#(he yelled at writers sixty years in the past)

[idkaguyorsomething]

the writers for classic who went “hmmm, how can we ensure that susan has something to do in this arc we’re writing 🤔” and their solution was to make a planet of psychic aliens that get easily overstimulated and have face blindness that the main characters need to negotiate with.

[jojolu]

Six Months in Boston

Pairing: Chris Evans/OC Erin Rose

Summary: Up and coming YA author Erin Rose, was sent to a small suburb 30 minutes Northwest of Boston to finish the last two books of her series, she is about to get very close to her very handsome new neighbor.

a/n: here goes nothing!

chapter 1: Enjoy Nature

"Oh my God! Just poop already Letty!" You shout at your Chihuahua Dachshund mix breed dog. She finally does and you pick it up and tie the bag.

You are walking on a new path the realtor showed you on a map. Your phone rings and it's your   sister Tilly FaceTime'ing you.

"Hey girl......where the fuck are you? Are you exercising?"

"Ugh gross! Never. Just exploring, Mike the realtor was saying there are 30 beautiful walking paths all around! Enjoy nature....that fucking tool."

"Where exactly are you? In case I need to come and find your body in the woods."

"In a small suburb, its technically the country! I'm thirty minutes northwest of Boston. My editor sent me to Boston. MASSACHUSETTS!! LIKE WHO AUTHORIZED THIS. For a year Till! I'm a hard core West coast kid! Born and raised near the ghetto."

"Pasadena, is nowhere near the ghetto. Its your fault, your way to good of a writer. Your first book shouldn't have been so good. Like bitch, you already have studios fighting for the movie rights."

You wrote, The Wish Masters, your senior year in Grad school on a whim. Your professor wanted you all to write 1 chapter of a book and you wrote 15, when you turned it, she called you into her office the following Monday. 6 years later on your 35th birthday it was released.

It bit of Harry Potter mixed in with Tinkerbell. All the Fairy families are separated by the type of groups and your story starts when the age of fairies start to die off. Deenah and her friends Mave and Trax are off on a journey to fix and restore the age of Fairies. 

"Yeah, yeah. Oh no there a dog loose." You see a brown and white dog with a red collar and leash dragging behind him.

"Let me see!" Tilly says.

You flip the camera and stick your phone in your sportsbra.

 You call him over and read his tag.

"Hey Dodger, gosh are a pretty dog. Letty, this is Dodger, Dodger, this wild animal is Letty girl."

You pick up his leash and continue walking the way Dodger came from.

"You fucking weirdo. That dog looks familiar. What's his name?"

"Familiar? Are you an Instagram dog, D man?" You say leaning closer to Dodger.

"Holy fucking shit! That's Chris Evans dog. I bet my fucking life on it."

"Seriously? Please God, don't let this be his dog. I'm not ready!"

You hear a man's voice calling out Dodger's name.

"Oh no......"

The person you see, isn't Chris Evans but his younger brother, Scott.

"That's Scott his brother!" Tilly says.

"I know.....Shhhh."

"Dodger! Hey man, you scared us." Scott says walking up to you.

"He just walked up to us." You say handing him the leash.

"Thank you! Chris would have KILLED me! I got him." He says as he yells back to the sound of a person walking up behind you.

You look past him and see Chris Evans. 

Your mind goes blank.

"Hi I'm Tilly!" You sister says from your boobs.

"Hi, mystery voice coming from this nice lady's boobs. " Scott says.

"OH my God! It's my sister." You take your phone out of your sportsbra and turn it so he can see her.

She waves like a crazy person.

"Hi, Tilly. I'm Scott."

"Hi! This is my sister Erin Rose."

"I totally forgot to introduce myself."

"She's a writer she wrote The Wish Masters, Jimmy Fallon just had her on last week. She just sent the second and half of the third one to her editor, She there to write two more books, she'll be there a year and she lives at 347 Mills Rd and that's her dog Letty, we found her on a trip to Joshua Tree, four years ago."

"Stop talking or I'm going to hang up and block you." You say to the phone.

"Sorry....."

"Well, this is my brother Chris Evans, he is an actor, you know him from Not Another Teen Movie and Cellular. He's has lived here for about three years and he lives at 345 Mills Rd and that's his dog Dodger, who he got a shelter about three years ago."

You look at Chris who is shaking his head.

You mouth, "I'm so sorry."

He mouth,"No, I'm sorry."

You both smile at each other. You look away to where Dodger and Letty are laying down, Letty is laying on Dodger's legs licking him.

"Well, it looks like you two are neighbors." Scott says to you both.

"Right! That's awesome, she's very single." Tilly says as she hangs up.

"Oooh she's not getting invited to any of the movie premieres. I'm going go home. Come on Letty." You say pulling her leash. 

She doesn't budge.

"To bad you only weigh eleven pounds." You say picking her up.

You turn to your left and then to your right.

Fuck!  

Erin why are you so dumb! 

You have no clue which direction your house is.

"Left." Chris says.

"Thank you." You say turning back left and walking away holding a dog that doesn't want to leave.

"She left her water bottle." Scott says.

"I'll take it to her later." Chris says picking it up.

"She's gorgeous......did you see her ass......damn." Scott says.

Chris just looks at him as he starts to walk away, Dodger turns and tries to follow the direction you left in.

"I did, and that's all I'm going to say."

"You going to save that image for your spank bank?"

"Spank bank? Seriously?"

"Sorry, I watched 10 Things I Hate About You last night. Great film. I know how long it's been, so don't act like you haven't already ready pictured her under you or on her knees."

"For fucks sake, Scott!? I just met her, technically we haven't really even met." Chris says walking away.

Scott laughs as he walks behind Chris.

"Fuck you, Scott! Now that's all I'm thinking about!" He yells as he starts to run.

You make it back in 10 minutes.

You were talking out loud the whole time.

"Really! Is this really fucking happening! Chris fucking Evans! Is this because I read that Chris Evans fanfic? Listen! I'm sorry! Well I'm not really! That's story was cute and he sounds great in bed. Speaking of bed! Am I supposed to act like I didn't see his dick?  What a beautiful penis.....oh my God. We share a driveway....his house is what like sixty fucking feet from my house.......great now all I can think of his is dick! Did I save that on my phone?"

You were walking so fast and distracted you just realized you left your water bottle. You set it down when you picked up Dodger's leash.

"Dammit, I love that water bottle, let's go inside." You say to the dog that is sniffing all around Chris's side of the driveway.

You walk inside and Letty goes and gets in her kennel and gets under her blanket.

You take off your shoes and head to take a shower. Tilly calls right after you walk out of the shower.

"Can I help you?"

"Hi, I just spent the last 20 minutes Google'ing him. He's very much single. He loves to take Dodger out on walks, he's covered in tattoos, he enjoys working with his hands, he loves his family, is an ass man and he has a huge penis."

"I don't care. I'm not going to do anything with information. I'm here for one reason, to write these books. This is not a story someone is writing. I'm not going to fall in love with him, he isn't going to take me on long walks where we can't keep our hands off each other, our dogs aren't going to be best friends and constantly have to see each other, you and Scott aren't going to be best friend and have matching toasts at our beautiful Farmhouse wedding." You suddenly get choked up.

"Ohhhh Erin...I'm sorry. I just got excited." She says suddenly with emotion in her voice.

"Serves you right! Who said those acting classes wouldn't help me write better." 

"You bitch! Just so you know he has a wide tongue, too." She hangs up.

Ugh, you just used the massage setting on your handheld shower head. Living next to him was going to kill you.

You get dressed, in a tank top dress that has a built-in bra and head out your pool. You hear laughing coming from your neighbor's house and fight the urge to look over.

"Erin!" You hear Chris yell.

"Please, have a shirt on...." You say before turning around.

"Hey, Chris."

Fuck him. 

No, seriously.

Fuck this sexy ass bastard.

He of course, is in just black swim trunks walking closer to his the fence. There are all the tattoos Tilly said he had, she didn't mention the chest hair.....you just want you rub your hands all over his body.

This is the closet your houses are to each other.

"Did you get that?" Chris asks looking at you.

"Shit, sorry thinking about my...book." You stumbled out.

"I have your water bottle and I was thinking that I could say thank you for grabbing Dodger, by ordering us some lunch?"

"It was no hassle, he just walked right up to me. Sure, yes that would be great."

"You want to come over now? You can come swim with me....if you want. Can you....." He stops himself.

"Were you about to ask me, a black woman, if I can swim?" You say giving him tons of attitude.

He goes beet red.

"Uh no...I was just...you have your hair straight....so I....."

You start to laugh at him.

"I thought Mackie would have told you what not to ask a black woman, it's a weave, I'm taking out next week and getting braids. Yes, I can swim, I was actually a lifeguard all throughout high-school and college. I'll change and grab Letty."

You see the relief in his face.

Did you just fluster Chris Evans.....

You are thankful for your sister, she made you buy all new swimsuits with your cash advance money. You put on your Victoria's Secret ruffle bottom bikini, you got it in three colors, white, pink and green. 

You put on the white one. Put your black sheer cover up.

You put your hair up in a messy bun and grabbed Letty.

"Listen, woman! You better act right! Do not pee on his floor!" You say to the dog who is very confused why she is getting a lecture. 

You put her down and grab the gift basket you just got from Sam Adam's and the freezer box it came in. He isn't in the back yard any more so you walk to his front door and ring the door bell.

"Brace yourself Erin...." You mumble out.

You can hear Dodger barking and Chris telling him to calm down.

He opens the door and smiles at you.

"Welcome, here let me take that. Come in."

Thankfully he put a shirt on.

You follow him to his kitchen while looking in all of his rooms.

"Our houses are the exact same. Even down to the floors. Literally the exact same. You need to see it."

"I'd like that."

You both pause for a second.

Letty and Dodger playing is what broke the tension.

"Its Letty, right? From The Fast and The Furious." 

"It is. Strangely, not many people get that."

"And Dodger, from Oliver and Company?"

"Yes, exactly. Most people think the baseball team."

"Why you have the Sox over here."

"Exactly. You want to head outside?"

"Lead the way." 

He grabs the gift basket and walks towards his backyard.

"Did you buy this?"

"Nope, I mentioned them in an interview and I got this, just yesterday."

"Not going lie that probably my favorite thing about this whole crazy life."

"Same, dude! I swear, someone asked what pen I used and I said Paper-Mate and I had a special delivery the next day. I'm really looking forward to when these studios choose my book."

"Which studios?" He asks opening your gift basket.

"You're just gonna open MY gift basket?"

"I thought this was for me?" He says laughing.

"Why would I give you MY gift basket? I don't know you like that!" You say laughing too.

"Go ahead you already opened it. Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal and Disney! I'm really excited about that one. They are thinking of my books as movies will start a new segment of Disney aimed at teenagers!" You practically shout.

"That's amazing and my heart is with Disney."

"Holy shit, I haven't told anyone that and wasn't supposed to........I figure you can keep a secret, Cap."

"You going to make me sign an NDA?" He says waaaaay to flirty. 

He opens one of the beers and takes a long drink.

 He licks his bottom lip.

"I could get one drafted up, if I need to. Can I have I one of MY beers, please?"

"Fine, but I get this hat." He says pulling a blue Sam Adam's hat out.

He hands you a beer and your hands touch. He doesn't let go, he grabs his bottle opener and opens for you.

"Thanks. Stop taking my stuff Christopher!"

"You don't want this hat or.....this beer coozie or.........these beer pretzels." He says taking all the things he mentioned.

"Give me those fucking pretzels."You say reaching for them.

"Come on, you don't want these." He opens the bag and takes a handful.

"Ohh you are not nice." You say standing up you take off your swim cover and walk up to him. Your breast are touching his chest and every time you inhale he looks down at your chest.

"Can I help you?" He says looking down at you.

"Chris, can I please, pretty please have those pretzels, I need something hard..and..salty in my mouth."You say with your hands on his chest.

He hands them to you without another word.

"Thanks, dude." You say grabbing them and sitting back down on his pool chaise.

"That was so mean! I'm still keeping this hat and coozie." He says looking over at you.

"Sure, but I'm keeping the corn hole set."

"You sure? I can take it off your hands."

You hear Letty barking at the backdoor.

Chris goes and let's them both put, they are chasing each other in circles, they finally sit he keeps messing with her and she keeps biting him then running away.

"Looks, like they found their best friend." Chris says.

"Yep. She's such an alpha. I'm surprised she letting him be so aggressive with her."

"Well, he definitely likes the challenge of a strong woman."

"She definitely likes the attention."

"He really likes to give it."

You weren't sure at what point you both stopped talking about the dogs but you needed to get in the pool to cool off.

"So we doing this or nah?"

"Huh?" The confusion on his face was priceless.

"Swimming? Or did you just asked me to get in a bikini for nothing."

He pulls off his shirt, finished his beer and walks to the pool, turns to face you, winks and does a perfect back flip.

"Oh you fancy." You get up and walk up to about 3 feet to his pool turn towards him do a cart wheel, that goes into a round off, which has you end right at the edge of his pool, then you do a backflip into the water.

"I give that a fucking ten." He says swimming up to you.

"Thank you. I'll give yours a 9.5 you lost a half point for trying to flirt with the judge."

"I should be given a whole extra point for that."

You splash him and swim away.

"Oooh now you started it." He dives down and pulls you under the water.

You poke him in the ribs and he let's go.

"Ouch!"

You swim up close to him.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to...."

He pulls you under again.

You pull him down too and start to have a contest to see who can stay under water longer. It's been 30 seconds and he is struggling. He groans and swims up.

He watches you as you flip into a handstand underwater and walk away from him, you come up 20 seconds later.

"Damn...."

"Sorry, lifeguard!"

"I normally have much better breath control." He says swimming closer to you.

"Oh really? You practice that?" You say smirking.

"Haven't needed to, come here." 

You get closer and he reaches right under your eye takes the eyelash that had fallen.

"Make a wish." He says holding it up to your mouth.

You close your eyes and blow.

You open your eyes slowly and he is staring at you.

You throw caution to the wind and put your arms around his neck and he immediately put his arms around your waist and pulls you towards him. He walks to the shallow end of his pool and puts you against the side of it.

"I'm fighting every urge to kiss you." He says.

"Same. You have no idea how much I want to."

"Then why aren't we kissing?" He says nuzzling and nipping your jaw.

"Because we both know it not going to just be kissing."

"Kiss me and find out." He says kissing your cheek and right under your ear.

"Why don't you kiss me?" You say running your nails down his back.

"I am kissing you." He moves down to your neck.

You turn your head so he'll kiss that spot under your jaw. He does and you practically moan out his name.

