#The unreliable narration just makes the whole book all the more fascinating

[the-busy-ghost]

Why, as a graduate of history who really should know better, am I always surprised when I finish a novel and go read some analysis of it only to end up saying, “Hang on, people think that character might have been an unreliable narrator???”

[wifegideonnav]

the importance of pov and kiriona gaia as gideon nav’s imperialist aspect

others have already made some really smart posts about how kiriona is gideon when she’s lost everything and everyone that made her who she was, and how even in the first two books, gideon was this terrifically sad creature who was disguised by the fact that she was her own narrator.

but I want to expand on that last bit, because yes. kiriona is a gideon who has lost everything, who has had to make tough decisions to survive, who has had to adapt to being primarily around her father (a manipulative asshole) and ianthe (ianthe). but this is also the first time we’re getting to see gideon from a perspective other than her own.

we’ve always known that gideon is a beautifully unreliable narrator - see her complete understatement of the fight before harrow opened the tomb, where she neglects to tell us that she almost killed harrow with her bare hands - but I think that for a lot of us, the introduction of kiriona was when we first felt that.

now, nona is not an objective narrator either (lmao). and she does actively dislike gideon (which is fascinating, and which I could go on about for several posts). but she does offer an outside perspective on gideon that we have, up to this point, been lacking.

because… yeah. sometimes, like anyone, gideon’s kind of mean. we know she’s a good person - her goodness is in many ways one of the central drivers of the plot - but that doesn’t mean she’s nice all of the time. it’s just that when she’s being mean to crux, or ianthe, or even harrow we can say, well that person deserved that. but the truth is, gideon has lived through the kind of hell that very few people could survive with any kind of goodness and softness left intact. she didn’t live through it, in fact. she’s just kind of… existed through it.

I saw another post point this out, and I want to reiterate: gideon’s goal, her whole life, has been to join the cohort. when we first meet her, we’re like, ok, makes sense, that’s the only ‘out’ available to her. and we kind of forget, even as we learn more about the empire, that what gideon wants to join is this actively and horrifically violent imperialist force. when we get to nona, and we meet hot sauce and her gang and joli and the angel and even the edenites, we expect gideon to have kept up with us somehow, to reject the empire. we want her to be one of the “good guys” (goodness in the tlt universe is another longass post I want to write…).

but gideon doesn’t reject the empire. because, crucially, she IS the empire - she is its heir, never mind the fact that that doesn’t really mean anything when the current emperor is immortal.

what I am trying to say is this: kiriona is gideon when you take everything from her, and then replace it with her father and everything he represents, and then take a step back.

that step back is crucial. it is what allows us to remember how imperialism - and by extension, or by metaphor, cruelty - works. gideon becomes cruel because she is in proximity to cruel people, AND because she is not in proximity to us.

THAT is what Muir is saying with kiriona. even the most kind, good, earnest protagonist can become a tool of evil in the right circumstances: and those circumstances include perspective. gideon, like it or not, is currently actively choosing to be a tool of empire. and if we were in her head, we might be able to - or we might be tricked into - accept her justifications for why she’s doing it.

the perspective shift is what allows us to see gideon as she - currently - truly is. it is no accident that this is when we get the outside pov. Muir allows us nowhere to hide; we have to confront what gideon has become and by extension what she always has been.

gideon nav is a good person, and I fully believe that in alecto we will watch her reject her father; I fully believe she will get to be a hero. but in order for that to happen, she - and we - must first undergo radical change and growth in terms of her worldview and attitudes. kiriona is not gideon’s final form. but in the same way that john is described by harrow as having aspects, kiriona is the aspect or facet of gideon that embraces cruelty, that perpetuates empire.

Muir tells us: even the most beautiful-hearted, trod-on girl in the world can become a tool of empire. but I have no doubt that in alecto she will tell us: this is how that girl can destroy it.

[retellingthehobbit]

Your retelling, will it be implying a Thorin/Bilbo attraction?

I ask because I just discovered that ship and when I looked it up on tumblr, it led me to your work lolol

Every time someone asks me this I feel more like I'm making a Real Adaptation! I love the idea of people following this webcomic for years while analyzing the gay subtext as if they're waiting to see if Supernatural will make Destiel canon. a powerful feeling. The short answer is yes! The long answer is that it's complicated, and that if you're not a Bilbo/Thorin Person you should still stick around because I'm going to handle it in a very funky way that is not what you're expecting (also at the rate I draw, it won't be "canon" in the comic for approximately 2039482289798334534534534534 years.) Generally Thorin's role in my version of the story is that he's a living embodiment of The Quest, and Bilbo's feelings for Thorin mirror his feelings for the Adventure. When Thorin first arrives at Bag End, Bilbo is overwhelmed and annoyed and confused-- he finds him both fascinating and horribly frustrating at turns, and has no idea how to feel about Thorin in the same way he has no idea whether he'll join the adventure. As the story continues, Bilbo's feelings on the Quest will shift, and his feelings about Thorin will shift as well. I just really love the general idea of a new take on Thorin where he has a bit more pathos and a deeper relationship with Bilbo. I also think the way LOTR retroactively reframes The Hobbit as a story written by 'unreliable narrator Bilbo Baggins' adds to the possibilities a lot! there's a lot of queer subtext in Lord of the Rings, and it's fun to bring more of that subtext into the Hobbit. Tolkien often refers to hobbit adventures as "queerness,' and makes "queerness" the name for the thing that bigoted hobbits are afraid of; the fact that Bilbo has been repressing the "queer" part of himself that he inherited from his mother is, canonically, the thing he's struggling with in the beginning of the story.

I really enjoy the bit in the Unfinished Tales where Gandalf describes Bilbo like this:

And now I found that he was 'unattached' - to jump on again for of course I did not know all this until I went back to the Shire. I learned that he had never married. I thought that odd though I guessed why it was; and the reason that I guessed was not that most of the Hobbits gave me: that he had early been left very well off and his own master. No, I guessed that he wanted to remain 'unattached' for some reason deep down which he did not understand himself - or would not acknowledge, for it alarmed him.

That feeling of not being "out to yourself" and not knowing what it is that you want out of life is just!!! It's just very compelling to me.

Thorin's still gonna die though. Don't you hate it when you have this whole elaborate coming-out-to-yourself story but then your first gay crush is so Problematic he kiiiinda nearly starts a war so you betray him by stealing the Heart of his Mountain in order to prevent that war, but then the war happens anyway and he dies horribly :/. A universal gay experience.

Thorin is also an interesting character to play with, especially because I'm diverging more from the book (compared to Bilbo or Gandalf.) The way I'm planning to handle him is that he's a character we see only "from the outside," from the perspective of other characters, and no character sees every side of him. The dwarves portray him as a noble king; the elves portray him as a haughty arrogant joke, to the point where it affects Tolkien's own "translation" of the story; Bilbo has his own complicated feelings about Thorin, but even his portrayal of Thorin is heavily biased and he never gets to see the full picture.

But yeah-- the Hobbit is originally a very lighthearted story, but I do think there are lot of darker and deeper emotions you could explore in it if you wanted to, particularly if you bring in the metatext of how it's reframed in Lord of the Rings. And I do want to explore those darker emotions! So I am XD. There already was an extremely book-accurate comic adaptation of the Hobbit that came out in the late nineties (though it's super short and the pages are cramped to fit in all the prose)-- so I don't really see the point of being obsessively close to the original novel, since an obsessively close comic adaptation already exists. This comic is for the Weird Queer Overly Emotional Metatextual Reframing of The Hobbit!! Anyway, it's fun.

[fatestayyuri]

FINALLY FINISHED WARD ARC 1

thoughts under the readmore

You can say a lot about wildbow but you can't say he isn't making Choices. Actually i can say that i'm pretty sure most of this is the grim cowardice of not actually examining his biases and just writing "what comes naturally" to a liberal poisoned by toxic yuri discourse.

