didn’t want to explain to him, that you were always early because you didn’t sleep at night.

“I know that you aren’t stupid. So, do you have any questions about the numbers you handle doing the day?” Was this a trick question? Did he really want to know that you had been wondering about all those blank transactions? Or the number of those called “other goods”? Or will he think you stupid if you hadn’t noticed it. You hesitated for a while but Tommy remained still and just surveyed you. You turned the paper back to you and wrote.

“Yes. All the blank transactions are odd.”

“Excellent. And you might have guessed that the man that is hopefully being removed from my floor at this moment is here in Birmingham because of said transactions.” He tipped his head and looked at you from over his nose. That look was so intimidating, that all you could answer with was a shrug. You could only guess that it might have something to do with it, but a lot of strange things happened in the company and you were sitting in the mean of it all and could just try to look the other way.

“All this time you have done your work without questioning anything. Maybe Polly was right. You are a great investment.” Tommy nodded to himself. A huge smack sounded from the wall and you jumped in your seat and looked around in horror. On the wall near the door was a hatch in the wall and the bartender Harry had opened in and was placing your drinks in the opening. Tommy fetched them for you and placed the yeollow-ish drink in front of you. You wanted to be polite and take a sip, but the drink was really sour from the lime and strong because of the amount of alcohol that was in it and you were not use to drink any of that.

“Oy mr. Shelby, your sister is here.” Said the bartender before closing the hatch again. Tommy looked a little annoyed by that comment but turned to you again.

“I hope we can continue our cooperation even after what happened today. You understand that we are more than just a limited company and I’m sure you will be let into more of the business of the Blinders at some point. But we have to cut it short now that Ada has arrived. Any minute she will…” He was cut short by the door opening and the sister you had seen goes to and from the office, stepped inside. Her whole face lightened up when she saw you.

“Oh I thought you were sitting in here alone being sour, Tommy. I didn’t know you had company. Do tell me, why can you take her to a drink when I can’t?” Ada walked over and sat next to you on the bench. She was dressed down but she still looked really fashionable. You wondered what kind of job she had, now that she didn’t have a desk at Shelby Limited.

“This is business. We had some things to discuss.” Tommy said with a sigh.

“Mmhmm. It’s not just you finally taking a woman on a real date?” Ada picked at him and Tommy closed his eyes for a moment before shaking his head no. Ada sipped her drink but noticed the paper on the table between the two of you.

“Oh that’s a brilliant idea! You write down your answers.” She took the paper and read the few things you had read and frowned.

“Oh it was business. You solved it? Y/n, she’s in now, Tommy?” Ada asked curiously.

“She is.” Tommy simply said, sounding as annoyed as he looked.

“Finally some sensible women at the office! But enough about work. Can I ask you some questions? Now that we have the paper and pen out?” Ada asked excitingly. Ada was a person that could fill out the room like no other. All the Shelby’s had some kind of an ability to make whole rooms to react to them in a different way. While Tommy could make everyone go silent, Ada could really make people comfortable. She was easy going and you could imagine that she must have been the star of the family when she was a child. She made you feel comfortable enough for you to nod and she started firing questions at you.

Most of them were something you could answer very short. Like what country you were originally from, if you were an only child, which you were and how many countries you had visited. You told her about your fathers business and how you had traveled around the world with him because of work and how you didn’t remember your mother at all. Under this interrogation Tommy just sat twirling his whiskey in the glass.

When you told Ada that you had never been in a real relationship she was deeply shocked. She glanced at Tommy before telling you – very quietly – how many men she had kissed throughout her life. How she had gotten married and had a kid that Polly took care of when she needed to get out. They suddenly sounded like a normal family if it wasn’t for the fact that Arthur walked in a while later.

“It’s done.”

--------------------------------------

Authors note

Sorry for the long wait. But i’ve had a lot of things to deal with. If you didn’t see my last post.... I’ve moved out, got a new job and 3 days into my new job i had a colleague that committed suicide at work. It has been some crazy weeks and i feel that the christmas vacation is well deserved this year.

-----------------------------------------

Taglist: 

@im-the-colourless-sunshine

@fearthequeer595

@sununicorn

@i-love-you-green​

@imnotsomewhore 

@imnotuglyimjustpredebut

@hi-there-x​

@namiknows​

@imnotsomewhore​

@captivatedbycillianmurphy​ 

[shytalia]

A Prince & A Pirate’s Fate - 16

— ♠ — ♠ — ♠ —

Chapter Sixteen

Start at Chapter one here:https://shytalia.tumblr.com/post/611878754309079040/a-prince-and-a-pirates-fate-usuk-fanfic

Also available on my AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shytalia

— ♠ — ♠ — ♠ —

Alfred awoke with a throbbing pain in his head.

“Ugh, what the fuck.” He groaned, holding his head as if it would make the pounding in it go away.

“Watch your language. I see Kirkland has left an unfortunate impact on you.”

Alfred jumped at the sound of another voice so close to him, his eyes widening and snapping in the direction of the intrusion. It was the current king, sitting calmly by his side. He stared at him gaping, unsure of exactly where he was or why his father was by his side as he slept. What he did know, however, was that Arthur was nowhere to be seen.

He was beaten to it before he could even open his mouth to ask.

“You disobeyed direct orders and have been visiting that pirate during the night, haven’t you?” There wasn’t much in the way of a question so much as it was just a statement. The king let out a rough huff of disapproval when his son didn’t answer. “As such, I have no choice but to relocate Kirkland to a more secure room. One you won’t be able to break into.”

He took a moment to look his son over. His young features were crinkled in irritation and he could see faint marks on his lower neck from previous private affairs, no doubt left by the captain himself. The image of his son stooping that low was unnerving.

“But upon reflecting your little escapades, I’ve deemed that a more proper punishment is in order. Kirkland will be relocated and put under the most maximum security, but he will no longer be allowed to do anything more than sit and wait.”

“What? What does that even mean?” Alfred growled, moving forward only to realize he himself couldn’t move either. With wide eyes his vision snapped to the side and saw his wrists chained to the bed he was on, allowing him to move only a very short distance. “Y-You can’t do this! Let me go!” He yelled.

“It is a necessity, you’ll see. You will be released on the night of the ball. I think a few days of solitude will prove to be a fitting punishment. No more running around the halls like a love sick puppy searching for its master.” The King muttered, taking the prince’s chin in his hand and twisting his head towards him. He matched the glare thrown at him. “Just so you understand me, son, allow me to be perfectly clear. You should relax and do as you are told. The more you struggle to understand what I’m doing is for the best then the more suffering you’ll bring your poor Arthur. Your actions will reflect his treatment. If you insist on acting out of line, his punishments will be all the worse because of you.”

For a moment hesitation flashed in Alfred’s eyes, and it didn’t go unnoticed.

“What punishments?” He asked, softer this time as if he were afraid of the answer.

“Anything I see fit. Because of your little adventures in the night, Arthur has already received ten lashings. You wouldn’t want him to get more, would you?” The elder man said easily.

Then, Alfred’s calm exterior was gone, replaced by a hot fury that threatened to eat him from the inside out. His chains rattled against his harsh movements as he attempted to free himself.

“What!” He practically screamed. “You whipped him? For what! He didn’t do anything, it was all me! He was stuck in that damn room day after day, I’m the one who kept visiting him even after he told me to stop!”

Despite his outburst, the king simply waved his hand as if brushing the offensive words out of the air. “It doesn’t really matter. Queen or not, he has to pay for everything he’s done in the past. He’s lucky I’ve been merciful, you know as well as I do that criminals like him do not often get anything less than a noose or permanent disfiguration. Would you prefer I do that?”

“No! I’d prefer if you treated him like my goddamn queen!”

At that, the King let out a small chuckle and stood up. “He will be treated like the queen once he acts like one and not a disgusting pirate. But don’t worry, it won’t take long, I will break him of his filthy habits soon enough.”

And despite the yelling from the younger royal and the screaming of his chains as he tore at him, rubbing the flesh beneath them raw until they bled, the king left his son alone again.

--- ♠ --- ♠ --- ♠ ---

The arrival of the other kingdom’s royals a few days later sent a wave of excitement throughout the entire capital.

Much like the impromptu parade signifying the arrival of Prince Alfred’s return home, carriages of varying colors carried new and foreign leaders towards the castle walls. Crowds clumped together on the streets for a chance to see a Heart, Diamond, or a Club wagon, each decorated as extravagantly as the last.

First came the Hearts, their red ribbons and heart-printed banners clashed brightly against the normal, Spadian blues. Most exciting was the young prince whose stoic face charmed all those he passed, offering them a polite wave but not much more. It didn’t seem to bother the crowd as they gorged themselves on his handsome features.

Next were the Clubs, a cold nation of ice and snow, but their green symbol was an ironic feature plastered for all to see. It was almost a mask, the clover of their nation a sign of luck and prosperity, even in the dead of winter. Despite this, people found themselves ogling the impressively tall, burly man with the gentle smile as he rode down the streets.

Lastly were the fashionably late Diamonds. Bright and warm, covered in gold and jewels, the King of Diamonds flashed his ringed hand enthusiastically to the people surrounding him. Women and men caught the kisses he drew from his mouth, blowing them into the crowd with fervor.

Overall, the arrival of the three foreign kingdoms was a cheerful success. Servants busied themselves making last minute preparations and ran around the castle like bees in a hive.

Alfred could hear the commotion from his room, finally released from his bounds he rubbed at the bruised skin of his wrists with a scowl. His father had never acted this tyrannically before, at least, not to Alfred. Had it always been there and he just hadn’t seen it?

He shook those thoughts away and pulled on his navy coat. It dragged down in the back and he couldn’t help but wonder what Arthur would be wearing. No doubt, they would dress him up like a doll in Spadian nationality and the Brit would loath every second of it. This is exactly what Arthur had been trying to avoid for so long and yet, here Alfred had made his worst nightmares come true.

He mentally cursed himself for it but a soft knock on his door banished those thoughts.

“Your highness, it is time.” A calm voice spoke through the wood. When Alfred opened it, he was greeted with the familiar face of the royal Jack.

“Yao,” Alfred recognized, doing his best to bite back his anger and his anxiety. He had to do this right, for Arthur’s sake. “Let’s get this over with.”

The walk to the ballroom was long and the sound of chattering people exploded to life the second they swung the grand doors open. There were nobles and ladies scattered around the hall, each decorated with elegance and riches. Some were already dancing and others were drinking, gossiping about petty affairs that made Alfred’s head hurt.

The Chinese man pushed him onward and towards a large, stage-like platform at the end of the room. It had chairs, in which already sat the current King and Queen as they watched the people buzz below them.

Alfred ignored any greetings he received as he walked through the crowd, not truly on purpose, but his mind swarmed with different scenarios that could go wrong at any moment.

He took his place in a chair, it was high up where he could see the entire room clearly. It was more often than not used for his parents and their more esteemed guests to lounge during parties such as this one. When they weren’t dancing around the ball room, they sat perched and watching like hawks to a bustle of prey.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Yao called after Alfred was seated, earning looks from all across the room. “I am proud to introduce our guests, who have traveled far to come and greet our new Queen and congratulate the young, Prince Alfred. So, without further ado, please welcome your majesties...”

The short man took a quick bow, pulling the doors of the ballroom open, and gestured for those outside it to come in. As he did, he dutifully introduced each one.

“Prince Ludwig, of the Hearts. King Ivan, of the Clubs. And King Francis, of the Diamonds. Welcome to The Spades.” Yao bowed to them once more.

The three took in their surroundings, obviously sizing up the room, its decor, and its occupants. At once, three pairs of eyes set sharply on the three, Spadian royals sitting on the other side of the room.

King Ivan was the first to speak. “Ah, it is nice to meet you, your highnesses.” He gave a small bow of his own, but even his crouched stature was far taller than anyone else in the room. “However, I am not seeing the newly found queen. I was told we would get the chance to meet him and I was looking forward to it quite a bit.” Something sparkled in his lavender eyes that made Alfred want to hurl, or punch him in the face, whichever came first.

The creepy Club did have a point, however. Where was Arthur? This ball was supposed to be a celebration of him coming to the castle, surely his parents weren’t going to leave him locked up throughout the entire thing!

As if on cue, the door creaked open once more and each curious face glanced to it. Standing with guards at his sides was Arthur, dressed in the finest clothing Alfred had ever seen him in. His blue eyes widened slightly, watching carefully as his betrothed strut into the room looking nothing less like complete, Spadian royalty.

“Arthur!” Alfred jumped up. As much as he told himself he would behave, the sight of Arthur finally out and free of chains made his heart beat erratically. The only thing that brought him back down to earth was his father’s cough and a harsh grip on his wrist, preventing him from jumping off the stage and towards the other blonde across the hall. Looking back, his eyes met the cold, warning glare of the elder royal and he swallowed.

Relaxing and standing up straight, he stared ahead at the man he adored so much just to find him looking right back up at him. There was something swimming there in those wide, green orbs that Alfred couldn’t quite place and it worried him to no end. So, without thinking, he grinned widely and outstretched his arms to address the room loudly.

“Welcome! Now that everyone is here, let’s get to dancing!” He bounced off the platform in a single leap, landing on the hard floor below and practically racing towards the petite, shaggy-haired man with open arms. “What do you say, Arthur? Can I have this dance with my future queen?”

Arthur’s eyes widened in disbelief, unsure if Alfred was trying to get them in trouble again or not. But, here in front of so many people, what could his father really do? So, he smiled and nodded, reaching out and allowing his hand to be taken.

“Of course.”

Within an instant, he was pulled close against a warm chest and an arm snaked around his waist, drawing him ever nearer.

“Good.” Alfred breathed, softer now that he had Arthur so close against him. He pulled the shorter man towards the middle of the room, ignoring the people that shifted to get out of their way, and immediately started twirling their bodies together to the music that flowed gently through the air. “I missed you.” He whispered.

Arthur only made a small sound of agreement, but his stiff limbs relaxed the longer Alfred held him close. He did his best to ignore the obvious eyes that were boring into them, even if they were being discrete, Arthur knew better than to think they weren’t at the forefront of everyone’s gaze.

“I’m sorry...for what happened. You didn’t deserve that.”

Green shot up and met blue. Arthur wavered at the look of sincerity and regret that twisted the younger man’s sweet face. It wasn’t a look that fit Alfred, he was meant for smiles and laughter, not worry or anger. The Brit shook his head and offered a small smile.

“Don’t worry. It’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever endured.” He assured.

His response only seemed to make Alfred’s brows furrow further together and his frown deepen.

“That’s not the point. I don’t want them to hurt you.” The prince voiced, removing his hand from Arthur’s in favor of pulling down at the other man’s sleeve. He could see the darkness of bruises lingering there from his binds, much like he had on his own, but Arthur’s looked even worse. Not only that, those familiar metal, bracelets encircled his pale wrists. It seemed even during a ball his father couldn’t trust Arthur not to kill him. For once since he returned, he thought the king actually got something right. “I promised you that I’d be your hero.”

“I don’t expect you to keep all your promises.”

As much as he wished he didn’t, Arthur couldn’t shake that feeling of betrayal he had when he realized Alfred was the man he had spent years loathing. No amount of sweet words and gifts would change that overwhelming ache in his chest at being lied to for so long.

Alfred frowned more at that but didn’t press the issue. He knew he had a lot to prove to Arthur and he wouldn’t stop until he made everything up to him and then some. But for now, he was content to have his lover close and to twirl him around the room to the sound of music.

Several dances later, Arthur opted to take a small break and convinced the young prince to grab a drink instead of just showering him in open affection. Alfred had pouted but agreed, running off to find the nearest butler with a glass of wine.

“It is nice to meet you, your highness.”

Arthur nearly jumped out of his own skin when a low voice ghosted past his ear. He turned to find a very tall, very intimidating man looming over him with a gentle grin. He nearly looked like he could pick him up and break him in half over his knee if he wanted. Arthur sincerely hoped he didn’t try.

“Hm? Did I say something wrong? You’re looking at me as if you’ve seen a ghost.” The large man’s face morphed into something of a pout, if one could truly call it that.

“O-Oh, no, my apologies. I didn’t hear you come up.” Arthur dismissed quickly, taking a small step back. He may be a pirate with incredible magical abilities and a talent for weapons, but at the moment, he had neither of those things. It didn’t help that he had gotten quite the thorough instructions from the king before being dressed for this horrendous dance that if he were to act out of line, his brother would not go unpunished. Thus, he had to play nice.

His explanation must have been enough for the tall man because he smiled again and nodded. “I did not mean to scare you.” He told him, accent thick on his tongue. “I am King Ivan, from the Club’s Kingdom. I would be honored if I could have a dance with the future Queen of Spades.”

He held out a large hand and Arthur hesitated to take it. He wasn’t exactly jumping at the opportunity to be manhandled by a very powerful stranger, but he didn’t have much reason to refuse either.

“Of course...” The Brit muttered, slowly lifting his own hand and placing it in the much bigger one. Without a moment to reconsider, Ivan pulled his smaller body close and was turning around in time with the music. Arthur barely had enough time to register what was happening as he was shoved, almost surprisingly snug, against the smothering body.

“I’ve come to meet you, Queen Arthur. I wanted to see you for my own eyes, it’s been quite a few years since we first heard about you. We weren’t sure you would ever actually come take your place.” Ivan talked casually, spinning Arthur around in circles as he did so, arm firmly planted against his lower back to keep him secure.

“Yes, well, I didn’t think I would either.” The pirate replied, almost bitterly as he spared a glance towards the platform the current monarchs sat on. He could see the King’s icy stare even from where he was moving in the middle of the dance floor.

“We Clubs have been watching these silly Spades run around trying to catch you for so long, it was most amusing. I’m almost sad the fun is now over.” The Russian sighed, his conversation moving as if Arthur hadn’t spoken at all.

What a particularly odd thing to say to the next queen of said kingdom.

Arthur cocked an eyebrow and looked up at the man who held him, taking in his childish frown of disappointment now that his apparent ‘fun’ was over.

“But, I get the feeling a new game is going to begin soon and it is exciting to finally meet the most interesting player. You’re not like the rest of these stuffy Spades.” Ivan’s smile once more tugged around the edges and, to Arthur, it almost resembled more of a smirk. He felt the hands around him tighten, as if drawing him closer to tell him a well-kept secret.

“I do believe most of the other people here are not murders and thieves.” Arthur replied easily. He may be put off by the other male, but he was not one to back down because of a little intimidation. He had his pride and he would keep it, as much as he could in this damned place anyway.

“I’m not so sure. But, perhaps your brand of depravity is a little bit different than theirs. That doesn’t mean there are not some similarities in the ruthlessness.” Ivan offered after a bark of laughter. He seemed genuinely pleased with Arthur’s answer. “Oh, but your dear prince...he’s not like the rest either, is he? Just look at him now, he’s glaring at me as if I’m about to rip your throat out. That is funny, da?”

Arthur ignored the low chuckle that emanated from the bigger man and twisted his head enough so he could see past his large arms. Sure enough, there was Alfred, two wine glasses in his hands and narrow eyes. He didn’t look jealous so much as he looked purely predatory.

“I think he and I will become very close friends. That would be great, yes?” Another deep laugh fluttered out of the Club’s chest, but something in Arthur told him that ‘friends’ was not exactly the right word to describe the thoughts Ivan was having at that moment.

“Of course. It would be lovely to have a good relationship between the Spades and the Clubs. I look forward to it.” The Brit announced, a tad too loud, but he felt the need to get out of the man’s grasp as quickly as possible. “Please, excuse me. I believe the prince has retrieved our drinks.”

Slowly, Ivan pulled back his arms and released the shorter man with a content smile.

“Thank you for the dance, your majesty. You are very fun.” He said.

Arthur gave a short bow, “And to you as well, King Ivan.” He told him, before turning on his heel and speeding off towards Alfred. Taking one of the beverages offered, he brought it to his lips and wasted no time drinking it down.

“What did he say?” Alfred asked lowly, cold eyes still hovering on the tall form retreating off the dance floor.

“King Ivan? Not much. Just that he thought our little game of cat and mouse had been rather amusing for him.” Arthur mumbled. It seemed he underestimated some of these other lands. He was a wanted man in each kingdom, including Clubs, and yet the King was content in watching them for his own amusement instead of trying to capture him for his crimes. “I believe he rather liked seeing you upset as we danced.”

Alfred’s gaze was still narrowed when blue eyes turned to him instead, softening immediately when they finally landed on Arthur’s gently, smiling face. Slowly, the prince brought his free hand up and ran his fingers across his lover’s cheek and cupped his face. “Of course I was upset. How am I supposed to feel with someone else holding you like that?” He asked, but his voice was somewhat amused. “More so, I don’t entirely trust him. Ivan isn’t exactly known for his good intentions.”

“Ohoho, gossiping already?”

The pair turned at once, finding a smug looking Francis standing not far behind them.

“It’s truly a pleasure to meet you, soon-to-be Queen Arthur.” The Diamond royal grinned, reaching out and grabbing the Brit’s hand. Without a moment of hesitation, he bent down in a bow and placed kisses upon the back of the pirate’s hand. He failed to notice the look of disgust that crossed the pale man’s face as he did so. “You’re far more lovely in person, might I say.”

“I appreciate the thought.” Arthur muttered, pulling his hand away and instead wrapped it around one of Alfred’s arms.

The Diamond stood tall again, his eyes scanning over the pair for a moment, before another grin plastered his face. “I must congratulate you two. This has been a long time coming, and we have all been patiently waiting for your arrival. We were all shocked to hear that the Prince of Spades had gone missing. It had been so long that we all began to assume the worst. But, it is fortunate that you were in safe hands the entire time after all, hm?”

The blonde king held a strange look on his face that Arthur did not like very much. He looked like he knew something but was holding back, whatever it was.

“It is very fortunate. I was lucky to be under Arthur’s care.” Alfred spoke up, his gaze unwavering as he stared at the other man with a silent dare to question him.

“Ah, as I said. Safe hands.” The Diamond chuckled, lifting a glass of wine he plucked from a waiter’s tray and raising it to the couple before him. “Not many of us marked find happiness with their chosen half. It is a game of wars and lying that we play, there is not much room left over for love between the likes of us.”

That was true. Most kings and queens did not care for one another, tolerant of the other more often than not and friends at the best of times. If he remembered correctly, the Prince of Hearts found his to-be queen more of a platonic companion than anything. And while that was fine for him, it wasn’t what Alfred wanted for himself. It had been a true fear of Alfred's entire life. He wanted an actual relationship with his betrothed, not just a political one.

He had found that with Arthur.

“But,” The young king began again before either of them could reply. “It is nice when it happens. I wish you two the best of luck, you are a rare exception indeed.”

Francis smiled from behind his glass before taking his leave, walking towards a group of well dressed noblewomen with flirtation on his lips.

“Diamonds always were strange.” Arthur muttered, twisting his body so he was standing in front of the taller man now.

“You would think it was the Hearts that were so sappy.” Alfred offered, earning him a small chuckle from the shorter male as he wrapped his wine-free arm around his slight waist. Their bodies pressed together without hesitation.

“Do you believe what he says?” The Brit murmured softly, his lips grazing the soft skin of the other’s neck. “About us?”

“You mean that we are a rare exception? I mean, yeah...kind of. We are, aren’t we?” Came the prince’s soft reply, pressing his own lips into that pale hair. “I love you, more than anything. I can feel it in every part of me. Every time I look at you, I am overwhelmed with just how much I adore you.”

He grinned a cheesy smile against the other’s scalp, feeling the way the smaller body warmed up against him.

“So you say.” Arthur replied after a moment, pulling his face away and looking up at his betrothed with a questioning look.

Alfred just laughed, the sound ringing out into the space around them and lighting up the room in an instant. Several people turned and looked, only to be greeted by the sight of their prince staring warmly down at the man before him.

“It’s true, and I’ll keep telling you every day if I have to. I really do love you, sweetheart.” He grinned down at him knowingly, easily picking up on the light dusting of pink that tinted his queen’s face.

Arthur looked to the side, feigning interest in the dancers on the floor spinning in circles, as he sipped his wine.

“I could do for another dance.” The pirate said quietly, but that was all that was needed since they were pressed so intimately close.

“Whatever you want, honey. I’ll give you anything in the world.” The royal laughed again, softer this time, before he finished off his glass and beckoned a butler over to relieve them of the cups. With that out of the way, his newly freed hand intertwined with the slender fingers of Arthur’s as he pulled him back towards the dance floor.

Once more, eyes were on them.

It was almost normal now, all things considered. How each curious glance pointed their way, laced with fake acceptance. Arthur was beginning to almost revel in the disapproving stares.

Let them look.

Let them see how he was twirled around and dipped, kissed mercilessly upon his cheeks and neck as laughter fluttered from his chest.

Let them see how Alfred looked at him, and only him, proving the golden boy of The Spade’s Kingdom was all his.

Let them watch as their arms tightened as they grew closer and whispered together like young kids sneaking out together into the night.

It was scandalous. It was exciting. It was everything Arthur yearned for.

They twirled their way around the dance floor until the ball began to disperse, guests filing out slowly but surely as the night grew later. Some guests lingered, drinking one too many glasses of wine or attempting to coerce a fellow partier to be their bed mate for the evening.

Alfred and Arthur, however, stayed pressed close. The closer they got to the inevitable end of the ball, the sooner they would be separated. If they just danced a little more, drank and laughed just a bit longer, maybe the party would go on.

“I don’t want them to take you.” The prince whispered against his queen’s lips, his large hands enveloping his pale face on either side. “When I think of you all alone, chained up…gods I want to kill them.”

Arthur leaned his head slightly into one of the hands planted gently on the sides of his face, closing his eyes for a moment just to enjoy the feeling. “Who?” He asked quietly.

“Anyone who hurts you.”

A small chuckle rumbled out of the Brit and he opened his eyes again. Green blinked up to meet blue, silent for a few moments until a third voice broke the peace.

“Your Majesty and your Grace.” Blinking and looking to their side, both blondes were shocked to find the Prince of Hearts standing near them. “I wanted to introduce myself to the future queen, as I did not have the chance earlier. I am Ludwig, I hope we have a good relationship in the future between our countries.” He stated and it sounded so rehearsed it almost hurt to listen to. Still, he sounded sincere, in his own way.

“Oh hey, Lud. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. It’s been what? A couple years or more, at least?” Alfred chimed, a sunny grin growing on his features. “How have you been?”

For a moment, the stern look on the pale, blonde’s face softened a bit. “I have been well, thank you, Alfred. I am glad to see you back home safe and with your future queen. Things have not been easy for you, I know.”