"Fuck, you sound so good moaning out my name."

"Kiss me." You moan out as he kisses that spot again. 

"Where?" He runs his tongue against that spot and gently bites you.

You finally turn your head and kiss him. He somehow pulled you even closer.

You put your hands in his hair as he slides his tongue inside your mouth. You pull away a bit and just look at him.

"What? We can stop."

"Nothing, I'm just taking you in. You're really good looking. I did not think this was going to happen." You say giggling.

"You're sweet. You're so gorgeous. You didn't? That bikini doesn’t agree." He says putting his hand on your ass.

You just laugh.

"Apparently, the internet is true, 'Chris Evans, an ass man'."

"With an ass like this, most definitely." He says putting his other hand on your ass.

"You are a whole mess. But to answer your question, I had maybe hoped that I could make out with my super hot neighbor, maybe just once."

"I knew it. Well that same internet calls you 'The writer who is taking YA by storm' I also saw your photoshoot in Vanity Fair, that's why I hoped you were going to wear a bikini, but this....."He runs his thumb along the edge of your bikini bottoms. "This is better than I could imagined."

He kisses you again and you wrap your legs around his waist and you can finally feel his amazing dick against your pussy.

"Damn, I can feel how warm your pussy is, I can't wait to taste you." He says in your ear.

"You look like this and can talk dirty."

"That's nothing......."

You bring his mouth back to yours and bite his bottom lip.

He reaches up and unties your bikini top, then kisses his way down to your nipple and slowly sucks it into his mouth, between his hot mouth and the chill of the water your close to an orgasm.

"Oh my goodness. You are the absolute worst."

He moves to your left breast, while his hand slowly making its way to your pussy.

The backdoor opens....

"Chris, I called you like 8 fucking times...............well hello Erin." Scott says.

"Oh my God, Scott!" You yell.

Chris just holds you close to give you some sort of cover.

"I obviously don't have my phone on me."

"I can see your hands are very full." He says looking straight into the water.

Chris tries to re-tie your top.

"Walk her to me." Scott says squatting down.

He ties the your top for you and get off of Chris.

"Well, this is not embarrassing at all!" You say swimming away.

"I'm fine." Scott says taking off his sandals and shirt and getting in the pool.

"That was the beginning and not the ending of that, right?"

"Ask him." You say laughing.

"You good over?" Scott asks him, when you both realize that he hadn't moved.

"Yep." He quickly turn and swims straight for you. 

You scream and try to swim away. 

He grabs you around the waist and puts you over his shoulder, then stand up so your ass is in his face and he turns and bites your left ass cheek. Then takes you back under the water. You bite him on his back and he let's you go.

You swim away and hide behind Scott.

"Nope, don't bring that shit over here." 

"You heard him. Go away Chris."

"Come here, Erin." 

He says as he lunges towards you.

You were quicker and got out of the pool.

He watches you walk away.

"Erin, can I have fries with that shake?" 

"You better behave."

"This is me behaving."

"You want a beer, Scott?" 

"Always." You open it and had it to him.

"Do I get one?" 

"Are you going to behave?"

"Probably, not."

You open his and walk it over to him.

You finally get yours.

"Watch this."

You put your beer bottle on the edge of the pool, stand to the left of it.

You do a cart wheel right over the bottle but stay on your hands and pick it up with your teeth and suck it in a little, then do a front to back slit then push off your hands and gracefully flip into the water. You come up with the beer bottle still in your mouth.

"Holy shit. That's awesome." Scott says.

Chris is just leaning against the side of the pool staring at you.

You swim up to him

"You didn't like it?"  You ask feeling a bit insecure.

He grabs your hand and walks you out of the pool and straight towards his back door.

"We'll be right back. Go ahead order whatever for lunch." He says to Scott as you follow him inside.

[chromatic-lamina]

Hello, hi, hey! For the End Of Year Fic-Writer ask meme: 1, 6, 7. Hope you have wonderful day✨

Thank you, lovely Alegna. I hope you’ve had a good day too 🦜

1. What’s your personal favourite thing you wrote this year?

My personal favourite thing I wrote this year would be screen / shiki-e which was inspired by both this commissioned piece of art by a-tsute and a small doodle she did. (I also really like house/yorishiro, but it’s more esoteric).

Law, Marco and Chopper all work in a hospital founded by the late Edward Newgate (or was it Roger? I can’t remember. Haha). And Chopper cannot wait for the seasonal panel to change to spring. He expects it to show cherry blossoms.

Reflection on Lami, Law, Marco and Chopper, and I guess parts of the One Piece world. Platonic.

6. What’s your favourite piece of dialogue you wrote this year?

Ah, tough one. I love writing dialogue.  Maybe this bit from the same fic? I dunno, any of my dialogue stick out for you?

For now, the North Blue doctor sat up and sneezed and rubbed his hand over his nose, gulped his drink and flipped two fingers at the river gliding past and at the geese bobbing on top of it. Flipped off cherry blossoms and Chopper as well, though just by chance.

"What's that about?" Marco asked.

"Sometimes you wear sneakers when boots would be better. You want cherry blossoms but you get anemones. And you had a sister who'd throw you under a bus but you'd do anything for her." Law spoke to the water.

"Even getting yourself run over?"

Law turned to Marco, nodded.

And from Devil Fruit Drivers (T-rated, platonic but full of past mishaps). (The three people conversing at the end are Robin, Luffy and Marco).

Marco pulled a chair up next to Law's and handed him a brochure. "Got this from Chopper." He opened to a page of supplies. "There are small wipes with benzocaine you can use to slow things down."

Law side-eyed him, took the pamphlet and shoved it in his top pocket. Chewed his inner cheek to stop from yelling.

"Might not want to have that picture on show." Marco flipped the leaflet around and tapped it back into Law's clothes like a father preparing his son for prom.

"Just what are we discussing here?" Shachi asked.

Law shambled him out of the room to a scrap yard some sixty blocks away. Let's see how easily he got back.

"He's the dispatcher, you know," Robin said, tipping the schedule book her way. "It's not his fault that…"

"…you finish so quickly,…"

"…Law."

7.What’s your favourite piece of description or narration?

From screen / shiki-e

The sun nudged the cold skies. Plum trees, free of leaves for winter, lined the path along the river. On his way to work, through the weak light, Law sought early blossoms. There. One bud on one stem of one tree out of ten. Discovering their secrets was the challenge. The flower would bloom in a day or two. Others were nested from sight, tucked into the kinks of the tree like a broody duck warming a cluster of eggs.

From house / yorishiro:

Koushirou's daughter, Kuina, fumbled about in the cupboard under the sink, looking for something, anything. Probably had in mind arranging the pink flower resting on the counter. Camellias bloomed through winter—a relief to the eye in the blinding snow that surrounded the house.

The girl filled a jam jar—its surface imprinted with apples and oranges. Left the cookware all over the linoleum, the tap dripping. She walked to the table, but the woman grabbed her wrist before she could slip the stem and flower into the makeshift vase.

I like all my stuff though, but i’m particularly fond of these 🖤 Ask meme is here. I’ve answered 1, 6, 7 and 4 (in just a mo). We’ll see if this shows up anywhere, considering all the links :-)

[tb5-heavenward]

You just know I'm going to ask about Covenant now, right?

well since you two are two of the only people who know about covenant (and i’m sorry bud, your editorial sensibilities are going to have to put up with my stylistic lower caps) and since I’ve finally watched that shitshow of a most recent episode, I am totally down to talk about covenant.

but first let’s talk a little bit about TAG

TAG is terrible.

Visually the show is gorgeous. It has improved by leaps and bounds and it was charming when it started and it is awesome now. WETA are absolutely the bedrock of what makes this show worth watching, and I love the visuals more and more as they continue to push those boundaries. The cinnamontography, etc.

The Thunderbirds are amazing. They are beautiful, intricate, wonderfully clever machines. Their pilots ain’t half bad either. If you know and truly love the show and think about them all as well and deeply as they deserve, I think it’s impossible to honestly pick a favourite. International Rescue is a fantastic premise. The Tracys and their associates are all strong, compelling characters who have been iterated into an updated retro-future and made universally deeper and more interesting.

The bread and butter conceit of the show is awesome, the tension and conflict and creativity around solving complex problems that they manage to demonstrate in the course of a twenty-two minute episode sometimes just boggles the mind. When IR gets put up against the forces of nature and straight bad luck and pure, audacious dumbassery, we have gotten some of the best moments this show has to offer.

And those first season episodes were ugly as shit and everybody sounded the same and there were maybe three spare models between the entire NPC cast, but my GOD did S1 ever have heart. The soul of the show belongs to S1 and no one will change my mind about that. Try it. EOS was incredible. Skyhook was the definition of a balanced ensemble episode. Fireflash. Tunnels of Time. Relic. Recharge. Extraction. S2 came back swinging out of the gate with Ghost Ship. Up from the Depths was an absolute masterclass and actually changed the stakes in the show for the first time. Bolt from the Blue. Power Play. Hyperspeed. We all know which episodes were fucking good as hell. S3 comes out and the visuals have improved yet further. They have firmly found their feet as animators and as actors and as characters. We are finally actually starting to learn about these boys and their father, the most glaringly obvious hole in the show at large. Night and Day. Life Signs. And then SOS 1/2 and a complete and total paradigm shift. There is a sense of mortality to TAG now and it is an edge of realism that SHOULD be able to elevate it beyond what it’s been so far.

And yet.

TAG is fucking terrible.

Five years on, I am entitled to say, TAG is absolutely the goddamn worst sometimes, holy fucking shit. And what makes that terribleness terrible in and of itself—is that it’s because this show fails to recognize its most fundamental strengths. It fails to know what its audience will really connect to. And it’s because the writers’ room must be the goddamn wild west at this point, with the sort of nonsense these fucks are throwing at the wall and hoping to see it stick. It’s because whoever is in charge of the overall narrative arc of these seventy-odd episodes has not done what’s necessary to ensure TAG’s cohesion as a unified work.

(y’all hang onto your butts, i’m gonna do another brick wall metaphor.)

So what we have, five years on and seventy-odd episodes later, is a heap of bricks that WANT to be a wall, and we’re led to the impression that they’re SUPPOSED to be a wall, but they haven’t been put together by any single person. They have been put together by a rotating cast of a few dozen people who orient the bricks they’re given in slightly different ways sometimes, or who lay them at odd angles or who brought their own bricks from home for some reason. David Tennant is there. He must have cost at least half the budget for all of S2. All in all, he’s just another brick in the wall.

We know by this point that there is some asshole vaguely in charge of the idea of the wall. You can kind of tell that he’s at least heard of walls and he would definitely like to build one, but he isn’t exactly making it happen. There is an edifice here. It is wall-like, in some regions. At the end of the day though, most people who come across it also step over it, no problem. Or they chisel out the bricks that look to be worth saving and kick the rest of the wall over. That’s just fandom. That’s what fandom does.

Now, it is necessary at any point when talking about children’s media to talk about another series that ran three seasons over sixty-one episodes, and covered a level of geopolitical conflict over the course of a single year from the perspective of five incredibly gifted young people, all of whom were complex and flawed and sympathetic, and who knew they were responsible with putting the world to right with their own hands and set about doing that in the face of incredible odds, against villains who were no less than ruthlessly sociopathic.

ATLA sets a high bar. TAG was never going to be ATLA.

But fuck, I wish it had tried.

I wish the people who had set out to remake this story had sat down together and said, “Over the course of the next three seasons, we will tell the story of what International Rescue is. We will explain how it came to be. We will have strong themes that persist through the show and repeat themselves for emphasis: One Problem At A Time, You Can’t Save Everyone, Someone Has To Try. We will explain who these boys are and how they came to be this way. We will make it deeply and obviously clear what they do, how they do it, and why. We will give them limits. We will let them fail. We will give them flaws, we will let them clash with each other. We will let them grow and change. We will give them one deep, powerful loss that is the bedrock of what they became. We will put a powerful force in the world that loathes and opposes them at all costs. We will give them a tiny fragment of hope to chase and chase and chase and let them catch it only at the moment when they’v’e finally learned that they can let it go.”

I wish there had been rules. I wish there hadn’t been a new villain crammed into every season, in a show where the villains are objectively the weakest part. To add four villains to a show that barely has room for one and then to expect to make them ALL have a sympathetic edge somehow—it’s absolute fucking idiocy. I don’t care that The Hood is Kayo’s Uncle and Smiled In a Picture One Time. I don’t care that The Mechanic Is Apparently Being Mind Controlled Though No Indication Of That Was Given At Any Point in His History Until We Were Told So Explicitly. I don’t fucking CARE that Havoc Gets Yelled At By Her Boss Who Is Mean. I don’t give a shit that Fuse Is Apparently Too Stupid To Have Recognized The Moral Component Of Any Of His Criminal Acts Up Until He Inflicts Them On The Tracys.

You know which villains are objectively incredible in this show? Langstrom Fischler. Professor Harold. Francois Lemaire. Ned Fucking Tedford, who is a villain on the grounds that he is an obstacle, a problem to be solved, a concept of a person so hapless that they have multiple times strayed in the most incredible kind of peril. The strongest villains in this show are the ones who are just PEOPLE. People who are being careless. Or who are being greedy. Or who are being self-aggrandizing. People who exhibit traits equal and opposite to what our boys in blue exemplify.

I don’t know. We’re coming to the end of S3, we’re nearing their grand, incredible climax, this promised moment of potential reunion—and I wish I cared. I really wish I could. But there’s so much clutter. There’s so much their pulling DIRECTLY out of their asses in the home stretch. There are so many loose threads, there are so many concepts that were introduced and then never explored, or which were introduced in the end game and then never reinforced. There is so much information that we should have had from the start, so many mysteries that went unsolved and uncared about because they were unmentioned. There is not enough room for them to resolve anything in a meanignful way. There it so much that it seems like THEY didn’t know, and they SHOULD HAVE. They had time. Five fucking years, they had so much time to figure this out. And yet.

anyway.

So, covenant. Covenant basically a codeword for what I would’ve done differently, the last time I got mad about this whole endemic problem with the writing in this show, round about two years ago now.

Covenant is just a good word, really, and while it means something as a title, that relevance has kind of degraded a bit. It was going to be a rewrite of the end of Season 2, and sort of a retrofitting of Season 2 as a whole. It was going to explore the ideas that they put down and then never picked up, it was going to seriously address a lot of the core conflicts in the show and set things in motion to resolve those problems. I have it started. I have a good couple thousand words of the beginning, but it’s a good enough beginning that it could potentially begin something else, and so I won’t publish it here, in case I end up using it somewhere else. As is, it’s a priveleged-eyes-only sort of work, it’s only really been passed around my inner circle. If anyone is interested in hearing more about that, hit me up and I’ll elabourate. But for now, it is quarter past eleven, and I have ranted for long enough.