God, where do i even begin? how about the thing that first stuck out to me, and also the 6 other people i for some reason ushered into this Stupid Fucking Journey: the prose. the prose is bad. it's really, really bad. it stretches longer than it should and lacks the earnest charm of like. all of the VN authors i read almost entirely because it drips with flecks of irony-poisoned Marvel Ooze.The mean thing to say is that he definitely writes like he writes WAY more than he reads; the more cynical analysis i've gotten from his other work is that he's gotten into a very comfortable rut. words and descriptions drag, there's a general roughness of typos pointed out in comments untouched, and on the whole it reeks (and requires me to put on the prerequisite filters) of sloppy translation.

But that's just one facet of the writing; I am a big proponent of roughness adding to the emotional resonance of the work. I uh. The actual happenings are... certainly something, alright. It's impossible for me i think to read this outside of the context of wildbow's Amy Dallon Brain Poisoning, where the recent interviews colour my perception of his work (insisting Victoria is not a cop) for the worse. I am also unlike Wildbow Not A Liberal? so the whole spiel about Justice and Punitive Measures flies over my head. It's a bit weird since I do think the specific unreliable narrator of Victoria is a fascinating mindset to read through, and her trauma relating to her sister is rather elegantly depicted at times.

The problem is that these depictions are in fact, ruined, by my knowledge of this work as Wildbow's Hit Piece on a 17 year old lesbian. Like, i cannot stress enough how much it all falls flat considering this is Victoria's Cop Pain shown to show us that actually Amy Dallon is irredeemable. maybe if i had read worm first? idk that might make me less sympathetic to this

Oh, right! the racism! one of the ways victoria's cop brain manifests is in weird word choices like "urban" and "troublemakers" / "mischief" but like. i'm not actually sure wildbow is aware of the character he is writing, or the territory he is in? the general feel of this is one where If this was done with intentionality and a materialistic analysis of the world it could be really good! unfortunately it's written by a liberal so like. it's not.

^ why. why. why. why.

i think the way that our book club is going (where everyone reads exactly (1) of wildbow's novel) is showing me the true breadth of wildbow's uh. Beliefset? worldview? worrying tendency for race science? anyways.

I feel like there's a skeleton for a really compelling story here. I genuinely like some of the depictions of trauma, the way that parental dynamics chafe, of being treated as a burden as a patient, of being laden with a really fucked up punitive mindset. I just wish like, it wasn't these characters, and it wasn't this writer.

[hildred-rex]

Hello, I love Hildred Castaigne! He’s such a fucked up unreliable narrator and he also reminds me so much of myself in middle school and I love him for it. What do you like about him?

First off, apologies for taking absolutely ages to answer this! Life happened and I promptly forgot tumblr existed for almost a month. Yay.

Anyhow, I think my love of Hildred is a combination of the factors you mentioned and the absolute state I got into shortly after I found The King in Yellow -- aaand here comes an essay. The last version of this got deleted, and apparently I've taken it upon myself to make its replacement even lengthier.

Hildred is a fascinating character to read and to write, and his opinions on things are (or would be) so different from mine that it's fun to try to puzzle them out. I keep a bevy of fictional characters that I can simulate reasonably well as a way to make myself consider how people get to opinions that differ from mine, and naturally he's among them.

Beyond that, I'm an absolute sucker for hints at a greater world, but only narrow viewpoints from which to try to figure out what's going on in that world.

The weird bits of The King in Yellow as a whole are superb at tantalizing you with smug allusions and tiny scraps of information about what, exactly, it is that the book is named for.

Is it a play? Is it an entity? What happened to the author? ...was the author Boris? (I don't think the author was Boris, but I won't lie that I've considered writing a fic where he was.)

I got hooked on Lovecraft for the same reason, and it's actually what put me on to Arthur Machen (favorite author) and The King in Yellow (favorite book).

Even with all that, I think my King in Yellow interest would have been a passing thing that returned occasionally, if it hadn't been the last thing I got into before my first set of high school final exams kicked my ass.

The tl;dr of freshman year is that I picked the wrong math class and it spent the semester wrecking my self-confidence (and my sleep schedule) before I finally managed to transfer to a better one. (Then I spent second semester picking myself back up.)

Hildred, notably, is self-confident to the point of it backfiring catastrophically on him. He absolutely should not have gloated to Louis, tactically speaking; in this essay I will-

Anyway. Stress is weird, so during finals season and its leadup I had quite a lot of unmarshalled energy that refused to work on what I actually needed it to do and that instead directed itself at my idle pokings at Hildred and his world.

Probably better than worrying about how my abysmal math grade was going to ruin my life.

It didn't, and I came out of the crucible with rather extensive additional worldbuilding. Since I essentially speedran getting invested in the project, I came away wanting to do more of it and... it just kind of stuck?

I mean, here we are several years later and my first impulse is still to name my tumblr blog for him. I've got a rough idea of his extended family back three generations. I have a design for that spring suit Hawberk had that was mentioned exactly once. I am the embodiment of

when it comes to this lol

_____

I couldn't find a good place to fit this in above, but Hildred was also the first time I encountered a story with an obviously intentional unreliable narrator after I'd encountered the term. Not sure how I missed it that long, lol. I spent probably half a decade looking askance at various authors and going "...do you know what you're writing there???"

I also couldn't integrate it anywhere, but I absolutely adore "The Mask." I have Thoughts on Chambers's ability to write romance more generally, the short version being that he writes Lovers™ and not characters and they're thus so wooden they're hard to read, but that he must have been in a position like the beginning of "The Mask" because holy god that is exactly how it feels.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 19 – All The Names They Used For God by Anjali Sachdeva

This is the second short story collection I’ve read this year, and of the two the only one that was really trying to be a coherent work in its own right and not just a grab bag of smaller pieces. I actually picked it up entirely off of a tumblr post, of all things – there was an excerpt from the story Killer of Kings that really got stuck in my head, and having read it I just needed to see the context and the rest of the work it was from. So, score one for viral word of mouth advertising I guess.

Killer of Kings – about the writing from Paradise Lost, from the perspective of Milton’s politically unreliable angelic muse – is absolutely the best story in the book, but there weren’t really any that struck me as bad. The overall tone is kind of dreaamlike – mythological, or in many cases the kind of story you’d expect to hear on a weird fiction podcast (if a very literary one). High on the uncanny and numinous, on weird situations and the touch of something transcendent, and just on people being put in situations. Low on high action, or really tension or plot at all – the narration usually feels like it’s at a bit of a remove, or if not then like one is observing the inevitable machinery of fate more than anything to really get excited about and caught up in. Dreams or fables, or something in between.

The writing is good enough to generally make the remove work, I think. Beautiful imagery in a lot of places, and very distinct (if occasionally pretty broad) voices for the points of view of all the different stories. Call prose lyrical is essentially just a buzzword at this point, but I think these mostly qualify.

There are nine stories in the book, and aside from the aforementioned fairy tale about regicide and mutinous angels, I’m afraid that I remember absolutely none of their titles. Or, no, that is a lie – the story about a pair of Nigerian girls abducted as brides by Boko Haram who escape after learning how to magically compel and dominate their husbands shares All The Names They Used For God with the whole collection, so I do remember that one. The other stories that really stuck in my head were of an albino homesteader in the Ozarks abandoning the farmhouse to explore and lose herself in the labyrinthine cave system she discovers, the modern day sailor in a dying fishing village becoming enraptured with the mermaid he glimpses as the ship he works gluts itself on the bounty of fishes she has called to feed the shark she’s become fascinated by herself, and the near-future story of identical septuplets created by their geneticist parents who are each struck by accident or disease as they go through adolescence and increasingly haunt their surviving, doomed siblings. (They’re all like that).