The two continued to talk remarkably casually for two rival kingdom heirs, but Arthur hardly listened to a word they said. Instead, his gaze was hard and unyielding as he kept it on the young Heart.

It took a while for either of the two taller males to take notice of the odd silence, but when Alfred prompted for Arthur’s input on a funny joke he had just made and received no answer, he glanced down to find his lover stiff and peering darkly.

“Artie? Baby? What’s wrong?” Alfred asked, tightening an arm around his waist to pull the lithe body closer.

Still no answer, but now Ludwig’s attention was focused on the other man whose look was unwavering towards him. There was an unreadable expression in his eyes that Ludwig had been trained all his life to avoid.

“Your Grace,” Ludwig started slowly, eyes watching carefully. “Is something the matter?”

There was no reply for a moment, just blues on green, until Arthur opened his mouth without moving anything else.

“How could you?” His voice was surprisingly soft, a mere whisper between his lips. But his eyes hardened deeper and his face contorted into an angry sneer.

“What?” Ludwig blinked, confused.

Alfred’s arm tightened again, protective in its brace as he leaned slightly forward and towards the smaller man to look him in the face. “Huh? Artie doll, I think you’re confused. What do you think Lud did? He just got here.”

His concern was lost upon deaf ears, however.

“How could you?” He repeated, twisting his way out of Alfred’s arms so he could storm the short distance to the foreign leader with malice clearly written on his features. He only stopped when he was right in his face, scowling at him. He threw his hands in the air as if his question were obvious. “Just because of what he is! He is still your brother!” He yelled, shocking everyone left in the ballroom, including Alfred and Ludwig.

“My brother? What do you know of my brother?” The Heart Prince reached out and latched roughly onto Arthur’s upper arms, gripping him in such a vice it caused him to twist slightly to ease the pain. “If you know something then tell me!”

“Ludwig, let him go!” Alfred was by them in an instant, pushing between two colliding planets as he pulled them apart. He pried the foreigner’s hands off of his fiance and sandwiched himself between them, glaring daggers at the other man. “Hands off, Lud.” He growled, the warning clear in his voice.

By now, the commotion had stirred up the curiosity in the room. Every face was turned towards them, some excited to see the events take place between such high ranking individuals, others afraid for the aftermath of what could come from such an ordeal.

Not that they cared, the only eyes that mattered were the narrowed ones of the king as he stood up from his seat.

“Guards.” He spoke gruffly, motioning towards the three. “Seize the future queen and take him back to his room. Everyone else, out.” He ordered, watching as the armored men moved across the hall to do just that. The remaining guests did not need to be told twice and were bustling to get out of the room and away from the scene.

“Wait! It was just a misunderstanding, we can talk this through.” Alfred bellowed, instantly circling around to pull Arthur against his chest to shield him from the oncoming soldiers. “I’m not letting you take him there again, he doesn’t deserve it!”

He missed the confused and worried expression that crossed Ludwig’s face at that. What did that mean? More importantly, what had Arthur meant?

“Now, now, son. We’ve been through this.” The King said, his voice feigned innocence, but the venom dripped from each syllable. “I have been through this with your…beloved as well. He knows the consequences of his actions. It is such a shame, causing a ruckus in front of a crowd like that? What will your poor brother think knowing you caused him so much pain for something so trivial?”

Without hesitation, Arthur stiffened in Alfred’s arms. He had forgotten....how could he have forgotten? He let himself slip, he had told himself he wouldn't make a mistake. That he could do this right, for his brother! But his tongue was too ready to slice through egos and his hands too poised to strangle stuck up throats. He had let Peter down.

“Please, please, no, I’m sorry.” The Brit’s knees felt weak and he might have fallen down and begged for forgiveness, had Alfred not been holding him up so tightly. “Please, I can be better. I will be better. Just don’t hurt him!”

The arms around him pulled him ever closer and a warm breath fell onto his neck. He could hear the prince’s nervous breathing against the shell of his ear. His pleading must be hard for him to listen to.

“My, it’s too late for that, isn't it? You were told what would happen and yet you still acted out of line.” The elder royal’s lips curled into a satisfied smirk. “Escort both the future queen and the prince to their rooms using any means necessary. Take Prince Ludwig back to the guest quarters, ensure he is treated with the utmost respect.”

With that, the guards advanced once more, but this time there were more than even Alfred could fight off alone. Arthur hung loosely, visibly devastated, in one arm as the other fought uselessly to keep the numbers off them.

The pirate hadn’t even put up a fight. Why should he? He would only make things worse for his brother if he did. He allowed the guards to drag him away, listening numbly to Alfred’s shouts growing dimmer and dimmer as they were forced apart once more.

[noscorpsaladerive]

@mordredoforkney asked me to talk about how i would rewrite lra but tumblr’s being stupid so i gotta repost it and not under a cut bc i can’t get the page to open on my blog :P

anyways i’ve waited y e a r s for this question i’ve had this typed up since 2015 and s/o to @europeansdomusicalsbetter for her thoughts and input

long story short i take out the rape scene and make it so all of the recorded songs fit into the show but this is super long so it’s going under the cut

Introduction to Merlin and his deal with the Dragon.  Scene with knights attempting to pull out Excalibur.  Méléagant tries and fails.  After misplacing his brother’s sword, Arthur is successful in removing the sword from the stone.  Méléagant gets angry and accuses Merlin of seeking power for himself. Advienne que pourra Gawain trains Arthur in sword fighting while they’re on their way to Camelot.  Julien/Homme du peuple shows up and is like “Dude Méléagant’s super pissed that you stole the throne from him so now he’s holding my liege hostage.  Come help please?”  Arthur agrees. Arthur and Méléagant face each other in battle.  Arthur wins but is badly injured in the process.  He asks Méléagant to knight him, and Méléagant reluctantly agrees.  The daughter of the lord arrives, and Méléagant reminds her that although he will no longer be king, he will still marry her.  He also hints at getting revenge before leaving with his henchmen.  Guinevere’s like yeah whatever this guy’s hot let’s get him healed.  Her handmaidens (who aren’t pregnant in my version because wtf was that dove) help the king’s knights bring him inside. Rêver l’impossible Arthur and Guinevere introduce themselves to each other.  Maybe also mention how much time has passed just because it’ll make more sense than being magically healed by pregnant handmaidens.  Merlin shows up and is like “Arthur I know you just got injured and that you think you’re in love, but we gotta go defeat the Saxons.”  Guinevere’s like “Mais le roi est fatigué ; il a besoin de repos” and Flo does that sassy wave that he did one time because he should do that forever and always. Quelque chose de magique Merlin returns and says, “Stop the party I’ve got to reintroduce Julien/Homme du peuple.”  Flo Arthur stops noodling long enough to listen to Julien rock out. Délivre-nous Arthur says something inspiring about how he must help his people before he can get laid or some shit.  He tells Guinevere that he must depart but that he will send for her once he has defeated the Saxons. Je me relève The Saxons have been defeated in what will probably result in another dramatic dance number.  Merlin and Gawain bring Arthur back to Camelot and the court.  Or maybe instead of starting this scene with them, it could start with Kay at Camelot, and he receives word that the new king will be arriving soon.  Then Urien could talk to Morgane (thus establishing contact way before “Il est temps”), and her dead parents are mentioned so she can sing.  Maybe something is mentioned about the round table too? Ce que la vie a fait de moi Merlin and Gawain arrive in court with Arthur in tow.  They have some fancy arrival scene where Arthur is introduced as the son of Uther Pendragon. Morgane has a startled yet confused reaction at first.  Arthur makes an announcement that he is to be married and that they must send for Guinevere at once.  If not mentioned earlier, the round table should be mentioned here.  As Arthur and company leave the stage, the setting changes to Morgane’s chambers that evening where she dreams of her mother. Dors Morgane dors (the version on the CD not the stage version) Morgane wakes from her trance in a rage.  She swears vengeance on not only Arthur but Merlin as well for the role that he played in her mother’s rape. Tu vas le payer Kay once again announces the arrival of the future queen of Camelot, and nothing is changed about this scene because it is Emily’s aesthetic and it is perfect. Au diable After Guinevere is settled in court (aka after she sits down on the throne), a mysterious group of players arrive to entertain the king.  Knowing that Arthur would never take her seriously if he knew who told the story, Morgane arrives in disguise. A l’enfant After Morgane reveals herself, Arthur is furious.  Upset at how he reacted and because she accidentally played a role in confronting her future husband, Guinevere rushes off stage (so she can get changed into her next costume).  Merlin and Arthur share a moment where Merlin does some dramatic foreshadowing about how that probably wasn’t a good idea and Arthur’s like “I don’t give a fuck.”   Transition into Guinevere’s garden.  Kay tries to cheer up the future queen with his silly antics, and her handmaidens quickly catch on and join in.  However, nothing really cheers her up until an unknown man shows up in her garden with his sassy squad of backup dancers.  The young man demands to see the king so he can become a knight.  After learning that he must be introduced, he asks Guinevere to do so.  They have several moments of cuteness yet also sadness since you know she’s kind of engaged to another, and she eventually agrees to introduce him.  She bids him farewell and sweeps offstage in her fabulous dress.  Lancelot is so excited that he’s going to be a knight and that he met the most beautiful lady in the world that he has to sing about it because it’s a freaking musical.  Tamara/Leia is probably hanging around so she can report to Morgane. Le monde est parfait Literally the exact same scene that’s currently in the show.  Even down to the “Donnez-moi une mission; je préfère mourir.”  “Restez en vie, c’est un ordre!”   Si je te promets

INTERMISSION

Tant de haine During the song, Morgane and Tamara arrive.  Distrusting her at first, Méléagant decides to trust her after learning of the wrongs that Merlin and Arthur have committed against her.  They decide to form an alliance.  Morgane mentions that she can put a spell on Méléagant that will make him powerful enough to defeat Arthur and take his rightful place on the throne.  She also announces her plan to destroy Arthur by using Guinevere and Lancelot’s love, and Morgane goes on to explain that by destroying Arthur, they will destroy Merlin as well. Transition to Camelot where Kay announces that the royal couple is about to be married.  Arthur and Guinevere are married while Lancelot sings. L’amour quel idiot Arthur pulls Merlin aside to have a father/son moment.  Arthur is still angsty over Morgane’s accusations, and he wonders what he should do now that the Saxons are defeated. Qui suis-je ? Merlin reiterates that Arthur should go after the Grail and maybe mentions something about how Arthur is not responsible for the mistakes of his father (this is some J’accuse mon père stuff right here).  Arthur agrees to seek out the Grail in a reprise that currently (unfortunately) does not exist. Je me relève (reprise) Transition to Méléagant’s castle.  Méléagant wants to know why Morgane’s plan is taking so long.  She tells him that the spell is ready, then they go into the “Je le jure” bit before breaking into song.  During the instrumental break in the middle, there’s some cool witchcraft happening.  This is when Morgane takes Méléagant’s soul. A nos vœux sacrés These next few songs will literally happen exactly like they currently do in the show.  Except Méléagant just falls asleep in his shadows’ arms instead of dying.  He lives, he sleeps, he lives again. (sorry samuel this is something we’d joke and say about méléagant since the skull makeup makes him look like a warboy from mad max fury road XD) Faire comme si Wake Up Nos corps à la dérive Il est temps Mon combat -- this now serves more as foreshadowing of a future confrontation instead of the confrontation itself (hopefully anyways) Le Chant du dragon Auprès d’un autre After Guinevere and Lancelot have left, Arthur’s gaze falls upon Morgane, and he orders his knights to arrest her.  He tells her that he figured out her plan, but that it won’t work.  He’s hurt, but he has forgiven Guinevere and Lancelot and will continue to rule.  Arthur orders his knights to step away from Morgane, and he tells her that he forgives her too and that she is free to leave if she chooses.  Morgane is in disbelief; how can he forgive her after all the pain she just put him through?  She tells Arthur no.  She will stay in Camelot and help him become the greatest king of all time. Un Nouveau Départ - sung by Morgane, change the line about vengeance.  Maybe other cast members join in during the later verses/refrains? Promis c’est juré - curtain call song plus one more jam for the road (maybe mon combat instead of quelque chose de magique)

obvs there are still a couple of kinks to work out but @ dove pls hire me to rewrite your musical

[peakyfckngblinders]

“All bets are off” - Chapter 3

Ship: Thomas Shelby x Reader

Hey there,

I’m so sorry for not uploading :/ Had a lot of stress but here we go, it’s a really long chapter, wanted to make two parts out of it but since I haven’t been here in weeks, I guess I owe you one.

As always, I’m not a native speaker, so I just got to tell you all how thankful I am to have @sarcastiphonix for helping me with my grammar troubles!

Prologue (x), Chapter 1 (x), Chapter 2 (x)

"I had business to attend to. I’m sorry“, I said, my thoughts remaining in an entirely different galaxy. "I noticed a man brought you home, who was that?“, Jim asked, concern covering his features. There was a moments pause before I answered him. "Oh, nobody. Just a colleague who helps at the stables.“ It was resolute in my mind that Jim didn't deserve to be constantly worried about my safety, so I decided he wouldn't be told that I was going to be working for the Royals of Birmingham. He was just a simple man, with an equally simple job, which he adored. As part of his heritage he acquired a small law firm from his father which he led in a small office downtown. Jim was a youthful and determined lawyer who focused on improving himself everyday. Nothing stood in the way of a bright future and successful career for him, and I intended to keep things that way. "I’m sorry I worried you, Jim“, I said, rising onto my toes and kissing him softly, "It was a hard day and I need to get up early tomorrow. Do you mind if I just take a bath and go to bed?“ The man in front of me was evidently irritated, and suspicious. "Wait, you never usually work on Mondays, love.“ I rubbed my eyes, letting out a frustrated sigh. "I—I just got new clients today. I mean, you know how this works, don’t you? You understand how vital clients to me.“ My boyfriend did not seem to believe my story but I was firm in my mission to spend some much needed time alone. No interrogations, just the hot water and me, alone with my thoughts. "Sure, Babe“, he mumbled, looking a bit disappointed.

I felt almost paralysed as I walked out of the door the next morning. Outside my house stood John Shelby flashing his classic wide grin at me, his car parked in the street. "Mornin’!“, he smirked, "A little friendly bonus for you- from me. Thomas wants us to drive directly to the stables, so I thought I'd just pick you up myself from here.“ "Uhm. Thank you“, I stuttered. We drove for half an hour, right through the city and ended up at the back country of Birmingham. I was slightly unnerved by the fact I had never been there before. "These are our family stables, the Shelby clan has got about six horses, and you're very lucky because today, you get to ride the newest girl in town!“, John smiled, as if I'd be grateful but I still felt unsure of myself around the Birmingham gang member, as if any slip up would result in a razor blade slipping elsewhere. I had problems keeping up with him because he seemed to sprint toward the stables. His movements gave the impression of a boy younger than himself, it was then that I recognised just how young he was- it had been the war that stripped him of his youth. When we approached two boys were mucking out the stables and beginning to feed the horses. They were quickly dismissed by a wave of John's hand which he then moved as if showcasing a prized possession. "Here we go, allow me to introduce you to Grace's Secret." I looked into the deep brown eyes of a grey horse, it's coat reminding me of clear snow which was beginning to thaw. "Hey girl“, I whispered, resting my hand on her neck, "You're beautiful, you know?" I took a look inside the box and could tell that she was strong, already trained well. However, her back revealed that she'd been ridden the wrong way for two, possibly three years. "Grace’s Secret“, I mumbled while checking the animal, „"A very unusual name…“   John’s eyes narrowed. "Oh yeah, it is…“ his voice trailed off. "And after that reaction, I guess you don't want to tell me the story behind it?“ "What?" John asked, startled. "Don’t play the fool“, I moaned, "nobody just calls a horse Grace's Secret.“
The crown prince stared at me and seemed to debate how much to reveal. He let out a reluctant sigh. "Listen, Thomas bought her. And It was Tommy who named her." His answer left me still confused as to what was so special about the name? Who was Grace? And why couldn’t John tell me? Perhaps being direct was the easiest way of finding out. I mean, it wasn't like John would kill me for asking a simple question. Admittedly, he obviously could have. "So, it seems like Mr. Shelby is a big mystery to everybody…“, I tried to needle softly. The smile vanished quickly from John's face. A look of sadness masking his  joy. "If you really want an answer—while Thomas might be a mystery to you, he wasn't to Grace, she was his confidant and first love“, he finally said. I had to gulp, he had made excessive use of the past tense. "I’m sorry for asking.“ Adding up the facts I'd received, I had calculated as much as I could about who Grace had been- an arcane women who had been Thomas Shelby's weakness. This story smelled like it didn’t had a happy end. It was an easy assumption to make, but I felt like I had asked enough questions for today. "I don’t feel like this is something I can tell you about when I’m sober. Come to the Garrison this evening, you can meet the rest of my crazy clan and I can introduce you to everybody, if you like. And maybe, just maybe“, he smiled for a split second, "I’ll answer your questions, after a few whiskeys. I mean, it's not fair if you get thrown into the cold water without a helping hand.“ I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smile too widely. "Thank you very much, Mr. Shelby! I'm beginning to think you aren’t as bad as everybody tells me.“ John laid his head to the side and his expression told me that I wasn’t quite right. All the playfulness that had been on his face seemed to slip away as he stared deep into my eyes. It felt like I stood in front of a whole other person. "Please Alice, don’t ever think that you can believe anyone outside the company regarding what happens inside", he took a deep breath and nearly whispered, "Every thread is pulled deliberately. I’ll help you, not just because I got my orders from Thomas to treat you gentle, but because I execute every fucking order I get. And it's not just me, every single one of us works that way because that's how the Shelby family survives. You’ll learn that principle fast, you’re smart. Just keep in mind that, even though you’re held out of that end of the business, it still exists. And if you ever spread unwarranted word about it, you are our business. And business gets executed, understand?" "And if I want to know everything? You know, if I don’t want to close my eyes. If I want to be“, I looked to the ground, took a step closer to him, "a fully fledged member of the Peaky Blinders?“ Clearly, I was tired of my life. Otherwise, I'd never have said something so foolish but at that moment in time, it felt like the correct question. John Shelby grinned suddenly at me. "You’re already en route, love, no escape anymore“, he smirked, "You know, Tommy told me that you’d fit in here. And that you’d get a taste blood way too soon. But I think even he will be surprised how fast you're trying to jump in.“ "A few days ago I would have been equally shocked", I confessed, "What the hell is happening here, you damn Shelby Brothers…“, I smiled, shaking my head, stunned, still not believing that the King of Birmingham chose me out of thousands of better jockeys. After a brief moments silence John perked up, "Let's go, come on, you gotta' see what you need to do for your money!“, He exclaimed and he began to show me the rest of the stables. For the remainder of the day I began to get to know Grace's Secret more. I decided to just call her Grace after John had left. He had other business to tend to but told me that we’d see each other at the Garrison later. Later that evening Jim enquired as to where I was going, as I went to leave just after returning from work. I lied, telling him it was a dinner with my new clients and that I wouldn’t come home before midnight.

I thought about what John had said the day before. The proposal Jim wanted to perform seemed to belong to another life. But how the hell did the Shelby boys know more about my fiancé than I did? How long had they been watching me? I tried to expel the thought of it from my mind, everything would be fine as long as I worked well. Reflecting, it didn't take long until I couldn’t differentiate the business from any other aspect of my life. Thomas had been right; if I wanted to be part of this company, I had to live with the business at the centre of my focus. And that was what I was determined to do.

After I took my first tentative steps into the Garrison, I was instantly impressed. It was evident that it was a bar under the control of the Peaky Blinders. Everybody here seemed to know each other and every man seemed to were a similar cap. Even though they all were pretty drunk, they treated each other with a familial attitude. "Ally!“, I heard a voice screaming. John ran to me, a cigar in his left hand, his drink in the other. It didn't take long to deduce that he was just as drunk as everyone else, "Welcome home!“ It was a strange comment for John to make seeing as I was only new to the franchise, but when he had called the pub my home, it really did feel like it. It was probably because you felt like you’d be accepted here, just as you were. Because they really would take you in as part of the family. Although, the daggers in the pockets and guns in the holsters of men, spread throughout the room, reminded how they could treat you if you weren't. "Arthur!“, John called, "Come on ya' fucker!“
"Sorry!“, came the sarcastic cry of a tall smiling man. He turned towards me, "Ah! So, you're the famous jockey then! Heard much about ya'. Welcome to the family! Let’s have a drink, I’ll let you have a good one! 'Arry?!“ As fast as he had appeared he was gone. The obscurity of their mannerisms forced a laugh from my chest. John noticed my giddiness and chuckled lightly himself, grabbing my hand like a boy several years younger would have, "I’ll introduce you to the rest, come on luv!“ And as I sat there, slightly drunk, becoming familiar with the close circle, watching the people dancing and laughing, I subconsciously searched for a pair of blue eyes. Goosebumps pricked at my arms as I found them staring back at me.   He stood still in the door frame, smoking and overseeing the chaos. Thomas recognised that I wasn't nearly as far gone as everyone else in the room, still too sober to put on my dancing shoes. I wasn't sure if it was a mirage but I was sure I could  actually see the coldest face of Birmingham smiling at me. Of course he wasn't exactly joining in the fun himself, but he did partake in light conversation and ordered drinks for those he was close to. Something lifted in my chest to see him happy like this. I was ashamed to admit it but Tommy's appreciation was dizzying. The corners of his lips were like hidden secrets that he turned up rarely, often when he thought no one else was looking. Maybe he had always been that way or perhaps it was  part of the act that had to be kept up by the barbaric gangster. But it was more probably that he never found many reasons to smile anymore because he had lost his favourite one.

But as I surveyed him, watching his family have a great time and grinning, I found myself questioning, how could a person like that do such terrible things?' Our gazes met each other again and I found myself grinning at him like an idiot, blood rising to my cheeks. The way he smiled changed. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I had the strange desire to continue exchanging looks for the rest of the night. But instead, Thomas Shelby nodded and made a sign that I should come closer before taking another deep drag from his cigarette. My knees were weak and I felt I couldn't trust my feet whilst my heart rate increased rapidly. With trembling legs I made my way towards an audience with the King of Birmingham. 
He looked over me again for a few moments before blowing out a cloud of smoke away from my face and spoke,
"Let’s take a walk. I don’t want to have to stay the entire time to keep things in check, just because we are the only ones who aren’t fetching up hell tomorrow.“ Thomas could see I was hesitating. He ended up taking my hand without a word and dragging me outside carefully. I prayed he didn’t ask himself why my hands were drenched in sweat, the close proximity unnerving me. It wasn't something I was comfortable asking myself.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Book Review: The Lies of Locke Lamora

by Wardog

Wednesday, 14 November 2007

Wardog actually likes something - possibly because she didn't have to pay for it.~

Father Chains sat on the roof of the House of Perelandro, staring down at the astonishingly arrogant fourteen-year-old that he little orphan he'd purchased so many years before from the Thiefmaker of Shades' Hill had become. "Some day, Locke Lamora," he said, "some day, you're going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I'm still around to see it." "Oh, please," said Locke. "It'll never happen."

The Lies of Locke Lamora is basically a fantasy-heist novel, but it's also a pleasant breeze through a stale genre (yes, I'm bitter), shorter than the typical eighty million pages and a surprisingly assured and competent debut. I picked it up in Hay on Wye for a sum so ludicrously trifling (a mere one of my English pounds) that it almost felt as if Scott Lynch had come up to me in the street and asked me nicely to read his novel, the consequence of which is that my critical objectivity is shot to buggery but I think I'd still be recommending this if I'd forked out the

requisite 7.99.

Locke Lamora - otherwise known as the Thorn of Camorr - is the leader of a tightly knit group of conmen-thieves known as the Gentleman Bastards. As the novel kicks off, they are in the process of scamming a couple of aristocrats out of a portion of their fortune, coincidentally violating the long-standing Secret Peace that has been negotiated between the criminal underworld and the upper echelons of society. Meanwhile a mysterious personage known as the Grey King is preying upon the thieves of Camorr and forces Locke to participate in his personal vendetta against the city's crimelord Capa Barsavi. Needless to say, events soon spiral massively out of Locke's control and he finds himself caught up in something that threatens not only the people he cares for but the entire stability of the city. The first third of the book is a rompish heist, complete with all the usual twists and turns, but then it twists on its axis becoming a much darker and more serious story, although it never loses the edge of gallows-humour that makes it such a pleasure to read.

The Lies of Locke Lamora is a truly a rootless, bastard child of the genre: there's a fair mixing of Feist, Gavriel Kay, Brust, Miville, Pratchett and Dickens to be found within, to say nothing of the more than passing nods to movies like The Godfather, The Sting, Oceans 11, Scar Face and Goodfellas. It's not flawless, but it's still damn good: a fast-paced, page-turning adventure story set in a complex and intriguing world that doesn't drown you in detail (although I expect the author will soon forget this and commence the deluge). Camorr provides an excellent backdrop for Lamora's exploits: an island city built of Elderglass by a race nobody remembers, it seems to be inspired by 16th century Venice, with all the attendant squalor and decadence. There's definitely world-building going on but its of the subtle kind that successfully creates the impression of a living and very real city without racking up a page count hefty enough to kill a walrus (*cough* Miville *cough*). Lynch's imagination encompasses both beauty and brutality, dancing easily from the banal to the opulent, from frivolity to genuine threat. One of my favourite chapters introduces the fencing master, Don Maranzella in his House of Glass Roses:

"Here was an entire rose garden, wall after all, of perfect petals and stems and thorns, silent and scentless and alive with reflected fire, for it was all carved from Elderglass, a hundred thousand blossoms, perfect down to the tiniest thorn ... ... each wall of roses was actually transparent .... Yet there were patches of genuine colour here and there in the hearts of the sculptures, swirled masses of reddish-brown transulence like clouds of rust-coloured smoke frozen in ice. These clouds were human blood.

I can forgive Lynch for lingering in his fairytale garden of blood-thirsty roses and his farmer-turned-fencing master is a wonderful antidote to all those artistic gentlemanly types with their flourishing rapiers. This chapter seems to illustrate Lynch at his very best - the strange, sculpted roses and the introduction of the fencing master, the shift from pretension to pragmatism, from description to dialogue, from fantastical lyricism to dark humour and the sudden stripped-down truth about what Jean Tannen has really come to learn:

"Jean, you misunderstand." Maranzella kicked idly at the toy rapier and it clattered across the tiles of the roof top. "Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colourful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sporting limitations and its proscriptions against dishonourable engagements. You, on the other hand," he said, as he turned to give Jean a firm but friendly poke in the centre of his forehead, "you are going to learn how to kill men with a sword."