[crashdevlin]

Plus One

Author’s Note: Written for @spnfanficpond Galentine’s Day for @coffee-obsessed-writer It’s a day early, girl, so treat yo self

Also written for @spnkinkbingo, filling my Meet Cute square

Summary: When y/n is forced to learn to dance for her ex’s wedding, she meets a certain green-eyed man whose brother thinks he doesn’t have any rhythm.

Pairing(s): Dean X bisexual!Reader, Past OFC x Reader

Word Count: 4772

Warnings: ballroom dancing, fluffiness, bad flirting, little bit of dirty talk, 18+ HERE BE SEX DON’T READ IF YOU’RE A YOUNG’UN!!!  protected sex, oral sex (fem rec), fingering,

Wanna enhance your fanfic experience? Get Dean’s hydrosol from @scentsfromthebunker

You grimaced as you walked into the large open room with the mirrored walls. You were the only one in the room below the age of sixty. You didn’t want to be there. You wanted to walk out, entry fee be damned, but you had to learn or you were going to make a fool of yourself. Probably do that, anyway.

You sat on a bench in the far corner and waited for the instructor to show up. You were picking at your cuticles when the door opened and the most handsome man you’d ever seen walked in. You thought he might be the instructor for a moment, as he was about your age which put him a good twenty years younger than anyone else taking the class, but he surveyed the room and then moved to lean against the non-mirrored wall near the door. He crossed his arms over his chest and you couldn’t help but notice the way his biceps bulged under his plain black tee. Your eyes flicked to his left hand and you were happy to see there wasn’t a ring there, but you didn’t let your hopes up. He could be here to learn for his wedding.

The instructor was a woman who must’ve been in her seventies and she looked like she’d smell like the inside of a craft store. When she told everyone to pair up, the handsome man made a beeline for you, which made you smile. “You already got a dance partner, sweetheart?” His voice was deep, his eyes a brilliant green and you found yourself frozen for a moment as you wondered how this man was a real human being.

“Uh, no. I’m a solo.”

“Not anymore, you’re not. I’m Dean.” He offered you his hand, which seemed huge.

“Y/n,” you said, standing and taking the hand. Yeah, it was huge and you could feel calluses on his fingertips when they brushed your wrist.

“Go ahead and take a few minutes to get to know your partners. We’ll start on basics of stance in five minutes,” Mrs. Philips said.

You smiled, nervously, up at Dean. “So, we, uh, appear to be on the younger end of the spectrum in this classroom.”

“Well, thanks for sayin’ I look young.” He flashed a brilliant smile full of perfect teeth. “So, y/n, what brings you to an intro ballroom dance class?”

You really liked the sound of your name on his lips. “You first, Dean.”

He chuckled, hands going into his pants pockets. “My brother’s taking an introductory painting class with our… with this kid we take care of. He saw they were offering the dance course and signed me up without asking me, because he says that I have no rhythm.” He shook his head like he disagreed. “Your turn, y/n.”

You stalled for a minute, wondering if you should be completely honest with the stranger or alter it to avoid issue. The earnest look on his face made you decide on honesty. “My ex-girlfriend is getting married next month.”

You could swear his face fell a little at that. “Oh?”

“Yeah, and I was the complete idiot who made good on the whole ‘We can still be friends’ part of the breakup, so I'm now Bridesmaid Number Three and she's made it clear that I'm expected to participate in all aspects of the wedding, including this ridiculous and awkward choreographed ballroom dance between the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Guess she forgot that I can't dance.”

Dean scoffed. “Wow. Sounds like a high-maintenance bitch.”

You laughed. “Yeah, well, the guy she cheated on me with is a major league asshole, so they're a match made in Hell.”

Questions filled Dean's green eyes. “Oh, so she's not a-”

You cut him off before he could say the ‘L’ word. “Nah. Unapologetic bisexuals, the both of us. Just, one of us thought they needed to have a girlfriend and a boyfriend and the other knew what ‘exclusive’ means.”

“Wow. If you don't mind me asking, why are you still friends with this bitch? I'd’ve cut her off a long time ago.”

You shrugged, looking past Dean to Mrs. Phillips, who was doing the rounds meeting the new students. “Started out that I genuinely didn't want to lose her and now it's more obligation. The LGBT community here in Kansas is a little exclusionary. They tend to ignore anything beyond the first two letters.”

“Didn’t know there was so much gatekeeping around that shit. Learn something new every day,” he said, smirking. “And you'd think they'd know about the Kinsey Scale.”

You laughed. “Not what I was expecting you to say.”

“Good evening! I'm Mrs. Phillips, what are your names, dears?”

“Dean Winchester.”

“Y/n Y/l/n.”

“Well, welcome, welcome, we'll be starting momentarily.”

Dean watched as the woman walked away before turning back to you. “She smell like cinnamon sticks and moth balls, to you?”

You snickered under your breath. “It's weird because that's exactly what she looks like she smells like!”

You enjoyed easy conversation with the man… until it came time to embrace and work on your positioning. He took your right hand in his left and set his right hand on your back, just under your shoulder blade. You felt like you couldn’t breathe. You tried to look away from him, but his green eyes kept calling to you. There was no conversation after that. You were little better than mute for the entirety of the time his hands were on you.

When the class ended, he smiled as he stepped back from you. “Will you be here on Thursday?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. I’ll try to be here, too. Wouldn’t wanna leave you without a partner.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The next few weeks, every Monday and Thursday was spent in deep anticipation of the night class. Dean had only missed one class, the third Thursday, and he’d showed up on Monday with a face full of healing bruises and an apology on those full lips.

“You don’t need to apologize, Dean. I mean, you obviously had some sort of accident… or maybe you got in a bar fight?” you asked, gesturing at his face.

He laughed. “Uh, yeah, something like that. I still wanted to be here, though.”

You smiled as you took up a waltz with him. “Your brother’s wrong, by the way. You’ve got all kinds of rhythm.”

“Ah, I’m glad he was wrong in this instance. Never woulda met you if he hadn’t signed me up.”

“This might be…” You looked down, blushing. You couldn’t ask this question if you were looking in those damn eyes. “This might be a big ask, but did you maybe want to be my Plus One for Debbie’s wedding?”

“When is it?”

You ventured a look at his face. He was smiling and it made you bite your lip. “Valentine’s Day. How cliche, right?”

“Sure, I’d love to be your Valentine,” he said with a cocky smirk.

“You got a suit to wear? ‘Cause as much as I love the plaid look, I think Deb would probably throw a fit if someone showed up in something less than her rigorous dress code.”

“Have I mentioned that your ex sounds like a high-maintenance bitch?” he asked with a chuckle. “Yeah, I got a few suits. Don’t worry ‘bout it. I’ll have to give you my number after class, so we can coordinate. Where’s the wedding?”

“Kansas City. Not too far.”

“That’s good. ‘Cause I don’t fly and if it were a destination thing, we’d have to plan some extra travel time.”

You smiled. “You’re afraid of airplanes?”

“They’re flying deathtraps. I don’t know why everybody is so shocked when I say I’m scared of ‘em.”

You looked up into his bruised and battered face. “Because you aren’t afraid of whatever did that to your face? You’re big and strong and don’t seem like the type to piss his pants over being stuck in a metal tube 30,000 feet… you know what, that does sound scary.”

He smirked. “See? S’why I drive every damn place.” He adjusted his grip on your hand. “You think I’m big and strong?”

“And funny and handsome and oh, my god, I’m totally not flirting with you, I promise,” you said, your cheeks heating up as you looked down.

“Well, if you were, you’d be doing okay at it.”

You bit your lip and looked up again. He really was unnaturally handsome, even covered in bruises. “Is that face gonna be healed before Valentine’s Day?”

“Yeah. I got a friend who used to be a faith healer. He can get rid of these like magic.”

You laughed. “He used to be a faith healer?”

“Yeah. Other stuff became more important, but he still pulls out the mojo for me and my brother and Jack. The family, ya know?” He laughed. “You look so skeptical!”

“Look, this might be the Bible Belt, Dean, but not everyone believes so deeply.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the difference here. I know what Cas does works. Anyway… you don’t have to worry about it, y/n. I’ll be handsome again by Valentine’s,” he said with a wink that made you shiver.

“It’s completely unfair, Dean Winchester, that you’re so handsome while black and blue.”

“Oh, am I?” He smirked at you as you lost your footing and he had to shuffle not to step on you.

“Yes, you are. Distractingly so.”

“Well, you’ll have to work on that unless you wanna make an ass of yourself at Debbie’s wedding.”

You laughed. “Well, either way I win, Dean, because my date to her wedding is gonna be a lot hotter than hers.”

He laughed again and everything seemed a little bit brighter in the wake of that sound.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You and Dean met at the cheap motel you’d agreed to stay in. Rooms 14 and 15 to make things easy on the both of you. You spent two hours on your hair, another ninety minutes on your makeup. You could hear Dean watching what sounded like Scooby Doo in his room, yelling at Fred for being a ‘cheating douchebag’.

When you stepped out of the room in your lavender bridesmaid dress, you felt awkward and anxious. For some reason, it felt like you were going to your first school dance or something. Taking Dean to this wedding seemed to regress you back a couple decades. You knocked on his door, heard the television turn off as he got up to greet you. You gasped when the door opened to reveal him.

He was wearing a dark grey suit with a shiny patterned grey tie. He had a long black coat over it and he had his hair gelled up. He looked amazing. “Wow,” you both said, simultaneously, then both smiled a bit nervously.

“Purple is definitely a good color on you, sweetheart,” he continued, letting his eyes run down your body.

You chuckled, smoothing your hand down the front of the dress. “It’s technically ‘lavender’. She was very specific on the color of purple. But… thank you. You look breathtaking, as always.”

“I take your breath away?”

“Why do you always make me question what comes out of my mouth?” you asked, shaking your head as he stepped out of the room and secured the door behind him. “I’m certain that I’m not saying anything bad but then you smirk and you make it seem like I’m flirting poorly and you think that’s hilarious.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s hilarious. I think it’s adorable,” he said, opening the passenger side door of his Chevy and helping you in.

He drove you to the wedding venue, a hotel with a beautiful outdoor area specifically designed for weddings. You were certain it was extremely expensive. Debbie was screaming in the bridal suite. You could hear it as you approached. You sighed, turning to Dean. “You should go get a seat. Hope your phone is fully charged. We’re probably gonna be a while.”

He nodded, pulling his headphones and cell phone out of his coat pocket. “Good luck with Bridezilla.”

Debbie was screaming about bobby pins. Apparently, whoever brought the pins had brought blond ones, not brown ones. It was a huge deal. As was the fact that there was only Diet Coke, not regular, and that there weren’t any electrical outlets next to the plush chair she wanted to sit in while she got her hair done. You found yourself wondering what you saw in that woman as you retrieved an extension cord and plugged a power strip into it.

“So, who’s your date? Did you bring a date? Because you’re paying for the steak plate if you RSVP’d for someone who doesn’t exist,” she bitched as the stylist pulled at her hair.

“He exists. He’s outside right now. And he wants some damn steak.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Dean. I met him at the Rec Center in Lebanon.”

“And? What do you know about him?”

“About as much as you knew about Spencer when you started dating him. I know his name, I know his brother’s name, I know the name of the orphan they adopted when the kid's mother died, I know his best friend's name is Cas. I know he thinks he's funny but his brother thinks he's an idiot.” You shrugged. “I can learn more as the time goes.”

“You barely even know him and you brought him to my wedding?!”

“You barely even knew Spence when you left me for him, so…”

“Oh, don't even start this on my wedding day!”

“You started it,” you argued. “Look, I'm not trying to start a fight with you. Just don't judge Dean when you haven't even met him.”

“He better be amazing.”

That you managed to make it through Debbie getting ready to walk down the aisle without you or one of the other bridesmaids bashing her over the head with that vase of long-stemmed roses she kept bragging about, was a miracle. You were beyond relieved when it came time to grab your small bouquet of tiny purple daisies and walk the aisle. You smiled at Dean as you passed him, and he pulled his headphones and gave a small wave.

“Whoa. That's your date?” the Maid of Honor, Brittany, whispered. “I gotta hang out at the Rec Center more often. Wow!”

“You said he has a brother?” the other bridesmaid, Amber, asked.

“Yeah, but I haven't met him, yet. He might be a troll. I don't know. I'll let you know.”

The groomsmen looked all right in their black tuxes, but your eyes kept gravitating toward Dean in his suit. Even as the crowd turned to watch Debbie walk down the aisle in her dress with the mile-long train, her breasts on display with her sweetheart bodice, your eyes were stuck on him… and he was looking at you. “Well, damn, looks like we might be at another wedding this time next year. Someone’s givin’ you the moon eyes,” Amber said.

“Shut up,” you whispered, fiercely. Debbie was halfway down the aisle, if she heard anyone talking about anything other than her on her big day, she’d flip out. You zoned out when Debbie got to the altar. Spencer’s vows were ripped off from Cory from Boy Meets World and you seemed to be the only one who noticed. Debbie’s vows boiled down to ‘you made my life better with all the stuff you’ve given me’ and you had to literally fight back a yawn. When they kissed, you gave a little golf clap. “Can we eat now?” you whispered as the newlyweds ran down the aisle toward the reception hall together, laughing happily.

“Pictures,” Brittany said, rolling her eyes. “Then food. I gotta go help.”

Dean approached as you followed Brittany toward the reception hall. “Well, that was…”

“You don’t have to say it, Dean.”

“You know the groom stole his vows from a TGI Friday show, right?”

You snorted. “I thought I was the only one who noticed!”

“As soon as he said, ‘Ever since I was young, I never understood anything about the world’ I knew it. I used to watch the hell outta some Boy Meets World. Topanga was hot as fuck.”

“She still is! Did you see the sequel series they did? About the Matthews kids? She’s still super hot. Lawyer-milf in a skirt suit, yes please.” Dean put his arm around your shoulders as you followed a line toward the reception. You liked the warmth and leaned into him. “So, she’s gonna do her sunset pictures with Cory Matthews and then they’re going to do their first dance. Then there’s the first round of toasts, gonna be from Debbie and from Spencer’s dad. Then we get to eat. I’m starving.”

“You should’ve said. I’ve got a bag of M&M’s in my pocket.”

“Thanks, but we’ve got steak waiting for us.”

“And when do you gotta dance? And which one of those douchebags do you have to dance with?”