So clearly the plots and settings vary pretty wildly, but I do mean it when I say that the book was the most cohesive set of short stories on an artistic or thematic level I’ve read in quite a long time. Every story in the book (I’m pretty sure, at least) has a real sense of some vast and unseen mechanism of the universe brushing up against the mundane world, some intrusion of something grand and overwhelming and uncanny into the protagonist’s life. (It’s the title, after all – ‘God’ in a broad, rather pentheistic sense, but still, the glorious and uncaring clockwork behind the curtain.) And the culmination of each story is the protagonist (not always the point of view, but the character actually driving the plot) in one sense or another succumbing to the unknown, abandoning what they have and take a leap of faith into some transcendent self-destruction.

All to say the collection really works as a whole more than the individual stories do on their own. Which is probably entirely normal for short story collections that aren’t pulled together based on being based on the same property or written by the same author without much curation otherwise, but I really don’t read many of those that are also actually good.

[goodshipskypirate]

So I've been slowly trying to read The Locked Tomb series, but having just finished the second book after putting it off for months, I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm better off reading summaries to know what has (which I did with Nona the Ninth just now) and will happen (with the upcoming Alecto the Ninth.)

Because while I liked Gideon the Ninth, the more experimental Harrow the Ninth was a bit more off-putting to me. I don't think there's anything wrong with what the book did (though I feel like overall, there's a lot of vagueness about their world and structure that naturally, the main characters would accept casually as a part of their world, but I struggled to try and make sense of sometimes) - the mystery delivered by unreliable framing and narration was obviously an intentional and quite brilliant choice.

But I think it made me realize with books, being a form of media that requires you, the reader, to visualize everything on your own, versus, well, an actual visual piece of media, meant I had a bit of trouble keeping pace with the (deliberately) obtuse, hidden pacing and foreshadowing. Like, I can read books that aren't a straight run from Plot A to Plot B, but combined with the weird vagueness of its worldbuilding (I don't know how to explain it, it's like they do establish its surroundings that I understand enough, but also not enough?), the first 200+ pages were a bit of a struggle.

To Harrow's credit, it still kept me intrigued to keep going. By the second half, I was WAY more hooked. I wanted the zillion questions I - and Harrow - had answered by the end, so I marched forward and was rewarded for my efforts. It genuinely is a good book, I do think the world of the Nine Houses is fascinating in its Gothic morbidness and how it all centers on necromancy, and I get why the series is beloved (The Locked Tomb also gets points for referencing funny dialogues and/or memes that would be obnoxious if the author had overdone them; she keeps it just right.)

I definitely want to see what happens next, but I simultaneously conclude the series as a whole is Not For Me. *shrugs* C'est La Vie. Until Alecto and than I've off to read the wiki summary.

[write-lets-do-this]

All for the Game is a series that truly transformed my reading experience back in the summer of 2020 when I read it for the first time. I remember taking the trilogy with me on a week-long beach holiday with my parents and regretting not bringing any more books with me for how fast I tore through them. I managed to keep myself fairly occupied by my own fantasies of how the characters would have reacted had they materialised before me or happened to be playing on the beach as I walked past. I could go on forever about all the details that go into this series and the emotions that I felt upon reading that were captured just as vividly even on my second re-read, but I’ll keep this relatively short.

The second book, The Raven King, (not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Maggie Stiefvater) kicks up the gory side a lot. This is the point where I warn anyone who hasn’t read it yet, and might be planning to, to check the trigger warnings for some pretty upsetting content that appears in both this second book and the third one also with too much plot relevance to be easily skipped over. There’s some harsh language and questionable drug use from the first book too, but the latter two books are the most heavy-handed with the explicit depictions of some quite horrific events.

For a series that has been published independently, it holds up well in terms of its quality when compared to other popular staples in the YA genre. The fact that it has been independently published rather than through an agency somewhat serves to highlight and mirror the narrative of the PSU Foxes as they scrabble together a found family of sorts from a bunch of traumatised and troubled young adults. The rawness of the writing itself only highlights this, making it easy for any angsty YA reader to latch onto, which really isn’t a bad thing when it comes to this series. All for the Game truly does master the art of creating almost stupidly dramatic scenarios and making them feel relatable to anyone that’s ever experienced any feelings of anger or worthlessness.

This series is so close to my heart it’s rather difficult to write objectively, or with a particularly analytical mindset about it, but it really is done rather well. The pacing is kept throughout the series, climaxing towards the final instalment and allowing a fair (if very slightly excessive) conclusion to ensure the characters’ arcs have been fully tied up. None of the leaving-enough-knots-untied-to-potentially-squeeze-another-spinoff-out that seems to plague almost every form of media in the current age, it encapsulates the whole story of Neil Josten and the other Foxes within its several hundred pages.

Neil’s narration plays its own part, making him an excellent, and frequently hilarious, unreliable narrator. The way Sakavic uses this as a tool to convey Neil’s own opinions without overly clouding the reality of the events beyond the character’s perspective is a finely-balanced art. While he’s not always the most honest about his own feelings, Neil’s perceptiveness makes for a fascinating angle that really uplifts the whole story.

Overall

I’ve already told you how much I absolutely adore this series, for personal reasons probably a little more than technical writerly ones. But gosh does it pull on your heartstrings. If you have the nerve to tolerate the hefty trigger list All for the Game comes with, absolutely give it a read!

Rating: ★★★★★

-Olive Tree

[shewhosleepsalotincemeteries]

Okay, I’d seen people talking about “people who are complaining that Nona should have just been the first act of Alecto are missing the point,” but I hadn’t actually seen anyone saying that until just now reading a review and oooooh now I’m mad and wanna yell about it.

“Her [Nona’s] greatest redeeming quality is that she tells people she loves them, but even then it feels hollow. It’s love like a child loves a toy, like a dog loves it’s owner. The love Nona expresses is that of convenience and immaturity, and is given out to anyone who shows her an ounce of kindness.”

I don’t know if I have anything intelligent to rebuke this with because I just want to scream YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HER SHE’S NOT FOR YOU!!!

But, okay, the thing that makes Nona’s expression of love so remarkable is because they come within the context of a series where literally no other character is like this. Obviously love is an extremely important theme in the series, but the love we have seen thus far tends to make most of our characters worse. It is not gentle or particularly tender, and it is often wielded like a weapon. So to have Nona be so vocally loving in such a pure gentle way isn’t hollow at all, and calling it so undermines everything about her. And calling her love “immature” also just pisses me off, so Boooo, reviewer you don’t understand the book 🍅

“Beyond feeling kind of unnecessary in the grand scheme of worldbuilding, these chapters [John chapters] result in no real emotional payoff or plot development beyond a vague handwave towards the next book.”

Unnecessary world-building and no emotional payoff?!? They make a point earlier about how John is an unreliable narrator so why should we listen to his account but the entire series is told by unreliable narrators, that’s why it’s endlessly fascinating, so idk why you’d get picky about it now? Secondly, I don’t know how any of the information we learned can be unnecessary when it gives us the extremely important information that Alecto was originally the soul of the earth, which I don’t think anyone had predicted, as well as lots of meaningful details about the original team and what they were like in life which makes seeing what John took from them and they became over the ensuing 10,000 years that much more painful.

“As the third book in a series, Nona the Ninth is already getting a lot of hype from die-hard fans of the Locked Tomb series. But this is a book that would make me tell fans not to bother.”

Now it’s just trying to make me mad, cause in this of all series I could not imagine telling fans to skip a whole book. Like the tiniest things have turned out to be callbacks and breadcrumbs, just because we don’t know how yet doesn’t mean not to bother?!!

Like how could you miss the point so bad?!?? I know it doesn’t ultimately matter if some people didn’t like it, but also I want to complain

[dangermousie]

Mousie’s absolutely subjective, very biased Top 10 web novels list

Please note that this is hardly aiming to be objective, if one can even be properly objective about a work of fiction. It is 110% based on my preferences, which means this list is heavy on the angst and has nothing set in the modern day. It is also heavily danmei-centric, even though I read way more het romance than danmei, because for whatever reason, most of the danmei I’ve read has been insanely good.