The book itself is interestingly structured - it reminds me rather of Heroes, in fact. It consists of a succession of short chapters building to a mini-climax, followed by a brief interlude, either a tale of the City and its Gods, or a flashback to the early years and training of Locke and his gang. This actually works really well. The interludes are generally absorbing enough that, even though I was eager to find out what was going to happen next, I didn't skip them or resent reading them ... at least not very much. Furthermore, most of the interludes, although not precisely relevant, often offer an illumination on future events, thus rewarding the alert reader. And it does solve the perennial fantasy book problem of how to introduce the hero to the reader and show his gradual development from child to adult without spending the first five hundred pages of the novel narrating every little moment of the hero's childhood in agonisingly tedious detail. Part of me, however, couldn't quite shake the conviction that it was a cheap trick. It's a very obvious way to build tension and create anxiety and uncertainty in the reader and occasionally interferes with the pacing at critical moments.

Lynch's is a self-consciously "dark" world; there's an awful lot of swearing and torture, and the central characters are, of course, thieves and murderers. But since we only ever see them stealing from the rich and murdering those who thoroughly deserve it and their loyalty to each other is unswerving, there's never really any question of their being admirable characters deep down. This is not a problem per se; but the book is about as morally ambiguous as my Grandmother:

"I only steal because my dear old family needs the money to live!" Locke Lamora made this proclamation with his wine glass held high ... ... the others began to jeer. "Liar!" they chorused "I only steal because this wicked world won't let me work an honest trade!" Calo cried, hoisting his own glass. "LIAR!" "I only steal," said Jean, "because I've temporarily fallen in with bad company." "LIAR!" At last the ritual came to Bug; the boy raised his glass a bit shakily and yelled, "I only steal because it's heaps of fucking fun!" "BASTARD!"

Stealing may be wrong but it's also big and clever and all the cool kids are doing it. The exuberance and loyalty of the Gentleman Bastards is charming and it's impossible not to root for them. On the other hand, I am conscious of a vague dissatisfaction with Locke. The book is careful to assert that he is skinny and unremarkable and a poor fighter but he is also a consummate conman with incredible reserves of tenacity and courage, he is cunning, daring and quick-thinking, and there is no sacrifice he will not consider to preserve the safety of his friends and loved ones. He can be ruthless when necessary, he has the survival instincts of a rat, he's reckless occasionally but only in a way we're meant to think is cool and, on top of all this, he has a conscience and listens to it. Needless to say his origins are shrouded in mystery (I'm sure this will be Very Important later) and his creator is head over heels in love with him. I came dangerously close to finding the character annoying and if Lynch isn't careful he's going to be unbearable a couple of books down the line.

Speaking of the dreaded "couple of books down the line" The Lies of Locke Lamora does a reasonable job of offering a coherent and contained plot arc, but there are several dangling threads (the most irritating of which is Locke's love interest, a woman occasionally mentioned but never introduced) presumably left there to wet the appetite for future books. The mighty internet tells me there will be seven of these, which triggers all my cringe mechanisms. This cannot end well. Has nobody learned anything from JK Rowling?

The second book of the septad, Red Seas Under Red Skies, has recently been released - having enjoyed the first book has much as I did, I'm now terrified to read the second in case it sucks. I guess I'll have to wait until it's available for 1 again. But, in the meantime, you could do worse than taking a look at The Lies of Locke Lamora. It's not perfect - Mary Sue-ish main character, a plot necessitated, damn near omnipotent bondsmage - and I understand it has received some criticism for its modern-sounding speech but, quite frankly, I found that contributed to the lively, irreverent tone of the book. But it is a fun, fast-paced read in a ponderous genre and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

PS - This is really childish (and has nothing to do with the review at all) but I think I also need to point out that Scott Lynch looks like this --->: 

Arthur B

at 17:09 on 2007-11-14I was toying with doing a Reading Canary for this one, and might still do if I get around to picking up

Red Seas

, but you seem to have covered most of the bases. I agree that criticising the book for modern-sounding speech is reaching a little - if an author's simply more comfortable writing dialogue in a modern style then I'd rather they did that than attempt to try Ye Olde Speeche and fail horribly. I also agree that Lynch is a little too in love with Lamora, and indeed most of the book's fans are a little too much in love with Lamora; the fun of the book comes when Locke screws up horribly, and if you look at it objectively he isn't actually as nice a guy as Lynch thinks he is. That's why the book works, of course: the big central conflict is about accepting a rotten compromise which causes suffering for a few but provides peace and security for many, or rejecting that compromise knowing full well that rejection means no peace or security for anyone, and it's good that the representatives of both sides have their good and bad points.

The big criticism I'd have is that all the flashback bits to their childhood simply weren't as interesting to me as the main story: I'd much rather have a book half the length without the flashbacks. It doesn't matter whether Jean was taught swordplay by a farmer-turned-toff in a blood garden or by a toff-turned-farmer in a turnip patch: I can't think of any instance in the main storyline where it becomes at all relevant. There is one flashback which nicely foreshadows the final conflict, but it does so by basically explaining what Locke's tactic is going to be, so the ending is a bit obvious. Also, yes, big smirking long-haired Scott Lynch wants to kiss big smirking long-haired Locke, a meeting of shit-eating grins which thankfully cannot actually occur in real life.

Thing is, I'm not sure whether I'll ever actually get around to picking up

Red Seas

. I picked up

Lies

second-hand too, and while it's a fun and consistently not-crap read it isn't quite good enough to force me to go buy the new one. I'm not convinced that the character merits more than one book about him.

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empink

at 00:01 on 2007-11-15@ Arthur

For now, I'd say not to bother with Red Seas. It's also a fairly consitently not-crap read, but imho the author's love for his character really burns strong in the sequel. I don't know why I couldn't put my finger on it when I read it, but Kyra hits the nail on the head here. He really, really loves this character of his, and it means he gets to do all kinds of improbably cool stuff.

Now, while that was fun in the first book, it starts to wear on you in the second one. The dialogue needs to be beaten with the boring stick (I swear, everything everyone says is so witty that you WISH someone would say something dumb at some point. Which they don't. ARGH), and the plot is just...stretchy, in terms of suspension of disbelief.

All I know to say is that, having read Red Seas, I'm not going to jones for the rest of the series anywhere as near as I am jonesing for one or two others, because it probably won't be worth it.

PS, Kyra, the mysterious woman never actually shows up in Red Seas. But she does get mentioned. A LOT. *facepalm*

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Wardog

at 09:22 on 2007-11-15ACtually my copy of Lies was brand, spanking new and still one pound - that's why I'm so smug about it. I LOVE you Hay on Wye!

Ahem, anyway. I actually found Locke irritatingly virtuous. Even when he's trying to get a suit of clothes, and he drops an innocent waiter into the shit, he still takes time extract said waiter *and* give him a purse containing more money he's ever held in his life. Until that point I was actually impressed that he'd completely fucked up the waiter's life - it made him less sympathetic but I think, perhaps, more interesting?

I genuinely didn't mind the flashbacks and interludes; they weren't *quite* as interesting as the main plot but I didn't find them sufficiently tedious that they detracted from it too badly. And I was oddly into Jean Tannen (even though he's basically just a side-kick protector for Locke)so I really loved the stuff in the House of Glass Roses; also it is relevant because it "explains" why Jean can take out the two shark-baiting sisters without getting completely mullered.

And thanks for the warnings, Empink, I very very nearly bought a full-price copy of Red Seas the other day and I'm now *so glad* I didn't. I'm not sure I can stand another book of love-interest build-up because you just *know* she won't live up to it. And I don't wish to see Lynch consummating his relationship with Locke in an orgy of cool stunts.

I did find Lies genuinely witty but mainly because the characters tended to say something deeply pragmatic or macabre or just plain inappropriate at what would otherwise be very serious moments. It helped me get through the nasty bits (becuase I'm a wimp) and it also tended to have a nice edge of desperation to it - whereas I don't think I *want* a dazzling virtuoso wit-fest from the Book II.

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Arthur B

at 12:19 on 2007-11-15Empink:

I'd been wondering what I'd found weird about the dialogue in

Lies

, but you've put your finger on it: everybody's a smartarse. I can remember a couple of times where I was having trouble following conversations, because everyone's dialogue is so similar in tone and delivery that there's little differentiating them. It feels less like a bunch of different people are having a conversation and more like Lynch has a bunch of sockpuppets that he's using to tell a story - you never forget that it's Lynch behind all of them. (Still, at least it is monotonous in a clever and witty and entertaining way as opposed to monotonous in a consistently dumb and boring way.)

Kyra:

You're right about the overvirtuousness. I was remembering the bit where he wrecks the waiter's life, but not the part where he makes it all better. I think the worst thing he does in the entire book is play a practical joke on the secret police (you know, the one with the boats full of shit).

I like Jean too, but I worry that I only like him because he's a floating bit of driftwood in an ocean of Locke; he's the only other interesting character we spend an extended amount of time with (though I also liked the Capa's daughter and the Grey King and the head of the secret police), so he's a welcome relief from an unending shower of Lamora-love. As far as the Glass Roses stuff explaining the shark sisters fight, I consider "Jean is a rock-hard son of a bitch" to be a more than adequate explanation for why he beat them. Jean being a rock-hard son of a bitch is neatly demonstrated in the main story by, well, Jean beating the shark sisters...

Both of ye:

I think it's fairly obvious at this point that the Mysterious Love Interest is, in fact, Scott Lynch in a dress.

Either that, or she'll be the big bad at the end of the series.

Possibly the big bad will be Scott Lynch in a dress.

The intersection of Lynchsmirk and Lamoracock providing the cure to the world's ills.

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Wardog

at 14:18 on 2007-11-15I actually thought the dialogue in Lies was just about cope-able with - it's true that everyone sounds nearly the same but that genuinely didn't bother me except occasionally when Locke was conversing with arisocrats and then it grated somewhat. Dona Sofia, for example, is clearly meant to have a distinct and feisty personality with her alchemy and everything - but I never really got much from her. I think I was just glad to have snappy, modern-sounding dialogue for a change, instead of ponderous faux-medieval stuff.

But Jean was a fat, weepy merchant's son - he had to go from that to RHSOFAB somehow; sure, you didn't need to really know how but since these two sisters were meant to be *all that* it wouldn't have made sense for some thiefly-brawler to be able to take them out.

I still feel positive about Lies, despite its flaws. You were obviously considerably more irritated by the Locke-Lovin' than I was. And Lynch isn't the most talented ventriloquist but I didn't feel him in the background as much as you did either. I shouldn't have put up the picture, I think I've just generated undue hostility by drawing attention to the fact he looks like the sort of person we know.

But I genuinely think Lies stands as a good fantasy read; future books, well, we'll see...

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Wardog

at 14:21 on 2007-11-15Also, I think Arthur is just being discriminating because Lynch isn't a hottie like

Gene Wolfe

;)

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Arthur B

at 14:57 on 2007-11-15

But Jean was a fat, weepy merchant's son - he had to go from that to RHSOFAB somehow; sure, you didn't need to really know how but since these two sisters were meant to be *all that* it wouldn't have made sense for some thiefly-brawler to be able to take them out.

Yeah, but we only know that because of the flashbacks, so Lynch ends up setting up a problem which he then feels that he needs to solve with more flashbacks. It'd be more interesting, to me, if he'd established the sonofabitchness of Jean early on, and then dropped hints through the main action that Jean actually comes from a softer, more pudding-like background. I honestly don't think it matters at all, to

Lies

, how Jean got hard - I think most readers can happily accept that a life on the streets as a criminal will tend to make people either sneaky or fighty, regardless of their background.

My worry is that Lynch felt the need to dump all the backstory with Chains and the farmer-turned-toff and the farmer-who-ended-up-a-farmer-again because he's got this big backstory he wants to hint at which is suddenly going to becoming very relevant in the later novels, in a kind of "James Potter was mean to Snape at school" kind of way. And who's willing to bet that this is going to tie in with Long Lost Bint somehow?

Don't worry about the photo, I'd probably be saying the same sort of things about the novel even if Lynch looked like my beloved Wolfe - although it's a lot funnier knowing that Lynch looks like that. I do think it's a fun, likeable novel and worth reading for entertainment; most of my problems stem from my impression that Lynch wants us to think it's something more than that. Then again, maybe I've been spoiled by

Vlad Taltos

, who pushes similar buttons and whose writer looks like

the bastard son of Terry Pratchett and Frank Zappa

.

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Wardog

at 15:12 on 2007-11-15Jesus CHRIST! *faints*

Yeah, I think you might be right about Jean; I guess it depends how much we care that this stuff is going to become Meaningful later. JKR has soured me on that sort of thing forever.

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Arthur B

at 15:38 on 2007-11-15Is that you swooning before the dreamy gaze of Brust?

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Alice

at 22:21 on 2013-08-28Necro-ing this post, since I've finally gotten round to reading the book after finding the post via the random button.

I mostly more or less enjoyed it, in an "oh, must you really, Scott Lynch?" sort of way - I actually enjoyed the backstory parts more than the main plot, perhaps because while Lynch SUPER-UNSUBTLY wrote out Locke's love interest right from the beginning, at least he didn't have her murdered and delivered to her father in a barrel of horse urine in order to kick off the main plot.

(That was the bit that really made me roll my eyes and give up on enjoying the book in anything other than a superficial way. Lynch slightly redeems himself by having the head of the secret police be a badass old lady with a cane, but I really liked Nazca, I thought she was cool, so I was extra annoyed when she got fridged.)

I really like Jean Tannen, though, so part of me is tempted to at least give book 2 a go.

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Robinson L

at 15:30 on 2016-10-05Listened to this one on audiobook several months back, and enjoyed it as a fantasy heist/adventure yarn; it was quite fun. I hope it wasn't Lynch's intention for me to read any deeper meaning into it, because I really doubt it would hold up to that kind of scrutiny, and it would raise a bunch of awkward questions I don't think he's prepared to answer.

I was a bit disappointed by the ending, because the best bits of the book are generally when somebody is executing a masterful con: whereas Locke spends the last few chapters of

Lies

alternately pleading, cajoling, and punching his way to victory.

I guess I didn't mind too much Locke being both an authorial darling and a hyper-competent master criminal, because, as Arthur pointed out in his original comment, he regularly screws up, finds himself outsmarted or outmaneuvered, and generally gets the everloving shit kicked out of him and/or reduced to a blubbering wreck. For me, this was enough to make the balance tip over into “enjoyable” protagonist rather than “insufferable,” though I realize folks' mileage will vary.

I also really liked the character of Father Chains. The samey-ness of all the characters' dialogue has been brought up already, and I just kind of shrugged it off—however, even with that, I feel like Chains got in an inordinate amount of memorable lines. Also, for some reason, the character of a hard-cussin' scoundrel priest really appeals to me. (Technically, Locke is one, too, but his priestliness is kept mostly to the background.)

I was also disappointed they didn't wind up causing the death of the Bonds Mage (perhaps by accident). As arc plots go, “high class thieves on the run from an immensely powerful and vindictive wizards' guild” sounds pretty solid, and could justify the seven book length to show how our heroes go from fleecing the city's upper class to taking on said wizards' guild and winning.

Like Alice, I disliked that the book fridges Nazca in such an ignominious fashion to kick off the main plot, although I was somewhat mollified that the villain then proceeded to wipe out the rest of the Clan Barsavi in similarly brutal fashion, meaning she wasn't the One Big Death, she was just the first major casualty (plus, three quarters of Locke's chums, also all male, go down shortly thereafter). Again, though, I recognize not everyone is going to be satisfied with this, nor am I arguing they should be.

For whatever it means, in the third book, Nazca is the only member of the Barsavi family who Jean deems worthy of mentioning among the list of people they've lost when he's reeling it off to Locke.

Speaking of deaths, I was extremely relieved that Jean Tannen survived the Grey King's betrayal: Locke really needed a sidekick for the story to work, and Jean was easily the best of the lot. His friendship with Locke is great, and one of my favorite parts of the book was actually the flashback to when he first joined the crew, after Locke's initial attack of sibling rivalry, where Jean asks Locke to help him steal stuff he can use as a death offering for his deceased parents, and Locke asks Jean to help him learn how to use an abacus*. So cute.

*This after Father Chains uses Jean's superiority with an abacus to humiliate Locke and demonstrate why Jean is a useful addition to the crew.

So that part was good, and I didn't mind the other flashbacks so much, though I might have if I'd read through the book instead of listening to it on audio. What I did mind was Lynch dropping a chapter about the Spider tumbling to Locke's latest scheme and setting a trap for him right after the cliffhanger chapter where he's been thrown into the river in a barrel of horse urine and left for dead. First and most obviously because it's a transparently artificial way to hold off resolving said cliffhanger (unlike the flashbacks, which happen in every chapter); but second and also perniciously, because it sucked so much of the tension out of later scenes with Locke trying to reestablish his Lucas Fehrwight scam—the main source of tension was now “will Locke fall into the Spider's trap, and if so, how will he escape it?” so all the stuff with him stealing an appropriate set of clothes felt like so much wasted time before we got back to the next big story question. And that's also unfortunate because I think the clothing scam was actually one of the strongest parts of the book.

Speaking of which, I see what you mean about Locke being “irritatingly virtuous,” though I didn't mind it much, either. The only part which really got me was the way he immediately opted for saving all the high-bread toffs of Camorr at the risk of missing his chance for revenge against the Grey King. I get that he's supposed to be a noble rogue character, but that part struck me as too altruistic to fit his personality. I would expect him at least to be seriously tempted to leave the aristocrats to their fate while he goes and settles the score with the guy who murdered all but one of his best friends. But no, in his mind, it isn't even a choice, and I don't understand why.

I think it should be noted, though, that Locke also does some really screwed up shit which he's never really called on (a major reason I resist taking the books at all seriously). This is a case in point:

he drops an innocent waiter into the shit, he still takes time extract said waiter *and* give him a purse containing more money he's ever held in his life.

Well, yeah, but he *also* gets the poor sod permanently exiled from the only home he's ever had, presumably cut off from friends, family, everyone and everything he knows. Now, for some people, I suppose this could be the best opportunity of their lives—for others, it would be a kind of hell. For all we know, that waiter might well have committed suicide a couple years later, unable to cope with his life's circumstances.

Other crimes of Master Lamora which go unaddressed: murdering the Grey King's assassin after getting information out of him by shutting him up in a cellar and setting fire to it. True, the man had just killed one of his and Jean's best friends and was complicit the conspiracy to kill them all, but that's an incredibly cruel way to dispatch him.

And biggest of all, he manipulates the Camorri top brass into demolishing the Grey King's escape ship and consigning the ~15 person crew to what I also recall being described as a particularly horrible death. True, they were all the Grey King's lackeys, but they were just there to help him get away with the loot (and not to infect half the city with awful plague, as Locke claims), which hardly seems to make them deserving of such a grisly execution.

I let all this pass because I take the books in a “fun adventure” mindset; if I took them seriously, I'd be forced to conclude that Locke Lamora is a terrible person in ways the books themselves aren't prepared to explore.

A final note on the audiobook version: Michael Page is a great narrator, his voice nicely capturing the story's narrative style, and bringing the characters vividly to life. He also does a wonderful job with the various accents which come into play (mostly as one or another of Locke's characters for a heist), making them very distinct and memorable. Perhaps too memorable, for I'm sure I've caught him recycling a number of secondary voices and accents—he's no Jim Dale—but still an impressive accomplishment which I think utterly nails the tone of the series.

[jinareads]

LET’S TALK: Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare

I've finally finished Lord of Shadows, the second book in The Dark Artifices trilogy by Cassandra Clare. It was beautiful and heartbreaking and hilarious, and I don't think I've felt that empty (in the best way possible) since I finished Clockwork Princess.

Trust me, you DO NOT want to read this if you haven't read all of the Shadowhunter books by Cassandra Clare.

Summary:

Lord of Shadows continues after Malcolm Fade's death, which has given rise to a bunch of Teuthida demons in Los Angeles. Jace and Clary visit the Los Angeles Institute, and since they can't stay because of a top-secret Clave mission to Faerie, a group of Centurions (graduates of Scholomance, an elite Shadowhunter school) arrive to lead the search for Malcolm's body and stop the sea demons. We're then introduced to Perfect Diego's friends, who are definitely less than friendly--and Diego doesn't look so perfect now, either. His recently rekindled romance with Cristina comes to a screeching halt when we find out that he's engaged--and with the heavily prejudiced Zara Dearborn, who wants to take the Los Angeles Institute for herself and for the Cohort (an anti-Downworlder hate faction of the Clave). And in the middle of all this, Emma, Julian, Cristina, and Mark go on a very illegal rescue mission to the Unseelie Court to save Kieran, who has been sentenced to death for the death of Iarlath (this is the Faerie who whipped Emma, nearly to death). And so they save Kieran, and are unexpectedly rescued themselves by a member of the Seelie Court and Mark's aunt, Nene. Here, the Seelie Queen shows Julian what's going on in Los Angeles: Arthur Blackthorn, in his last lucid moments, has decided to sacrifice himself to Malcolm, and a successfully revived Annabel awakes to kill Malcolm and take the Black Volume of the Dead. The Seelie Queen then offers the team her soldiers to help defeat the Unseelie King alongside the Clave--but more importantly to Julian, she says that she knows a way to break the parabatai bond--in exchange for the Black Volume. And so Julian and Emma go to Malcolm's cottage, while Ty, Livvy, and Kit venture off to Blackthorn Manor in hopes of discovering more about Annabel. An ancient and deadly group called the Riders, as ordered by the Unseelie King, are now tracking the Blackthorns to bring back the Black Volume to the king, and at the end of a battle that nearly kills all of our main characters, Annabel appears. Julian persuades Annabel to testify in front of the Clave and turn over the Black Volume in exchange for Blackthorn Manor and reinstatement of her honor, and everyone travels to Alicante via a portal that Magnus Bane opens up (with great difficulty, since his powers have been used thus far to help heal and protect the Blackthorns). So the Blackthorns, Emma, Kieran (who will also testify against the Unseelie King), Annabel, Alec, and Magnus are all in Alicante, awaiting the trial that will determine the fate of the Los Angeles Institute. Following Magnus's suggestion, Emma and Julian go to Robert Lightwood (the Inquisitor), asking that he send Emma into exile to deaden the parabatai bond. Robert agrees, and shortly after, the trial is underway. This is where everything falls apart: Annabel is unexpectedly questioned under the Mortal Sword, Magnus collapses due to his hidden sickness, Annabel kills Robert with the Mortal Sword, Annabel kills Livvy, and Emma shatters the Mortal Sword with Cortana. The book ends, with Julian clutching yet another member of his family lost to him.

Okay, so it's really hard to summarize what happens in Lord of Shadows because it is a MASSIVE book--both in terms of page number and plot content. So much happens in this book, and I want to discuss some of the finer details a little bit further.

favorites:

Emma's humor.

“‘You’re my mother’s sister?’ [Mark] said incredulously. ‘I think they usually call that your aunt,’ said Emma. Mark gave her a dark look.”

“‘I am Sabnock of Thule. How dare you stand before me, ugly human?’ ‘How personal,’ [Emma] said. ‘I’m hurt.’“

“‘In all our lives there has only been one thing we have sought and not found.’ ‘A sense of humor?’ Emma suggested.”

Kit's mundane knowledge. Things like cancer and autism aren't talked about in the Shadowhunter community, and it’s so interesting to see Kit react to their dangerously traditional way of rejecting mundane medicine and treatment.

Diana's history. Cassie did such a beautiful job in allowing the reader into Diana's past, and we finally learn her secret: Diana is a transgender woman. Since mundane medicine is forbidden by the Clave, she was living in mundane society until the war, and is now living as her dead sister, Aria. I love that we got to understand why Diana refused to become the Head of the Institute, despite her absolute love for the Blackthorns and Emma. 

Gwyn ap Nudd. I was 100% intimidated by Gwyn until he started making his moves on Diana, and their interactions turned into some of my favorite moments. Especially when he casually quotes Shakespeare.

Some idiot put “Will H.” on all the rare first editions in the library.

Cristina. I can’t believe I almost forgot about Cristina!! I was really into the whole Mark-Cristina-Kieran thing going on in the book and how Cristina and Kieran were very patient with Mark figuring out what he wanted. Also, I loved how irrelevant Diego was to Cristina after she found out about Zara (ok I know he had good intentions with the whole thing but whatever)

what the fuck:

Clary’s (impending) death. CASSIE CAN’T DO THIS TO US I THOUGHT WE WERE SAFE AFTER CITY OF HEAVENLY FIRE

Sidenote: Ok, Jace technically died during TMI--we can totally bring her back nbd

Cortana. Cortana cuts through a lot of stuff that normal weapons shouldn’t be able to cut through--exhibit: the death of one of the seven riders (which was actually thought to be impossible). Also, I didn’t even consider that one of the Mortal Instruments could be destroyed. Does this mean Cortana can now compel people to tell the truth???

Theory: Can Cortana somehow cut the parabatai bond, since it can apparently cut through everything?

Annabel’s murderous rampage at the end. I 100% did not expect her to kill everyone at the end???

Tessa and Magnus. WHAT IS WRONG WITH TESSA AND MAGNUS??? The whole time Magnus was working his magic, I was getting worried because while he’s one of the most powerful warlocks we know, HE HAS LIMITS. And they kept. pushing. him.

tears:

Livvy’s death. I HATED that this happened to the Blackthorns, especially since they’ve already lost so much and they only had each other left. At the same time, I kind of saw it coming, especially with Kit entering the picture. I’m really glad that Kit and Ty have formed a relationship so that Ty will have someone to support him through this in the next book.

Robert’s death. I finished the story with Robert and Michael in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy after I finished LoS, and it was SO MUCH MORE DEVASTATING that he died. Not only did Emma and Julian lose the one person who could’ve helped them through the whole being in love with your parabatai thing, but just THINK OF ROBERT AS HE HEARD THEIR STORY. Robert can’t go back in time and make it up to Michael, but he could’ve helped another pair of parabatai

Jon’s death. I really didn’t mind this until the last couple stories from TFTSA, but it def hit me when I thought of him and Marisol, and how little time they had together.