“After dinner and after Brittany and Mark do their toasts. Instead of the usual Daddy/Daughter dance, Debbie decided that the bridal party need to dance, instead. So, I get to dance with Jeff. Jeff’s the one that looks like Shaggy.”

“Oh, the goateed one.” You nodded. “Okay. Well, when they open the dance floor up, you and me can show ‘em what Mrs. Phillips has taught us.”

You laughed as he pulled away to pull out your seat at the round table closest to the long high-set table that Debbie, Spencer, Mark, Brittany and Spencer’s parents were going to be sitting. “If they play anymore waltzes after we get done with the Maids and Men dance, I’ll definitely show off with you, Dean,” you said as he pushed your chair in for you.

“I’m gonna request it,” he teased, sitting in the chair next to you.

“Oh, hush.” You leaned your head on his shoulder as the rest of the wedding guests poured into the hall and took their places at their designated tables. About fifteen minutes later, Debbie and Spencer entered. They immediately went into their first dance, two minutes of ‘A Thousand Years’ by Christina Perri. “A song from Twilight. Really?” you whispered to Dean who chuckled.

“Why do you know that song is from Twilight?”

“Because Debbie’s Team Jacob and it was impossible to avoid when we were dating. I know things about that series I never wanted to know,” you answered, watching Debbie try to dance with that train behind her. Spencer tripped on it twice in the two minute song.

The welcome toasts were mostly just Debbie patting herself on the back for being so beautiful and getting a man who could pay for the wedding she always wanted and Spencer patting himself on the back for marrying a chick as ‘freaky’ as Debbie. The steak was well-done, because obviously no one knows how to cook a damn steak, and the baked potato was wrinkly and dry.

But Dean made things better. He joked through the dinner, kept his arm across the back of your chair so that you knew he was there, and gave quiet commentary as Mark and Brittany gave their toasts. He gave rapt attention as the bridesmaids and groomsmen all stood and walked to the middle of the dance floor. You matched up with Jeff, took your stance and waited for the music. You were nervous but as soon as ‘Once Upon a December’ came on, you let your mind go back to Dean holding you as the crazy old lady taught you how to dance.

Jeff was supposed to lead, but you ended up leading him around the dance floor and two and a half minutes later, all three bridesmaids were folded on the floor in an artful dance pose. You hated it, but you smiled at Debbie’s guests and let Jeff help you up. “That was…” Dean started as you sat down. He looked around before leaning closer to you. “Pretentious bullshit. Debbie choreograph that?”

You nodded, chuckling. “She’s a big Disnerd. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Anastasia isn’t Disney,” you whispered as Debbie and Spencer got up to cut the cake. They smashed the pastry into each other’s mouths, then Debbie demanded all the single women to line up behind her for the bouquet toss. You rolled your eyes and went to the back of the crowd. After the pushing and shoving was done and one of Debbie’s twice-divorced aunts had the bouquet in her hands, they opened the dance floor and the DJ turned on some pop music.

You were bouncing happily to some P!NK song when Dean approached with a drink from the bar and handed it to you. “You look like you need a little social lubrication.” You sniffed at the plastic cup and raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s a screwdriver. Who doesn’t like vodka and orange juice?” You laughed and took a drink. “And when the DJ plays my request, we’ll need you a little loose.”

“What request?”

“You’ll see.”

Another four songs of pop and old R&B and an old rock song came on. Dean smiled brightly. “What is this?” you asked as he pulled you from the edge of the dance floor to the middle of it.

“Kashmir. It’s got three-four time,” he explained, wrapping his arm around you and taking your hand in his.

“The drums are in four-four, though.”

“Just listen to the guitar, then.” As Led Zeppelin played, you didn’t listen much. You focused on letting your body be led by his, the way he held you to him and spun you around the dance floor. You focused on his eyes and the way they crinkled at the corners when he smiled as brightly as he was smiling. You focused on those perfect teeth in that smile and the freckles across his cheekbones and, as the song came to the instrumental outro, you focused on those full pink lips crashing into yours.

You dropped his hand, slipping your hands up around his neck to pull him down further into the kiss as he wrapped his arms around you to pull your body harder against his. “Dean,” you whispered when you had to pull away to breathe. “My room or yours?”

“What, Debbie doesn’t have some grand exit planned that you’ve gotta be here for?”

You laughed. “She can run to the limo with one less sparkler lighting her way. She’s a high-maintenance bitch. Get me out of here.”

“Gladly,” he said, grabbing your hand and running for the exit. You were laughing as you swiped your purse off the table on your way out, ignoring the looks from Debbie, Brittany and several of the other guests. You were sure you’d never see most of them again.

Your phone was going off with texts before you even made it to the interstate, Debbie admonishing you for leaving, Brittany cheering you on and Amber just letting you know that Debbie was livid. You left your phone in your purple clutch purse on the seat of his car as he guided you toward his room. “I've got condoms in my bag,” he said, pushing his door open and pulling you in with him.

He made a beeline for his duffel bag and you admired the swell of his ass as he bent over. He pulled out a box of Trojans and set it on the side table as he sat on the edge of the bed and smiled at you. “As good as you look in that dress, y/n, why don't you go ahead and take it off.”

“You first, Dean,” you responded with a smile.

He smirked and stood, pulling his suit jacket off and tossing it at the chair in the corner. His hands went to his tie next, loosening it and pulling it off. As he started unbuttoning his shirt, you got impatient, moving forward and grabbing his belt. He kept removing his shirt, throwing it at the chair and missing as you pulled the button on his slacks. He grabbed your wrists to stop you as you went to unzip his zipper. “Your turn, y/n,” he said as he toed his shoes off. You reached to your right side and pulled your zipper down, letting the dress drop to your feet. “Damn. I’ve been waiting for this since I walked into Mrs. Phillips’ class. Worth the wait.” He dropped his slacks and boxers to the floor at his feet.

You pulled your bra off, tossing it across the room and eagerly slipping your panties down your legs. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him into a fierce kiss, your tongue slipping into his mouth and sliding against his. He grasped your hips and pulled you against him as he fell to the bed. The give-and-take, the taking turns, ended there as Dean took complete control of the situation. His hands groped their way down your body, learning where you were most sensitive and following his hands with his mouth to seek those places out.

To call Dean an enthusiastic lover would be an understatement. You had never had someone so attentive, giving off happy moans as he licked at your folds, praising the taste of you and making sure every move he made was well-received. Your orgasm was a slow build of two of his fingers fucking in and out of you, his tongue lapping at your clit lazily. He was taking his time, not racing to your finish line like every other lover you'd had. When you came, it wasn't an explosion or a tsunami, it was a succession of small waves of pleasure crashing into your nerves one after another until your breath was forced from your lungs.

“Dean,” you called, breathlessly beckoning him up from between your thighs. He crawled up your body, licking his lips. “Fuck me. I want to feel you inside me.”

He smirked as he reached over and grabbed a condom, tearing the foil open and quickly rolling the latex down his length. He pressed his lips to yours as he slotted himself between your legs again. He notched the head of his cock at your entrance and let out a deep groan as he slid in to the base of him. “Jesus, woman. You're fucking tight.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back. “Please move,” you whined.

He chuckled as he started to kiss along your jaw. “No patience, y/n?” he whispered in your ear.

“No. No time for patience. Fuck me, Dean. We've waited long enough.”

He slid his hips backward and eased in again, lazily, slowly, taking his time just as he had when he was eating you. “We got all the time in the world, sweetheart. I'm gonna make you cum ‘til you can't fucking move. Then I'm gonna get you back to Lebanon and I'm gonna fuck you some more.”

He started a slow rhythm, swiveling his hips and nibbling and licking at your neck. You met each movement of his hips, your heels in his back working as leverage. That is, until he pulled your legs free of his waist and pressed your knees up into your chest. When he picked up his speed, you squealed and squeezed your eyes closed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” you rambled, almost chanting as he fucked you harder. “Dean, oh my god!”

“You almost there, baby?”

“Uh-huh. Y-you?” You opened your eyes and caught his lust-blown green ones.

“Yeah. Wanna get you there first, though.” He brought his right hand down to your hip and swept his thumb across your clit.

Your second orgasm hit you like a ton of bricks, a guttural moan pulling from your throat as your vaginal walls clenched and fluttered around his cock. He managed another three thrusts before his hips stuttered and he slammed forward to the hilt, spilling into the condom. He captured your lips again, both of you panting in the afterglow. You both moaned as he pulled his softening cock out of you.

He tied the condom off and threw it in the waste bin before dropping to the bed next to you. You chuckled as you snuggled into his chest. “Your brother really is wrong about you.” You looked up at him with a smile. “You've got amazing rhythm.”

He chuckled and held you close. “Gimme some recovery time and we'll dance again, y/n.”

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[snarky-badger]

Eddie/Venom finding out their S/O has a healing factor, after she was severely injured during a mugging, stabbed from behind or something. Venom is devastated for a few seconds thinking they failed, and their lover is dead. only to get a shock when she jolts up and starts wheezing and coughing up blood; begging them to pull the knife out venom reluctantly does so, and watches in awe as the injury heals.

*crawls out of Writer’s Block hell* I’m scrolling through Prompt suggestions trying to get the muse back. Kinda abandoned doing things in order for the moment, sorry. And sorry for the long period of inactivity. RL is sucking all my will to write at the moment :(

It had been a wonderful afternoon of playing hooky from work. You and Eddie had caught a matinee, then gone to lunch at his favorite buffet restaurant - you were sure they were low-key scared of him at this point. He and Venom ate a lot. Still, despite the horrified looks at Eddie’s fifth helping, the two of you had enjoyed your meal.

The entire day had been a godsend of calmness. Up until karma, fate, or just some little asshole at the Universe’s dealings decided to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.

“Whoa guy, you don’t wanna do this,” Eddie frowned as the mugger tightened his grip on you, the sizeable knife at your throat digging in a little.

The man’s free hand was painfully squeezing your left arm as he pulled you backwards into the alley. Eddie followed, a white sheen flitting across his eyes, and your dry swallow had your skin grating against the blade at your jugular.

“Wallet and phone!” The man’s fetid breath rolled past your face as he growled out his demands, and you clenched your jaw, not fear, but anger rising in you as Eddie obediently dug out his wallet and smartphone, handing both of them over to the mugger, who chuckled as he shoved both items into the jacket he was wearing. “You too, toots.”

You grimaced at the ‘toots’ remark, but reached into your small purse to retrieve the items, slapping them into the grasping hand to your left. The knife nudged you a little, maybe because of the force you’d used, and you saw Eddie’s gaze darken angrily.

The blade left your throat, and you finally let yourself breathe, before a dirty hand curled around your neck, holding you tight. The mugger at your back leaned into you, cheek brushing yours, and you wrinkled your nose at the smell that clung to his skin. “Sorry, toots, this ain’t personal. But, your boytoy there, he’s one of those that’ll try to be the hero once I let you go. Gotta distract him, got me?”

You opened your mouth to voice your confusion before white hot pain exploded in your back. Something - your brain said ‘knife’ - slipped in between your shoulder blades, slicing, cutting, stealing your breath from you in a horrible gasp. Blood flecked your lips as you met Eddie’s horrified gaze, and you stumbled forward when the mugger shoved at you, sending you staggering into Eddie’s open arms as you fell.

Heat and cold warred in your body as you struggled for breath. Something in your chest didn’t feel right, you couldn’t get in enough air. Eddie cradled you in his arms as he dropped to his knees, grief and anger warring in his eyes before blackness swarmed around him, Venom making an appearance.

Obsidian tendrils lashed out. You heard more than saw them gain purchase on the mugger, heard the wet snap of breaking bone and tearing flesh.

Something popped in your chest and suddenly blood filled your mouth, obstructing your airway. You gurgled, coughing, every spasm making fresh pain lance through you. You felt cold, felt sticky, hot, blood - such a contrast - wetting the back of your shirt and dripping to the ground below you.

Venom’s grip on you tightened, painfully so, tendrils curling around you to secure you to him as he leapt up the side of the building, more tendrils and his right hand digging into the brick as he scaled upwards. “MORSEL! FIGHT! THERE’S A HOSPITAL–”

You swallowed blood and shook your head, raising a bloodied hand to touch his face. “T-t-too late.”

“NO!”

Everything was fading. The sounds of the City, cars, people, pigeons, everything was just vanishing. All you could hear was your labouring heart and the gurgling breaths you were taking. Your vision blurred at the edges, even as you struggled to focus on Venom as he madly, desperately, leapt across rooftops, uncaring that he’d be seen in the daylight. “…s-stop.”

A pained, wounded, noise left him as he jerked to a halt on a rooftop, pale eyes fixated on you as a large taloned hand rose to cup the side of your face, his voice a low, mournful whisper. “MORSEL–”

“S’okay,” you rasped, blood trickling from the corner of your mouth, even as your vision faded, the feeling of your heart literally missing a beat thudding in your chest, like the final nail in your coffin. Weakly, you rose a shaking hand to cover his, unable to see, but hearing the low, alien, keen that left him. “…s’okay… love you… s’okay…”

“NO. NO NO NO! EDDIE! EDDIE, WHAT DO WE DO?! NIBBLE, MORSEL, PLEASE—”

His begging voice faded from your ears as your heart stopped, your hand falling from his.

For one long, horrible, moment, you ceased to be. That long second stretched out, an eternity of darkness and cold and emptiness.

Before it all slammed back.

Your body convulsed as life was forced back into it, your eyes going wide as you gasped for air. Sound snapped back into focus, the sky too bright to your eyes that had been sightless just moments before.

Venom’s grip on you loosened in shock, and you uncoordinatedly shoved yourself out of his arms, twisting to land on your hands and knees on the roof, landing with a grunt. He stood there, dumbly, eyes as wide as you’d ever seen, as you twisted your right arm back, fingers seeking the knife that was still in your back.

“…get it out…” you wheezed, your healing body struggling to repair the damage that the still present blade was creating. Your lung couldn’t reinflate with the intrusion in it, and you fought for breath, even as your heart beat rapidly, trying to send enough nutrients to mending flesh. “Venom…. take it the fuck out, please!”

Your pained cry finally jolted him out of his shock, his form dropping to one knee next to you as he gripped the knife by it’s handle. You felt the blade grate against rib and slice through newly healed flesh as he pulled it out, and finally, finally, you managed to take in a deep breath, coughing as your collapsed lung reinflated.

Dimly, you were aware of Venom staring at the skin of your back in a stunned awe as the skin knit itself back together. You waited until the unnerving sensation of your insides rebuilding and regrowing settled before sighing and slowly, stiffly, pushing yourself up until you were on your knees.