10. Return of the Swallow - one of the two non-danmeis on this list. Smart and nuanced and with a large cast of characters. Our heroine is a long-lost daughter of the family that is brought back in and has to cope with familial struggles, crazy royals, court intrigue, invasion et al. It’s SO GOOD! There is romance with the sexy smart enemy general but honestly, it’s the heroine that is the main selling point for me.

9. Transmigrator Meets Reincarnator - the only other non-danmei novel on this list, this was my very first web novel and what drew me into this insanity. This is just a ton of fun, probably the lightest novel on this list, not an ounce of angst to be found. But it’s hilarious and features competent heroine and tsundere hero and I will always love it for opening a new world to me. Anyway, our heroine transmigrates into the novel as the female lead. Unlike the original lead though she doesn’t want to seek adventures and angst - she just wants to comfortably live with the wealthy, nice husband heroine has. Alas, said husband is no longer nice since he has previously lived this story where he was betrayed by FL and then transmigrated/reincarnated into the past. Oh well, the heroine opens up businesses and makes friends. And eventually, her husband realizes his wife is way different this time around. This actually doesn’t have much romance, not until close to the end, but this is so fun I don’t care.

8. Lord Seventh - I am only partway through this so far, but it’s already on the list because it’s smart and somehow intense AND laid-back (not sure how this works, but it does) and is honestly just a really really solid and smart period novel, with the OTP a cherry on top of a narrative sundae. Plus, I love the concept of MC deciding he is not going for his supposedly fated love - he’s tried for six lifetimes, always with disaster, and he’s just plain done and tired. When he opens his life in his seventh reincarnation and sees the person he would have given up the world for, he genuinely feels nothing at all. (Spoiler - his OTP is actually a barbarian shaman this time around, thank you Lord!)

7. Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS) - oh come on, how are you even on this tumblr if you don’t know MDZS/The Untamed? This was my very first danmei and it’s so much fun! I love everything about it - the unreliable narrator, the looping structure, the main OTP, Wei Wuxian’s laidback, traumatized insouciance, everything. Anyway, the plot in the event you somehow transported here from 2005 is that the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Wei Wuxian, was defeated by the righteous sects over a decade ago and fell of a cliff to his death. Only now that same Wei Wuxian opens his eyes in another body and everything that was supposed to stay in the past starts again.

6. Heaven Official’s Blessing (TGCF) - people either love its meandering narrative, picaresque structure and cast of thousands, or find it a detriment compared to much more compact MDZS. I love it even more than MDZS for those very qualities. It does have a rock-solid, darling OTP, but what really elevates it to me are the MXTX trademark combo of snarky/light tone hiding a ton of trauma underneath, the insanely intricate world-building, and what it has to say about the nature of grace and goodness. Xie Lian is one of my top 5 web novel characters and probably in top 10 from anywhere. Oh, and while MXTX’s stuff is not as angsty for me as Meatbun’s or even Priest’s, there are always exceptions, and there is one chapter in this novel that pretty much broke me and sometimes I still flashback to it and feel unwell.

Anyway, what is it about? There is a commotion in the heavenly realm - Xie Lian, the Crown Prince of a long-destroyed kingdom, has ascended to Godhood. That in itself is not so exciting. However for Xie Lian this is the third time (!!!!) as he’s ascended and lost his godhood twice prior. And now, the biggest joke of the divine realm is back, throwing the heavenly realm into chaos. And elsewhere, Hua Cheng, one of the four most powerful demons of that Universe, sits up and takes notice.

5. Golden Stage - my perfect comfort novel. Probably the least angsty of any danmei novel on this list (which still means plenty angsty :P) It also has a dedicated, smart OTP that is an OTP for the bulk of the book - I think you will notice that in most of the novels in this list, I go for “OTP against the world” trope - I can’t stand love triangles and the same. Anyway, Fu Shen, is a famous general whose fame is making the emperor antsy. When he gets injured and can’t walk any more, the emperor gladly recalls him and marries him off to his most faithful court lackey, the head of sort of secret police, Yan Xiaohan. The emperor intends it both as a check on the general and a general spite move since the two men always clash in court whenever they meet. But not all is at is seems. They used to be friends a long time ago, had a falling out, and one of the loveliest parts of the novel is them finding their way to each other, but there is also finding the middle path between their two very different philosophies and ways of being, not to mention solving a conspiracy or dozen, and putting a new dynasty on the throne, among other things. It always makes me think, a little, of “if Mei Changsu x Jingyan were canon.”

4. Sha Po Lang - if you like a lot of fantasy politics and world-building and steampunk with your novels, this one is for you. This one is VERY plot-heavy with smart, dedicated characters and a deconstruction of many traditional virtues - our protagonist Chang Geng, a long-lost son of the Emperor, is someone who wants to modernize the country but also take down the current emperor his brother for progress’ sake and the person he’s in love with is the general who saved him when he was a kid who is nominally his foster father. Anyway, the romance is mainly a garnish in this one, not even a big side dish, but the relationship between two smart, dedicated, deadly individuals with very different concepts of duty is fascinating long before it turns romantic. And if you like angst, while overall it’s not as angsty as e.g., Meatbun stuff, Chang Geng’s childhood is the stuff of nightmares and probably freaks me out more than anything else in any novel on this list, 2ha included.

3. To Rule In a Turbulent World (LSWW) - gay Minglan. No seriously. This is how I think of it. it’s a slice of life period novel with fascinating characters and setting that happens to have a gay OTP, not a romance in a period setting per se and I always prefer stories where the romance is not the only thing that is going on. It’s meticulously written and smart and deals with character development and somehow makes daily minutia fascinating. Our protagonist, You Miao, is the son of a fabulously wealthy merchant, sent to the capital to make connections and study. As the story starts, he sees his friend’s servants beating someone to death, feels bad, and buys him because, as we discover gradually and organically, You Miao may be wealthy and occasionally immature but he is a genuinely good person. The person he buys is a barbarian from beyond the wall, named Li Zhifeng. It’s touch and go if the man will survive but eventually he does and You Miao, who by then has to return home, gives him his papers and lets him go. However, LZF decides to stick with You Miao instead, both out of sense of debt for YM saving his life and because he genuinely likes him (and yet, there is no instalove on either of their parts, their bodies have fun a lot quicker than their souls.) Anyway, the two take up farming, get involved in the imperial exams and it’s the life of prosperity and peace, until an invasion happens and things go rapidly to hell. This is so nuanced, so smart (smart people in this actually ARE!) and has secondary characters who are just as complex as the mains (for example, I ended up adoring YM’s friend, the one who starts the plot by almost beating LZF to death for no reason) because the novel never forgets that few people are all villain. There is a lovely character arc or two - watching YM grow up and LZF thaw - there is the fact that You Miao is a unicorn in web novels being laid back and calm. This whole thing is a masterpiece.

2. Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - want the emotional hit of 2ha but want to read something half its length? Well, the author of 2ha is here to eviscerate you in a shorter amount of time. This has the beautiful world-building, plot twists that all make sense and, at the center of it all, an intense and all-consuming and gloriously painful relationship between two generals - one aristocratic loner Mo Xi, and the other gregarious former slave general Gu Mang. Once they were best friends and lovers, but when the novel starts, Gu Mang has long turned traitor and went to serve the enemy kingdom and has now been returned and Mo Xi, who now commands the remnants of his slave army, has to cope with the fact that he has never been able to get over the man who stabbed him through the heart. Literally. This novel has a gorgeously looping structure, with flashbacks interwoven into present storyline. There is so much love and longing and sacrifice in this that I am tearing up a bit just thinking of it. If you don’t love Mo Xi and Gu Mang, separately and together, by the end of it, you have no soul.

1. The Dumb Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha/erha) - if you’ve been following my tumblr for more than a hot second, you know my obsession with this novel. Honestly, even if I were to make a list of my top 10 novels of any kind, not just webnovels, this would be on the list. It has everything I want - a complicated, intricate plot with an insane amount of plot twists, all of which are both unexpected and make total sense, a rich and large cast of characters, a truly epic OTP that makes me bawl, emotional intensity that sometimes maxes even me out and so much character nuance and growth. Also, Moran is my favorite web novel character ever, hands down.