Arthur’s death. I ALMOST FORGOT THIS HAPPENED. Arthur has such a twisted history, with his imprisonment in Faerie while his brother fell in love (please read TFTSA). I honestly felt so sad that Julian had to take on the responsibility of being a father and Institute head at such a young age, but I’m so glad that Arthur had a final moment of awareness--I hate that he sacrificed himself, but it was beautiful that during his moment of clarity, his mind focused on saving the people he loved the most.

things that I don’t know how to feel about yet:

Jaime. I’m still really not into him or Diego yet, despite all their talk of good intentions. His interactions with Dru made me think of the Nate-Jessamine relationship for some reason??

Sebastian + Seelie Queen child. I’ve seen this theory around the internet so many times, and I am worried. I am worried because of Dru’s little trip to Faerie involved a BOY WITH WHITE-BLOND HAIR AND GREEN EYES--aka Ash. And he asks about his mother; could it be that the Seelie Queen is hiding him away from everyone else, trying to keep him a secret? Or maybe he’s been kidnapped by the Unseelie King?

And it’s mentioned that he’s around 13, but let’s not forget that a day in the human world was 7 years for Andrew and Arthur when they were trapped in Faerie.

[tessatechaitea]

Suicide Squad #17

In Russia, Zod kneels before you. Shit. I think I have to turn in my writing card now.

All the best covert organizations have headquarters behind waterfalls.

When are we going to get the Nightwing comic book where he goes undercover in an international construction company that builds super villain secret headquarters? Think of all the crime that can be stopped before the villain even has a place to sit backwards in a chair facing a bunch of monitors while stroking a cat! Zod is introduced falling out of a helicopter with the rest of the squad as he screams the thing you expect him to scream. It's hilarious because that's what Zod or people hearing the name Zod always say! He doesn't seem particularly upset that he's been enslaved. As long as he has the illusion of freedom (which he only has due to his delusional nature or why else would he explain to Amanda that he serves no one while doing what he's told?), I suppose he can't get too upset. Besides, he gets to kill people! That's a pretty sweet perk. The Squad have come to destroy the Annihilation Brigade. They're Russia's version of the Suicide Squad. Maybe. I mean, if that's true, why are they located in Zimbabwe? Is it only because there are no famous waterfalls in Russia? I mean, there might be! But only waterfall nerds have probably heard of them! Whew. Now nobody will dare to say I look ignorant by my lack of international waterfall knowledge because they'll be too embarrassed to admit they're a waterfall nerd! The first member of the Annihilation Brigade to die is Tunguska. I first heard of the incident at Tunguska due to In Search Of. That was my favorite show as a kid.

"Zod will invent the ways"? That doesn't make any sense. Unless one of the ways Zod just invented was ramming his boner through Tunguska's liver. I mean, why else is Tunguska screaming like that? I doubt it's due to Zod's breath.

Coming to Tunguska's rescue are his colleagues, Cosmonut and Tankograd. Cosmonut has the power of silly typos while Tankograd has the powers of a city made of tanks. I understand why Cosmonut wears a space uniform while the only thing he can say is a picture of a peanut. But why does he have a head shaped like a hammer? If there's one nut that doesn't need some kind of tool to crack it, it's the peanut! They should have called it the pussnut. Meanwhile in Belle Reve, Harcourt has realized her jigs are up and begins slaughtering people. Amanda probably knew this would happen and didn't warn all the techies because Amanda is a fucking asshole. The advertisement for the King Arthur movie still makes me laugh out loud every time I see it. Who the fuck are these people making movies in Hollywood?! I'm surprised King Arthur doesn't have huge fucking ear gauges in that ad. Um, anyway, Harcourt reports back to The People before setting the self-destruct code on Belle Reve. Fucking self-destruct codes. It's like one lazy fucking hack writer somewhere in the past needed a quick and easy way to threaten the lives of the heroes while also allowing for the utter annihilation of the bad guys so that asshole invented the idea of a self-destruct mechanism built into the evil organization's headquarters. And it was such an easy way to advance the plot and add tension, other lazy hack writers decided to use the premise until it became something audiences stopped questioning. I wouldn't mind if all of our homes were rigged with self-destruct codes just in case a guest stays too long or some Mormon missionaries ride up on their bikes to discuss Christ's new world message. The Suicide Squad discover that The People's compound behind Victoria Falls is their version of Belle Reve. It's full of imprisoned super-powered people with bombs in their brains. Does the Suicide Squad really need to confront an organization that holds up a mirror to their organization so that they suddenly see all of its flaws? I think they already knew how shitty it was. They don't really need a lesson to get them thinking, "Hey! I don't think Amanda Waller has our best interests at heart at all!"

You're right, Floyd. You aren't the Teen Titans. You do more good than they do.

Tunguska blows up, killing everybody. Everybody except the people labeling under the delusion that they're job is so dangerous that they might as well just kill themselves. They never die. They teleport away along with Cosmonut because he's obviously the best prisoner to interrogate.

"Who is behind this?!"

Later in Belle Reve, Amanda confronts Harcourt before she can escape. Remember how I mentioned how Amanda was a huge fucking asshole because she didn't warn the techies earlier?

She's even worse than that! She's also lucky Harcourt didn't kill two techies with one bullet!

Harcourt is a terrible spy. One of the first things they learn is to tell how many bullets are in the clip of your gun simply by weight! Probably. I mean, I'd definitely teach that course if I were running a Spy Community College Program. Captain Boomerang kills Harcourt before she can tell Amanda that Boomer killed Hack. Oh, also before Harcourt can kill Amanda. I just mentioned them in order of importance. I still don't know why Boomer killed Hack but since he liked her, it must have been mind control. Or else that self-loathing I mentioned earlier that he's full of. In the epilogue, Cosmonut is interrogated and Amanda learns what a peanut looks like when spoken. Rick Flag sucks on Harley's finger which, according to earlier issues, was probably just inside his asshole. And Zod speaks with his cohorts inside the Black Vault (probably Faora and that dumb oaf) before attempting to do brain surgery on himself with his heat vision and a mirror. That totally makes sense, right? His heat vision is powerful enough to cut into his own Kryptonian brain but not powerful enough to shatter a mirror. Because light or something! I really need to dig up Ostrander's run on this thing and reread that. Although I might be severely disappointed. I was pretty young when I read and loved it. What if my raging cynicism, cultivated from years of life constantly trying to put me in the ground and my existential terror of just about every mundane task civilization expects out of adults, make me realize it was actually terrible?! Hmm. Now I really want to reread it!

[theblacktivity-blog]

Taking The Stage

In these crazy times the ABC network special “Taking The Stage; African American Music and Stories That Changed America” was a reminder of a gallant history. It was at once a testament to the resilience of a people and in some ways, the constant invocation of that trait seem to quietly whisper to the viewers for whom it was meant: “we must begin  again to prepare ourselves”. In the main, it was a Black musical tribute celebration of the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and Culture. But the panning of the camera’s throughout the Kennedy Center’s mostly Black and illustrious audience, (not the least of which included takes of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama dancing harmoniously to the rhythms like college sweethearts reliving the conjured up memories brought on by the songs) gave it the air of pomp and circumstance. To a degree, it was the sort of thing that's met with a wink and a nod, in that it seemed very much like a celebratory send off to The First Couple and all that they mean to us in symbol and reality. And as each performer did the stage their justice, often times acknowledging the President and First Lady in the rafters, that love was radiated back in the form of warm appreciative smiles and what seemed like chest thumps and air daps sent telepathically...the Black way. The show opened up with a jovial Oprah Winfrey as host who exclaimed “Although I should open up the show by saying, ‘good evening everyone’, what I’d really like to say is hallelujah!”. Getting a rise out of the crowd as only Oprah can, and with the president and first lady looking on, she continued; "We’re here to celebrate, from our first days here as African Americans, we’ve left a record of how we felt and how we moved through life, from the spiritual side to the sexy side, life in all of its colors. Tonight is about music and it’s about memories and it’s about imagination and tonight is about taking the stage and changing America." What may have seemed on the surface like a typical awards show or tribute show introduction when looked at with more depth seemed more like a soft call to arms. It showed something of an acknowledgement of the days ahead and as usual, the role we as African Americans will have to play in bringing about and insuring justice.  Afterwards, the performances began to roll in. Beginning with a tribute to the legendary Black opera singer Marian Anderson, Mary J. Blige performed ‘My Country Tis’ Of Thee’ as a projected background of the Lincoln Memorial served to create the ambiance of the moment Anderson made history by singing on those very steps in 1939. Following was actor Jesse Williams, with an introduction to the musical form of ‘The Blues’. Amid the receding of thunderous applause, grew the somewhat tense silence of an audience more than likely familiar in some way or another with Williams’ strident and fiery oratory, the very type displayed at the 2016 BET Awards. Among the Black faces in the crowd were white ones as well, some celebrities, some carrying an air of quiet importance, all of whom visibly appeared to be on either end of a black to white spectrum. They either seemed genuinely engaged with the words of Williams as he linked the history of ‘The Blues’ to the dark legacy of chattel slavery, or developed that reddish blush indicated when some whites anxiously await guilt (real or perceived) to be transmitted into their souls via the rhetorical barbs of the smart or “radical” Black man in-residence. The air was broken when Gary Clark Jr. performed a number in the blues tradition followed by a performance by the Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe of the lyric ‘Wade In The Water’. In the lead up to the first commercial brake was an article on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art & Culture entitled; “Bill of Sale of a slave”. It’s a record dating back to 1835,  detailing the sale of a slave (more than likely a fair skinned woman) between the seller a local judge, and the buyer, both from Arkansas, right around the time when slavery was beginning to expand further westward. This intermission was timely as it highlighted the historic ills from which such a racially divided nation sprung. Then, as the show continued there was a moment of awkwardness. The type that makes one say to oneself; “And....exactly why is this?”. Dave Grohl  (former drummer for the legendary band Nirvana and Foo Fighters founder and guitarist...rock renaissance man) joined the stage with legendary go-go icon Trouble Funk as a tribute to the musical form that has its origins in the nation’s capital. Granted, Grohl did grow up near the D.C. area (northern Virginia more specifically Alexandria) and may have very well been influenced by the art form, it just seemed out of place. One wonders why not UCB and Trouble Funk? That would have been appropriate and more in tune with Washington D.C.’s historic sound. Instead what happened is overbearing guitar and vocal riffs that overpowered the very percussive rhythms for which go-go is known. Whether that was a producer or network choice, who knows? In any event it had the slight air of paternalism (no fault of Grohl to be sure) that tends to occur when white America feels the need to awkwardly force itself into spaces in the name of an over-the-top proof of solidarity with Black culture. I mean all due respect to the white brothers and sisters who are really down. Let’s be clear, we appreciate those who truly are, the Black delegation fucks with you! But sometimes we would rather you refrain from messing up the beat. Post that incident, Fantasia took us down home with her rendition of Aretha Franklin’s 1967 song Dr. Feelgood. Such a performance from the North Carolina bred songstress reminded us that there is indeed a difference between singing and sangin’. Usher’s tribute to the late great James Brown left nothing to be desired as he slid, glided, and jump-split his way all over the stage in the way only he could, clad in the flyest damn black tuxedo I’ve ever seen. Then there was another awkward “huh?” moment, albeit less than the go-go performance. Actor Tom Hanks introduced the 7 surviving members of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen. Of all the tributes of the night, this one was undoubtedly the most moving as their wasn't a dry eye in the house as Hanks described the story men despised by their country for the color of their skin, even as they shot down America’s enemies abroad in record numbers. The airmen, some walking some in wheelchairs and all who looked incredibly well kept (Black don’t crack ya’ll) were then met by Fmr. General and Secretary of State Colin Powell who gave an emotional salute and greeted each man with an embrace and handshake. A moving moment indeed but also one that begged the question; “Why wasn’t Colin Powell himself slated to tell that story in addition to everything else?”. At the very least if they wanted an actor to introduce the story, why not someone like Lawrence Fishburne? After all, he was casted in the original movie about the Tuskegee Airmen circa 1995. No disrespect to Tom Hanks (one of my favorite actors by the way) but it just seemed like yet another example of that paternalistic brand of altruism. Afterwards the gorgeous Angela Basset led an introduction of tributes to singers Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Sarah Vaugh, and Nina Simone which were performed by various artist including Christina Aguilera and accompanied by jazz musician Robert Glasper on piano. At break, we were introduced to yet another artifact on display at what will henceforth called the “Black Smithsonian”, rock-n-roll founder Chuck Berry’s candy apple red 1973 Cadillac El Darado. Little was mentioned about Berry being the founder of the musical form of rock-n-roll as we know it, instead the break opted to say the he was “influential” in early rock-n-roll. I noted that, duly. The convenient avoidance of the fact the Elvis Presley stole practically every move he had from Chuck Berry....but I’ll move on. Usher graced the stage once more to give tribute to the role of Black athletes in America including a montage of Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe (Rich--what! Richmond!), Althea Gibson, Juan Carlos, Tommie Smith, and a host of others past and present. In usual form, comedian Chris Tucker took the stage to lead into what would be NeYo’s best Michael Jackson rendition. It was yet another reminder of just how big a hole that loss will always be in the world of entertainment at large and the Black community. While NeYo in true fashion did ‘The King’ much justice...it’s just not the same. P.S. The person that didn’t think to schedule the Prince tribute there after should definitely be demoted, possibly fired. The incomparable comedian Dave Chappelle, broke the seriousness of the moment as only he could with some sharp and socially observant zingers before his piece honoring the tradition and importance of Black humor. From Moms Mabley, to Dick Gregory, to Redd Foxx, to Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, the montage provided reminded us of the role of Black comedy in the analysis and coping with life in an often absurd America. Janelle Monae did her part prefacing the Motown sound that brought Black soul music to “mainstream” America. Gladys Knight was honored and how better to honor the honor the legendary soulstress than the Ms. Knight herself, leading the crowd in the classic “Midnight Train To Georgia”. John Legend followed, tapping into his inner Marvin Gaye with a rendition of “What’s Going On?” in his signature staccato voicing, as perfectly timed a song as it was when Marvin first wrote it. After a commercial break which included a commemoration of the revolutionary Nat Turner (white America’s historic candy man) in which the Bible that Turner was caught with after the Southampton, VA insurrection was explained, the Blackness continued with a tribute to the jazz art form.  The legendary Herbie Hancock was introduced to the crowd by one of the coolest Black men on the planet in Samuel L. Jackson. Hancock performed the signature contortions and improvisations that make the art was it is from piano, to electronic synthesized keyboard as the crowd looked on in awe. Improvisation being a key trait of the Black experience as a whole, it was only right that jazz would be preceded by hip hop. Will Smith took the reigns by citing a Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Common cited Langston Hughes’ “I Too, Am America” Chuck D when into his legendary verse on “Fight The Power” as President Barack Obama mouthed along, and Doug E. Fresh set the proverbial “it” off when he laid as only he could the a vocal percussive that would serve as an instrumental to “The Message”. The crowd clapped and lip synched along; don’t push me/cause I’m close to the edge/I’m tryin, not to lose my head/a huh huh huh huh/it’s like a jungle sometimes/that make’s me wonder/how I keep from going under. I watched on wondering if those in the crowd (more particularly the white folks) yet understood poignancy of Melly Mel’s words after almost four decades. Arguably hip hop’s most famous bridge, this is in varying degrees, the Black experience in America summed up. Essentially a hip hop version of writer James Baldwin’s quote that; “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time”. With an inward chuckle, my inner Mr. T pitied the fools. Ending the night were actress Octavia Spencer and Stevie Wonder. Spencer played her part introducing us to that timbre, that down home sound that we know as gospel.  After the pleasantries, Donnie McClurkin graced the stage joined by the legendary Howard University Gospel Choir in a performance that was so good it should’ve been followed by 1st Sunday church basement potato salad after. Thereafter Beyoncé protégés Chloe and Halle led the crowd in a soulful and vocally mature version of “There Eye Is On The Sparrow” that was certainly another check off of the list in a series of performances in which the duo should aptly be considered soul music’s generation next. Of course though, what is a tribute to gospel without the incomparable Rev. Shirley Ceasar! As she always does Ceasar the lit the stage as only a traditional down home Reverend and gospel icon can, sweat dripping from the forehead and all, as she too was joined by Howard University’s gospel choir. After catching the holy ghost like Julio Jones in one on one man coverage, the crowd welcomed none other than Stevie Wonder onto the stage. Breaking into his classic “Higher Ground” he was joined on stage by all the performers and guest as he beat the piano up like self defense. Such an ending seemed to serve as a signal to Black America at large, that this musical and cultural tribute would've been best summed up by the words of Kendrick Lamar: “we gon be alright!”.

[merlinficreview]

The Student Prince: Chapter 1-5 Review!

Sorry it’s been 84 years since Romeo or I have posted anything. Romeo is back to school for the semester so her time is limited and work has been really draining on me recently. Never fear, we are still here though and I’ve got a review!

The Student Prince by FayJay

Word Count: 145222

Ok guys, this is it. The infamous Student Prince fic. I have read this one before and I liked it because it seems to be the closest fic I’ve found to a modernized version of the BBC show. Plus, as I’ve already said before, I am a sucker for Modern Royalty AUs. This fic also takes place at the University of St. Andrews, which I know nothing about. So google will be my trusty friend throughout this review.

Here we go!

Chapter 1

We begin with Merlin getting hit in the face with some luggage and falling onto some poor elderly lady. Merlin has to maintain an extra sense of control when objects are flying towards his face because he has magic and doesn’t want to out himself. Yay Modern Day Magic Fic!

So it turns out the luggage situation was someone else’s fault. “She glanced from Merlin to the lady and then back again, her face the picture of mortification, and Merlin – who had been feeling a little disgruntled about the whole unexpected-rain-of-luggage scenario – took one look at her huge brown eyes and immediately wanted to reassure her that he had thoroughly enjoyed being knocked half unconscious.” Haha, aww.

The luggage canon introduces herself as Gwen. Yay, Gwen! She is studying engineering at St. Andrews. I think it’s weird that Gwen already has all her textbooks. Have they already signed up for their classes? How would she know what to buy?

Gwen tells Merlin she also has a hammer in her bag. "’Of course there is,’ nodded Merlin, gravely. ‘Who travels without a hammer in their luggage these days? One never knows when a spot of joinery might be in order.’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Stop!’ he said, raising one hand in front of him. Gwen blinked, and after a beat Merlin added: ‘Hammer Time! Dooo doodoodoo! Doodoo! Doo! Hammer Time!’ as he improvised a quick, and truly terrible, attempt at the Hammer Dance in the cramped confines of the aisle.’”

Oh my God. How embarrassing. Stop it, Merlin. Then Gwen tells Merlin that she makes her own jewelry and Merlin is super impressed. Merlin even does the dance a second time and I want to crawl in a hole and die from secondhand embarrassment. Merlin, you JUST met Gwen. Calm yourself.

“’Hey, it's not really Merlin, is it?’ Gwen asked, looking at him sidelong. ‘I mean – really really? You're pulling my leg, right? I mean – nobody's called Merlin. Why would any woman name her baby after an old man with a long white beard and a pointy hat? It's like calling your baby Gandalf.’” This is the second time Gwen has awkwardly expressed disbelief about Merlin’s name. Stop being weirdly obsessed with his name, Gwen. How fucking rude. Poor Merlin. Getting assaulted by luggage and then getting his name made fun of. Good start to college, Merlin. Good start.

Then Gwen points out that Prince Arthur is also going to be attending St. Andrews and she says Merlin and Arthur will become besties. Merlin points out that her name is Guinevere and that she’ll be future queen.

"’That isn't why I applied there,’ she insisted. ‘I mean, I know that there must be thousands of girls who filled in their UCAS forms with St Andrews just because they're living some kind of stupid “Princess Diaries” fantasy and they think they're going to meet him and he'll fall for them and they'll end up with a tiara and a load of corgis, but I'm serious about my career. St Andrews has an excellent engineering department. I was going to apply there long before I heard that's where Arthur was going.’”

But that’s not the plot of The Princess Diaries at all?

I also have the St. Andrews website pulled up because like I said, I know nothing about it, or going to school in the UK, to be honest, and it doesn’t even look like St. Andrews has an engineering department. Man, Gwen is going to be pissed when she finds out she spent all her money on textbooks for a degree her school doesn’t offer.

Then Gwen tells us how King Uther met his wife while they were at Oxford once upon a time. "It's such a beautiful story, isn't it? The way they met at Oxford when she borrowed his jar of Gold Blend, not even realising he was the Prince of Wales at first because he was in the middle of shaving and she was distracted by her friend's dog...oh, they were so in love!" Gold Blend is coffee, by the way. I had to google it too. In what situation would a man be shaving his face next to a container of instant coffee while a random dog is nearby? That’s such an odd scene to imagine. Maybe she knocked in his door to borrow the coffee and she had the dog with her? Were there co-ed dormitories back then?

Merlin is just as suspicious about this story as I am and pops Gwen’s bubble, telling her it was most likely PR. I agree.

"Merlin shook his head mutely, and carefully didn't mention any of the books or magazines he might possibly have read about Prince Arthur and his family. Especially not the outrageously hot photoshoot in GQ magazine that he'd been hiding under his bed for the past three months, and frantically jerking off to most nights. Nope, definitely not mentioning that. Gwen rolled her eyes. ‘Uther and Igraine – it's like a modern day Romeo and Juliet!’" First of all, 100% do not mention that to Gwen. Good decision. Second of all, Gwen has a really hard time grasping plots, doesn’t she? No wonder she decided to major in a non-existent department at her university. She’s not a very bright girl.

We then learn that Merlin is planning to major in physics. That is a department at St. Andrews, good job, Merlin! Then Gwen compares their journey to Hogwarts. “He found himself wishing he could explain about Professor Gaius and Doctor Nimueh, and about the kind of text books he had stuffed into the bottom of his rucksack – but that wasn't going to happen. Magic was secret, and secret it should stay. Nobody wanted to go back to the days of witchburnings.” Poor Merlin. It’s always so sad that he has to hide himself. I will also give him a pass for already having magic books because that’s different.

Gwen and Merlin talk a little more about Harry Potter and then go right back to talking about Arthur and how they’ll probably never meet him. Well…

Then Merlin gets real depressing real fast. "Whatever. All those posh interbred types with more rooms than they know what to do with and flocks of sheep wandering around on their enormous ancient estates - that's who he'll be hanging out with. Not with a physics student from a grotty little council estate in Cardiff, or an engineering student – however lovely – who lives above her dad's garage in Wembley. Face it – we don't have our own flocks of sheep." Brutal Honesty Hour! It’s my favorite time of day!

Merlin then shares some chocolate with Gwen and they enjoy the rest of their train ride.

Chapter 2

“The door was open a crack when Merlin reached his room in St Salvator's Hall, and he could hear voices inside, and what sounded rather a lot like The Rolling Stones.” I looked up St. Salvator’s Hall and holy crap those rooms are nice. According to the photos, the rooms are like twice as big as the dorm rooms of the university I went to. I also decided to compare prices, for funsies, and also to sit and cry about how much more ridiculously expensive it is to go to university here than in other countries. The fee for a shared room at St. Salvator’s Hall is £5,837 which includes a meal plan. That’s 6292.55 USD for comparison. At the University that I went to, a shared room with communal bath is 6,795 USD. This does not include a meal plan which could add up to around 800 USD if you pick the one with the most meals. Those rates are also per semester and not for the entire academic year. Now, St. Salvator’s rate does not state whether the fee is per semester or for the whole year but either way, it’s still way more expensive here in the US. It also looks like St. Salvator Hall doesn’t have communal bathrooms like the one located here that I looked up. Yay not affordable education here in the US!

Anyways, Merlin enters the room and his roommate is none other than the Prince of Wales himself, Arthur. Oh my god. I NEVER saw that one coming!

“’Only – I thought – well, I pretty much assumed that you'd be staying over at New Hall. Where they have single rooms. And ensuites with all the mod cons,’ blurted Merlin. ‘Not sharing a room in Sally's. Why are you sharing a room in Sally's?’ Arthur frowned. ‘Because I lost a bet, if you must know. With my father.’ He stared at Merlin, looking puzzled and a touch irritated. ‘You weren't expecting this, then? They didn't get you to sign things – Official Secrets Act, all that?’” I think that’s a fair question Merlin is asking and I also want to know what sort of bet Arthur lost. How fucking awkward that no one alerted Merlin to who his roommate was supposed to be. Don’t they give out roommate names before the semester starts?

So then Arthur gets bitchy that Merlin hasn’t signed a non-disclosure agreement. “Well – sorry if this sounds, you know, rude, but basically if you touch any of my stuff, or take photos of me or my friends, or tape conversations, or sell your story to the press, or – basically, if you act like a dick, right? Well, we're talking Tower of London, pretty much. That's the Cliff Notes version.”

Calm the fuck down, Arthur. Throwing Merlin in the tower for borrowing your history book is way too excessive. So then Merlin asks if he can make a citizen’s arrest if Arthur does any the aforementioned things to Merlin. Good job, Merlin. Arthur is a complete asshole about that, acting like Merlin’s stuff is grosser than the stuff on the bottom on Arthur’s shoes and tells Merlin he will replace anything he ruins with something of “equal value.” "’Like a stick of gum,’ murmured Kay, sniggering.” Yeah, be prepared to really really fucking hate Kay in this. "’I can see why you have to swear people to secrecy, if this is how you act when you're not around a reporter,’ blurted out Merlin, feeling cheated. ‘You really are a massive prat, aren't you? A smug, self-entitled, patronising git.’” Yassssss. You tell him, Merlin.

Arthur and his friends leave and then Merlin goes to find Gaius. We learn a little about the School of Sorcery. This School can be found in every single building on campus, one just has to find the special door with a dragon on it. Merlin finds the door located in his residence hall. Of course the dragon on the door talks to Merlin, "’Young Merlin!’ it said, in a voice like a rusty gate, blinking sulphurous eyes impossibly as it writhed through the wood like an eel in water. ‘Back so soon?’ ‘What?’ Merlin stared at it. ‘I haven't – this is my first time here, Master Dragon.’” So we get a little hint of reincarnation.

Merlin finds Gaius who tries to shoo him away until Merlin gives him his name. Gaius changes his tune after that and tells Merlin he knew his father. The first thing Merlin does is complain about sharing a room with Prince Arthur. He says it will make it too hard to hide his magic. “Gaius blinked at him owlishly. ‘Then I suggest that you learn some discretion, young man, and quickly,’ he said.’” That is such an annoying adult thing to say. What a non-answer. Poor Merlin. Gaius tells Merlin he is supposed to be rooming with Arthur so he can protect him and that wizards have always protected kings and queens. Merlin is unhappy with this news.