“So…” you started dumbly, avoiding Venom’s stunned gaze as you used the collar of your shirt to wipe blood from your mouth. “Questions? Comments? Yelling?”

None of those options applied. Instead, Venom grabbed you and hauled you into a crushing hug, arms tight around you as he buried his face into your hair.

You returned the embrace as best you could, your back protesting as he held you tighter in response. “Okay, o-okay, take it easy, I’m still healing…”

His grip on you loosened a little, taloned hands coming to rest on your shoulders as he leaned back to meet your gaze. “HOW?”

A grimace flit across your features. “I’m a mutant. I, um…. My body heals any damage it gets. If I get killed, I just… kinda, reset, like some goddamn computer. Everything goes away, and I think, maybe, I really do die - for a moment anyway -  and then… bam! I’m back and everything’s healing.”

“MORSEL…” One large hand rose to cup the side of your face as Venom leaned in, resting his forehead against yours. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US?”

“Because I’m a mutant. You know the rap mutants get. And… I’m… I don’t get sick, I heal from everything… and I don’t age the same way.”

He pulled back, curious. “AND THAT SHOULD BOTHER US, WHY?”

“Because I’m older than I said I was,” you admitted haltingly, glancing away. “I’ve been alive for a long time. And… I told myself that I’d never get involved with anyone again - it hurts too much to outlive them - but Eddie… and you… I couldn’t help it. I fell in love with you two so fast that it still scares me. And maybe you’d be okay with me being a mutant, but–”

Venom tilted his head, and you knew, knew, that Eddie was as hyper-focused on you as Venom was. “BUT?”

Fuck it. “I’m a hundred and sixty three years old.”

He blinked. Actually blinked.

You winced in the ensuing silence, certain that you’d just lost both of them, only to jerk your head up to stare at Venom in shock when he rumbled a laugh.

“EDDIE SAYS YOU’RE ‘ROBBING THE CRADLE’.” Venom told you with a smirk, and you felt your face heat with a blush. “ALSO, THAT HE HAS NO PROBLEM DATING AN ‘OLDER WOMAN’. AS FOR US, NIBBLE… WE’RE OLDER THAN THIS CITY BY A THOUSAND YEARS. A HUNDRED AND SIXTY IS YOUNG.”

Goddamn aliens. You hadn’t thought about that. “So… you’re not going to leave?”

Another laugh left him as he pulled you into another hug, and if you were a little weepy, he wisely didn’t comment. “YOU’RE STILL STUCK WITH US, LITTLE ONE. THOUGH, EDDIE HAS ENDLESS QUESTIONS.”

“Can I answer them back home? I feel kinda gross.”

“THE NEST IT IS.”

“…I love you.”

“AND WE LOVE YOU, MORSEL. BUT, PLEASE, DON’T EVER SCARE US LIKE THAT AGAIN.”

“I can’t die, Venom. I’ll always heal.”

His grip on you tightened, tendrils lashing out to curl around you as he rose to his feet, cradling you in his arms. “DOESN’T MEAN WE ENJOY SEEING IT.”

You reached up to wind your arms around his neck, pecking him on the cheek. You would have kissed him, but you still tasted blood on your tongue, and doubted he’d enjoy the sharp reminder of you choking on your own blood. “Okay.”

[pileofsketches]

Hi Writer!

I’m noun on Ao3; thank you for writing for me! To give you an idea of my tastes, I’ve got the standard DNWs below. Anything not mentioned is fair game.

On consent, I’m ok with dubious consent—be it because consent cannot be discussed beforehand, dubcon turning into con, or simply because desire overcomes reasons why person didn’t consent fully in the first place. Otherwise, go wild. I like enthusiastic consent, arousal is arousing.

DNWs: dialogue lifted entirely from canon (callbacks are fine!), first-person writing (unless in epistolary format), character studies (whole fic musing on someone’s canonical actions, no new content/action), hopeless or depressing endings (angst and struggle during the fic = great), coffee shop/minimum wage struggle AUs, noncon, trans headcanons, autism headcanons, asexuality headcanons, prostitution as a positive (background prostitution/mentions of trafficking are a-ok), daddy kink or parental role kink, and sexualized choking.

A/B/O is a trope I absolutely adore—the changes to society! the possessiveness! the various kinks!—but please no male pregnancy/women who can impregnate.

If, in any place, a kink/trope looks to override any specific DNW, the kink/trope wins out. That shouldn’t happen in this exchange, but if it does—kink/trope trumps.

List is organized by fandom, then universal kinks, parings, then paring specific kinks if applicable. There are so many freeform tags, I tried to give a sentence each as to why I like each one, and more if possible. Also, you can assume if I like a specific kink (ie, Breeding Kink -- We Have to Conceive the Chosen One(s)) then I will like it in a general sense (= breeding kink) and it’s a-ok to use it in combo with another prompt.

Assassin’s Creed – All Media Types

I have not played anything after Syndicate, but am familiar with the comics up to Juno’s death and some of the YA novels. Please do not use any of the Odyssey/Origins lore, be it on whatever they’re doing with the Precursor backstory or Assassin motivations or whatever.  

 A/B/O - Alpha begs to be allowed to knot: I love the desperation and the contrast between perceived authority of the alpha versus the omega actually giving permission.

 A/B/O - Animalistic Behavior: Biting, marking, a general retreat to more animalistic instincts. I like A/B/O set-ups where it’s the alpha who gets uncontrollable while the omega, while in heat, retains their wits. I do love nesting omegas!

 A/B/O - breeding triads:  ‘Successful’/stable relationships involve either one of each, or two alphas and an omega, or two omegas and an alpha.

A/B/O - First time rut Alpha with experienced omega: Self-explanatory.  

Alternate Universe - Role Reversal: Fandom specific! Either a) make the Assassins Templars, or b) swap motivations as far as Pieces of Eden.

Bondage and Discipline - Honor Bondage: Give me some of that Assassin control! Does the paranoia and like, actual expertise with restraints and weapons make this the more interesting/more sexual option? How does control get handled when that’s one of someone’s huge ideological pillars?

Breeding Kink - Those are some excellent genes you have there: For any of the past parings, they know they have to have a kid to make Desmond happen. For any of the later ones, is it a pre-Flare attempt to get them a backup plan? Is Abstergo making them do it?

Breeding Kink - We Have to Conceive the Chosen One(s):  For any of the past parings, they know they have to have a kid to make Desmond happen. For any of the later ones, is it a pre-Flare attempt to get them a backup plan? Is Abstergo making them do it?

Character From Future Tries To Convince Current Enemy They Will Be Friends/Allies In Future: Desmond going back to the Farm, Desmond going back before his kidnapping, Desmond waking up from any of his Animus experiences with knowledge of the Flare and trying to get to Lucy earlier, Maria going back to the first time she met Altair and trying to help him, Altair waking up in the middle of his missions from either the end of his life or the middle of his successful relationship and trying to mend things with Malik/meet Maria sooner.

Character goes bad to save the world and enjoys it more than expected: I will kill for this in a ToWK setting for Connor. Or, Desmond—the Eye somehow gives him all the power, and he decides to fix everything/break the cycle. I’m also for this with anyone in the Altair/Malik/Maria trio—what does it look like if one of them manages to use the Apple?

Comes Back Wrong: Mostly for Desmond. Everyone is glad he’s ok, but there’s some element of Precursor/just plain done with being manipulated/whatever you want to slap on. Also, for Malik or Maria after their canonical deaths.

Dubcon voyeurism to consensual threesome: self-explanatory.

Lavish Descriptions Of Historical Clothing: specifically 18th century, but I’m flexible.

Loyalty Kink: self-explanatory.

Sex Pollen: self-explanatory.

Soulmates: Characters have each other's names on their wrists: self-explanatory.

Soulmates - they know from a young age that they're soulmates but smth keeps them apart: self-explanatory.

Touch-Starved Character Having Overwhelming Tender Long Foreplay First Time Sex: self-explanatory, but it does scream Connor.

Werewolves - Sex With Werewolf in Wolf Form: self-explanatory. 

Desmond Miles/Lucy Stillman (Assassin's Creed)  

I like this paring because of what an effective lure Lucy was for Desmond, with the fact that she was 1) attractive 2) saved him and 3) had a relationship with Bill that seemed like perfect bait (and was) for Desmond’s own issues with him. Desmond’s forgiveness of her, Lucy’s tragic death, the parallels that were made in the game between him and Lucy and Maria and Altair—all great.

Malik Al-Sayf/Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad/Maria Thorpe (Assassin's Creed)

My favorite OT3s are the ones where each person has an independently strong relationship with the other two in the trio, and supports each one/gets different things out of each one. I like Maria and Malik moderating Altair and dealing with the complicating feelings he has for each one when he’s been such a lone wolf for most of his life. (I am also a big fan of Tazim being Malik and Maria’s kid)

Ratonhnhaké:ton | Connor/Original Female Character(s) (Assassin's Creed)

This ship is entirely a vehicle for kinks/tropes, do whatever you’d like to make the OFC work. My only request is that she not be a colonist who’s Not Like Other Girls, ie, won’t wear stays/a corset and a skirt, or be someone that Connor rescued who now has a crush on him. Also, I would kill for a ToKW setting.

Rebecca Crane/Shaun Hastings/Desmond Miles (Assassin's Creed)

Pretty much the same as the Altair/Malik/Maria ship- I like OT3s are the ones where each person has an independently strong relationship with the other two in the trio, and supports each one/gets different things out of each one. I would be as happy for something set pre-Flare where the three of them fall in together because hey, it’s the end of the world, as much for something Syndicate/Black Flag era where Desmond is revived/downloaded from the cloud and they’re very glad to have him back.

Dishonored (Video Games)

 Arranged Marriage - Public Consummation

Bondage and Discipline - Honor Bondage

Breeding Kink - We Have to Conceive the Chosen One(s)

Character goes bad to save the world and enjoys it more than expected

First Time - A Patient with B's Clumsy but Enthusiastic Blow Job/Cunnilingus: Would prefer Emily to be the experienced one. 

If I Must Solve A Dozen Geopolitical Problems Just To Have Sex With You Then I Will

Lavish Descriptions Of Historical Clothing

Loyalty Kink

Ritual Sex Magic

Soulmates - they know from a young age that they're soulmates but smth keeps them apart

Emily Kaldwin/The Outsider

General monster boyfriend vibes, the idea of the destined lover, the inevitability of fate vs active and individual choice. I prefer Outsider-Outsider, but am ok with a story that splits between divinity and mortal or sets him as the slightly-off human. Please no naivety/woobie human Outsider.

Xeno - Loving oral on Wet Pinecone Dick (Awapuhi Plant gif)

Xeno - sex shouldn't be physically possible but we're not cowards

Be Not Afraid for I have some excellent dick

Consentacles

Kirin Jindosh/Emily Kaldwin

Coup-tested royalty vs clawed his way up from the gutter genius—the class divide is a huge part of why I like this paring. I like Emily pushing and Jindosh resisting—until he doesn’t—and the idea of the public/private divide as far as behavior.

Masked Ball As An Excuse for Inadvisable Sex: This is just the Fugue Feast, so. 

Pregnancy - Impregnator Wins the Throne

Soulmates - Characters have each other's names on their wrists: The angst! How does Jindosh handle this, growing up. (How do you even prove it’s real?) How does his struggle to get close enough to Emily influence his choices? Is he even interested in nobility? How does Emily handle her side? Just give me class issues and the concept of fate/avoiding fate.

The Witch (2016)

Please don’t make Thomasin’s age/youth a kink. In the period setting, she’s more or less a full adult, dresses like one, etc. Also, I would prefer a benevolent/semi-benevolent Black Philip in the sense of a viable alternative to the religion Thomasin was raised in, and a humanoid over a goat. The theme of willing and educated consent is particularly important to me in this one- Thomasin makes her choices understanding the cost, and is an enthusiastic participant, or is actively convinced. 

Black Philip/Thomasin (The Witch)

Alternate Universe - Formal Matriarchy: How does the witch commune in the forest work? Where do they get their food/supplies? (’noun, that’s too much thought for a horror movie’) How does this turn out in fifty years/sixty? Listen, I just want a functioning magical matriarchy that yells fuck off/fights expansionism. 

Breeding Kink - We Have to Conceive the Chosen One(s) Slash anti-Christ, or a bunch of demons, or whatever.

Lavish Descriptions Of Historical Clothing: Particularly corsets, or the sort of clothing that wealthy women would wear in this time period. She was tempted by a pretty dress, among other things. 

Pregnancy - pregnant with multiples

Sex with Monsters

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (TV)

Please keep this in the era the show is set in! I am a-ok with period homophobia, but am not interested in a coming out type story where the focus of the struggle is triumph over adversary- I like Midge’s career being the focus, or little domestic scenes. Maybe something where they’re in a relationship by the time she realizes that Shy’s gay? Is she able to handle herself better because of this? I am also perfectly happy if Midge and Susie remain closeted to friends/family during the story/their relationship seems like how it is in the show to everyone else, and there’s no angst over that.

Miriam "Midge" Maisel/Susie Myerson (Mrs Maisel)

Butch woman is allowed to remain butch for entirety of story

Canon Got Fucked and They Lived Happily Ever After

Character A thinks they're just character B's rebound but they're not

Lavish Descriptions Of Historical Clothing

Make This Fic Super Excited About Bing Set in New York

[acehotel]

Interview: Maxine Walters

Maxine Walters is the Queen of Jamaican Dancehall signs. For the last eighteen years or so, she's been cherry-picking them off the streets of Jamaica and showcasing her favorites around the country. She also has a chart topping song to her name, runs a Caribbean production house and has a soft spot for sunshine dresses. In her words, she works hard, plays hard and sometimes is just plain lazy.

Last month, a collection of her most prized pieces premiered in the Gallery at Ace Hotel New Orleans along with an artist talk led by womanist writer, Stevona Elem Rogers and Mr. Boombastic himself. We sat down with her the day after it opened to chat about signs, the happenstance of obsession and the good life. 

Shaggy showed up last night. How did that happen?

I knew Shaggy was coming to town. He's a good friend. His wife, Rebecca is my Art Director. I had just finished a job with her and she goes, you know Richard is going to be in town. That's what she calls him. And I said, oh really? I told her I had a talk on that Saturday evening, and could she ask him if he'll come in early and do the talk with me? That was the last we spoke and then I forgot about it.

Lucky for us, that's not the end.

Yes. Once we arrived at the hotel, we were looking for a table to eat and suddenly this person came up and yelled my name. I looked and said, "Shaggy, you're here!". We sat together, started chatting. I asked if he would join me & he did.