Anyway, the plot (or at least the way it first appears) is that the evil emperor of the cultivation world, Taxian Jun, kills himself at 32 and wakes up in the body of his 16 year old self, birth name Moran. Excited to get a redo, Moran wants to save his supposed true love Shimei, whose death the last go-around pushed him towards evil. He also wants to avoid entanglement with Chu Wanning, his shizun and sworn enemy in past life. And that’s all you are best off knowing, trust me. The only hint I am going to give is oooh boy the mother of all unreliable narrators has arrived!

The novel starts light and funny on boil the frog principle - if someone told me I would be full bawling multiple times with this novel, I’d have thought they were insane, but i swear my eyes hurt by the end of it. I started out being amused and/or disliking the mains and by the end I would die for either of them.

[wifegideonnav]

I posted 2,574 times in 2022

That's 2,574 more posts than 2021!

282 posts created (11%)

2,292 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@emcapi

@mayasaura

@gideonisms

@saltwaterconfessions

@theriverbeyond

I tagged 2,463 of my posts in 2022

Only 4% of my posts had no tags

#art - 799 posts

#memes - 487 posts

#ntn - 393 posts

#harrow - 324 posts

#griddlehark - 317 posts

#gideon - 291 posts

#vibes - 229 posts

#op - 219 posts

#htn - 162 posts

#meta - 162 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i’d say something like ‘sorry guys i’ll try to be more active in the future!!1’ but que será será im not actually in control of when or how

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

there’s a post going around like “catholicism is only good for sexy vampire aesthetics” WRONG its primary purpose has always been to instigate a series of events that culminated in tamsyn muir writing gideon the ninth

2,073 notes - Posted November 8, 2022

#4

god I’m just never gonna fucking recover from “harrowhark, I gave you my whole life and you didn’t even want it.” the use of her full name. the agony. the shakespeare-level comedy of errors with the angst turned up to 11 and the comedy turned down to 0. the fucking. tragedy of it all. I’m unwell no fucking talk me rn

2,243 notes - Posted October 3, 2022

#3

every time I think about harrows connection to gideon being so strong that gideons name is the last thing she says before dying despite having literally erased her capacity to comprehend it, I have to go lie down. like tamsyn really said love is so strong that it remains even if you carve out the part of your brain that feels it.

2,301 notes - Posted September 9, 2022

#2

the importance of pov and kiriona gaia as gideon nav’s imperialist aspect

others have already made some really smart posts about how kiriona is gideon when she’s lost everything and everyone that made her who she was, and how even in the first two books, gideon was this terrifically sad creature who was disguised by the fact that she was her own narrator.

but I want to expand on that last bit, because yes. kiriona is a gideon who has lost everything, who has had to make tough decisions to survive, who has had to adapt to being primarily around her father (a manipulative asshole) and ianthe (ianthe). but this is also the first time we’re getting to see gideon from a perspective other than her own.

we’ve always known that gideon is a beautifully unreliable narrator - see her complete understatement of the fight before harrow opened the tomb, where she neglects to tell us that she almost killed harrow with her bare hands - but I think that for a lot of us, the introduction of kiriona was when we first felt that.

now, nona is not an objective narrator either (lmao). and she does actively dislike gideon (which is fascinating, and which I could go on about for several posts). but she does offer an outside perspective on gideon that we have, up to this point, been lacking.

because… yeah. sometimes, like anyone, gideon’s kind of mean. we know she’s a good person - her goodness is in many ways one of the central drivers of the plot - but that doesn’t mean she’s nice all of the time. it’s just that when she’s being mean to crux, or ianthe, or even harrow we can say, well that person deserved that. but the truth is, gideon has lived through the kind of hell that very few people could survive with any kind of goodness and softness left intact. she didn’t live through it, in fact. she’s just kind of… existed through it.

I saw another post point this out, and I want to reiterate: gideon’s goal, her whole life, has been to join the cohort. when we first meet her, we’re like, ok, makes sense, that’s the only ‘out’ available to her. and we kind of forget, even as we learn more about the empire, that what gideon wants to join is this actively and horrifically violent imperialist force. when we get to nona, and we meet hot sauce and her gang and joli and the angel and even the edenites, we expect gideon to have kept up with us somehow, to reject the empire. we want her to be one of the “good guys” (goodness in the tlt universe is another longass post I want to write…).

but gideon doesn’t reject the empire. because, crucially, she IS the empire - she is its heir, never mind the fact that that doesn’t really mean anything when the current emperor is immortal.

what I am trying to say is this: kiriona is gideon when you take everything from her, and then replace it with her father and everything he represents, and then take a step back.

that step back is crucial. it is what allows us to remember how imperialism - and by extension, or by metaphor, cruelty - works. gideon becomes cruel because she is in proximity to cruel people, AND because she is not in proximity to us.

THAT is what Muir is saying with kiriona. even the most kind, good, earnest protagonist can become a tool of evil in the right circumstances: and those circumstances include perspective. gideon, like it or not, is currently actively choosing to be a tool of empire. and if we were in her head, we might be able to - or we might be tricked into - accept her justifications for why she’s doing it.

the perspective shift is what allows us to see gideon as she - currently - truly is. it is no accident that this is when we get the outside pov. Muir allows us nowhere to hide; we have to confront what gideon has become and by extension what she always has been.

gideon nav is a good person, and I fully believe that in alecto we will watch her reject her father; I fully believe she will get to be a hero. but in order for that to happen, she - and we - must first undergo radical change and growth in terms of her worldview and attitudes. kiriona is not gideon’s final form. but in the same way that john is described by harrow as having aspects, kiriona is the aspect or facet of gideon that embraces cruelty, that perpetuates empire.

Muir tells us: even the most beautiful-hearted, trod-on girl in the world can become a tool of empire. but I have no doubt that in alecto she will tell us: this is how that girl can destroy it.

2,922 notes - Posted September 23, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

happy pride to girls who didn’t know that women could be nice to you, inscrutable polycules, straight people in forbidden marriages, body snatchers who kiss their own reflections, poets obsessed with long-dead warriors, predatory cougars, lesbians who are in fact the problem, and girls who are in love with a corpse

7,115 notes - Posted June 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[therealvinelle]

Other than Twilight and Harry Potter, are there any other fandoms you have heretical thoughts about? I’ve been trying to analyze things the way you do, but honestly I haven’t explored any new content in a while. (I have seen your posts on Star Wars and Death Note and for the most part, I agree with them.)

Yes, there's Star Wars which I have very heretical thoughts about, and by extension Clone Wars which no one has asked me about. There's Death Note too, the MCU, Good Omens, X-Men (which I'll admit is mostly "ugh, X-Men"), uh... probably more that I can't think of at the moment.

The trouble is, I'm not sure when my thoughts are heretical and when they're not. My thoughts are simply how I think, when I read Midnight Sun I see Edward Cullen being a lunatic who isn't falling in love with Bella at all, and I see his family as deeply dysfunctional. I didn't first read the book the way Meyer intended and then sit down to Youtube pundit it up with "akshually, Aro did nothing wrong!" takes, you know? Granted with Twilight I'm extreme, but... I keep having opinions that I take for granted everyone shares, only to find that nope, it's just me.

I'll give you a better example than Midnight Sun.

Walking out of the cinema after seeing The Force Awakens, I was laughing helplessly with my friend because we both thought Kylo was just ridiculous, both in the sense that we found the guy comical and in that he felt distinctly manifactured in the sense that Disney had clearly wanted a Complex Villain™. He was young, weepy backstory involving his father, the whole shebang, without actually having any depth to his character whatsoever. There were only these performative scenes that smelled of Disney saying "See? See? Fascinated yet?". And, again, the guy was just so comical, I couldn't take him seriously at all.