Chapter 3

This chapter opens with:

“Hey, Gwen – how's McIntosh Hall?

Brilliant! How's Sallies?

View good, mattress soft, roommate total plonker. Yours?

She seems OK. Sorry you got plonker. Want to meet later & go to Union together?

God, yes please!” It’s written just like that (italics represent direct quotes and bold represents italics within the fic. You know the drill). I assume they are texting.

Anyways: “It was the tail-end of summer, but apparently that meant something rather different on the East coast of Scotland than it did in Wales, and by the time Merlin got to Gwen's Hall of Residence he was wishing he'd brought a coat, rather than just pulling on a black v-neck jumper.” Does Merlin not know how to read a map, or?

Like… I know the UK is small compared to the US but he can’t really be that surprised that the Northern part of the UK is colder than the Southern part. There’s almost 500 miles in between Cardiff and St. Andrews. I’m glad Merlin isn’t majoring in geography.

So Merlin meets up with Gwen outside her residence hall where she has acquired a gentleman caller. It’s probably Lance. Merlin and Gwen hug. “’Hey, you,’ he said into her hair, feeling something in his chest tighten unexpectedly. ‘I missed you.’”

Calm down, Merlin. You’ve known her for thirty seconds and only been away for her for three of those.

Lance is not happy with Merlin’s presence. “’Hi, Lance,’ he said, ducking his head in Lance's general direction. Lance smiled back – or at least, he bared his teeth, which was almost the same thing. Merlin had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. ‘Hi,’ said Lance reaching out a hand that Merlin rather suspected was going to be bone-crushing. He let go of Gwen and accepted the handshake, and managed not to buckle under the pressure of Lance's Very Manly Indeed deathgrip of macho posturing.” LOL HOW HILARIOUS. Men treating women like objects and prizes to be won. Real knee slapper, that joke.

Gwen tells Merlin that Lance is going to be her Academic Dad and then informs us that there’s only 8 weeks until Raisin Weekend. Thanks, Exposition Gwen! So I also googled this Academic Family business since that’s not a thing we have here. So, basically an Academic Mum and Academic Dad are like mentors for first year students and freshmen are allowed to ask for someone to be their Academic Mother but the Academic Dad has to do the asking to the freshmen. So it makes no sense that Gwen was so shocked about Lance asking her. Whatever. Raisin Weekend is basically just an excuse to drink excessively with your Academic Parents and dress up in costumes that Monday and have shaving cream fights. Typical college nonsense.

“’Well, if I'd known they were giving away hot blokes with every room, I'd definitely have put my name down for McIntosh Hall.’ Lance made a startled noise, and his territorial expression shifted rather quickly into something entirely different and almost maiden auntish as Gwen punched Merlin's arm.” Get it, because Gay Merlin is no longer a threat to Lance chasing after Gwen. No one tell Lance bisexual people exist. I think his head would explode. No, you know what? Someone should tell him. He’s an asshole.

“Lance gave her a slightly sheepish grin. ‘It's okay,’ he said. ‘I'll be your designated driver – I'm not big on the alcohol.’ ‘I don't need a designated driver,’ said Gwen, looking at him sidelong. ‘It's a three minute walk! It would take longer to get a car started than it would to get there!’ ‘Right – well, designated guard dog, then. Or knight in shining armour, or guardian angel, or overprotective Dad – whatever you want to call it. I don't drink, so, you know – I'll make sure you're okay. Promise.’”

Oh my God. Slow your fucking roll and let her do what she wants. She’s not some poor defenseless damsel in distress.

Lance gives off an extreme sense of superiority in this fic. He’s a Buddhist, doesn’t drink, volunteers all over the fucking place as Professional Knight in Shining armor and he’s vegan. “’My Dad disapproves of the veganism,’ he admitted, sheepishly. ‘But it's not so hard, really. It feels good, knowing who I am, and what I want out of life. Being mindful in all things.’” Be more pretentious, Lance. Really, I want to see if you can top all of that.

“Merlin studied Lance, trying not to be too damned obvious about it. He wasn't at all sure if this guy was for real, or if he was playing some kind of elaborate joke, with all this holier-than-thou schtick. There was a disconcerting intensity to the man. Merlin wanted to like him, but he wasn't at all sure what to make of him. He did seem a bit too good to be true.” See, Merlin knows.

Oh and Lance is going to teach Gwen kickboxing. He has classes on Wednesday. Of course he does. Merlin is not into it, especially after meeting one of Lance’s students, Elaine. “Merlin looked at her biceps and swallowed. ‘Yeah – no thanks,’ he said, with a watery grin. ‘I've got a suspicion she'd crush me like a bug.’” Mostly I just included this because I wanted to talk about the phrase, “watery grin.” I see this ALL THE TIME in fanfic and it drives me crazy. What the fuck is a “watery grin?” If your smile is “watery,” swallow your fucking spit. That’s disgusting.

“Gwen bit her lip and glanced up at them. ‘Would you hate me forever if I left you for five minutes?’ she asked. ‘I need the ladies' room. I know I should have gone before we left, but I was caught up talking, and I didn't get around to it. Can you wait for me?’ ‘Until the stars fall from the sky,’ said Lance, bowing with an elaborate flourish that made Gwen roll her eyes.”

I don’t even have a response to this bullshit.

So Gwen goes to the bathroom and Merlin does his, “hurt her and I’ll kill you,” speech to Lance and afterwards they become friends and Lance offers to be Merlin’s Academic Dad.

When Gwen comes back she is absolutely flipping her shit because she saw Arthur. “’ComeOnComeOnComeOnComeOn!’ she said in a singsong voice. ‘You should see him! He's sitting at a table! Drinking a beer!’” Yes, let’s all go and gawk at him like an animal in the zoo. Gwen and Lance are being really annoying so far.

So Merlin tells Gwen that Arthur is his roommate and that he’s an asshole. He then requests that they not go stare at him like total creepers. Gwen is not happy. “He looked at Gwen and sighed. ‘Look, I promise that you'll get to see him again. In fact I'll text you when he's in the room, so you'll know when's a good time to swing by and visit me in Sally's and meet him properly. I'm sure he'd love to pose for a photo with you, and give you his signature, and all that kind of meet'n'greet thing.’” Ok, Merlin. This shit is why Arthur already doesn’t like you. No inviting people over to stalk your roommate and make promises on his behalf. Stop it.

They all go dance and Merlin makes a fool of himself doing the hammer dance, covered in glitter, wearing DIY hammer dance pants (I don’t know) that he got from… somewhere. Arthur stares at him and Merlin falls off the stage.

Chapter 4

Merlin wonders how many other sorcerers are at St. Andrews and we learn that he is there on scholarship. Must be nice. My poor loan debt ass is going to be paying for the two years I spent in nursing school for like ten years. Cheers.

Merlin hears Gwen laughing, “He spotted her over on the other side of the room, in front of a table advertising the St Andrews Fencing Society.” Gwen? Fencing? I mean, I guess. Why not? She’ll have a lot of time on her hands when she realizes the major she’s chosen doesn’t exist at that school. Gwen is with her roommate, Sophia.

“With that thought in mind, he marched purposefully over to the rainbow-festooned table advertising the St Andrews LGBT Society in cheery glittering letters. ‘Sign me up,’ he said, firmly, grinning at a bald girl with enough silver in her various cavities to sink a small ship. ‘I'm a card-carrying friend of Dorothy, and I'm gagging for a shag.’” What a colorful way to introduce yourself, Merlin.

Merlin stops in the middle of registering for his LGBT club to fantasize about Arthur. As you do.  “’Oh, marvellous,’ said a faintly familiar voice behind him, rippling with laughter. ‘Oh, that's just perfect. Does Arthur know yet?’” The person is Morgana, “’Er...?’ he said, trying to think where he knew her from. ‘Sorry, are you talking to me?’ ‘He doesn't, does he? There'd have been even more bitching and whining if he did,’ she said, decisively. ‘Oh, this is going to be good.’” Get it? Because Arthur’s homophobia is such a hilarious joke and it’s going to be SO LAUGHABLE when he finds out his roommate is gay.

Merlin goes out for coffee with Morgana, who I do like in this fic minus her laughing at Merlin’s sexual orientation in the previous scene. Morgana asks Merlin if he is in to Arthur. “He's an insufferable, rude, arrogant, overprivileged berk, and I wouldn't suck his cock if he was the last man on earth and he was paying me, so there!” Me thinks the man doth protest too much.

“Fine. We won't talk about how much you want to get into my cousin's royal boxer shorts. So – magic!” Morgana gives no fucks. I like that about her. Merlin freaks out because you can’t just go talking about magic all willy nilly like that. Merlin insists on calling magic “macramé,” but Morgana is having none of it. They decided that their cover story for being so familiar with one another is that they have played World of Warcraft for years and are finally meeting in person. Sure. We also learn that Morgana is studying Art History. Good job, Morgana. That is also a subject that St. Andrews provides.

“’Now then – word on the street is that you might actually be worthy of that remarkable name.’ She took a long, thoughtful drag, and Merlin watched blue curls of smoke snake out of her nostrils like she was some kind of very small, elegant dragon. ‘Is it true that you changed the seasons?’ she asked. ‘No!’ Merlin said. ‘Or at least – well, not on purpose.’” Yikes, Merlin. I guess Merlin was 10 and throwing a tantrum about cherries not being in season so he changed the season from winter to summer. He also summoned a kracken when he was 12 years old on a school field trip. Poor Hunith having to deal with Merlin. He sounds like an insufferable child.

They then proceed to get drunk and Morgana becomes Merlin’s Academic Mother thingy. Merlin gets Morgana to be Gwen’s as well.

Chapter 5

Merlin gets back to his dorm and Arthur is there. Arthur apologizes to Merlin and suggests they start over. Arthur then realizes that Merlin is drunk. Merlin drunkenly tells Arthur that he is friends with Morgana and they were drinking together and that she is now Merlin’s Academic Mother. Turns out she is also Arthur’s. Who didn’t see that one coming? Arthur admits that he looked Merlin up and knows a lot of stuff about him. Merlin says stuff he shouldn’t say, basically admitting he is a sorcerer and he finds Arthur hot and Arthur doesn’t pick up on any of it. Arthur is stupid.

Merlin starts to fall asleep on the floor and Arthur can’t have that, for platonic friend reasons, and so he gets Merlin into bed and decides to help him drink water and take some pain killers. “There was an uncertain space of time, and then Merlin was being manhandled upright by someone warm and shirtless, who smelled good. Merlin knew he smelled good because he was slumped bonelessly with his nose pressed into the hollow of a freshly-washed collarbone. Because it seemed like a good idea, he licked it, and made a small appreciative sound, and then tried a gentle bite. The owner of the collarbone gave a startled hiss, and flinched away, but didn't drop him; and the voice, when it came again, was decidedly hoarse.”

See, Arthur is fucking stupid. If a friend/someone I wasn’t into randomly bit and licked my chest, drunk or not, I would be like, “yo, that’s not cool.” Because that’s not something someone does with their platonic friend.

When Merlin wakes up, “Another thought wandered idly through his brain, and he was faintly aware that it was significant: he wasn't alone. He was, in fact, wrapped around somebody else in the manner of an affectionate baby octopus, one leg tangled between theirs, one arm hooked firmly around a neat naked waist and his mouth pressed damply into the warm, soft-sharp curve of a shoulder blade.” Arthur is awake too, “Do you have any idea of how much fun and frivolity I could have been having last night, while you were busy cutting off the circulation in my limbs? I'll have you know I was going to have a fantastic evening.”

Umm… you made the choice to stay behind and spend the night cuddling your roommate, Arthur. You could have shoved him over if you wanted to.

Merlin and Arthur go get breakfast together. Merlin texts Gwen to tell her about Morgana being their Academic Mother and that she is also Arthur’s. Gwen freaks the fuck out.

That’s it for this review. It’s a decent set-up to the fic. We get to know a little bit about Merlin and how powerful he is. We also have a rough start to the Arthur/Merlin friendship but then it’s nice to see Arthur actually own up to his shit and apologize to Merlin. Arthur is stupid for not realizing how into him Merlin is. Gwen and Lance have been pretty annoying so far and if I remember correctly, they continue to be insufferable for the majority of this fic because their “will they won’t they” cliché set-up is stupid.

Until next time

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Retribution Fails

by Dan H

Saturday, 26 June 2010

Dan did not like Retribution Falls~

A little personal history: the original title and subtitle for this article were “Still Up In the Air – Dan Hemmens is ambivalent about Retribution Falls.”

Then over the course of writing this article, I came to realise that while I really enjoyed reading the book (I finished it in two sittings over two days), in retrospect I found large parts of it cheap and annoying, and found myself increasingly unable to defend its hideous gender-fail. I also found out that this thing had been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke award which made me frankly despair, because if this is the best SF has to offer then the genre really is fucked.

So yes, this started out more balanced than it ended up. Short version: the book is quite fun, extremely faily, and not all that well written. Judged as a low-investment romp, it’s alright. Judged as a nominee for a prestigious award, it needs to be killed with fire.

Oh, and spoilers, for those that care.

Anyway, Chris Wooding's Retribution Falls is generally billed as a “steampunk western” although as recent discussions here at FB show, neither term is really well enough defined for this label to have much meaning. Speaking personally, I didn't get much of a western vibe from it, but that's possibly because Kyra and I have been neck deep in Deadwood and therefore I have trouble getting the real “Western” feel from something where people aren't yelling “cocksucker” every two minutes. Or it could be the fact that since it's primarily set onboard a ship, and concerns itself almost exclusively with pirates, it fits more into “pirate” than “cowboy” in my personal cataloguing system. Although actually this is all so much pettifogging since the whole distinction between “fantasy,” “steampunk,” “western,” and “pirate yarn,” can be neatly avoided by treating the whole thing as part of that (now obsolete) genre the “adventure story”.

So yes, Retribution Falls is an adventure story. It concerns the crew of the airship Ketty Jay as they develop from a ragtag group of ne'er do wells into a properly formed and fully functioning crew.

The crew (who are all neatly introduced by means of in-character introductions to one of the viewpoint characters in chapter two) are as follows: Darien Frey, hot lothario captain; Pin, stupid pilot; Harkins, cowardly pilot; Silo, silent technician and obligatory brown person; Malvery, the drunken doctor; Crake, the tormented daemonist and Jez, the new navigator who is also, for what it's worth, the only woman on board. I'm pretty sure I've remembered everybody, and if I've forgotten anyone they're probably highly forgettable.

I'm going to come back to gender issues in a bit, but I'm going to start by pointing out that having one female character out of seven is the worst possible option. Zero out of seven, and you have a setting in which women don't fly airships, which is absolutely fine. Put in exactly one, and you suddenly have a society where women are apparently perfectly accepted on the setting equivalent of the Spanish Main, but never the less you've only got one in your crew. Zero is a better number than one in this situation is all I'm saying.

But like I say, I'll come back to this later.

Anyway, the crew are hired to board another aircraft and steal a cask of gems, for which they will be paid fifty thousand ducats. This too-good-to-be-true job offer turns out (surprise surprise) to be too good to be true. Which results in the crew blowing up an airliner and having to go on the run from both the legitimate military (the “Coalition”) and a variety of scoundrels and bounty hunters that want to hand them over to various interested parties.

So far, so swashbuckling, and it is indeed about sixty percent rollicking good fun. Unfortunately it's then twenty percent tedious exposition, ten percent sloppy writing, ten percent sexism.

Anyway, where to begin:

You Can't Take the Sky From Me

A lot of comparisons have been made between Firefly and Retribution Falls, and this might be a good time to say that much as I find Whedon annoying, and as much pleasure as I take in questioning the man's uber-feminist image it's worth admitting that he does about a million times better than a lot of other writers out there. Sure, Mal Reynolds may have a rampaging case of nice-guy syndrome, and might treat Inara like dirt, but by comparison to Wooding, Whedon deserves every Equality award he's ever got. Which is good, since he's clearly going to keep on getting them.

But I digress.

Superficially, Retribution Falls is a lot like Firefly. It's even got an on-the-run aristocrat with a girl in a box. Structurally, however, it's a lot more like Lost or Heroes.

I'm going to digress again. One of my favourite things about Heroes is the fact that I once read an interview with Tim Kring, in which he admitted that he neither knew nor cared about the history of the superhero genre, and that his main inspiration for Heroes was the way in which Lost (and here I confess to paraphrasing) cynically manipulated its audience by doling out tiny pieces of information about members of its large ensemble cast over the course of the series. He just thought that this was a fantastic structure for a TV show.

Retribution Falls works very much the same way. The first three or four chapters are taken up with fast-paced introductions to the cast, which more or less go like this:

“Hello, I see that bullet wound you had healed mysteriously fast”

“Yes, it is, mysterious isn't it?”

“I know, I noticed it because of something that happened in my past”

“Your past? Gosh, might there be something mysterious about it?”

“Why yes, you'll find that most members of the crew have something mysterious about them.”

“Wait, we've just heard news that we're being followed by the dread pirate Trinica Dracken!”

“The dread pirate Trinica Dracken you say! Gosh, mysteriously I think the captain may have some kind of connection to her, in his past. His mysterious past.”

“Gosh how mysterious!”

It's not quite that bad. But it's almost that bad. Although it's not necessarily that bad that it's that bad, because this really does make the whole thing quite readable. Yes it's shoddy and manipulative, but the thing about shoddy, manipulative tricks is that they work. Show me a character with a mysterious past, and I'll be unable to put the book down until I've either found out what that mysterious past is, or convinced myself that I'm never going to. Therefore if you give me seven characters, each with their own mysterious past, and give me the background on one every four chapters then you can pretty much guarantee that I'll be reading until one in the morning.

Of course the downside of this kind of strategy is that in-the-moment readability comes at the cost of after-the-fact satisfaction. Few and far between are the occasions on which I've discovered a character's secret backstory and not found it some combination of trite, predictable, and implausible. It's like popcorn, utterly compelling but at the end all you're left with is a faint cardboardy aftertaste.

Structure and Story Issues

The book is certainly readable, and mostly fun, but there are times when it bogs down in tedious exposition. This would be bad enough if it was just your classic “as you know, your father, the King...” dialogue, although there is an awful lot of it – people in this world seem to spend an inordinate amount of time having conversations in which they explain the basic causes and consequences of wars that happened a couple of years ago, the equivalent of people in the real world saying “of course after the Al-Quaeda bombings in 2001, the American government launched a series of military actions throughout the Middle East, beginning by attacking the Taliban who at that time were in control of Afghanistan...” over their morning coffee. Unfortunately, as

other reviewers

have pointed out, the same principle is applied to little things like character development.

The key offener here is Darien Frey himself, the vagabond captain of a vagabond crew, guiding his motley band of reprobates to high adventure on the open skies. The emotional thrust of the book, such as it is, involves Frey learning to take responsibility for his role as captain, and to learn respect and affection for his crew (and perhaps for other people in his life as well).

The problem with this is that our only insight into Frey's emotional state is what the book tells us Frey's emotional state is. We are told early on that he does not value his crew, and that he considers himself a bit of a loser. We are told later that he does value his crew, and that he's pretty much okay with himself, and has accepted the responsibilities that come with his position as captain. The problem is that – with the exception of a couple of clearly signposted set-pieces - we see no appreciable change in his behaviour, or even his attitude. The man who leads his crew the a doomed attempt to plunder the Ace of Skulls at the start of the book is not discernibly different from the one who spearheads the attack on Retribution Falls at the end. Both ultimately involve Frey risking his ship and his crew, without their knowledge or consent, in pursuit of a large reward which he has little reason to expect receiving. The fact that the first attack is doomed and the second succeeds has everything to do with narrative structure and nothing to do with Fray's leadership choices.

To put it another way, Frey spends the first half of the book chiding himself for his selfishness, indolence, and pisspoor leadership skills. By the end of the book he has stopped chiding himself for all of these things, but has failed to show any actual change in his behaviour. Which creates the impression that all of his growth and development over the course of the book has served only to make him less self-aware.

A

member of the twitterati

sums this up all very succinctly as “The Heavy Handed Adventures of Captain Uttercock”.

In many ways, the book reminded me of

The Last Five Years

. I spent so much of the book going “this guy is a cock, am I supposed to think this guy is a cock, I must be supposed to think this guy is a cock, but nobody else seems to think this guy as a cock except his psycho bitch exes, but this guy is clearly a cock...” that it wound up being remarkably intrusive. I had no problem with the other unsympathetic characters (Grayther Crake the daemonist, for example, is clearly a judgmental asshole, but he's obviously supposed to be a judgmental asshole so I understand how I'm supposed to react to him) but with Frey I always felt like my perception of his flaws was always slightly to one side of the author's perception.

For example, the book opens with Fray and Crake captured by a gang lord (here Wooding gains points for starting with some action, and loses them immediately for having the action be completely unrelated to the rest of the story). The Gang Lord threatens to kill Crake unless Fray gives him the ignition codes to the Ketty Jay. Fray of course refuses, and Crake has a massive chip on his shoulder about this throughout the whole book. Then later in the book, Trinica Dracken (evil pirate bitch-queen – incidentally I'm using the word “bitch” a lot in this review, for reasons that should become clear later) captures them again, and makes the same threat, and this time Fray gives her the codes, thus causing a big sign to appear saying THIS IS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.

That particular element would have been more effective but for two things. Firstly, it was so telegraphed it lost all its impact – Crake spent the entire freaking book saying “hey Frey if that EVER HAPPENS AGAIN you'd better give over the damned codes, m'kay.” Secondly, refusing to give up the codes was absolutely the right decision.

Consider. You are being held captive by a psychotic bastard who is only keeping you alive because you have information they want. Your only chance of survival is to not give them the damned information. If you do give them the information, chances are they'll kill all of you anyway. In this situation, giving up the codes is certainly understandable, but it's also completely stupid.

This was broadly the interpretation I was assuming the Doctor was driving at when, after Crake complained that the captain almost let him get killed, the Doctor insisted that no, Frey was a good man who would never let his crew down. I thought, in fact, that they were going for a kind of Mal Reynolds effect – making the captain good but not nice, the kind of man who would always do the right thing, even if that meant letting somebody die for the good of the ship.

Turns out this wasn't what they meant at all. Clearly, giving up the codes to the psychotic maniac was supposed to be the right decision, which is why it's CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT when Frey does it later, so when the Doctor says he's a good man he just kind of means – I'm not sure. That he might be a selfish, whiney, borderline amoral dickhead but at least he wasn't actively malicious?

The only reading I can really support for Frey's character development over the book – as in the only reading which I think the author and the text expect you to take away from it – is that Frey is a good man deep down, but lacks the confidence to act on that goodness. He is, I think, supposed to be afraid of getting too close to people and it is that fear which we are supposed to see as his great weakness, not the fact that he chooses to act on that fear by treating people really unacceptably badly. To draw yet another comparison which will require me to link my own articles, it's rather like Tanis Blacksword in

Banewreaker

- Tanis as you might recall murdered his wife in a jealous rage, and perhaps I'm being a prude, but to my mind the key problem here is not the fact that he flew into a jealous rage, but the fact that while he was in it he murdered his freaking wife.

Wooding seems to be under the impression that Darien Frey is a good man who sometimes allows his insecurities to get the better of him, and seems to see the book as chronicling his battle to overcome those insecurities. I read Darien Frey as a gigantic asshole, who sometimes uses his perfectly forgivable insecurities as an excuse to treat people like shit.

Women

Probably the most illustrative example of this dissonance in Frey’s personality is in his reaction to his ex-fiancée, Trinica Dracken.

We are first introduced to Trinica as a terrifying pirate, a ruthless, ass-kicking queen of the skies. We learn fairly early on that she has some kind of connection to Frey, and I initially had high expectations for their reunion. To fully explain the reasons behind this, I’m going to have to go into some detail about Frey’s behaviour up to this point, so bear with me.

Throughout the book it has been clear that Frey has a history of treating his romantic partners like dirt. It is clear also that part of the reason he treats his romantic partners like dirt is that gorgeous women constantly throw themselves at him. Not only throw themselves at him, but throw themselves at him and actually fall in love with him, and then stifle him with their smothering girlness.

For example, when Jez – the new navigator – shows up in chapter two, Frey observes that he’s glad she isn’t too attractive, because if she was he’d “be obliged to sleep with her.”

How exactly is the causality supposed to work on this one? Does he mean that if she was more attractive he would want to sleep with her, in which case it wouldn’t be an obligation really, would it? Or does he mean that if she was more attractive she would want to sleep with him? In which case what, does he think that unattractive women don’t have libidos? (I suspect the answer to that last question is probably “yes” actually). At the time I took the most charitable reading, which is that this is evidence of Frey being a self-deluding cock who isn’t capable of owning his sexuality, and that over the course of the book he would come to realise this.

Then about halfway through the book, he has to infiltrate an Awakener (think Catholicism meets Scientology) stronghold in order to find one of his many former conquests and – if you’ll pardon the phrase – pump her for information. It’s a single sex institution and he spends most of the time while he’s infiltrating the building fantasising about all the nubile, sex-starved young women he’ll find in here. I’ll say here that I actually found his fantasising perfectly reasonable, because again I read it as evidence that Frey is a bit of a prick, and was quite pleased when it became clear that his infiltration wasn’t going to end in spankings and baby-oil.

Then he meets his ex (whose name I shall look up when I get home), who kicks him in the head (because she r strong wimminz!) and has a go at him for leaving her in a nunnery for two years, despite having promised that they’d always be together. Frey then has this long, self-justifying internal monologue about how you had to lie to women because if you didn’t they’d only go and find somebody who did lie to them (because you see women want a man who says he’ll be with them forever, and men just want sex, and there is no overlap whatsoever – no men are interested in commitment, no women are interested in straight-up fucking) and that it therefore wasn’t his fault. Then of course he lies to her again, they have sex and she tells him everything he wants to know, and he promises to come back for her which he of course has no intention of doing. But you have to lie to women, so that’s okay.

So anyway, by the time Trinica Dracken shows up on the screen Frey’s pick-up-artist bullshit is wearing pretty thin. Up to this point, however, I was honestly expecting Trinica Dracken to turn the whole thing on its head. I was expecting this to be the one relationship in his whole sorry past that had actually been a partnership of equals, a woman who instead of clinging to him with doe-eyed devotion had been strong and confident in her own right, whose relationship with Frey had been tempestuous and remarkable. I expected the love of Frey’s life to be a woman who had a ship of her own, a crew of her own and a life of her own. It wouldn’t have justified his acting like a dickhead ever since, but it would at least have explained it. I know that this strays into the realms of

counter-factual criticism

but my intent here isn't to say “Trinica Dracken should have been different” but rather “I had a number of false impressions about what Trinica Dracken would be like, that led me to read all the sexist bullshit in the book more favourably than I might have otherwise.”