What's the story between you two?

We've known each other for ages. He's a philanthropist, you know. I really admire him. He does a charity for this children's hospital and his wife Rebecca runs it. They do it every other year now. It's interesting how we met— I met him sort of casually many many times. Then one day, maybe twenty years ago, I was on a flight to London and we sat beside each other and talked the all the way from Kingston to London. He told me his entire life story and we just kind of bonded.

Let's talk about these beautiful wonderful signs.

I started collecting them in 1999. I'd seen them around forever and like every other Jamaican, I paid them absolutely no attention. Then in the late 80s early 90s, a peace corps volunteer came to Jamaica named Christina Kirsten. She couldn't find anywhere to live, so she ended up living with me.

Well, this girl, everyday she would come back to the house with a masterpiece. She was teaching art at the time. One day she gave me a gift, a hand-painted dance hall sign. I looked at it and thought “this is art, this is free art.” I'd been collecting art since I was 17, so I couldn't believe it. It ignited a passion in me.

Immediately I started going out everyday and bringing signs home—three or five or sixty, as we did one day. That was it. I just started collecting them because I fell in love with them. It wasn't for money or because I wanted to sell them or do anything but just to have them.

It's interesting because so much of street art today is immovable, like wheatpaste and spray paint — but these you can take. They're often made out of scrap wood, right?

No, actually. They're made out of hard board. Wheat-paste used to be very common in Jamaica as well, and like you said, you couldn't take those with you. These signs were a sort of graduation of that style of advertising. The competition started as to who could come up with the funniest things.

The artists that get commissioned to make them, do they get paid well?

I don't think so. I think it's probably good money since they can turn them out so quickly though. It's usually a group of people that do them. But, they're not really paid as artists. These signs are looked at as short term advertising only.  

Do they get recognized for their work?

No. There's no protection. When I was starting to look into putting together the book, I contacted the copyright and said you know, what about these? And they said, "What about them?". There's no way to credit the artists, because they don't sign them.  

What made you decide to compile your collection into a book?

The Hospice. When I realized that the they needed support and more funding, I thought what can I do? People love these signs, maybe I can do something with that.

The Consie Walters Cancer Care Hospice. What's your connection to it?

My father worked for TV J, a Television station in Jamaica. A year before he died, he was contacted by a Nurse who asked him to help this hospice for Cancer patients, which he did. A year later he found out he had Cancer. The last year of his life, he worked diligently, I mean, he really devoted his life to getting this hospice off the ground. Two months after he died, they named it for him. After that, my entire family, we all started to work with the hospice in one way or another.

So, you decided all proceeds from the book would benefit the hospice?

Yes. The first book was really a catalog for the exhibit at Ms. Lily's in New York, which was the first show. We sold about a thousand copies and all that went to the hospice. Then, I was approached by Hat & Beard Press to create a coffee table book, and that's the book you see now.

Where have the signs taken you so far?

Art Basel, Los Angeles, New York, Kingston, Montreal, here. Soon? London, Berlin, Sao Paulo and more.

Do you know how many you have at this point?

About 4,000. The outside of my guest house is completely covered in them. I keep 100 or so of them at my Sister's house in Florida, a collection in Europe, a couple of storage spaces, all over my house and a few other places.  

What was the first one?

It said Fire something. I don't quite remember.

Do you have a favorite?

One of them is hanging here. Rastafarihighnity. *[photo]

Rumor has it, you shared the stage with Bob Marley once.

Yes, yes. It's a very simple story. The year before he died, he called me up to do this float for him for the West Indies Day Parade. He was performing on the stage all alone and he said " Come on, girls! Come up here with me." — so, my friends and I ran up and pretended to be the I Threes. Bob was great. He was an amazing person. I spent a week working with him and could probably make a film just about that slice of life.

It seems like you'll try anything once. What's left on your list?

Most of the work I do in the film business is mostly commercial work, which keeps me very busy. I also have been teaching production for features at this international film school and I love it. Teaching is is so satisfying because when you finish, you just levitate knowing that they've received what you've given. I'm planning to do more of that this year.

I have a wonderful little country cottage on the coast of Jamaica which I'm going to turn into a sign house. Something like a tourist attraction, strictly invitation only. Invite them over for tea, no more than 8 people at a time. That's been my plan for a long time. After that, it's just where the signs take me I guess. It's a good life.  

---

If you're in New Orleans you can visit Maxine's show at the Gallery inside the hotel and buy a copy of her book next door at Defend New Orleans. If you're not somewhere in the 504, you can also buy the book online, here. If you want to bask in dance hall glow, stay the night. Blog readers and dub step lovers get good deals on rooms at Ace New Orleans with secret code STAYMORE.  

[365daysofj2]

There Goes My Hero (Library AU, NC-17)

Thursday night, after Jensen finally gets off from work, Jared calls him. “Hey, Jared,” Jensen says warmly when he answers the phone. “How was your day?”

“Pretty good,” replies Jared. “How about yours?”

Jensen sighs. “Larry was in quite the mood today. He was telling Kathryn about restaurant managers he’d like to kill.”

Jared’s jaw drops. “You’re not serious. What’d you do?”

“Told him we’d have to report him to the police if he kept making threats like that,” says Jensen. “He shut up quick. Hell, Felicia even shut him down this morning. I couldn’t believe it.”

“What’d she say?” Felicia’s notorious for not standing up to anyone, even people who are actively yelling at her.

“He started to repeat himself, the way he always does, and she snapped, ‘I heard you the first time, Larry.’”

“Wow.” Jared sits down on the couch. “Did it work?”

“He seemed pretty stunned,” says Jensen. “He actually did shut up, and he wouldn’t go back to her the rest of the day.”

“Good for her,” replies Jared. “Tell her I said ‘way to go!’”

“I will.” He hears Jensen turn the phone to speaker and pour some liquid into a glass. “So, was there something you wanted?”

“Yeah,” says Jared hesitantly. “There’s something I wanted to, uh…get your opinion on.”

He hears Jensen take the phone off speaker. “If it’s something comic- or cartoon-related, I’ll do my best, but I make no promises.”

Jared shakes his head. “Not exactly. It’s just…I was wondering if you would be up for a little role-playing next time we get together.”

“Dungeons and Dragons role-playing or the fun kind of role-playing?”

Jared’s eyes widen. “You know about Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Only that my parents thought it was Satanic,” answers Jensen, and Jared can practically hear his eyes rolling. “I take it you were talking about the latter.”

Jared grins. “Sure was. I was thinking superhero and tied-up hostage.”

“Tied-up as in bondage?”

Jared swallows hard. “Light bondage. Just wrist cuffs, unless you’re up for more than that.”

“You got more than that?” Jensen sounds surprisingly intrigued and not hesitant at all.

“I’ve got ankle cuffs and a mattress kit,” replies Jared. “But that’s a little advanced.”

Jensen’s quiet for a long moment. “Yeah, just wrist cuffs to start. I can’t believe you can even bring geekdom into the bedroom.”

“I’m a man of many talents,” says Jared with a smirk. “And many costumes, as well.”

“You mean—you know what, I don’t even want to know,” says Jensen. “So, you wanna come over tomorrow night? I’ll throw some chili in the slow cooker and make some cornbread.”

Jared smiles. “That sounds awesome. Yeah, text me when you get home and I’ll come by.”

“Sure thing.” Jared hears Jensen’s jazz music turn on in the background. “Well, I’m gonna eat and have some more wine. Have a good night, and I’ll see you tomorrow after work.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Jared leans back and grins. “You won’t be sorry, I promise.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to punish you if it doesn’t go well,” Jensen says, his voice dropping into a terribly sexy low register.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” replies Jared.

Jensen responds in the same sexy voice. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

Jared swallows hard. He adjusts his jeans and says, “I guess you will.”

“Good night, Jared,” purrs Jensen.

“‘Night, Jensen,” says Jared in a slightly strained voice.

* * *

The next night, Jared’s knees shake slightly as he steps up to Jensen’s front door. He’s got on a Batman hoodie and black jeans, baggy enough to allow for his Batman boxer-briefs with attached cape, and the cowl his college friend Sandy knitted him is in his Batman backpack along with his wrist cuffs and fasteners. He’s also got something he bets Jensen will never wear, but he’s gonna give it a shot anyway. He’s a little embarrassed now that he’s actually contemplating explaining his fantasy life to a buttoned-up jazz-loving librarian stereotype.

It could be worse. At least he doesn’t insist on playing a Batman porno in the background. He’s perfectly fine with a custom music playlist he keeps on his phone. He got that from the same person he got Jensen’s potential costume from—Sandy’s roommate Sara, who singlehandedly put on a midnight showing of Rocky Horror every year that included students acting out the movie in front of the screen. Jared starred as Brad all four years, and kept the corset and black lace panties. He figures if they fit him in college, they should fit Jensen now. Jensen’s a lot narrower in the shoulders and hips than Jared ever has been. Sara was also a slash fanfic writer, and he’s embarrassed to admit that most of what he knows about gay sex he learned initially from her fanfic before he started experimenting on his own.

Jensen answers the door, still dressed in his library clothes, a crisp maroon button-down shirt and black pinstripe trousers. His eyes light up when he sees Jared, as if he wasn’t expecting him, which is kind of ridiculously charming. Jared grins and steps past him into the townhouse. “Hey, Jensen.”

Jensen closes the door behind him. “Hey yourself, Jared. You can throw your bag on the sofa till we head upstairs.”

Jared does as he’s told and follows Jensen to the dining room, where steaming bowls of chili and a basket of cornbread are sitting out, along with bowls of sour cream and grated cheese. Jared grabs Jensen’s belt loop and pulls him in for a kiss. “This looks great, thank you. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

Jensen beams. “No trouble at all.” He motions to the chair that Jared has started to think of as his own. “Sit. I bought some craft beer, since that seemed better for chili than wine.”

Jared raises an eyebrow. “Have you ever bought craft beer before?”

“I went to college and grad school, you know,” replies Jensen, but Jared thinks the annoyance is feigned. “Yes, I’ve bought craft beer before. Fuck, I’ve bought kegs of Yuengling before. I’m not that much of a snob.”

Jared takes a sip of the beer. It’s a local one from the brewery at the PA Ren Faire, an oatmeal stout that’s quite possibly the best beer Jared’s ever had. “Wow,” says Jared. “This is great.”

Jensen smiles, clearly pleased. “See? I’m not totally hopeless.”

“I never said you were,” retorts Jared.

“No, but you were thinking it.”

Jared takes a bite of his chili. It’s got plenty of heat and meat, the two things Jared likes most. He dips his cornbread in it, as does Jensen. “So, you haven’t totally lost the Texas, I see.”

“No more than you have,” says Jensen. He takes a sip of his own beer. “You’re right, this is pretty damn good. I just bought it ‘cause it’s local, but it’s better than I was expecting.”

“Yeah, it’s awesome.” Jared shovels more chili into his mouth. “I swear, someday I’m going to move in here just so you can cook for me every day. This is the only place I ever get real, home-cooked food.”

Jensen’s eyes twinkle in the light of the candlesticks he’s placed in the middle of the table. “You want to move in already?”

Jared almost chokes on his food. “N-no, I was just—it was a joke!”

Jensen puts his hand over Jared’s. “Relax. I know that.” He takes a sip of his beer. “But, down the road, it’s definitely something I want to talk about.”

Jared nods. “I live in a shithole. Believe me, when you wanna talk, I’ll listen.”

Jensen goes quiet then, and the two of them eat their dinner in relative silence except for the music in the background, which Jared suddenly realizes is the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack. “You bought new CDs?”

Jensen nods and smiles. “Yeah, after the concert. You don’t mind?”

“No, not at all!” Jared pats Jensen’s knee. “I’m glad you opened your horizons to something different.”

“Someday we’ll see the movie,” says Jensen, looking to Jared for reassurance.

“I’ll bring it next weekend,” says Jared. “We can marathon the first three. Then I’ll let you catch up in your livres des français.”

Jensen beams. “I started French lessons on Duolingo,” Jared explains.

Jensen gets up and kisses the top of Jared’s head. “You’re the best boyfriend ever.”

Jared smirks. “Hold that thought.”

They finish eating and do the dishes together. Then, Jared retrieves his bag and they head upstairs.

Jared sets the bag down on Jensen’s desk chair and pulls out the cuffs, the ties, and the “surprise.” He feels his cheeks grow hot as he hands Jensen the corset and panties. “You don’t have to wear these, but man, I’d love it if you did.”

Jensen turns them over and considers it. Just when Jared thinks he’s going to say no, he grins. “What the hell, right?” He motions towards his bathroom. “I’ll go change, and then you can tie me up.” He rubs his chin. “There’s a sentence I never anticipated saying.”

Jared lets Jensen leave and then pulls off his hoodie and jeans. He fastens the cuffs to the headboard of Jensen’s bed and waits for Jensen to come back in. He hooks his phone up to Jensen’s Bluetooth speakers and starts his playlist. Hawksley Workman’s “Striptease” starts playing and Jared starts to get hard just from the Pavlovian conditioning. He fucked almost half a dozen guys to this song during college, including a different one after each performance of Rocky Horror. The first time it was Milo Ventimiglia, the guy who played Eddie. That was probably the only pairing in the whole show that wasn’t supported by canon. Even Jared couldn’t make a compelling fanfic case for that one.

Jensen comes back wearing the black flowered corset and lace panties. Somehow it manages to make his pecs look flawless and his thighs almost obscene. Jensen takes one look at the cuffs and swallows hard. “Do your thing,” he says, his voice slightly raspy.

Jared fastens the cuffs around both of his wrists. His arms are spread out at a sixty degree angle, which he’s not going to leave him in for long. It’s too painful the first time. He turns around and says, “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Jared dons his cowl and turns off the lights, leaving only a small desk lamp lit. “Call for help,” says Jared in his normal voice.

“Help?” Jensen sounds unsure, but then he seems to get into it. “Help me! I’m trapped!”

Jared turns around. “I’m coming!” he shouts in his deep Batman voice. He sees Jensen bite back a laugh, pressing his lips firmly together.

He climbs on the end of the bed. “Where are the others? Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” replies Jensen, sounding rather convincingly terrified. Jared wonders if Jensen has some theater background he’s not aware of.

“Who did this? Did you see?”

Jensen shakes his head. “He had a mask on. Covered his whole head. And then he covered my eyes.”

Jared rolls back on his heels. “I need to search the building.”

Jensen swallows. In a shaking voice, he responds, “Do what you have to do. Just—come back soon?”

Jared reaches out and strokes Jensen’s hair. “I’ll be quick. I promise. I’m not leaving you.”