I took it for granted that the internet would agree with me.

The internet did not agree with me.

So-- I don't know, anon, because sometimes what I think is a commonly agreed upon opinion is in fact herecy of the highest order.

It's best to ask me about any given thing, really, because if I try to make a list of fandom I'll only embarrass myself by forgetting to put some on the list.

Also, @thecarnivorousmuffinmeta had a post at one point giving advice on how to be a heretic, unfortunately I can't find it. The trick, though, is to look at what's actually happening, and not what people tell you is happening. Treat every narrator and character as unreliable: is there a chance your narrator could be wrong about X, narrator believes that Y is the case - looking at their reasoning, do you agree? Character A made a statement. Do you trust A, or does A perhaps have a reason to lie or else twist the truth? And, most importantly, don't look at authorial intent. Yes, character B is supposed to be in the wrong. Do you agree with that, though?

Good luck and whatever you do, don't bring up your weird opinions at parties because you'll get odd looks.

[shigaeru]

I just discovered your art recently and I love your style and composition and expressions and everything? The way you draw Shizuo and Izaya is amazing and I admire the huge project you've taken on with adapting ACI, your comics are so much and I'm so looking forward to seeing your take on certain scenes if you ever get to them. I was staring at some of your pages again the other day and I just noticed that Shizuo still seems to have that scar on his chest from when they first met? Ahh that's just such a neat detail, I'm just generally in awe of all of the little things like that that make experiencing the story again from you, a lot of fun. Anyways, I'm kind of curious if ACI is (still?) your favourite fic and if there are any particular reasons why or why not.

AAAAA that's such a nice message to read, this really brightened my day thank you;;

As for your question, I don't think it is my favorite fic, but it's very high up my list! I don't think I could rank them, actually. I just have some sort of big "fics I utterly love" aquarium and they're all swimming around in there, for various different reasons, tropes, scenarii, writing styles.

But there ARE particular reasons I always come back to it.

it's the most well-paced enemies-to-lovers story I've read. It's a very long book and it never takes shortcuts. It takes all the time it needs to establish the colossal character development they have to go through.

The characterization of Izaya and Shizuo feels ON POINT. They're assholes to each other, to other people, so far in their own head they don't see the big picture, they're very serious about wanting to kill each other. But they've also known each other for 10 years and you can just feel it in every interaction.

The dialogue are snappy and every line calls for the next one (which makes the adaptation job really hard btw because sometimes I HAVE to scrap bits of dialogues for the speech bubbles and 1) it breaks my heart, 2) every line is SO important, I can't scrap a sentence without having to rewrite the whole bit, or its answer, or the joke it announces for 3 chapters later)

The writing is so good. It looks pretty simple at first glance, but the description job is very effective. And more importantly everything's a mesh of foreshadowing and hidden references. The dialogues, the imagery, don't get me started I could write a paper on this. There is SO MUCH stuff you have to read between the lines to catch. Izaya and Shizuo are unreliable narrators, how they interpret the situation, what they take from it, a lot of it is incomplete. I've first read ACI in 2017, and I've read it so many times by now, both for myself and for the comic work, and every time I find something new I had not noticed. It's FASCINATING.

The scenario itself? Chef kiss. The balance between horror, angst, genuinely soft interactions and humor is great, and it's actually THE long fic I can't choose a favorite chapter from. Every chapter has at least one very good thing in it.

This is very summarized (i could go into so much depth, i'm not joking about the paper thing gdjjhfd) and of course there are things I like less in it. Stuff I already worked my way around, and plan to work my way around in future chapters (it's mostly the way sexuality is treated I'm a bit uncomfortable with, but Spoon gave me her authorization to take artistic liberties so *WINK*) What you said about experiencing the story again from me got me emotional, thank you a lot again;;

[eldritch-elrics]

more svsss notes! from “shen qingqiu’s short but aggravating time in jail” to “shen qingqiu Fucking Dies” :]

...this got long. oops

so the book does this a lot but i’m always a huge fan of when a character (in this case little palace mistress) spouts off a cliche and sqq internally goes “oh my god here we go again. cringe.” it’s like... the reader gets to experience the drama of the cliche but also laugh at it

airplane has gay and homophobic vibes. or like...... araki jojo vibes. it’s so funny

the system keeps forcing sqq into plots that were originally meant for binghe’s harem members, which is of course hilarious (more so now that binghe’s not a teen anymore) - but i’m thinking about the fact that the system is literally powered by binghe. i wonder if binghe’s feelings are subconsciously influencing the system/the rest of the plot? like we know he has plot armor; does he also have enough influence to shift the story’s genre without knowing it? shit like this is why i love this novel. i’m really curious if it’ll be addressed

more of sqq being absolutely terrible at communication <3 please sir. say your FEELINGS. i’m sure you could figure out some way to explain without revealing that you know how the og plot goes...

another thing i find super interesting about sqq’s character is how sure he is that lbh’s gonna turn out how he did in og pidw. he’s just refusing to accept that lbh’s changed in any way, or that he cares about sqq at all anymore. there’s some line somewhere where sqq is like “oh no, being nice to him just made it worse... i’m stuck with him hating me even more now...” like NO. you’re just refusing to see all the signs of lbh’s hidden feelings. love unreliable narrators lmao

fate/destiny is such a big theme i keep noticing stuff about it

the system giving him a multiple choice answer to binghe’s “do you regret it” question, dating sim style, is of course hilarious, but it’s also a fascinating moment for a couple reasons. first, it shows how much of a crutch the system is for sqq - sqq’s leaning on it to fix his problems instead of actually putting in the work himself to get better at interpersonal communication. i hope that in a key moment later he’ll choose to defy the system. i think that would be a nice pivot point for three themes: first, accepting that sometimes he needs to fix problems on his own, without any omniscient outside guidance, second, accepting that not everything is written in stone (either by airplane or by the system), and third, recognizing that binghe and the rest are “real people” (ymmv on whether or not you think they are, but i think this is where i think sqq’s arc is headed) rather than video game objects to be manipulated.

i think that some shifts in his attitude do start to happen in chap 43 though when he sacrifices himself

back to slightly less analytical observations! sqq getting his clothes torn up. oh my god. and lbh’s REACTION...

dying at shang qinghua’s “coded” letter and the fact that its content basically amounts to “i fucked up, please escape from jail asap thanks bro”

gongyi xiao my BELOVED that prison break was pretty great. also i am so fucking sad about him. binghe WHY

so lbh wasn’t actually a disciple of meng mo? huh...

seems like the words of sqq’s vengeful ex weren’t completely true. i very much doubt the trial’s gonna happen now but i bet this will come up later

seriously losing it at sqq’s tavern disguise? smeared his face with dirt and drew on whiskers?? CATBOY SHEN QINGQIU???

love this development ning yingying’s gotten. the disciples’ relationships with their shizun in general are so cute omg

liu qingge keeps saving sqq from situations and it’s very fun. bros :)

also how lqg was like SO down to fight binghe at the end of that chapter?? king shit

binghe held out his hand to sqq when they were on the roof..... what was he planning to do.........

oh my god that whole confrontation. what is it with mxtx and Climatic Fights On Roofs

here is where the fate theme gets REALLY clear. sqq uses “we can’t avoid fate” as an excuse/coverup but lbh is like “no. was it fate that made you do all those horrible things to me?? i’ve decided that fate doesn’t actually exist. fuck the world i do what i want!”

which like. YEAH. protag energy. the rules of the world don’t apply to lbh so much do they???

im so excited for these themes to be explored more

also like. hell yeah. binghe finally sharing his emotions at a super climactic moment

and then sqq SACRIFICES HIMSELF...

god damn.

it’s a bit out of nowhere but also like. i kinda love it? because sqq knows he can’t talk his way out of this. he can’t say “hey it wasn’t me who abused you/made the choice to push you off the cliff.” so he goes and does the most drastic action he can think of. and it WORKS

now initially i was a lil mad about lbh changing his mind so quickly but i actually think it fits for 2 reasons. first, he’s a webnovel character. they do that. second, his mind has just been cleared of xin mo’s influence, which had been plaguing him during his most angry/violent moments, so with all that anger suddenly gone it makes sense for his feelings to shift. and deep down, he really does care about sqq!

sqq fuckin DEAD and finally binghe is sharing his feelings,,

i do think that lbh should be allowed to feel mad about what og!sqq did to him in the past though? like. it was wrong, and though sqq may feel like he’s made up for it, i do think he owes lbh a proper apology and (if possible) an explanation. there’s much more work (and communication) to be done between them but i’m glad they’re finally getting somewhere...

but of course i don’t think they’re gonna be seeing each other again anytime soon :]

[kellyvela]

GRRM has said in interviews that he’s purposely played with the romantic tension between the hound and Sansa. What do you think the endgame purpose of the unkiss and that playing is meant to be for?