Here, for what it is worth, is a summary of what Frey's relationship with Trinica Dracken is revealed to have been like:

Trinica Dracken was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist for whom Frey worked. When they were both in their late teens, they fell in love. Trinica was a lovely sweet girl with long hair who wore white dresses, Frey was much as he is now. Eventually, the relationship had gone wrong. Here is Frey's description of it:

In the early months he'd believed they'd be together forever. He told himself he'd found a woman for the rest of his life. He couldn't conceive of meeting someone more wonderful than she was, and he wasn't tempted to try. But it was one thing to daydream such notions, and quite another to be faced with putting them into practice. When she began to talk of engagement, with a straightforwardness he'd previously found charming, he began to idolize her a little less. His patience became less. No longer could he endlessly indulge her flights of fancy. His smile became fixed as she played her girlish games with him. Her jokes all seemed to go on too long. He found himself wishing she'd just be sensible

Okay, leaving aside for the moment that Frey's analysis of what went wrong with his relationship boils down to “the bitch wouldn't keep her mouth shut” note that here his dissatisfaction with Trinica stems simultaneously from (a) the fact that he starts to see that she isn't the perfect fantasy figure he thought she was (he “idolizes her less” which in sane-person world is a good thing in a relationship) and (b) the fact that she still displays many qualities of the fantasy figure he wants her to be (her “girlish games” and her “flights of fancy”). You've got to feel sorry for the girl, because I seriously don't know how she was supposed to please this arrant cocksucker.

It gets worse. Obviously Frey takes the sensible and mature attitude to being in a relationship with somebody for whom you feel manifest contempt, which is to agree to marry her, get her pregnant, and leave her at the altar. He does, of course, admit that this was sub optimal. Here is his magnanimous and painful admission of culpability, which represents a significant moment in his growth and maturation:

His love for her had been the most precious thing in his life, and she'd ruined it with her insecurities, her need to tie him down. She'd made him cowardly. In his heart he knew that, but he could never say it.

This? Seriously Chris Wooding? This is Frey's big moment of self-realization? That he was wrong to let her make him stop loving her? Not, say, wrong to be an emotionally abusive asshole? Or that he was wrong to abandon his pregnant girlfriend on their wedding day? Oh no, his great fault, his great flaw, is that she made him cowardly?

A fairer man might point out at this stage that Trinica does at least call him on this, the fact that he's always blaming his problems on everybody else. The problem is he doesn't stop doing it, but the book treats him like he has.

Anyway, Frey abandons Trinica, leaving her pregnant in a world where, it is strongly implied, a woman who has a child outside wedlock is basically ruined. This results in Trinica attempting suicide, which results in her having a miscarriage. Which results in Frey spending the next ten years hating her for murdering their child.

Of course here again, Frey has a Big Character Development moment, when he realizes that while he is totally justified in hating Trinica, because she totally did murder their child, he has to accept that he is also partly responsible for her murdering their child, because he allowed her to make him cowardly, so that when she attempted suicide (which, let us be clear, was also cowardly) he didn't get back in time to save the day.

To put it another way, Darien Frey's character arc ends with him confronting a woman who he emotionally abused to the point at which she tried to kill herself, and forgiving her for it.

Up until his reunion with Trinica, Frey comes across as a feckless, self-absorbed cock. His interactions with his former love, far from making him more sympathetic, instead reveal him to be a judgemental asshole. He accuses her of murdering their child – an accusation neither Trinica nor the text challenges. He calls her a coward for attempting suicide – an accusation which the text treats as factual. And of course he has a great deal to say about her appearance:

Her skin was powdered ghost-white. Her hair – so blonde it was almost albino – was cut short, sticking up in uneven tufts as if it had been butchered with a knife. Her lips were a red deep enough to be vulgar

Ironically, of course, this actually makes her sound totally awesome (although where the fuck does he get off judging her choice of lipstick – I'm sorry Darien, is your ex not looking virginal enough for you? Well fuck you you misogynistic shit). But just in case we don't get that her new badass look is bad m'kay we get the following exchange during their next meeting:

”How'd you get this way Trinica?” he said. He raised his head and gestured at her across the gloomy study. “The hair, the skin...” he hesitated. “You used to be beautiful.” “I'm done with beautiful,” she replied

Because of course after she attempted suicide (sorry, I mean “murdered her unborn child” - her life is not, after all, important here) she tried to run away on an airship, but she was captured by pirates who gang raped her. And of course she responded to that by making herself UGLY. Because it is made very clear in the text that She Was Raped Because She Was Beautiful. Incidentally, despite being “through with beautiful” she still wears lipstick, and apparently a particularly vulgar shade of it, if Frey is any judge. I can't be sure, but I'd have thought if you were going down the “I shall make myself ugly so people won't rape me” route you'd avoid lipstick entirely. Then again, maybe Wooding knows something I don't.

And of course Frey's reaction to the whole thing is:

He didn't pity her. He couldn't. He only mourned the loss of the young woman he'd known ten years ago. This mockery of his lover was his own doing. He had fashioned her, and she damned him by her existence.

So ... your ex girlfriend, the former love of your life shows up, and tells you that she's spent the better part of the last ten years getting beaten and raped by a series of pirate crews until she'd eventually clawed her way into a position where she finally had a modicum of security, and all you care about is the fact that she's no longer the innocent little girl you fell in love with? The innocent little girl who you fell in love with but also treated like shit, wanted to get rid of, impregnated and abandoned? You can't spare one second to think about anything except how her present situation reflects on you.

Die in a fire you smug, self-centred little fuckstain.

Umm, there's a fair amount more fail in the book, but I'm really not sure I can go on. Suffice to say that the only other female characters in the book of any significance are Jez the navigator, whose contribution to the climactic confrontation is to whore herself out to a mid-ranking Naval officer (and she doesn't even get to do it on page) and Bess, the golem that Crake created out of his eight year old niece, who he stabbed to death while possessed by a daemon. Crake occasionally angsts about allowing the crew to use Bess (who it is strongly implied can feel pain) as portable cover in firefights. This does not stop him from doing it repeatedly.

Fantasy Rape Watch

Number of Named Female Characters: 4

Of Whom Protagonist's ex Lovers: 2

Of Whom Dead: 2

Of Whom Rape Victims: 1

Of Whom Murdered By Viewpoint Character: 1

Causes of Rape and Sexual Abuse, by Attribution in Text

Nature of Violent Culture: 0%

Nature of Patriarchal Society: 0%

Decisions Made Freely by Rapists: 0%

Beauty of Victim: 100%

Consequences of Rape and Sexual Abuse, by Importance as Judged by Text

Emotional Distress to Victim: 0%

Physical Injury to Victim: 0%

Emotional Distress to Victim's Ex-Boyfriend: 25%

Victim No Longer Physically Desirable to Ex-Boyfriend: 75%

Who Suffers as a Result of a Woman's Suicide Attempt, by Attribution in Text

Her: 0%

Her Unborn Child: 70%

Her Boyfriend: 30%

Who Suffers as the Result of the Murder of an Eight Year Old Girl, as Judged by Text

The Eight Year Old Girl: 20%

The Murderer: 80%

Ways In Which An Intelligent, Talented Woman, Who Has Superhuman Strength And Is Nearly Invulnerable to Physical Damage Could Attempt To Rescue Her Companions At Short Notice

Steal a Ship and Mount a Rescue: 0%

Sneak into Execution and Mount a Rescue: 0%

Prostitute Herself: 100%

My Level of Surprise That This Book Was Nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award:

30%

My Hope For the Genre, Taking This Book As a Standard:

0%Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Minority Warrior

~

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http://alex-von-cercek.livejournal.com/

at 20:16 on 2010-06-26Holy shit.

I don't even have anything else to say. Just...holy shit.

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http://furare.livejournal.com/

at 20:48 on 2010-06-26Wow. That just *is* a world of fail, isn't it?

Focusing just on the "you murdered our child" bit for a minute, it's uncomfortably reminiscent of

something I read recently

about men who want to make abortion all about them, a terrible tragedy foisted on them by the actions of an evil woman. I know a suicide-induced miscarriage isn't exactly abortion, but I think Frey's reaction comes quite close to theirs. Made me wonder if it was possibly intentional - the parallel seems quite obvious to me.

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Arthur B

at 22:49 on 2010-06-26

Focusing just on the "you murdered our child" bit for a minute, it's uncomfortably reminiscent of something I read recently about men who want to make abortion all about them, a terrible tragedy foisted on them by the actions of an evil woman. I know a suicide-induced miscarriage isn't exactly abortion, but I think Frey's reaction comes quite close to theirs. Made me wonder if it was possibly intentional - the parallel seems quite obvious to me.

It's an analogy that jumped out at me too. At the very least, if performing an act that leads to a miscarriage is regarded by Frey as murder, then abortion has to come under that category for Frey's views (and the text's views, it seems) to be even slightly internally consistent. And "men's rights" morons do seem to like portraying abortion as a crime against fathers, and to blame women for everything that men do wrong in a relationship.

Out of interest, how do books get nominated for the Clarke award?

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Dan H

at 23:11 on 2010-06-26

I know a suicide-induced miscarriage isn't exactly abortion, but I think Frey's reaction comes quite close to theirs. Made me wonder if it was possibly intentional - the parallel seems quite obvious to me.

I think that's fair, there's a rather skeevy implication that she deliberately attempted suicide *in order* to induce a miscarriage *in order* to get at Frey.

Because Women Are Evil.

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http://furare.livejournal.com/

at 12:59 on 2010-06-27Because she couldn't have wanted to kill herself because she couldn't deal with the disgrace *he* left her with? I'm not trying to undermine her autonomy by saying it's his fault she slept with him; however, it's unquestionably his fault that he abandoned her at the altar. So surely, by his own logic, if she had succeeded in committing suicide, he would have murdered her. (Just kidding, I can see that Frey's "logic" serves no purpose other than to make sure that he is not genuinely to blame for anything.)

One slightly off-topic thing I feel the need to say is that I Have Had Enough of anything - books, magazine articles, people - who claim that women all want romance and/or commitment, while men just want sex. A lot of women actually want sex, and some of them are actually willing to admit that they're not looking for candlelit dinners or long-term commitment in exchange. Actually, "in exchange" is the problem, isn't it? It implies that sex is something you have to compensate a woman for if she "gives" it to you.

And seriously. If a guy I was dating told me that he wanted to "be with me forever", I would probably laugh in his face. And then try to scrape him off my leg. I don't mind commitment in and of itself, but that sort of declaration fucking terrifies me. But then, I've come to the conclusion that when pop culture talks about "women" and "what women want", they are almost never talking about me. It's like I don't exist or something.

To bring this comment back to the book under discussion, I think it's a real shame that the author squandered a potentially awesome character by treading tired old ground. I mean, a woman who's a badass airship pirate captain! That has so much potential - a character fantasy-reading women might enjoy and identify with. If she wasn't defined almost entirely by what men had done to her. Kind of typical for the genre, though, isn't it.

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Niall

at 14:38 on 2010-06-27

Out of interest, how do books get nominated for the Clarke award?

The Clarke Award is administered by a body called the Serendip Foundation. Each year, they arrange a panel of five judges: traditionally (that is, for pretty much the whole of the Award's thirty-year existence) two of these have been nominated by the British Science Fiction Association, two by the Science Fiction Foundation, and one by A. N. Other invited body, which at present is SF Crowsnest.com, and has been the Science Museum and various other groups. Around this time of year, the Chair of the judging panel writes to UK publishers inviting them to submit books for consideration. Any science fiction novel published in the UK in the relevant calendar year is eligible; the Award does not define "science fiction" or "novel", that's left up to publishers and to the judges to debate. The judges read all the books. They may ask the Chair to contact publishers and request that other titles are submitted for consideration.

The judges then meet in February (ish) to select a shortlist of six. The shortlist is announced in March or April. The judges re-read the books they shortlisted, and meet in April/May (for the last few years, it's been at the start of the Sci-Fi-London film festival) to select a winner.

Basically, it's the Booker Prize process, although I think that in the case of the Booker the Chair is a full member of the panel, and in the Clarke they're a facilitator, appointed by Serendip to run the judges' meetings but not having a vote themselves. Other differences: publishers aren't limited to submitting only two titles, as they are in the Booker; and judges are typically asked to serve for two consecutive years (not all on the same schedule, so there's some refreshment and some carry-over from year to year).

The other titles shortlisted this year were Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts, Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson, Spirit by Gwyneth Jones, Far North by Marcel Theroux, and the eventual winner, The City & The City be China Mieville.

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Niall

at 14:40 on 2010-06-27Oh, and the judges for this year were Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Chris Hill for the BSFA, Francis Spufford and Rhiannon Lassiter for the SF Foundation, and Paul Skevington for SF Crowsnest.

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http://alex-von-cercek.livejournal.com/

at 16:36 on 2010-06-27

To bring this comment back to the book under discussion, I think it's a real shame that the author squandered a potentially awesome character by treading tired old ground. I mean, a woman who's a badass airship pirate captain! That has so much potential - a character fantasy-reading women might enjoy and identify with. If she wasn't defined almost entirely by what men had done to her. Kind of typical for the genre, though, isn't it.

Hell, Trinica sounds like the only interesting character in the book. In fact, the book that would be interesting to read would be titled "Kill Frey" and it would be about Trinica Dracken crossing off names from her Death List.

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Dan H

at 21:10 on 2010-06-27

Actually, "in exchange" is the problem, isn't it? It implies that sex is something you have to compensate a woman for if she "gives" it to you.

I believe this is an attitude which I've heard succinctly summarized as "women have sex, men want sex." And yeah, it's kind of a problem. It creates this notion that sex is something that men are supposed to get out of women by whatever means society deems acceptable, which leads to all sorts of nasty places.

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Melissa G.

at 22:31 on 2010-06-27

One slightly off-topic thing I feel the need to say is that I Have Had Enough of anything - books, magazine articles, people - who claim that women all want romance and/or commitment, while men just want sex.

I totally forgive you for off-topicness because I am so sick of that attitude too! It's so annoying and gender box-y.

But I have to say that I'm even more sick and tired of this attitude:

Because it is made very clear in the text that She Was Raped Because She Was Beautiful.

Because that is such utter BS and a total misunderstanding of what rape is and why it happens. Rape is about power, not desire or lust or being unable to control oneself because the other person is so beautiful. It's so disgusting and irritating to see rape twisted into something where the guy just can't control himself because she's so damn hot. Come on, who could blame him? And then, that brings you to the "She should be flattered he raped her; he could have any woman he wants" mentality. Just...no.

Apologies for going slightly off-topic myself, but that mentality about rape is a huge rage button of mine. Especially since I recently seem to be reading scripts (for my job) of movies where violence against women seems to be the most used plot point for the male character to do anything.

Women in Refrigerators

, anyone?

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Dan H

at 22:55 on 2010-06-27

And then, that brings you to the "She should be flattered he raped her; he could have any woman he wants" mentality. Just...no.

Which might be an apposite moment to bring up the scene fairly early in the book when the characters are attacking an information-broker's hideout, and the guy's pet whores are holed up with shotguns worried that the band of armed psychos who just burst in might, y'know, rape them.

But fortunately Frey reveals that it is he, the hot man from earlier. So he can't be a rapist, because he is hot!

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Melissa G.

at 23:20 on 2010-06-27

So he can't be a rapist, because he is hot!

::facepalm:: That's right, hot guys can't be rapists, and ugly girls can't be rape victims. I mean, who'd want to rape them? They're ugly. And rape is just about how hot a girl is. Really, it's the ultimate compliment!

Sigh. The fail just hurts sometimes....

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http://alex-von-cercek.livejournal.com/

at 23:22 on 2010-06-27You know, taken 100% and entirely out of context, the interchange of

”How'd you get this way Trinica?” he said. He raised his head and gestured at her across the gloomy study. “The hair, the skin...” he hesitated. “You used to be beautiful.” “I'm done with beautiful,” she replied.

could actually be a snappy wisecrack on the lines of those typically delivered by pulp heroes or, say, Sam Spade. You know what, I think we should all ignore the context, Trinica is an awesome character without it.

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Dan H

at 23:28 on 2010-06-27

Sigh. The fail just hurts sometimes....

To be very slightly fair, I should add that I'm only presenting one of several possible readings. It's possible that they decide to trust him because they recognize him from earlier, for example, but mixed in with all the faily stuff about beauty it bugged me.

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Melissa G.

at 01:55 on 2010-06-28@Dan

That's true, but there's still a sigh on my part at rape-fail in general because I've heard that kind of mentality and attitude expressed far too many times. Especially in conjunction with celebrities who get accused of rape. >.< So the book may get a pass, but society does not. ::shakes fist angrily at society::

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Wardog

at 09:26 on 2010-06-28I was going to read this ... now I am not.

I am depressed.

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http://furare.livejournal.com/

at 11:06 on 2010-06-28Oh hell, don't get me started on the rapefail. I didn't touch it in previous comments because it kinda makes me too angry to write coherently. Let's just say I've read an awful lot about rape in recent weeks and months, and I am sickened by the attitude Melissa mentions with respect to rapist celebrities. I guess the assumption that a celebrity could "have any woman he wants" is pretty damned insulting, too. Sorry, but I don't sleep with guys who act like they're doing me a favour just by noticing me.

And on the general subject of rape and rapefail - it is really aggravating that blog posts on rape are *always* commented on by someone claiming that the real victims of rape are men who are unfairly accused. Because women love "crying rape" and having their sex lives, choice of clothes and conduct at the time in question, and a million and one other things scrutinised. I would not be surprised if an awful lot of retracted accusations were actually due to the fact that investigation of the crime makes the victim feel like they were at fault.

Regardless, "false" reporting occurs in 2-8% of cases, which is about the same as an awful lot of other crimes. (Rape apologists carry round a 41% false report statistic that was taken from a fatally flawed study done in the 70s, rather than the most recent FBI statistics, because it's the one that makes them look right.) But then, issues that largely affect women - like rape and domestic violence - have to be invaded by men telling us that MEN are the victims here, that rape is a stick evil women use to beat MEN and why are we still talking anyway SHUT UP.

So yeah. Novels - and anything else written by anyone ever - that put the blame for rape on anything the victim did or is, rather than the decision made by the rapist to rape her, are things I have no patience with at all. The fact that rape is seen as the victim's fault in real life makes it really far from okay to say that in a novel. Unless you're trying to make the point that your viewpoint character is a misogynistic shit - but I don't think that was the intended reading here.

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Melissa G.

at 01:14 on 2010-06-29

Oh hell, don't get me started on the rapefail. I didn't touch it in previous comments because it kinda makes me too angry to write coherently.

Ditto for me. It's gotten to the point where every time rape shows up in a book/show/movie/what have you, I tend to roll my eyes and then start to judge harshly. Usually it just seems like the writer thinks "What's the most traumatic thing that could happen to this girl? Oh, I know! She gets raped." Or even worse, "What's the most traumatic thing that could happen to this guy? Oh, I know! His girlfriend/wife/mother/daughter/sister gets raped." It just ends up seeming unoriginal and lazy - not to mention the possibility of epic fail.

I do just want to plug something that I was really impressed with as far as how it handled rape and incorporated it into the story. And surprisingly, it's a comic book! It was Ultimate Elektra - a short mini-series type deal. I actually thought that the rape was handled realistically and was meaningful to the story; it all felt like something that could really happen. I'd love to know if anyone else read it and what you thought of it.

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Arthur B

at 01:49 on 2010-06-29

It's gotten to the point where every time rape shows up in a book/show/movie/what have you, I tend to roll my eyes and then start to judge harshly.

Same here. I started to read

The Heart of Myrial

by Maggie Furey a while back, and at first it was silly but basically harmless fun.

Then there was a bit where some peasant woman gets raped by bailiffs to establish two things: that their employer is a rotter, and that the guardsmen who show up and summarily execute the rapist they catch in the act are basically good people who we should cheer for.

I stopped reading at that point.

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http://ignisophis.livejournal.com/

at 15:03 on 2010-09-14A friend of mine recently recommended this book to me. I read it, really enjoyed it and recommended it to my friends, one of whom pointed me to this review. Which is full of things I disagree with, so I thought I should post to explain why.

Judged as a low-investment romp, it’s alright. Judged as a nominee for a prestigious award, it needs to be killed with fire.

Surely a book should be judged on its merits, or lack thereof? Nominations for the Clarke Award have very little to do with quality, and shouldn't your issues with its shortlisting be a matter for a review of the Clarke Award and/or its judges? After all, I doubt Chris Wooding wrote it specifically with the Clarke Award in mind.

I don't agree that zero female crew would have been better than one - it gave me the impression, not of a setting where "women are apparently perfectly accepted", but of a setting where there is very strong social pressure against women entering that line of work. Given the sexism inherent in the rest of the setting, positive discrimination in the crew's gender ratio would have changed the whole focus of the story.

To put it another way, Frey spends the first half of the book chiding himself for his selfishness, indolence, and pisspoor leadership skills. By the end of the book he has stopped chiding himself for all of these things, but has failed to show any actual change in his behaviour. Which creates the impression that all of his growth and development over the course of the book has served only to make him less self-aware.

I had a different reading on all of this. For me, part of the appeal of the book is that almost all of the information we have is told from the point of view of a character who is, not to put too fine a point on it, a horrible self-deluding wreck of a human being, damaged by the consequences of his own actions and continuing to damage both himself and those around him. Considering the timescale of the book, I think any genuine change in his behaviour would be too rushed to be plausible. Instead, we see a change in his internal attitude and intentions which will maybe lead to a future change in his behaviour, and till then he's faking it until he can make it. We've spent the whole book being shown how much he wraps himself in delusional self-justification and I don't think there's ever much of a change in its level, just in its form and motives and likely consequences.

That particular element would have been more effective but for two things. Firstly, it was so telegraphed it lost all its impact – Crake spent the entire freaking book saying “hey Frey if that EVER HAPPENS AGAIN you'd better give over the damned codes, m'kay.” Secondly, refusing to give up the codes was absolutely the right decision.

I did find it extremely effective, and honestly didn't know which way Frey would jummp. Firstly, Crake's earlier harping on about it did telegraph that a similar situation would probably happen again but could have just been to add weight and consequence should Frey have handled it the same way. Secondly, to my mind it was the right decision not to give the codes the first time, but the right decision to

give

the codes the second time - Macarde just wanted the information, the ship and a bit of revenge, whereas Dracken primarily wanted Frey and the crew and had a good reason to kill Crake; to her the information and the ship were just a bonus. Which is why I didn't think we were meant to think that giving up the codes the first time would've been the right decision.

The only reading I can really support for Frey's character development over the book – as in the only reading which I think the author and the text expect you to take away from it – is that Frey is a good man deep down, but lacks the confidence to act on that goodness.

This is a reading I completely disagree with. If this is the case then why, on the third-to-last page (after Frey has done some heroic things and finally started to bond with his crew), does the author feel the need to remind us of all the horrible things Frey has done? The impression I get from the text is that Frey is a horribly flawed man, but that even horribly flawed people can have some redeeming features, can occasionally do good things despite themselves, and can strive to be better.

Wooding seems to be under the impression that Darien Frey is a good man who sometimes allows his insecurities to get the better of him, and seems to see the book as chronicling his battle to overcome those insecurities.

I'm always reluctant to claim knowledge of an author's mind, but here in particular I think you're doing Wooding a great disservice. Particularly as Wooding never tells us what he thinks, only what Frey thinks.

because you see women want a man who says he’ll be with them forever, and men just want sex, and there is no overlap whatsoever – no men are interested in commitment, no women are interested in straight-up fucking

For me this was one of the cues that Frey's thought processes are not an authorial voice. He may think about it that way, but the one sex scene in the book has the woman taking the initiative and displaying a greater sexual appetite.

Causes of Rape and Sexual Abuse, by Attribution in Text Beauty of Victim: 100%

According to testimony of said victim, possibly in order to give herself security by thinking that she's safe from rape now that she is attempting to present herself as being far from beautiful. Attributed by a character within the text rather than the text itself.

Consequences of Rape and Sexual Abuse, by Importance as Judged by Text Emotional Distress to Victim's Ex-Boyfriend: 25% Victim No Longer Physically Desirable to Ex-Boyfriend: 75%

Who Suffers as a Result of a Woman's Suicide Attempt, by Attribution in Text Her Unborn Child: 70%, Her Boyfriend: 30%

Both according to the viewpoint of Frey, who as we've already established is a horrible self-centred git. Judged and attributed by a character within the text rather than by the text itself.

Who Suffers as the Result of the Murder of an Eight Year Old Girl, as Judged by Text The Eight Year Old Girl: 20%, The Murderer: 80%

Again, this is according to the point of view of the murderer, not judged by the text itself.

Ways In Which An Intelligent, Talented Woman, Who Has Superhuman Strength And Is Nearly Invulnerable to Physical Damage Could Attempt To Rescue Her Companions At Short Notice Steal a Ship and Mount a Rescue: 0% Sneak into Execution and Mount a Rescue: 0% Prostitute Herself: 100%

Jez is somewhat stronger than she would be as a human, can heal from a knock to the head and a flesh wound and is a decent shot, but this hardly makes her anything like invulnerable and it certainly doesn't make her some kind of superhero. The prostitution did irk me, but I mostly saw it as a comment on the way in which she was coming to see herself as an inhuman monster, and an acknowledgement that she was intelligent enough to realise she couldn't have pulled off either of the first two options on her own.

Overall, I think the heart of our disagreement over the book comes down to a preference for or against didacticism. It's something I strongly dislike - I want stories which present interesting situations and complex flawed characters then leave me to make up my own mind about them. Which don't try to insert authorial comment into the mindset of a flawed and potentially unreliable viewpoint character. Which present a sexist and corrupt society as what it is, without feeling the need to explicitly lecture the audience about it.

Judging from your review, particularly those percentage breakdowns at the end, you want a story in which the text and the author tell the audience what they should think of the horrible things that happen and the horrible things the characters do?