Jared jumps down and lies on his belly on the floor to hide from Jensen. On the stereo, the song switches to George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” He has a momentary pang of guilt thinking of the singer's posthumous status. He lets the song play through and then gets up.

Jensen’s struggling against the bonds, not hard, just for show. “Help me! Please?”

“I’ve secured the area,” rasps Jared. “But I’ll have to pick the locks. It’ll take time.”

“Just don’t leave me again,” murmurs Jensen, and he actually sounds hurt.

Jared fiddles with the cuffs. They’re only Velcro, but they’re strong, and Jensen can’t get out of them on his own. He rests a hand on Jensen’s shoulder as he pretends to fiddle with the one on Jensen’s left wrist. “I’m not leaving. I’m here. I’m taking care of you.”

“I’m scared,” Jensen says in a small voice, and those plush pink lips turn out in a pout. Jared adjusts his rapidly-hardening dick inside his briefs.

“Don’t be,” he says in his Batman voice. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

Jensen leans forward and brushes his forehead against Jared’s bicep. “You’re so strong,” he simpers. “You have such big muscles.”

“Comes with the job,” he rasps. He reaches down with one hand and traces the neckline of the corset. He starts unfastening the hook-and-eye closures down the middle one by one.

Jensen’s eyebrows shoot up, like he didn’t realize they were there. But he fights it down and drops back into character. “You’re so brave. But I guess that’s part of the job too.”

“Can’t be a superhero if you’re not brave,” Jared agrees. He unhooks a few more fasteners. He trails his hand down to Jensen’s crotch and feels the damp rayon of the panties that cover Jensen’s rock-hard cock. He’s enjoying this, too. He slips a hand under the waistband and flicks the tip of his thumb over the slit. Jensen arches his back and thrusts his cock further into Jared’s grip. Jared pumps it a few times and, as a courtesy, slides off the panties. He tosses them over the side of the bed and licks a bead of precome off the slit. Then he runs the tip of his tongue underneath the sensitized head, making Jensen buck his hips and nearly hit Jared in the forehead with his pelvic bone.

Jared takes Jensen’s cock further into his mouth. He laves a thick stripe up the underside of the shaft, then releases it and slides a hand up Jensen’s pelvis to the lower hem of the corset. Jensen squirms. “Ja—I mean, Batman, please, have mercy!”

“You like that?” Jared rasps. He unfastens another couple of hooks and slides his hand over to tease at Jensen’s left nipple. He rolls it between his thumb and forefinger, coaxing it into hardness. Jensen drops his head back and moans.

Jared leaves Jensen’s wrists bound, since he doesn’t seem to be disliking or resenting the restraints. “You’re just so pretty,” he breathes, sliding his hand to Jensen’s other nipple and teasing it into hardness. “No wonder the Joker went for you. He likes the pretty ones.”

“And what do you like?” gasps Jensen.

Jared smirks at him. “The grateful ones.”

“I’ll do anything you want,” says Jensen, breathing hard.

“Anything?” Jared raises an eyebrow.

“I owe you everything,” murmurs Jensen. “I want to—to express my gratitude.”

Jared flicks open a few more hooks. “You would do anything?”

“Anything at all.” Jensen honest-to-God flutters his fucking eyelashes. “Anything for you. You’re my hero.”

Jared reaches behind Jensen’s pillow where he hid the lube. He squeezes a generous amount on his fingers and runs one around the outside of Jensen’s hole. “Let me fuck you?”

“Absolutely,” gasps Jensen.

Jared slides one slick finger into Jensen’s tight hole. Jensen’s breathing hard and it takes him a minute to relax and let Jared past the ring of muscle. Jared reaches his other hand up and cups Jensen’s chin. “Relax, baby. I gotcha.”

Jensen nods. “I know. I trust you.”

Jared slides a second finger in. Jensen tips his head back, exposing that long, freckles expanse of golden skin, and Jared presses his lips to it. Jensen moans as the warring sensations dazzle his senses. He goes boneless in Jared’s arms, completely open to Jared’s desires, and Jared’s never been so horny in his life.

He adds a third finger, scissoring open Jensen’s hole. He reaches under the pillow and retrieves a condom, then tears it open with his teeth and rolls it over his thick, straining cock. He pulls his fingers out of Jensen’s hole and spreads some lube over the condom. “You ready, babe?”

“Fuck yeah,” gasps Jensen.

Jared pushes his cock into Jensen’s slicked-up hole and Jensen groans with pleasure. He presses in as far as he can, past the ring of muscle, and Jensen just leans back and lets him in. Jared starts to thrust, establishing a rather intense rhythm, and Jensen tips his head back and lets Jared do as he pleases.

Jared captures Jensen’s hot, dry lips for a kiss as he plunders Jensen’s ass. Jensen bucks against the restraints but doesn’t complain, just gasps and moans as Jared fucks him as fast and hard as he dares. Seeing Jensen like this, totally vulnerable and yielding to Jared’s every demand, is just about the hottest goddamn thing he’s ever imagined.

Jensen breaks the kiss and tips his head back on the pillow, panting so hard that Jared falters momentarily. “I’m okay,” gasps Jensen. “Fuck, just—just like that.”

Jared continues to thrust and Jensen continues to fight against the restraints, but not in a way that indicates distress. Jared comes with a stuttering shout and spills his load into the condom. Jensen bucks his hips and Jared takes his quivering cock in one hand and jacks him through his own orgasm as he’s pulling off the condom with his other hand. Jensen comes with a hoarse groan that Jared swallows by covering Jensen’s mouth with his own. He ties off the condom and throws it away as Jensen shudders through the aftershocks. Finally, he releases Jensen’s wrists and Jensen immediately throws his arms around Jared, who collapses next to him on the mattress. “That was incredible,” breathes Jensen.

“You liked it?” Jared’s breathing hard, but he manages to smile.

“I loved it,” replies Jensen. “I kind of want to try it from the other end.”

“You gotta ask nicely.” Jared nuzzles Jensen’s temple with his nose.

“Please can I tie you up and fuck you next time?”

Jared smirks. “I’ll think about it.”

Jensen kisses his temple and rubs his wrists, even though Jared knows the cuffs don’t chafe. “That’s all I ask.”

[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!

[stone-man-warrior]

November 15, 2018: 5:35 pm:

November 15, 2018: 5:56 pm:<br><br>Dead Mother-Fuckers at the Grants Pass Wal... StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-11-15 18:35:58-0800 - Updated: 2018-11-15 18:35:58-0800

November 15, 2018: 5:56 pm: Dead Mother-Fuckers at the Grants Pass Wal-Mart just a half hour ago. Terrorist soldiers died at the Wal-Mart when their Nitrous Oxide/Versed airborne gas tanks were ignited. They launched in the suspended ceiling and disappeared in there at the checkout and came out by the Pharmacy area. One of the dead terrorists was a General who plays the role of store manager. All of the checkers that work the check-stands have the rank of Lieutenant, and all of the shoppers at the Wal-Mart in Dystopian Socio-terrific Grants Pass Oregon are soldiers, I don't know what there ranks are, but they are lower in rank than Lieutenant. I think the impostor shoppers use the rank of "Fogger", there primary job is to follow American shoppers around the store, communicate to other Foggers the location of American Citizens who came into the store to shop, and to "fog" the isles where the American Victims are shopping inside the store. There are also "Exterminators" who attack the vistins with a needle filled with euthanisation drug from the "Pet IQ" store that was put into the Wal-Mart this past summer. There are "Cart Drivers" and "Finishers". The cart drivers usually wear yellow Wal-Mart vests, and the "Finishers are dressed in regular street clothes for quick exit and blending into the crowd. I think that those titles are actually used as military rank among these unconventional army soldiers. The General who launched into the ceiling was a female, about sixty yers old, long grey hair, and very petite. She was also fogging at the check-stand to "ripen" me for the kill. Fight terrorism with a Bic Lighter! All you have to do is bring a lighter, and use it periodically as you shop in each isle of the store. When you encounter a group of people huddled closely together, light the lighter and go the opposite direction. The foggers group themselves up together in the isle where the American Victims are, they release Nitrous gas as a group, while pretending to be friends who happened to meet inside the store and engage in conversion among themselves while pretending to be friends with one another..It ids not difficult to know that the conversations are phony. If you listen to these kinds of conversations, it is not difficult to figure out that the people are actually talking about where inside the store that they are at, and that they "Got One!". "Got One" is an announcement made over the electronic communication that these terrorists use among themselves while killing American Citizens inside the store. LIGHT THEM UP! Other terrorists also launched inside the store, and the entire army of terrorists there are extremely mad at me personally. I have killed more terrorists there than I am willing to say, and if I did, no one would believe the number anyway. The number I use is 5. The Fifth amendment to the Constitution of the USA is designed as a means to protect Americans who have to protect against conditions of war, at a time when the nations leaders are not aware of the war yet, or, are not addressing the fact that warfare is happening. 5th! At the checkstand, number thirteen I think today, the checkout Lieutenant had been informed of some information and then questioned me about it. She asked me, or told me in a question form "You killed Lorena?". Someone else said "Chapman is dead, he ran her through". I lit my lighter repeatedly after that. and said "If Lorena Chapman is dead, than the people of the entire world are far safer now, you have no idea!". So, today before I went to the store for food, there was an intruder inside my home. The intruder was dressed in a disguise and the disguise was a ball. A terrorist wearing a bright blue costume that appeared as a ball, a big, giant size ball. I don't remember fighting the terrorist, I only remember seeing the giant ball. Also today, the terrorist at 445 "MyStreet" by the name of Steve Bell, assaciated with the US Postal Service and also with a cell at Arby's restaurant, clearly has been replaced with a look alike terrorist who was at the home of Steve Bell today with a small child, presumably a kidnapped child, with red hair. They specialize in kidnapped red headed girls between the age of five and eight years old at the Steve Bell Terrorist cell at 445. The replacement Steve is a man who works in the electronics department at the Fred Meyer Department store. All of this happened. These reports on this page going back four years or more are all true. There is no way to get help. These reports are here as a means to try to get some help. No one will help. Please call the US Department of Defense and direct them to this page. It's important.

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+1'd by: Gannon Mahaffay

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-11-15 20:14:37-0800

November 15, 2018: 7:55 pm: There is a realty that needs to be understood by those who would do National Security work. It's a realty that has been covered or otherwise hidden in such a way as to make fools out of those who do National Security work. It is not my intention to make any one feel foolish, however, those who do National Security work have been fooled on a scale that is so large, it cannot be seen. Like standing on a spec of dust in the Himalayas while looking for Mount Everest, the reality is too large to see. National Security people need to understand the enormity of what has happened while they were being fooled. The people responsible for making fools of National Security persons are easy to find. Almost everyone on Earth can see them everyday. Even if we do not want to see them, they are there, right in front of our faces, entertaining us as they take the entire USA, and in fact, the entire planet Earth and all of it;s people. Reality: It is that big. It is that blatant. It is standing, sitting, singing, laughing, telling jokes, doing News broadcasts, playing musical instruments and lulling everyone into a trance of entertained bliss as they torture the children of the world. My children. Your children. The Screen Actors Guild. That is the reality. The enormity is different. The enormity is the result of nearly fifty years of being fooled. The reality and enormity is such that the entire state of California, Oregon, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, New Mexico... and more... all of that, and I mean all of the people who once lived in those states... they have all been killed and replaced with impostors. Until National Security people are willing to arrive in reality, stay there, and stop being fooled, the USA is doomed to fail. The time is approaching quickly. We have until January 2020, after that, no more USA, and whats worse, no more Freedom. In the absence of Freedom, there will be captivity. The terrorists are the Screen Actor Guild in all of the ways teh Screen Actor Guild exists. From the actors, entertainers and musicians, all the way to the engineers who do the sound and video magic, to the set designers, make-up people, and the most dangerous of them all are the screen writers. Even the people who sweep the floor after the rock concert and those who go get the coffee for the cast and crew... everyone of them are Screen Actor Guild and they have been making fools of National Security people for five decades. The people can be all found in two locations. The Rolodex of Jay Leno, and the Rolodex of David Letterman. That is how you can find them, and you don't not need the physical Rolodex, you just have to think about it.

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-11-15 20:55:01-0800

November 15, 2018: 8:30 pm: True story: 1997. I received a phone call. A family member had died. I was told there was a service, and the location of the service was provided. I had to drive a long way, through three states to get there. I took my daughter along with me. Upon reaching the bottom of the Tehachapi mountains of Highway 58 near Edwards Air Force base in the California Desert, I stopped for fuel and to rest after a long driving session. It was dawn. The gas station attendant was terrified. He asked me from where I had come from. I told him. He told me a bunch if things that I did not comprehend. The man was truly terrified and trying to explain things to me. There is a railroad track there by that gas station at the bottom of highway 58, it runs along the base of those mountains there and includes the area of Valencia, Palmdale, and Saugas along it's path. A train was coming by while this man was trying desperately to get me to understand something that I could not understand. He was speaking English clearly, I could understand his words, not the idea he was conveying. The urgency was clear to me. The train approached. The man at that gas station told me ti go look at the train as it went by. It was right there across the street and within walking distance so I did what he asked of me. I went over there. The train went by, and it was a freight train with endless cars that can hold aggregate material. The freight train with endless aggregate cars was filled with people. They were screaming, moaning yelling... names, numbers, places, Valencia! I heard. Saugus! I heard. and names. Phone Numbers and cries for help were coming from that train. There were others in off road vehicles with spotlights. It was just getting daylight at the time. The ones with the vehicles were riding alongside of the train. There was another vehicle on the train tracks, a small utility railcar like a dump truck on the train track. That extra railcar was stopping along the way, the men were picking up the people that had fallen out of the train with the aggregate cars. I understood. I went back to my car at the gas station and my daughter was gone. I looked for her everywhere around there and heard her yell for me. She was inside of a big rig truck and the truck was leaving. I got my daughter back from that truck. We continued on our way to the funeral service for my deceased family member. On the way back, we had to go the same way we came. It was weird. I stopped at a rest stop at the bottom of highway 58 to stretch out and use a restroom. As i began to walk towards the restroom, two cars went near mine. My Daughter was sleeping in there. I went back car and those people left. I tried to walk towards the restroom again, and those people approached my car again. I did not use the restroom facilities and chose to just do things without the restroom. We got back onto the highway and those people were right behind us. They tried to make me crash. I made them crash instead. In 1997, it was very difficult to get from one state to another without being killed.

[ecotone99]

[SF] A little story based in the world of Mortal Engine.

I recently had to write a short story for school and I decided to base it in the world of Mortal Engines. I’m not a very good writer and I have only read the first book so somethings might be wrong and I decided to make somethings up but here you go.