This is all what he said about the matter in question so far:

The Hound and Sansa, romantic or platonic? It could be very different things to each of those involved, mind you!

JUNE 24, 1999 THE HOUND AND SANSA

Moreta12: I understand, I’ve heard your opinion on that. In ACOK, it seems that the relationship between the Hound and Sansa had romantic undertones. Is that true?

GeoRR: Well, read the book and decide for yourself.

Moreta12: I’ve read the book and I’ve debated those particular scenes with a few others. Half say that it’s romantic and half say it’s platonic. I’ve taken the romantic stance.

GeoRR:  It could be very different things to each of those involved, mind you

Moreta12:Yes, but it seem like evidence points towards romantic undertones. Will the Hound appear later?

GeoRR: Yes, the Hound will be in STORM OF SWORDS. In fact, I just finished writing a big scene with him.

[Source]

When will Sansa be “legal”?  **ºª@”¡¿x<%$!&?

OCTOBER 05, 1999 AGE OF SEXUAL RELATIONS IN WESTEROS

The nature of the relationship between Sandor and Sansa has been a hot topic on Revanshe’s board. Sansa’s youth has been one focus of the discussion. What is the general Westerosi view as to romantic or sexual relationships involving a girl of Sansa’s age and level of physical maturity?

A boy is Westeros is considered to be a “man grown” at sixteen years. The same is true for girls. Sixteen is the age of legal majority, as twenty-one is for us.

However, for girls, the first flowering is also very significant… and in older traditions, a girl who has flowered is a woman, fit for both wedding and bedding.

A girl who has flowered, but not yet attained her sixteenth name day, is in a somewhat ambigious position: part child, part woman. A “maid,” in other words. Fertile but innocent, beloved of the singers.

In the “general Westerosi view,” well, girls may well be wed before their first flowerings, for political reasons, but it would considered perverse to bed them. And such early weddings, even without sex, remain rare. Generally weddings are postponed until the bride has passed from girlhood to maidenhood.

Maidens may be wedded and bedded… however, even there, many husbands will wait until the bride is fifteen or sixteen before sleeping with them. Very young mothers tend to have significantly higher rates of death in childbirth, which the maesters will have noted.

As in the real Middle Ages, highborn girls tend to flower significantly earlier than those of lower birth. Probably a matter of nutrition. As a result, they also tend to marry earlier, and to bear children earlier. There are plenty of exceptions.

[Source]

Unreliable Narrator

JUNE 26, 2001 SF, TARGARYENS, VALYRIA, SANSA, MARTELLS, AND MORE

[GRRM is asked about Sansa misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword.]

The Lion’s Paw / Lion’s Tooth business (*), on the other hand, is intentional. A small touch of the unreliable narrator. I was trying to establish that the memories of my viewpoint characters are not infallible. Sansa is simply remembering it wrong. A very minor thing (you are the only one to catch it to date), but it was meant to set the stage for a much more important lapse in memory. You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom… but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it’s a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

[Source]

(*) It was Arya who misremembered the name of Joffrey’s sword tho…

Unreliable Narrator 2.0

OCTOBER 05, 2002 SANSA’S MEMORY

[Note: This mail has been edited for brevity.]

… this is an inconsistency with ASoS more than an outright error. In ASoS, Sansa thinks that the Hound kissed her before leaving her room and King’s Landing. In ACoK, no kiss is mentioned in the scene, though Sansa did think that he was about to do so.

Well, not every inconsistency is a mistake, actually. Some are quite intentional. File this one under “unreliable narrator” and feel free to ponder its meaning

[Source]

Unreliable Narrator 3.0

NOVEMBER 27, 2007 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

Here’s a really particular question (which I realize means it probably won’t get asked in a general interview): In A Storm of Swords, there is a chapter early on where Sansa is thinking back to the scene at the end of A Clash of Kings when The Hound came into her room during the battle. She thinks in the chapter about how he kissed her, but in the scene in A Clash of Kings, this actually didn’t happen. Was that a typo or something? —Valdora

GRRM: It’s not a typo. It is something! [Laughs] ”Unreliable narrator” is the key phrase there. The second scene is from Sansa’s thoughts. And what does that reveal about her psychologically? I try to be subtle about these things.

[Source]

Sansa may be dead but Alayne is alive

APRIL 15, 2008 FUTURE MEETINGS, POVS, ARYA’S ROLE, EASTERN LANDS, AND ASSASSINS

[Will Sandor and Sansa meet?]

Why, the Hound is dead, and Sansa may be dead as well. There’s only Alayne Stone.

[Source]

A lot more dangerous than romantic

AUGUST 2, 2009 AS SER JORAH MORMONT…

weltraummuell: The Hound Oh please don’t cast an old guy for the Hound, his scenes with Sansa are so romantic and erotic, I couldn’t bear if it’d feel creepy all of a sudden. Well, that’s me making demands. LOL

GRRM: Re: The Hound Old guy? No, but… the Hound is still a whole lot older than Sansa, and was never written as attractive… you know, those hideous burns and all that… he’s a lot more dangerous than he is romantic.

kestrana: The Hound Yeah its a “girl always wants the bad boy” kind of thing although Sansa seems to pull something else out of him. It feels so wrong sometimes but I want to see them together again tee hee.

weltraummuell: The Hound Hehe, George, maybe you didn’t intend it, but he turned out to be a very erotic character to female readers. Especially since he’s mutilated and dangerous. Makes him unpredictable and vulnerable which is the most explosive aphrodisiac for a girl’s fantasy. ;)

weltraummuell: The Hound And I know from discussions on other board other women feel just the same about Sandor. He’s an absolute favourite with the ladies!

halfbloodmalfoy: The Hound LOL, you’re such a man. To many of us women, dangerous *is* attractive.

GRRM: The Hound But no one has any love for poor old Sam Tarly, kind and smart and decent and devoted…

[Source]

I played with it but I didn’t get the answer I was waiting for

JUNE 22, 2012 SWORD & LASER VIDEO PODCAST

GRRM: I am sometimes surprised by the reactions, of women in particular, to some of the villains. The number of women over the years who have written to me that their favorite characters are Jaime Lannister or Sandor Clegane [the Hound] or Theon Greyjoy… All of these are deeply troubled individuals with some very dark sides, who have done some very dark things. Nonetheless, they do draw this response, and quite heavily, I think, in the case of some of them, from my female readers in particular.

Veronica Belmont: I’m a big fan of the Hound, myself, actually.

Tom Merritt: Of Sandor? Really?

Veronica Belmont: Yeah, the Hound… Maybe it’s not because I feel any compassion towards them, I’m not really sure what the attraction is. Ah, I’m not going to call it attraction, actually. Let’s just say it’s a fascination, perhaps.

GRRM: [Chuckles] Well, I mean, fascination is one thing, but some of these letters indicate that there really is like a romantic attraction going on there. And I do know there’s all these people out there who are, as they call themselves, the “San/San” fans, who want to see Sandor and Sansa get together at the end. So that’s interesting, too.