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Arthur B

at 15:43 on 2010-09-14Dan said:

Frey spends the first half of the book chiding himself for his selfishness, indolence, and pisspoor leadership skills. By the end of the book he has stopped chiding himself for all of these things

ignisophis said:

Instead, we see a change in his internal attitude and intentions which will maybe lead to a future change in his behaviour

How does going from "I'm quite bothered by my behaviour" to "I'm OK with my behaviour" make it

more

likely that he's going to change?

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Dan H

at 16:07 on 2010-09-14

Overall, I think the heart of our disagreement over the book comes down to a preference for or against didacticism.

I don't think it has anythign to do with that. Didacticism is one of those irregular adjectives. You're being Didactic, I'm just presenting things as they are. He has an agenda, I'm telling a story.

It's something I strongly dislike - I want stories which present interesting situations and complex flawed characters then leave me to make up my own mind about them.

So do I. Retribution Falls does neither of those things.

Your interpretation of Frey - as a flawed and complex but ultimately sympathetic character, that despite the horrible things he does he is always striving to be a better man - is exactly the one which I complain that the book was forcing down my throat.

Which don't try to insert authorial comment into the mindset of a flawed and potentially unreliable viewpoint character.

Authorial comment is *absolutely* necessary when you're dealing with a flawed and potentially unreliable viewpoint character. Otherwise how do you know they're flawed and potentially unreliable?

Which present a sexist and corrupt society as what it is, without feeling the need to explicitly lecture the audience about it.

You're presenting a false dichotomy here. You seem to believe that the options are "present a sexist and corrupt society in an uncritical and shallow manner" or "lecture people".

I'd also point out that /Retribution Falls/ does not, in fact, present a sexist and corrupt society. It doesn't really present a society at all. It's an adventure novel, it pays no attention to the way its setting would or could actually work. What you take as "presenting a sexist society as it actually is" I take as "just being sexist".

Judging from your review, particularly those percentage breakdowns at the end, you want a story in which the text and the author tell the audience what they should think of the horrible things that happen and the horrible things the characters do?

This is what I don't understand. The text *does* tell us what to think about the horrible things that happen, and the horrible things the characters do. It's extraordinarily heavy handed in that regard. Frey's interaction with Trinica is a good example. In the article I quoted the following:

He didn't pity her. He couldn't. He only mourned the loss of the young woman he'd known ten years ago. This mockery of his lover was his own doing. He had fashioned her, and she damned him by her existence.

This is telling you exactly how to feel, and exactly why you should be feeling it. Frey did a Terrible Thing in running out on Trinica, and we are supposed to condemn him for running out on her, but recognize that he has accepted responsibility for it and grown as a result. That's what allows you to interpret Frey as a "complex and flawed character".

Frey is only complex and flawed if you interpret his character in exactly the ways the book (very directly, very heavy-handedly) tells you to interpret his character. Otherwise he really is a dickbag with no redeeming features whatsoever and that's not an interesting character to read about.

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http://ignisophis.livejournal.com/

at 16:58 on 2010-09-14

Your interpretation of Frey - as a flawed and complex but ultimately sympathetic character, that despite the horrible things he does he is always striving to be a better man

But that's not my interpretation of Frey. That's how you think the author wants us to interpret Frey. My interpretation of Frey is that he's a flawed and complex and almost entirely

un

sympathetic character, who doesn't strive to be a better man until we're approaching the end of the book - and even then the motives for his striving are suspect and its eventual outcome uncertain. I don't sympathise with him, but I do pity him, and despite his being a git with virtually no redeeming features I do find him interesting to read about.

Authorial comment is *absolutely* necessary when you're dealing with a flawed and potentially unreliable viewpoint character. Otherwise how do you know they're flawed and potentially unreliable?

From an evaluation of their narrative.

You're presenting a false dichotomy here. You seem to believe that the options are "present a sexist and corrupt society in an uncritical and shallow manner" or "lecture people".

If you're going to rewrite what I say, please don't put quote marks around it! Or at least, use quote marks but put some editorial square brackets around the altered text.

"He didn't pity her. He couldn't. He only mourned the loss of the young woman he'd known ten years ago. This mockery of his lover was his own doing. He had fashioned her, and she damned him by her existence." This is telling you exactly how to feel, and exactly why you should be feeling it.

This is our disagreement in a nutshell. You think that excerpt is telling the audience what to feel and why they should feel it. I think that excerpt is telling the audience what

Frey

feels and why he thinks

he's

feeling it. What you appear to read as an objective narrator uncritically describing Frey's reaction in what we are meant to take as reasonable terms, I read as subjective narration by a selfish and dysfunctional viewpoint character speaking in the third person.

I think it's a deeply unhealthy way to feel, and would agree that the book deserved to be killed by fire if it suggested that the audience

was

meant to feel that way about Trinica's condition. Fortunately, I don't think it is.

Is not the definition of a didactic reading of a text the belief that the text is telling us what to do and why we should do it?

And in response to Arthur:

How does going from "I'm quite bothered by my behaviour" to "I'm OK with my behaviour" make it more likely that he's going to change?

If he was genuinely bothered by his behaviour beforehand then he'd have made an effort to change it. I see the transition as going from "I shall self-flagellate about my failings while using my awareness of them to convince myself that tryin to change would be pointless" to "I have failings, but I am making an effort to change". How genuine and lasting that effort is has yet to be seen.

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Dan H

at 17:50 on 2010-09-14

My interpretation of Frey is that he's a flawed and complex and almost entirely unsympathetic character, who doesn't strive to be a better man until we're approaching the end of the book

I think we're using the word "sympathetic" differently. I'm using it to mean "has qualities with which you can sympathize" whereas you seem to use it to mean "has no flaws".

You see Frey as flawed, complex and almost entirely unsympathetic but (presumably) with some redeeming features (you suggest as much in your previous post). Again this is *exactly* the interpretation I believe the text is pushing for.

The problem I have with Frey isn't that he's unsympathetic, it's that he's unsympathetic *in different ways to the ones the text cares about*.

From an evaluation of their narrative.

Which you would do how? I mean seriously how do you know a narrator is unreliable without some clue that comes from outside their narration?

I think it's a deeply unhealthy way to feel, and would agree that the book deserved to be killed by fire if it suggested that the audience was meant to feel that way about Trinica's condition. Fortunately, I don't think it is.

Umm ... I'm a bit confused here. What about the way Frey feels about Trinica's condition are we supposed to disagree with? How do *you* feel about Trinica's condition and how do you think it's different, and how do you think the text supports that feeling?

The book clearly explains to us that Frey had a responsibility to Trinica, that by running out on her he shirked that responsibility, which caused her to attempt suicide and lead to the death of their child, and ultimately to her getting raped and becoming the Dread Pirate Dracken. Frey feels guilty for shirking this responsibility. What about this interpretation do you think is incorrect? How do you think Frey is mistaken here?

Is not the definition of a didactic reading of a text the belief that the text is telling us what to do and why we should do it?

Umm ... yes it is. I read the book as extremely didactic, and dislike it because I consider it to be didactic. You seemed to think that my problem was wanting the book to be *more* didactic, when in fact I want it to be *less* didactic. The book as it stands tells us exactly how to feel about everything in it.

If he was genuinely bothered by his behaviour beforehand then he'd have made an effort to change it. I see the transition as going from "I shall self-flagellate about my failings while using my awareness of them to convince myself that tryin to change would be pointless" to "I have failings, but I am making an effort to change". How genuine and lasting that effort is has yet to be seen.

Again, that's exactly my problem and once again, your interpretation of the text lines up exactly with the interpretation I believe the text is telling me to have.

Frey's big flaw, as dictated by the text, is that he runs away from his responsibilities. That is the flaw he spends the book dealing with, and that is the flaw he overcomes at the end when he realizes that he has a duty to his crew.

Frey's real flaw is that he believes everything is about him. The thing is that it *really is*. This isn't a matter of perception, every single person he meets is willing to risk everything to either help or harm him. Even Trinica's suicide attempt was *about Frey* and she freely admits that it was about Frey. This isn't unreliable narration, this isn't the subjective viewpoint of a flawed character, this is how things actually are in the setting.

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Arthur B

at 20:44 on 2010-09-14

Which you would do how? I mean seriously how do you know a narrator is unreliable without some clue that comes from outside their narration?

To be fair, you can do it without outside clues. Gene Wolfe did it quite well in

Peace

- if you take the narrator at his word it's about a nice old man reminiscing about his life, but if you pay attention to the bits where he contradicts himself, glosses over something, or is clearly omitting something you realise that he's a horrifyingly evil person. (To pull a fuzzily-remembered example out of thin air, a particular character just plain disappears partway through the story after a fairly tense conversation with the narrator, and it's only later when he casually mentions possessing a piece of property that most definitely belonged to her that you realise he probably killed her - and if you go back and revisit the scene in question you can put together a fairly good idea of how he did it and how he disposed of the evidence.)

Not that that's necessarily what's happening in Retribution Falls. And I do agree that you do need the contradictions and omissions and whatnot in order to give textual support for interpretations that directly contradict the narrator's own assessment of things. The more internally consistent and solid a narrative is the less wiggle room you have for challenging the statements in it, after all.

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Dan H

at 13:44 on 2010-09-15But that's still a metatextual clue - Wolfe clearly included the reference *specifically* to allow for that interpretation, which is sort of my point.

I'm not saying the text has to stop and say "just so we're clear, the narrator is lying to you here" but it is actually very clear what *is* just viewpoint and what *isn't*. It's like people who will argue that Star Wars is shot from "Luke Skywalker's Viewpoint" and that the Empire might not be evil at all. It's not a legitimate reading of the text, and it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how viewpoint works in fiction.

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Arthur B

at 14:01 on 2010-09-15Well the other difference is that

Peace

is very much delivered from the narrator's viewpoint - it's all spoken in the first person. It's not Wolfe writing in the third person who tells you that the narrator has the vanished girl's stuff, it's the narrator himself not managing to keep his story straight.

Of course, the other big argument against the "it's OK because he's an unreliable narrator" take on

Retribution Falls

is that as far as I can tell it's written in the third person, which would mean you can't firmly say that the narration is from Frey's point of view. The argument that the narrative voice isn't "subjective narration by a selfish and dysfunctional viewpoint character speaking in the third person" seems to me - unless there's textual support for it somewhere - to be a bit of a leap, when the default assumption in most books is that the narrative voice is objective, omniscient, and impersonal. I'm sure there's been books written in the third person where the narrative voice is in fact subjective, unreliable, and personal, but you'd expect to be tipped off to the fact if that's what you're meant to take away from it.

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Niall

at 14:16 on 2010-09-15

the default assumption in most books is that the narrative voice is objective, omniscient, and impersonal

Say what? No it isn't. I wouldn't even say it's the default assumption in most books written in the third person. In fact, I'd say that in contemporary fiction, an objective, omniscient, impersonal narrative voice is rare.

The specific paragraph being debated above is limited third person. Every sentence is grounded in Frey's subjectivity. For me to read it as an objective assessment of the situation, it would have to stand further outside him: "Frey didn't pity Trinica. It wouldn't do any good. The only thing to do was to mourn the loss of the young woman he'd known ten years ago..."

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Arthur B

at 14:46 on 2010-09-15

Say what? No it isn't. I wouldn't even say it's the default assumption in most books written in the third person.

OK, checking the wikipedia article on narrative modes I see that I've been sloppy about my terms and not used them especially correctly (though I note that over the entire sweep of literature the third-person omniscient has totally been the most commonly used so ya boo sucks :P).

For me the narrative voice came off as impersonal - the very fact that it's the third person seems to point in that direction, for starters. But I'm assessing that on a fairly limited selection of quotes, and I'd need to read a lot more to work out whether the narrative voice is meant to take an over-the-shoulder perspective where it follows Frey but doesn't necessarily condone or identify with him or whether it's meant to be Frey.

This is all, of course, secondary to the question of whether the reader is meant to sympathise or condemn Frey. And the thing is, the various attitudes he expresses, which both Dan and ignisophis agree are problematic, are common enough that I can easily imagine many readers reading the book and thinking "Yeah, that Frey guy's totally got it right - my ex's abortion was all about me too!"

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Arthur B

at 14:48 on 2010-09-15(Also I'd argue that the third-person omniscient has maintained a greater foothold in SF/fantasy than it has in other genres thanks to the influence of Tolkien in fantasy, and various brick-sized multiple-viewpoint novels of the Alastair Reynolds/Peter F. Hamilton variety in SF.)

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Niall

at 15:00 on 2010-09-15

I'd need to read a lot more to work out whether the narrative voice is meant to take an over-the-shoulder perspective where it follows Frey but doesn't necessarily condone or identify with him or whether it's meant to be Frey.

To be pedantic, I'm less interested in whether it's

meant

to be one or the other, and more interested in what it

is

, if only because we can't know the former and can meaningfully debate the latter. So: I think

Retribution Falls

is basically over-the-shoulder with occasional slips which come about because, when it comes down to it, Wooding is not a particularly impressive writer on a sentence-by-sentence level. It doesn't help that, as you say, the prose has a fairly unexciting default voice, neither strongly

of

the character it's following nor strongly

not

of the character it's following. Still, I didn't experience the book as didactic in the way that Dan did.

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Niall

at 15:05 on 2010-09-15Do you know, it's so long since I've actually read Tolkien that I can't remember what his narrative is like, but I wouldn't characterise Hamilton as third-person omniscient. From what I remember, even if he follows multiple characters, he sticks pretty tightly to a single character within any given scene. So I'd say he's multiple third-person-limited, and reserve third-person omnisicient for books like

Middlemarch

, where there is a single narrator that wanders between characters whenever it feels like it.

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Arthur B

at 15:05 on 2010-09-15

To be pedantic, I'm less interested in whether it's meant to be one or the other, and more interested in what it is, if only because we can't know the former and can meaningfully debate the latter.

But there's no objective test which will conclusively prove it's one or the other, if it's a borderline case; all we can do is see what it seems like to us, and consider what prompts the text are giving us (the latter of which is what I meant by "meant").

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Arthur B

at 15:07 on 2010-09-15

Do you know, it's so long since I've actually read Tolkien that I can't remember what his narrative is like, but I wouldn't characterise Hamilton as third-person omniscient. From what I remember, even if he follows multiple characters, he sticks pretty tightly to a single character within any given scene.

Yeah, but he'll regularly set up situations using the technique where the characters who are going into a particular situation know much less than we do, because the narrative voice has clued us in to stuff that's been going on which the current viewpoint character doesn't know about. The overall point is to give this helicopter overview of what's happening on a stage covering half a galaxy, which no one character can get a clear picture of but which the narrative voice seems to be showing us as we travel around in its company.

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Wardog

at 15:18 on 2010-09-15I'm with Niall on this - I think it is rare to find books where the narrative voice objective, omniscient and impersonal. Otherwise everything would sound like it was written by Henry Fielding. Most third books have conscious POV shifts, usually between chapters or between scenes, as you move between characters or else are specifically situated as being the perspective of a specific character - the Harry Potter books, for example.

Where it gets difficult is locating the overlapping subjectivity of character and author - and, by author, I mean the hazy figure present in the text, not the person giving interviews to the media.

Sorry to randomly tangent, but this discussion reminds me the discussion about

Sisters Red

over at The Book Smugglers. Essentially Ana condemns the book for its victim-blaming and honestly slightly unhealthy attitude to certain types of girls - later the author inadvisable rocks up in the comments to claim s/he has been misrepresented since the unhealthy victim-blaming stuff was all from a unhealthy character's POV.

Unfortunately "it's okay, it's a bad person saying it" becomes difficult it is very often implicitly supported by the structures of the book itself. to use the Sisters Red example, what you have is a damaged character expressing an offensive viewpoint, the same viewpoint echoed by a less damaged character not two pages later AND a world in which the offensive viewpoint is LITERALLY true. In the world of Sisters Red, girls who dress, look and behave a certain way are, in fact, targeted by predators. Whereas the "dress up pretty will get you raped" mindset is actually not only untrue (since the majority of rapes are committed by people who knew the victim, not strangers jumping on beautiful girls who go clubbing in short skirts) but a control strategy to keep women feeling vulnerable and dis empowered.

To return to the book in question, the issue, I think, is not with Frey's viewpoint itself but with the way the narrative as a whole functions to support it, rather than condemn it. I mean Frey views women in a completely obnoxious but the behaviour of every woman in the text actually reinforces the fact he's right to treat them as he does - I mean everyone he sleeps with, apparently falls madly in love with him and wants him to settle down and twu wuv with her. It doesn't matter how much pseudo bad-assery you paint onto a female character if *her entire life* revolves around a dude then Frey is, in fact, exactly right to view women as clingy, fragile and emotionally demanding.

The whole "He had fashioned her" line is grossly offensive - not least because, in the text, it is actually true.

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Arthur B

at 15:33 on 2010-09-15

Most third books have conscious POV shifts, usually between chapters or between scenes, as you move between characters or else are specifically situated as being the perspective of a specific character - the Harry Potter books, for example.

OK, I've tended to think of multiple viewpoint books as being objective/omniscient/impersonal because the narration isn't exclusively associated with one viewpoint, and gives you an overview of what's going on which no single character actually enjoys - so it averages out as being objective-ish and omniscient-ish and impersonal-ish when you take the book as a whole, but I'm obviously doing great harm to the terminology there so I'll stop.

Though that said, if the main character's ideas are never actually challenged by anything they encounter in the world, it doesn't matter much where the narrator's sitting does it?

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Melissa G.

at 17:35 on 2010-09-15

Though that said, if the main character's ideas are never actually challenged by anything they encounter in the world, it doesn't matter much where the narrator's sitting does it?

That's pretty much my problem with the "But the narrator is unreliable/a bad person so it doesn't matter if their POV is offensive" argument. If you want us to accept that the POV is in an unreliable person's hands, we needs clues in the text.

A good example of it being done right, imo, is Lolita. I don't particularly *like* Lolita, but Nobokov actually did a pretty stellar job of writing from the POV of a pedophile while still providing us with enough textual clues to be able to interpret Humbert Humbert's behavior and mindset as destructive and wrong. It's very subtle and not concrete evidence - hence all the controversy surrounding that book - but I truly believe we're not meant to view Humbert Humbert as *right* in what he does. Lolita displays characteristics of a sexually abused child, for example. Humbert Humbert doesn't pick up on this, but the reader can.

Anyway, back to the original point, I think if a writer is going to have an unreliable narrator or a morality effed up narrator, the text outside the character needs to display at least *signs* that they are effed up and unreliable. If the world bends to their viewpoint, I don't think there's any way that defense works. They are just being proven right, in that case, which is basically what people have stated above, and I agree with.

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Dan H

at 18:40 on 2010-09-15

The specific paragraph being debated above is limited third person. Every sentence is grounded in Frey's subjectivity. For me to read it as an objective assessment of the situation, it would have to stand further outside him: "Frey didn't pity Trinica. It wouldn't do any good. The only thing to do was to mourn the loss of the young woman he'd known ten years ago..."

I think you're right that the specific paragraph is a bad example, but I think part of the confusion here is that people seem to be misunderstanding precisely what I find offensive about Frey's reaction to Trinica and the way it is grounded in the text.

People are focusing a lot on the "didn't pity her" line which is actually the line in the whole thing I find *least* offensive. Pity is a patronizing emotion, and what offended me most about Trinica wasn't the lack of sympathy in the text, it was the lack of *respect*.

As Kyra points out, what's really offensive about the whole thing is the second line: "This mockery of his lover was his own doing. He had fashioned her, and she damned him by her existence." What is offensive about this line is not that Frey thinks that way but that the text really does provide strong evidence that he is *right* to think this way.

Frey's *entire* arc (as ignisophis observes) is about going from making excuses for his flaws, to facing up to them and taking responsibility for them. In this context, his taking responsibility for Trinica's condition is presented as both right and correct, and a step on his emotional development towards a better and more complete person. Similarly he *takes responsibility* for his part in the loss of their child, accepting that his cowardice in running away from Trinica was comparable to her cowardice in attempting to take her own life. These are all *personal revelations* which are presented as *unambiguously positive and correct*.

To lay it out clearly, this is a list of things which I consider to be facts about Trinica Dracken which (a) are what Frey believes, (b) are the canonical truth of the setting and (c) are deeply offensive.

1. Trinica attempted to kill herself because Frey left her. Unambiguously true, he admits it, she admits it.

2. Trinica's attempted suicide was motivated partly out of a desire to hurt Frey. She says specifically tells Frey that "I wanted you to know what I had done".

3. Trinica's decision to kill herself was cowardly. Frey believes this, the text does not challenge it, and Frey is presented as developing emotionally when he compares his own cowardice to Trinica's.

4. Trinica's attempted suicide was worse because she was pregnant. Again Frey believes this and the text supports it. Again, Frey's emotional growth comes from his recognition that he *shares* in Trinica's moral culpability for the death of their child.

5. Trinica is a tragic figure. A lot of the argument about what is and is not Frey's PoV seems to come down to the question of whether it is right that he "does not pity" Trinica. What is most certainly *not* subjective, or simply a result of Frey's distorted viewpoint, is that Trinica is *worse off* as a capable, independent Pirate Captain than she was as a nineteen year old china doll.

These are all genuinely, deeply offensive to me - particularly point 3: "suicide is cowardly" is one of the most repugnant ideas to go unchallenged in popular opinion, and a text that repeats it without condemning it reinforces it.

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http://ignisophis.livejournal.com/

at 20:42 on 2010-09-16

I think we're using the word "sympathetic" differently. I'm using it to mean "has qualities with which you can sympathize" whereas you seem to use it to mean "has no flaws".

"I'm [tautology] whereas you [are ridiculous]"? Heh.

In this context I'm using 'sympathetic character' to mean 'a character in whose circumstances I could potentially see myself having similar reactions and making similar choices'. To make it clearer with some examples, in this particular book I find Crake, Harkins, Jez, Malvery and Silo sympathetic. I find Frey and Pinn unsympathetic. Trinica Dracken I find to be about half-and-half.

I mean seriously how do you know a narrator is unreliable without some clue that comes from outside their narration?

I think Arthur and others have already addressed this point. To be clear, I don't consider Frey unreliable in his recounting of facts but I do consider him unreliable in the way he judges and presents those facts. Not due to explicit cues in the text, but by evaluating his judgements and presentations in relation to my own experiences of the real world, in the same way as Melissa suggests the audience is meant to pick up on aspects of "Lolita".

I'm a bit confused here. What about the way Frey feels about Trinica's condition are we supposed to disagree with? How do *you* feel about Trinica's condition and how do you think it's different, and how do you think the text supports that feeling? The book clearly explains to us that Frey had a responsibility to Trinica, that by running out on her he shirked that responsibility, which caused her to attempt suicide and lead to the death of their child, and ultimately to her getting raped and becoming the Dread Pirate Dracken. Frey feels guilty for shirking this responsibility. What about this interpretation do you think is incorrect? How do you think Frey is mistaken here?

As others have said, it's probably not the best idea to get overly hung up on this one paragraph. But to answer your questions...

As you say, one of Frey's big flaws is thinking that everything revolves around him. This is a perfect example. Yes, Frey shirked that initial responsibility, and he is right to feel guilty for doing so - but not so much for the fact that he did so as the manner in which he did so, which is never something he questions because as is stated elsewhere in the text he believes women

need

to be lied to. The crucial error is his assumption that each step led inexorably to the next, as if his initial flight toppled the first in a line of dominoes. The causal links are there but it's not a simple case of "If A Then B", at each step Trinica had a choice in how she reacted and there were multiple other influences on that choice besides the previous steps - such as the culture, her family and the pirates who captured her.

I read the book as extremely didactic, and dislike it because I consider it to be didactic. You seemed to think that my problem was wanting the book to be *more* didactic, when in fact I want it to be *less* didactic. The book as it stands tells us exactly how to feel about everything in it.

My point is that the didacticism doesn't lie in the book itself but in your reading of it. I don't consider it particularly didactic, and Niall appears to agree with me. Furthermore, your review rarely gave me the impression of wanting it to be less didactic - instead you are constantly railing against the book for telling you the wrong things, and rather than not telling you anything you seem to want it to tell you different things: that suicide is not cowardice, that rape is not motivated by beauty, that the person who suffers most in a murder is the victim.

Frey's real flaw is that he believes everything is about him. The thing is that it *really is*. This isn't a matter of perception, every single person he meets is willing to risk everything to either help or harm him. Even Trinica's suicide attempt was *about Frey* and she freely admits that it was about Frey. This isn't unreliable narration, this isn't the subjective viewpoint of a flawed character, this is how things actually are in the setting.

Again, I think you're seeing things in the text that aren't there. For a start, I disagree that that

is

the way things are in the setting. The first two NPCs we meet, Macarde and Quail, most definitely

aren't

willing to risk everything to help or harm him. After that, most of the focus Frey draws isn't because of who he is but because of what he represents; to the Century Knights and society at large the killer of the prince who was the nation's sole heir, to Duke Grephen and his allies a threat to their conspiracy. The only people willing to risk anything for his sake (besides his crew) are Trinica Drecken and the Thades, all three of whom have solid motives for doing so.

what offended me most about Trinica wasn't the lack of sympathy in the text, it was the lack of *respect*. As Kyra points out, what's really offensive about the whole thing is the second line: "This mockery of his lover was his own doing. He had fashioned her, and she damned him by her existence." What is offensive about this line is not that Frey thinks that way but that the text really does provide strong evidence that he is *right* to think this way.

As I explained above, I don't think the text does provide strong evidence that he is right to think that way. Frey believes it, because he thinks everything is about him, but the reader hopefully has enough awareness of the real world to know that life doesn't work like that. I think part of the problem here is that Trinica is also a dysfunctional and psychologically damaged person, about which I shall go into more detail below.

To lay it out clearly, this is a list of things which I consider to be facts about Trinica Dracken which (a) are what Frey believes, (b) are the canonical truth of the setting and (c) are deeply offensive.

1 & 2: (a) and (b) hold. But I'm not sure why you're taking offence? People find many reasons to attempt suicide, and it seems odd to take offence at somebody being psychologically vulnerable. (Tangent: The physiological changes brought on by pregnancy are well known to have an effect on mood, a brief google suggests that some people claim natal depression can cause an increased suicide risk while others claim there is a reduced suicide risk during pregnancy; I don't have the knowledge or inclination to properly search and evaluate the medical literature on the subject, but it's entirely possible Wooding didn't do his research properly either and happened across a study claiming an increased risk?). It's not as if the text suggests she was morally or intellectually justified in attempting to kill herself in that situation or for those motives, which is something I could support taking offence at. These are the interactions of two deeply dysfunctional people, and I see them presented as such.