“As you all know, thousands of years ago, the ancients destroyed themselves during the Sixty Minute War,” explained Mr. Ahmed in his booming voice that woke Lute from his sleep. “The fear of this war is what forced the cities of the world to mobilize, be put on wheels and eat each other”. “Why isn’t Petra on wheels?” enquired one of Lute’s classmates. Lute never had many friends and as such, he had a lot of free time to read the history books, so, he already knew the answer to this question. “Because we’re built into the side of a moun…” mumbled Lute, still half asleep. “As you all know, the hunters exam is coming up and you only have one chance; if you fail, you’ll have to try to be a warrior or historian instead,” continued Mr. Ahmed. The hunters exam, the test ever boy in Petra waited for since they started school. If you passed the exam it showed that you were becoming a man, and it allowed you to be a hunter (the most respected job in Petra), aside from being chief of course. This meant that everyone in Lute’s class was excited, everyone except Lute. He never really cared for anything, he just drifted back in forth through life without a direction. Of course he would do the exam, he needed something to do with his life after all, but, if he had to be a historian, so be it. Class finally ended and as he was about to leave the dark, sandstone room when he bumped into Michael, the chief’s son. Michael hit him as hard as he could, right in the stomach. “Maybe you should run home to your parents, oh wait…” said Michael tauntingly. The problem with this is that Lute never had parents or a home; he was left behind by a small traction city that drove past Petra. Because of this, no one liked him very much and he never made any friends. Lute started to run away and all he could hear is Michael yelling, “You’re a scaredy cat”. The next morning, all the boys met at the hunting grounds for the exam. The Chief was there; he always watched the exam, he did pick out the new hunters after all. “For the exam you’ll all have to go into the wilds and bring back any animal you can find,” explained the Chief, “the first ten boys to bring back an animal, pass”. The Chief started counting down and as soon as he got to one, everyone ran of into the harsh sand dunes and small forests outside Petra. All they were given was a bow, a quiver of arrows, and a knife. Lute was one of the first to find a deer, but Michael was following him, still holding a grudge. Michael knocked his arrow before Lute had a chance and took out the deer. Michael shouted back to Lute as he ran back to the Chief, “Too slow, Lute, maybe you’ll find another one”. He wandered and wandered the dunes with no direction and every once in awhile he sat and rested. Finally, after what felt like hours, Lute finally found another animal; it was another deer. He knocked his arrow as quickly as a cheetah, and let it fly. He hit the deer and dragged it away. When he got back to the Chief, he could see Michael scowling at him, visibly angry that Lute made it through the exam. “Good job to those of you who made it,” said the Chief in his regal voice, “and I’m truly sorry to those of you who didn’t, but, you can still be a warrior and protect the ancient walls of Petra”. Of course when Lute went to leave, Michael followed, mocking him. This happened almost everyday but recently it’s been worse and Lute just ignored it until he made it to his single room in the dark, dry, sandy walls of Petra. Due to Petra being built into the side of a cliff, when the traction era started, they were stuck where they were. Most cities gained any new technological advancements from cities they ate, but Petra couldn’t eat other cities and as such, their society was very primitive. Aside from that, Petra was a fairly nice place, other than the sandy walls and constant darkness.

The next day, all of the new hunters had to gather in the main hall of Petra for a feast. The main hall was darker than any other part of Petra because it was built the deepest in its walls and it was the most covered part of the whole city. It was also the nicest part of Petra, with real wooden furniture and some things that the ancients called televisions, although they didn’t work, they made surprisingly nice decorations. “After all of your hard work to get to where you are, we decided to let you enjoy your first day before starting your new duty,” announced the Chief. He was right, everyone did have fun, everyone except Lute. It was a fine party, but Lute didn’t care for socializing, mostly because no one talked to him, partly because he was naturally shy. The other reason that he didn’t have fun is that Michael was constantly watching his every movement. Michael’s eyes stayed focused on him, immovable, until finally Lute started to leave. “Where are you going Lute?” mocked Michael. “H...home,” responded Lute. “But, didn’t your home drive away a long time ago?” taunted Michael. Finally Lute had enough and ran up and hit Michael. He stared in horror as he watched him fall, then, he stared at his now open hands and back at Michael. Next thing he knew, the Chief was beside him. “I-I-I didn't mean to do it, he was maki-” started Lute with tears welling up in his eyes. “I know, I’ve seen what he does Lute, I’ll make sure to scold him later,” interrupted the Chief. Lute fell to the ground, sobbing. He could feel all the action of the last few days catching up on him and he fell asleep. Eventually he woke up in is small, dark room all alone. He got up and walked out to the dorm where all the other boys stayed. They were running out to the hunting grounds. They must be sending us on our first expedition thought Lute. Lute started following them. He wasn’t very excited to go out into the wild, then again he wasn’t excited by much. Even though this was true, there was a silver lining to being alone; he wouldn’t have to put up with Michael. He walked out into the light and saw the chief standing at the front of the crowd of hunters. “We have been running out of food recently and for your next expedition, we will need you to stay in the wild for one month,” started the Chief. The new hunters cheered at the idea of going out for the first time, while the older hunters stayed quiet because they knew what to expect. “Now everyone, we need you all to go and collect your gear and leave as soon as possible,” finished the Chief. Lute went back to his room and found that there was a brand new bow and arrow, made out of steel, waiting for him. Alongside the bow, there was a note that read,

Dear Lute, I know you haven’t had a good upbringing in our little town and I’ve seen what my son does to you. I know this can’t make up for everything, but, I would like you to have a brand new bow, straight from our engineers. From, The Chief

With newfound encouragement, Lute grabbed the bow and some hunting powder (a tool developed by the ancients to keep meat fresh and now hunters used it so that all their meat stays fresh until they return to Petra) and he ran off to the hunting grounds. He was happy to finally be free of the constant mocking of Michael and everyone else. Almost as soon as he stepped outside of the dark walls of Petra, he saw a massive deer. He followed the deer into the woods, for days. When he finally caught the deer he was extremely tired since he hadn’t slept for a couple of days. He knocked his arrow and felled the deer. Lute went over to the deer and praised the god of the hunt, as was customary. Afterwords, he paced some hunting powder onto the body, keeping it edible for the month to come. He built up a small tent and a fire and hid the deer under some leaves. As he was doing there was loud rumble. He didn’t know what was happening when the colourful birds flew into the air, screaming. He wandered alone (nothing he wasn’t used to), unable to find a single animal in the wood, all he could find were their tracks. Eventually, almost two weeks later, the forest opened up into the dunes of Jordan. Once again, there wasn’t a single animal in sight, and he still heard the rumbling from earlier. The deeper Lute made it into the dunes, he started to find deep tracks in the dunes. They were fresh tracks and they were definitely from a traction city. Lute knew he had to warn Petra, he finally felt like he had a purpose. He started off towards his home, completely forgetting about his earlier catch. He ran as fast as he could but the constant rumbling was catching up to him, getting louder and louder until it was unbearable. He turned around and in his last second of consciousness, he saw the massive name on the front of the traction city, Mining City Zarqa. Then the city hit him, sending him into the air.

Michael was just about to return home when he found one of the other hunters camps. He hadn’t had much luck finding food, so, when he saw the deer handing under the leaves, in perfect condition, of course he took it. It was the biggest animal he had ever seen, it was almost as big as him. He knew that he would be celebrated if he went home with such a big catch, so, he started off running as soon as he picked it up.

It was a peaceful day in Petra, much like any other, only the Chief was starting to worry. He was worrying so because all of the hunters had returned on the deadline, all except one. The other reason he was worried is that the hunters had only brought back enough food to last a week. Aside from that, Michael had just arrived with the largest catch anyone had ever seen. Another feast was starting in the main hall, to celebrate the hunters’ return. This celebration was even more exciting than the last because of all the adrenaline running through the hunters after their exhilarating expeditions. At the end of the feast, the hunters were given rewards for their catches. Most of them were given some new clothes and other things like that, but, Michael who had stolen the biggest catch was given the newest set of hunting gear from the engineers. Then there was a boom, the sound of falling rock, as the front wall of Petra fell.

It was almost a week later when Lute woke up; it was a miracle he survived. His mind was foggy after the incident but one word stayed in his mind, Zarqa. He didn’t know why he remembered this word but he knew it must be important. He began to wander the dunes aimlessly, once again. Eventually he began to go back towards Petra. Soon Petra came into sight and Lute saw the devastation that had come to his home. He dropped to the ground, tears falling from his eyes. “Noooo!” he shouted into the empty space around him. The realization came to him, I had to warn them, I saw the tracks, I could have saved them. He walked closer to Petra, realizing how small and helpless he truly is. He didn’t move for hours, yelling and crying into the nothingness. He’d didn’t bother to go back to Petra because he knew he’d find nothing. Finally he made up his mind; he would hunt down the city that did this. Zarqa he kept saying in his mind, over and over. He walked for hours on end, through the empty dunes. Eventually he tripped over something in the sand. He turned around to look at it and started to dig out whatever it was. First he saw what looked like a tiger head made of steel. He continued to dig and there was a metal skeleton connected to the head and tubes going back forth through the sinewy body. After it was completely dug up, Lute knew exactly what it was. It was a stalker; resurrected creatures, made of metal, that were used for war. It’s small green eyes lit up and stared straight at Lute. He jumped back instantly, ready to run but it followed him. It started to rub up against him. It seemed as though it liked him.

Zarqa wandered throughout the land. It’s mayor was standing on a balcony above the gut (the place where cities went when they were eaten). He watched their newest slaves as they were walked to their new place of work. Zarqa was a mining town (they get their materials by digging into mountains), so, they only devoured cities for new slaves. Because of this, they didn’t mind that there was nothing else to be obtained from Petra.

Lute’s new pet (he named it Leer) followed him obediently, no matter where he went. Sometimes he sent Leer out to find food and it always returned with fresh food. This newfound companion managed to keep Lute’s spirits high, even though Leer was a soulless robot. After a while, they heard the now familiar rumble of a traction city. It was coming right for them! They tried to run but the city was too fast. They were sucked straight into the gut. “Welcome to Al Karak!” boomed the speakers above them. Slowly he walked in a line with other people captured from the dunes of Jordan, while Leer followed in the shadows. He had to give his name to a guard before he was allowed into the main part of the city. The city was bright and colourful, unlike Petra. It was inviting him in. He was almost tempted to stay here forever, but, he had to save his people and he might be able to take advantage of his current detour. Almost every city had an airship dock and he might be able to find someone to take him to Zarqa. After asking for directions, he found his way to the dock where he met a young pilot named Edward. He informed Edward on his situation and Edward agreed to let Lute fly in his ship. “There’s a group of trading cities to the east, we could probably find out where Zarqa is heading if we head out there,” Edward explained. “Sounds like a good id-“ “W-w-what is that!!” shouted Edward, pointing at Leer as it crept out of the shadows. “Well, I guess it’s kind of my pet,” started Lute “I named it Leer and it’s a stalker.” “Weren’t stalkers only made from humans?” asked Edward. “I guess some nation decided to make them out of animals, who knows?” replied Lute. After getting to know each other, Lute, Leer and Edward headed off to the trading cities.

Soon they could see their destination below. The cluster of cities just looked like a mangle of grey steel. When they landed, they found out that it smelt even worse. As they walked the streets, an old man heard them talking about Zarqa. “So you’re looking for Zarqa, are you?” asked the slouched over, old man. “I can tell you exactly where their going, for a price of course,” he continued. Lute and Edward looked at each other, nodded and handed over what little money they had. “Their on their way towards mountain to the north; I hear they’ve run out of mountains to dig up here and they need a new mining site,” quickly explained the old man. “Thank you!” the boys said as they started running of towards the airship.

The airship started to circle Zarqa, trying to find an entrance. It turns out that the mining city saw them as soon as they flew over top of it. After a couple minutes, Zarqa shot a net out at the airship and tried to pull it in. Edward’s airship turned out to be stronger than it looked; it started to fly away from the city, breaking the net. They flew out of sight before returning to sneak into a lower level of the city.

They stole some guard outfits and snuck into the city, with Leer following from the shadows. They asked around and found out where the people of Petra were sent and Edward had bought some tech from some shops. One of the people they asked was suspicious and called some guards on the boys. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before,” Said one of guards. “W-w-we’re new!” quickly replied Edward. “I didn’t know we were hiring new guards, not as young as you atleast,” impatiently said the guard. Lute started to reply, then, Leer stepped out of the shadows and lunged at the guards. They stumbled away and ran. The boys also started to run in the other direction. At Least now they knew where they were going, but the whole city would know about them now; now they had to stick to the shadows. Lute had adrenaline pumping all throughout his body and he felt like he was invincible. He finally felt like he had a purpose, like he knew what he had to do in life. They crept in the shadows for hours until they finally made it to the pits the people of Petra were being held in. They looked starved and tired and they probably haven’t eaten for days. Leer jumped down into pit, head first, and scared all of the guards away. The boys followed and jumped down. Lute searched for the Chief and told him about his plan. “We brought an airship, we have to sneak you all out into it,” explained Lute. “How are we supposed to sneak out of here without being noticed?” “If someone sees us, Leer can can scare them off”. “Who is this Leer?” enquired the Chief. “He’s my pet, he’s a stalker”. “A-a-a stal…” “It’s fine, he’s really taken to being around humans,” interrupted Lute. “That settles it, we will leave know,” finished the Chief. The Chief turned to address all of his citizens, “Lute and his new friends have brought an airship to take us home”. Everyone started to cheer and the Chief moved his hands in a motion, intending to calm them down. Lute and Edward lead the way, everyone crept through the dark path. They did indeed run into some guards, but, Leer did his job and scared them away. They managed to all fit into Edward’s airship and start their new journey home.

After a weeks journey, the people of Petra made it home. As soon as they landed, they made a makeshift stage, so that they could hold a ceremony to praise their saviours. “I have have to go home, I can’t stay here but I do have some tools I bought for you all,” said Edward walking to his airship, handing over the tools. “Thank you!” everyone yelled to Edward as he flew away. The ceremony continued. Lute was given some food and money; they didn’t have anything else to give him. The biggest announcement didn’t come until the very end. “Lute, I have decided to make you my heir, you have done more than enough to deserve this,” said the Chief. “I can’t accept this, I just did what I had to,” replied Lute. “I have already made up my mind”. “Thank you so much,” said Lute, tearing up. Michael stormed off, mad that his father chose Lute rather than him. The people of Petra started repairing the town, using Edwards tools. From this day on, the people of Petra lived in happy seclusion.

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