3: (a) and (c) hold, but I think it's a considerable leap to go from "not challenged by the text" to "the canonical truth of the setting". To my mind, your wanting the text to explicitly challenge and condemn this belief of Frey's also counters your claim that you want the text to be less didactic as opposed to just differently didactic.

4: (a) and (c) hold, and it's possible that Trinica believes it as well. But it's only a canonical truth in the sense that certain characters in canon believe it, as with (3) I think there's a difference (at least in fiction) between not explicitly challenging or condemning a viewpoint and presenting it as a valid and objective ethical judgement.

5: Aristotle defined a tragic figure as someone whose misfortune is brought about by some error of judgement. So yes, I agree that Trinica is a tragic figure and that (a) and (b) hold. But I'm not sure what it is about Trinica being a tragic figure that you find offensive?

Whereas I do find it offensive that you characterise her nineteen year old self as a "china doll". We aren't given that much detail about her life at the time but we do know that she was a wealthy heiress and trained pilot capable of romancing Frey against her family's wishes, convincing Frey to say he'd marry despite his reluctance, and even after her suicide attempt and miscarriage able to steal some money and fly off alone in a small aircraft. Yes she was emotionally vulnerable enough to fall obsessively in love with Frey and attempt suicide when he left her standing pregnant at the altar, but to me the rest of that sounds fairly awesome, not particularly badly off and not particularly "china doll" like either.

Whereas she then spent years being raped and abused, stuck in a situation where she had to use her sexuality as a tool for survival and advancement and a culture where violence and murder are commonplace, then remaining in that culture while denying her sexuality and attempting to present herself as something undesirable. Laying aside the fact that despite the way it's glamorised by fiction and cultural mythology piracy is actually rather horrible, her position as a pirate captain may be capable but whether it's more independent than her early life is a position open to much debate. It's also a position in which I'd say that she possesses a lot more 'public agency' but a lot less 'personal agency', and one which I see as reinforcing and perpetuating the psychological damage she's suffered. So yes, I do think she is a great deal worse off.

A lot of the argument about what is and is not Frey's PoV seems to come down to the question of whether it is right that he "does not pity" Trinica.

I think that's in large part due to the choice of example paragraph!

"suicide is cowardly" is one of the most repugnant ideas to go unchallenged in popular opinion, and a text that repeats it without condemning it reinforces it.

I'd find it really intrusive to have an explicit condemnation, and I think the text does challenge it by showing that Trinica is most definitely not a coward.

To close, I just reread the last chapter of the book and noticed something I didn't before this discussion. When Trinica has Frey (and his crew) at her mercy she lets him go with the following dialogue, which I think stands by itself:

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http://ignisophis.livejournal.com/

at 20:44 on 2010-09-16Oops, missed a blockquote closure in my comment, hope the site admins can edit to make it a bit more readable?

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Arthur B

at 22:05 on 2010-09-16

To be clear, I don't consider Frey unreliable in his recounting of facts but I do consider him unreliable in the way he judges and presents those facts. Not due to explicit cues in the text, but by evaluating his judgements and presentations in relation to my own experiences of the real world, in the same way as Melissa suggests the audience is meant to pick up on aspects of "Lolita".

But doesn't this mean that you end up disagreeing with Frey's assessment of his world because you don't buy into his preconceptions and biases, whereas someone who did share his preconceptions would just find them reinforced?

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Niall

at 09:02 on 2010-09-17Arthur: possibly, but (a) I'd be willing to bet that there's no way to write about a character like Frey that a person like Frey wouldn't find a way to sympathise with, (b) Even if you could find a way to make this hypothetical person-Frey find character-Frey unsympathetic, I would imagine they'd just dislike the book rather than be challenged or changed by it, and (c) I don't think it's literature's job to be concerned with the reactions of a hypothetical person-Frey.

I expect to get some disagreement here on (c), and to an extent I'm going to immediately walk it back, because I think that what is missing from ignisophis' analysis -- while I am broadly more in agreement with his reading than Dan's -- is a sense of a structural argument. Trinica's psychological vulnerability isn't offensive just because it's there, it's offensive because there isn't a broad enough range of female characters in the novel for it to seem exceptional, and because there isn't a broad enough range of characters in the sf and fantasy genres for it to seem exceptional; that is, it plays into prevalent and damaging stereotypes.

I would prefer that stories not do that, he said, with heavy understatement. But that's because of how

I

react to it, not because of how I worry other people might react to it. I don't think it's sustainable, and I do fear that it's arrogant, to pronounce on the latter.

As I say, I agree with much of the rest of ignisophis' response to Dan's five points, particularly

I think it's a considerable leap to go from "not challenged by the text" to "the canonical truth of the setting"

. Absence of endorsement is not endorsement of absence, and as I've already said, I didn't feel shepherded towards one interpretation as Dan did. (In fact, where the female characters are concerned, I was more bothered by Jez than by Trinica (or Amalicia), pretty much because I didn't believe what I was told about Frey's exes -- to build on ignisophis' point, I think the "straightforwardness he'd previously found charming" is a clear hint that young Trinica was

not

precisely the delicate flower Frey imagines her to be -- whereas we get Jez's point of view.) At the same time,

Retribution Falls

is not a good enough book that I want to die in a ditch over it. Also, I'm now late for work. Oops.

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Arthur B

at 09:52 on 2010-09-17

Arthur: possibly, but (a) I'd be willing to bet that there's no way to write about a character like Frey that a person like Frey wouldn't find a way to sympathise with, (b) Even if you could find a way to make this hypothetical person-Frey find character-Frey unsympathetic, I would imagine they'd just dislike the book rather than be challenged or changed by it, and (c) I don't think it's literature's job to be concerned with the reactions of a hypothetical person-Frey.

Ah, but my problem with ignisophis's analysis isn't just it lets people who already agree with Frey off the hook, it also isn't especially helpful for people who already agree with Frey.

If this really is a book the reader has to resort to things that they already know and believe to cobble together an interpretation, which is what ignisophis appears to be saying, then the book isn't really bringing anything new to the table. It's not opening their eyes to another way of looking at the world because it's just asking them to resort to theirs, it's not putting forward any new ideas so much as throwing out facts for people to whip into shape using their own ideas, it's not communicating anything meaningful because the reader finds no meaning or message which they didn't already completely believe in when they picked the book up.

This is something which is, to borrow Dan's terms from the start of an article, alright if you're just talking about a low-investment romp but is troubling if it's something that gets shortlisted for an award. Major landmarks of the SF genre - or any genre, or fiction in general - need to do something more than just saying "Meh, I dunno guys, what do you think?"

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Niall

at 10:18 on 2010-09-17Philosophy-of-awards as well as philosophy-of-reading, eh? It's like you're deliberately

trying

to distract me from work... :-)

I was surprised to see

Retribution Falls

on the Clarke shortlist, I think a lot of people were surprised, there were plenty of books I would rather have seen shortlisted, and had it won, I would have been upset for pretty much the reasons you outline. That said, part of the reason I was surprised was that books like

Retribution Falls

-- by which I mean adventure novels -- just don't get shortlisted for the Clarke very often. And in principle, I would like a definition of "the best science fiction novel of the year" to be able to include really good adventure novels, which do after all make up the bulk of what gets published as sf. So there was an extent to which I was happy to see it on the shortlist, even though I think it's pretty disposable, because it represents an assertion that this sort of thing

can

be the best sf has to offer, and because when reading the six shortlisted books in quick succession, it was a change of pace.

I would be interested to know what people make of

The Fade

, Wooding's previous novel, which I read several years ago and much less attentively than I read

Retribution Falls

, but which I remember as significantly more interesting (and better) on some of the issues we've been discussing here. I'm also quite tempted, now, to pick up the RF sequel

Black Lung Captain

, just to see how things pan out...

Also:

Absence of endorsement is not endorsement of absence

That doesn't actually make any sense at all, does it? Just forget I typed it, stick with what ignisophis wrote.

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Niall

at 10:19 on 2010-09-17

really good adventure novels, which do after all make up the bulk of what gets published as sf.

That is, adventure novels make up the bulk of what's published as sf. Really good adventure novels, sadly, seem to be thin on the ground.

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Arthur B

at 11:14 on 2010-09-17

And in principle, I would like a definition of "the best science fiction novel of the year" to be able to include really good adventure novels, which do after all make up the bulk of what gets published as sf.

Oh, I think there are books that qualify as classics of the genre that basically boil down to being adventure novels - like anything Jack Vance ever wrote. But ideally your pure adventure novel should say "Hey, I'm a pure adventure novel, I'm not trying to say anything profound", which is at least a positive statement, rather than being an abstention from making any kind of statement at all.

(Of course Dan would argue that Redemption Falls doesn't abstain from making any kind of statement at all, but I'm not tackling that so much as I'm taking issue with ignisophis's stance that you can work out how the book is intended to come across by resorting to your own personal knowledge and preconceptions rather than anything in the text.)

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Melissa G.

at 17:53 on 2010-09-17

I'm taking issue with ignisophis's stance that you can work out how the book is intended to come across by resorting to your own personal knowledge and preconceptions rather than anything in the text.)

I see what you're saying here (I think). To bring it back to my original example of Lolita, the only people who will find Humbert Humbert offensive and creepy and wrong are the people who already think "pedophilia is bad". Any pedophile reading the book is likely to walk away thinking, "Yes, exactly, he totally gets it!" The smart, non-pedophile reader will vilify Humbert Humbert, whereas a creepy child-molesting reader is likely to vilify Lolita, that damn little cocktease.

The book does require people to come to it with the preconception of "pedophiles are creepy and wrong", and honestly most people do. Unfortunately for "Retribution Falls" (and I've not read it so I'm just going on what the article/comments have said), most people do not come to a sci-fi novel with a preconceived notion of feminism and an expectation of strong females characters because, as Niall said, it plays into "dangerous stereotypes". These tropes exist so strongly in SF/Fantasy that it's more difficult to assume that the reader will know not to take Frey's attitude as how we are meant to view the world. Granted, this gets into "assuming your reader is an idiot" which can be even more infuriating, but I think this might be what some people are taking issue with. Correct me if I'm wrong. :-)

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Sister Magpie

at 18:25 on 2010-09-17I don't want to weigh in on Retribution Falls since I haven't read it, but I remember Lolita as having a few moments where Nabakov seemed to make it clear that Humbert was wrong too. For instance, doesn't he get sick when he catches sight of Quilty watching Lolita innocently playing with a dog and obviously perving on her, as if he's looking at himself from the outside? And one thing I do remember is one passage where Humbert is describing their happy life together and almost accidentally talks about Lolita crying herself to sleep at night.

The book is mostly in his pov but iirc Nabakov had a real history of writing unreliable narrators so that became a central idea of the book. Pale Fire has a seemingly insane person writing notes on a poem, Despair (I think it was?) is a novel about a guy who finds his exact double...except only the narrator actually thinks they look alike. I'm not sure if this author has the same interest?

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Dan H

at 22:03 on 2010-09-17

I don't want to weigh in on Retribution Falls since I haven't read it, but I remember Lolita as having a few moments where Nabakov seemed to make it clear that Humbert was wrong too

Humbert Humbert is fairly unambiguously wrong in Lolita. This is what I really don't get about "viewpoint" arguments - it's entirely possible for a book to be written from the point of view of a character and still be critical of that point of view.

Heck, Retribution Falls does this with its other viewpoint characters. Crake's chapters are full of his comments about how awful and common everybody else is, but it is extraordinarily clear from the way the book is written that we are supposed to disagree with him.

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Dan H

at 23:28 on 2010-09-17

In this context I'm using 'sympathetic character' to mean 'a character in whose circumstances I could potentially see myself having similar reactions and making similar choices'.

Umm, then you're using a very weird definition of "sympathetic".

I *sympathized* with Humbert Humbert. I wouldn't marry a woman just so I could fuck her daughter.

To be clear, I don't consider Frey unreliable in his recounting of facts but I do consider him unreliable in the way he judges and presents those facts.

But his judgment of those facts is reinforced by the way other people behave and what other people say about him.

. The crucial error is his assumption that each step led inexorably to the next, as if his initial flight toppled the first in a line of dominoes.

Except that there is no evidence in the text that he is incorrect, and quite a lot of evidence in the text that he *is* correct.

My point is that the didacticism doesn't lie in the book itself but in your reading of it.

I think "didacticism" is actually the wrong word to use here. The book is *heavy handed*. It tells you very clearly and explicitly what to think about things. It's not a subtle text.

Again, I think you're seeing things in the text that aren't there ... The only people willing to risk anything for his sake (besides his crew) are Trinica Drecken and the Thades, all three of whom have solid motives for doing so.

But don't the crew, Trinica, and the Thades together represent all of the viewpoint characters and most of the incidental cast. Who's left to not give a damn about him, other than the Century Knights?

As I explained above, I don't think the text does provide strong evidence that he is right to think that way. Frey believes it, because he thinks everything is about him, but the reader hopefully has enough awareness of the real world to know that life doesn't work like that.

I really, really don't understand what you're saying here. You seem to be saying that because something is not true in real life, it should not matter if it is presented as being true in a book, because people will know it is not true in real life? That's *fairly clearly nonsense*.

Fiction, whatever fandom may believe, operates off a set of conventions which are not the conventions of reality. When a character reaches a conclusion as part of an arc which is *all about* their growing sense of personal responsibility and self-awareness, it is *ludicrous* to suggest that the conclusion is meant to be wrong.

Real life doesn't figure into it. I know that black people aren't subhuman monsters, does that mean that

On the Creation of Niggers

should not be interpreted as saying they are?

1 & 2: (a) and (b) hold. But I'm not sure why you're taking offence? People find many reasons to attempt suicide, and it seems odd to take offence at somebody being psychologically vulnerable.

It's offensive because it reduces Trinica to a commentary on Frey. It's offensive because it reinforces Frey's claim to have created Trinica which you've just insisted that the text doesn't reinforce. It's offensive because it contributes to the massive amounts textual evidence that Frey is actually basically right about both Trinica specifically, and about women in general.

If Frey wasn't a misogynist dickbag who believed women were fundamentally weak and needy, it wouldn't have been so much of a problem that the love of his life was fundamentally weak and needy. I might add that while people attempt suicide for a variety of reasons "in order to induce a miscarriage, in order to upset their ex boyfriend" is seldom one of them. Again it makes Trinica sound like a horrible, vicious, hysterical shrew and that's *not* Frey's viewpoint, that's what she's *actually like*.

3: (a) and (c) hold, but I think it's a considerable leap to go from "not challenged by the text" to "the canonical truth of the setting". To my mind, your wanting the text to explicitly challenge and condemn this belief of Frey's also counters your claim that you want the text to be less didactic as opposed to just differentlydidactic.

I genuinely don't understand how your mind works here.

So Frey makes a statement: Trinica's suicide attempt was an act of cowardice. This statement is presented as part of his emotional development, and is reinforced time and again in the narration.

What you seem to be doing is letting your preconceptions from outside the text colour your ability to see what is *actually there*. Frey's beliefs are never challenged, therefore they are facts within the context of the text. That is how fiction works.

4: (a) and (c) hold, and it's possible that Trinica believes it as well. But it's only a canonical truth in the sense that certain characters in canon believe it, as with (3) I think there's a difference (at least in fiction) between not explicitly challenging or condemning a viewpoint and presenting it as a valid and objective ethical judgement.

No. There isn't.

What the characters in a text believe is what is true in that text, unless there is some other evidence *within* the text that the characters are mistaken.

The Chronicles of Narnia are not about a world where superstitious people mistakenly worship a lion. Star Wars is not about a group of terrorists attacking the legitimate government of the galaxy. Twenty-Four is not a scathing attack on the War on Terror. Harry Potter is not about a manipulative headmaster tricking a selfish idiot-boy into killing himself.

That is not how fiction *works*.

5: Aristotle defined a tragic figure as someone whose misfortune is brought about by some error of judgement. So yes, I agree that Trinica is a tragic figure and that (a) and (b) hold. But I'm not sure what it is about Trinica being a tragic figure that you find offensive?

Broadly speaking, what I find offensive is the fact that she's a woman in a refrigerator.

Whereas I do find it offensive that you characterise her nineteen year old self as a "china doll".

Since every single piece of imagery we get of her nineteen year old self is one of fragility and vulnerability, I stand by my phrase.

Whereas she then spent years being raped and abused, stuck in a situation where she had to use her sexuality as a tool for survival and advancement and a culture where violence and murder are commonplace, then remaining in that culture while denying her sexuality and attempting to present herself as something undesirable.

All of which are infuriating, offensive stereotypes.

The notion that women can only get on in the world by "using their sexuality" (whatever the hell that means) is a myth which fits in *exactly* with Frey's brand of misogynist bullshit. Notice we're never actually told how Trinica got to be captain, only that she "used her sexuality" and of course because she's a WOMAN and therefore has MAGIC WOMAN POWERS that's enough. Because apparently a group of people who will happily rape the shit out of you will also be totally awed by the mystery of your womanhood.

Trinica's entire backstory is founded on rape myths and misogynist bullshit. It is *impossible for her to exist* in a world in which a bunch of offensive, apologist bullshit about rape, sexuality and sexual power are not canonically true.

I'd find it really intrusive to have an explicit condemnation, and I think the text does challenge it by showing that Trinica is most definitely not a coward.

When?

Trinica is totally a coward. She's weak, pathetic and trapped. Hell you say as much yourself when you talk about how much worse off she is now than when she was an heiress. She's totally broken by everything that happens to her and transparently has nothing left to live for. She does dangerous shit, but that's because she's effectively dead already.

To close, I just reread the last chapter of the book and noticed something I didn't before this discussion. When Trinica has Frey (and his crew) at her mercy she lets him go with the following dialogue, which I think stands by itself:

You don't think maybe that was just a cheap cop-out to avoid having yet *another* improbable escape?

Whatever she says (after all, aren't you the one who insists that what characters say can't be taken at face value) her *entire life* still revolves around Frey. Her *entire purpose* in the book is to provide Frey with something to angst about.

She's an awful, stereotypical, insulting character.

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Niall

at 09:50 on 2010-09-18

Crake's chapters are full of his comments about how awful and common everybody else is, but it is extraordinarily clear from the way the book is written that we are supposed to disagree with him.

Can you pin down what the difference is? Ideally, I guess, with examples, which specific sentences you think make clear we're meant to disagree with Crake, the ones that are missing from Frey's chapters. I feel like we're getting a bit lost in the generalities, at this point.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 01:04 on 2011-06-18Well, I've started on Dan's old copy of this book (Thanks again for shipping it to me!), and right now I'm in broad agreement with his assessment of Capt. Cockspank. I've read stuff that's worse than this (I'm looking at you, Stephen Hunt and George Mann), and I give Wooding credit for avoiding the creepy ultraviolence those guys like to delve into, but RF is really a shallow book. I've haven't run into Trinica yet, but I've got past Frey's encounter with Amalicia at the convent, and that whole sequence was pretty sophomoric.

Actually, this whole thing has started me wondering about how George Macdonald Fraser managed to make Flashman as much of a pig as Frey and still be a fun character to read about. Right now I'm juggling between Flashman's self-awareness, the fact that his transgressions always come back to bite him in the ass, and the simple fact that he's actually funny and has a brain or two in his head.

(On a side note, the story has me wondering yet again how vulnerable the "air pirate" pseudosubsubgenre is to technological progress. Most of the stuff I've seen never seems to stray much beyond the 1920s and 1930s tech-wise, so I'm wondering if this is a fantasy realm that can't survive in an era of radar, missiles, and jet engines. Hey, I'm a child of alternate history. This is how we think, dammit!)

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/0txE6GYMzdiwjPOqDTwLdeHMvOdijS5Jm1c-#9995a

at 05:52 on 2011-06-18

On a side note, the story has me wondering yet again how vulnerable the "air pirate" pseudosubsubgenre is to technological progress. Most of the stuff I've seen never seems to stray much beyond the 1920s and 1930s tech-wise, so I'm wondering if this is a fantasy realm that can't survive in an era of radar, missiles, and jet engines.

It's probably possible, but you'd run the risk of jumping straight from "air pirates" to "space pirates" toting lasers that can vaporise half a mile of woodland countryside in the blink of an eye.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/0txE6GYMzdiwjPOqDTwLdeHMvOdijS5Jm1c-#9995a

at 10:34 on 2011-06-18

It's probably possible

I meant to put in "to write a novel featuring air pirates in a modernistic setting" right after that. Sorry, bit of an oversight on my behalf.

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https://profiles.google.com/Iaculoid

at 12:38 on 2011-06-18You could probably take some cues from modern pirates, like the ones operating off the coast of Somalia. Our hypothetical air pirates would probably fly fast, stealthy, and heavily-customised craft up-gunned from civilian marques and 'liberated' from their country's collapsed military, forcing down every cargo plane and airliner that enters their airspace and ransoming off their crew and payloads to the parent countries.

All you'd need is a slight advance in aircraft technology and its general commercial availability, as a matter of fact.

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Arthur B

at 13:57 on 2011-06-18

All you'd need is a slight advance in aircraft technology and its general commercial availability, as a matter of fact.

Perhaps not even that. Posit a Cold War era proxy war in which the US or Soviets armed one side with an air force... let the proxy war (and the superpower funding) die off with the end of the Cold War, and have all of these planes sat there with nobody especially keen on asking for them back (because that'd mean admitting the superpower's level of involvement in the war) and no effectual government to take charge of them. Throw in a bunch of fighter pilots owed a heap of back pay and with families to clothe and feed and protect in the anarchy that the war has left behind.

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https://profiles.google.com/Iaculoid

at 16:46 on 2011-06-18Indeed so. You'd even see several piratical conventions return with the aid of modern technology, like flying under false colours. Instead of, say, baiting in pirates with a lumbering freighter hiding a company of heavily-armed marines on board, you'd see stuff like military fighters using radar-reflectors to disguise themselves as juicy, tempting commercial aircraft.

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Alasdair Czyrnyj

at 01:11 on 2011-06-21Wow, you guys are all way more creative about modern air piracy that I am. I've toyed with the idea once or twice, but I just ended up decided that the precision machinery/know-how needed to keep modern planes going would be too much for a pirate outfit to afford. (Then again, I've rarely wondered about where airship pirates get their hydrogen/hydrogen knockoff, so maybe I'm being too close-minded here.)

Anyway, I've finished the book, and I've got to agree with the general consensus. I personally found that Frey's arc essentially read as a transition from a self-centered asshole to a self-promoting asshole (a.k.a. The Kirk09 Character Arc). I personally found Jez the most interesting character, though I felt she needed a meatier role (perhaps in a better book than the one she got stuck in).

One thing really irked me though, and it's something I haven't seen any other reviewers pick up on: the pilot Harkins. In the one chapter where he gets to be a viewpoint character, his interior monologue makes it clear that he's suffering from a pretty severe form of PTSD. And yet, his main purpose in the book is to be mocked for his "cowardice."

Not cool at all.

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https://profiles.google.com/Iaculoid

at 22:25 on 2011-06-21Yeah, I think that if you're disputing modern air-pirate concepts on grounds of realism (particularly Arthur's very down-to-earth redundant-pilots scenario), then you probably need to ask yourself some serious questions about why there weren't vast fleets of corsair zeppelins floating above London in the '20s.

In fact, I'd say that some old Cold War-surplus jets in a camouflaged airbase actually seem easier to operate than some fancy pirate airship. Could be wrong, though - my experience with airships is... less than exhaustive.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 09:03 on 2011-06-22I would think it is a question of familiarity. Airships have that air of classy obsoleteness about them, everybody knows they're not very practical as weapons of war and perhaps that whole slow ballooniousness makes them seem easier to supply and operate. Jet fighters on the other hand are well known as deadly and hugely expensive machines which require the financial capabilities of a nation state or a huge corporation to keep in the air. You also get the feeling that even if an airship has its problems, if it is filled and operational, it's quite autonomous; for example zeppelins flew to South America and back on a pleasure cruise. So a rogue airship, if it was armoured or whatever, could supply itself from the country side or land for a stop in different places, whereas a fighter needs a separate ground crew and all those facilities to remain operational from one day to the next.

So, airships could be more mobile basewise and thus it adds to the romance?

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Vermisvere

at 09:45 on 2011-06-22Perhaps the airship could serve as a mobile base and lift-off point for the jet fighters - sort of like a modern-day aircraft carrier, only airborne. Throw in some anti-aicraft turrets to be manned by the crew against hostile jets and airships and you've more or less got your pirate airship of the future.

In short, a militarised version of

this

.

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https://profiles.google.com/Iaculoid

at 14:18 on 2011-06-22Well, that'd certainly deal with the problem of having fixed, vulnerable airstrips on the ground for the military to demolish (though they'd best hope it's capable of landing planes of any size, or they'll still need somewhere to force their captives down onto). Plus it would serve as a convenient shorthand for 'hey, aircraft technology is really cheap and easy to use now!'.

Depends on how high-tech you want your air-pirates to be, I guess. Either daring, desperate wash-outs on a shoestring budget, or organised, brutally efficient criminals who are practically running a major corporate enterprise.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 14:21 on 2011-06-22Or an upgrade on

this

.

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Steve Stirling at 05:18 on 2011-07-13

I'm going to start by pointing out that having one female character out of seven is the worst possible option. Zero out of seven, and you have a setting in which women don't fly airships, which is absolutely fine. Put in exactly one, and you suddenly have a society where women are apparently perfectly accepted on the setting equivalent of the Spanish Main, but never the less you've only got one in your crew. Zero is a better number than one in this situation is all I'm saying.

-- not saying the book is good on male-female relations, but this bit is pretty accurate with respect to much of history. In other words, there -were- women pirates on the Spanish Main. Not many, but they existed, both in male disguise or 'disguise' and, still more rarely, as women.

And there was a well-known woman who became a captain in the Russian cavalry during the Napoleonic Wars, and was allowed to stay on by special order of the Czar after she was 'found out'.

The usual attitude was, inconsistently:

a) "everyone knows" that women are too weak, fragile and vulnerable to do this (for various values of 'this'), but;

b) Cynthia/Alice/Whoever is a good troop and we don't tell the Captain about her because she's hauling her weight and we need her, and besides she'd kill anyone who blabbed, like she did Frank.

In other words, women were present, but rarely; they weren't accepted, but could occasionally push their way in, with guile, luck, great ability and incredible determination.

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Michal

at 06:10 on 2011-07-13There's only one thing I thought when I saw that cover:

Airship Pirate!