Tom Merritt: The TV show has sort of played with that a little, and probably stoked those fires.

GRRM: Oh, sure. And I’ve played with it in the books. There’s something there, but it’s still interesting to see how many people have responded to it.

[Source]

I played with it but I didn’t get the answer I was waiting for 2.0

JUNE 23, 2015 GRRM Q&A AT THE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKSTORE IN STOCKHOLM

Question: “Is there any fan reactions that you have been surprised by, like is there a character that’s more popular than you thought or have people been shocked by something you didn’t think we would be shocked at?”

GRRM: “I’m reasonably certain what people will be shocked by. I knew that the Red Wedding would provoke a big reaction and it did. I was pretty confident that, you know, throwing Bran out the window and then killing Ned in the first book would get reactions, and indeed they did. All of those worked exactly the way it did to the extent that things that have surprised me, they tend to be smaller things. I guess I… Maybe I should not have, I don’t know. How do I phrase this without getting myself in terrible trouble… I guess I don’t understand women, but I was definitely, you know, way back when, surprised by the number of women who reacted positively to characters like Theon and the Hound as dashing, romantic figures. The san/san kind of thing took me by surprise, I must admit, and even more so the women who, and there are some, who really like Theon. So that surprised me.”

[Source]

Unreliable Narrator 4.0

DECEMBER 2016 ASKING GEORGE R.R. MARTIN ABOUT S@N/S@N

My question is regarding Sansa Stark. Her sexuality has evolved through every book and yet the memory that seems to stick the more with her in this regard is the night of the Blackwater. So I was wondering if you can expand on your view on what this is, since as before that night her interactions with Sandor Clegane weren’t really physical.

The night of the Blackwater, yes. Ahhh… Well, I’m not going to give you a straight answer on that hahaha… Uhmmm, but I would say that ahhh… you know a television show and a book each has its own strengths and weaknesses; there a re tools that are available to me as a novelist, that are not available to people doing a television show. And of course there are tools available to them, that are not available to a novelist, I mean they can lay in a soundtrack, they can do special effects, they can do amazing things that I can’t do, I just have words on paper. What can I do, well I can use things like the internal narrative, I can take you inside of territories… thoughts, which you can’t do in a TV show… Ahhh… You just have the words they speak, you see them from outside because the camera is external, while prose is internal, and I have the device known as “unreliable narrator”… Ahhh… Which again, they don’t have. So, think about those two aspects when you consider that night of the Blackwater.

[Source]

Do with it what you will.

[silverbastardgoldenfool]

Realm of the Quarantine Reread End-of-Book Questionnaire: Assassin’s Quest

Any differences between your first/previous reading experience and this one?

Keep in mind I’m writing this months after finishing the book lol (it’s mental illness innit). I have LOTS of notes to go off but yeah, things aren’t as fresh in my mind overall. With that said the biggest difference I can think of between my first and second experience with AQ is my feelings towards Kettricken. I think the first time around reading you know that Fitz is an unreliable narrator but you are still limited by his viewpoint so you can get a bit trapped seeing things the way he does. For this reason, I think I pretty much just forgave Kettricken when he did on my first read, whereas on this read I was like……. Waiting for her to actually apologise and show some sympathy towards Fitz and it just…. Never happened.

Like, don’t get me wrong, I still love Kettricken as a character and I fully recognise that she has been traumatised. I don’t expect her to be nice or act rationally, and in the case of being willing to take Nettle for the crown… It’s cold but she’s doing what she feels she has to. My issue is - do what you have to, but don’t expect Fitz to understand or forgive you (same with Starling). But I think what bothered me the most was how Kettricken would constantly confide in Fitz and break down to him and he was always there to let her do so, yet she NEVER gives Fitz the chance to do the same. The one time he does “open up” in a sense is when she forces him to air out his traumas in front of everyone, and she didn’t show him any sympathy for what he’d been through then or later. She has been through hell, absolutely, but while her plight may not have been any better than Fitz’s it certainly wasn’t any worse. She pretty much had two modes in this book: completely cold or a crying wreck - but she was only ever crying for herself. She lets Fitz console her but she never consoles him. Again, this is a result of her own trauma and I don’t expect her to act any differently, but it just reaffirmed for me that while she and Fitz care for each other deeply it is not an equal relationship. Fitz feels an obligation to serve her and she - knowingly or not - takes advantage of that. Like, after realising that this is their dynamic it is so obvious that the same is true in Royal Assassin as well, and it will be interesting to see how it changes (or doesn’t) in Tawny Man as I don’t remember it well enough to say.

Must reiterate: Kettricken is still a great character and I still have a lot of respect for her, unfortunately she just falls into the overfull camp of people who love Fitz but have an unhealthy power dynamic with him.

The other big difference I noticed was that the Verity stuff just wasn’t as devastating this time. Not because it was any less sad but it just didn’t tear out my heart like it did the first time. That’s not a fault with the writing at all, I think it’s just the fact that, knowing what would happen to Verity and that we wouldn’t see the real Verity again, I kind of already let go of him at the end of Royal Assassin.

Something you can’t believe you forgot

I guess more of a misinterpretation/wishful thinking but like, realising that there is no passage explicitly stating that Fitz and the Fool were actually spooning in the mountains murdered me and spat on my corpse.

Oh also!!! Fitz yeeting himself out the window at Tradeford castle jskaskjf

Favourite character introduction moments/scenes

I love Kettle in general and the way we’re introduced to her as a cranky old lady sets her up perfectly

Favourite character arcs

Man they’re all so fucking sad lol but I guess the Fool? He goes from thinking Fitz is dead and his purpose failed to reuniting with Fitz, their relationship growing into something really real for the first time, and actually completing his mission - at least for now lol. This book is really the first time you get to see the Fool be properly vulnerable. Even when he was getting beaten up by Regal’s guards he always had his veneer of snark and superiority to hide behind - and I doubt when he went through his sicknesses at Buckkeep he would have revealed his weakness to anyone in order to be helped. But in the mountains he lets so much of that facade of the King’s Fool fall away - at least when it’s just him and Fitz. When he and Fitz meet again he lets Fitz see his grief and pain and hopelessness and joy as the Fool looks after Fitz, and then later when it’s the Fool who needs looking after he lets Fitz look after him. When was the last time the Fool had anyone really care for him like that, ya know? Had someone protect him purely out of love? Ouch dude!!!!

Also he gets to kiss Fitz at the end so good for him!!!!!!!!!! Be gay ride dragons!!

Favourite quote/s

“I would kill Regal. It only seemed fair. He had killed me first.”

“I had looked into the heart of my enemy. I still could not comprehend him.”

“The more I drank, the less tolerable my situation seemed. And the more intolerable I became to my friends.”

“I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.”

“The Fool, the Fool, only the Fool. I sought for him. I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. He darted and eluded me, like a bright gold carp in a weedy pool, like the motes that dance before one’s eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon’s reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power in the briefest flashes of insight. In a moment I understood and marvelled at all that he was, and in the next I had forgotten that understanding.”

“When you can either laugh or cry, you might as well laugh.” - the Fool

Favourite relationships

Fitzandthefoolfitzandthefoolfitzandthefoolbahslbghabfhalgngjba 

Also fitz and nighteyes (speaking of which, Nighteyes’ arc in this book is also fascinating and surprisingly complex) and Fitz/Nighteyes/Fool mwah magnifico chef’s kiss

Favourite setting

Kelsingra baybeyyy. I remember the first time reading this having no fucking clue what was happening in that chapter but I guess it was the gay agenda all along

Favourite chapter

It’s gotta be the chapter where Fitz and the Fool reunite, right? Catch me just gradually losing my grip on reality with every lingering stare 

Most loved character

Foooooooooool

Most hated character

Ya know, for a minute I was actually wondering if I would like Starling this time round but yeah no lol. She was actually okay for a while but as soon as she sold Fitz/Nettle out she became The Worst, just as I remembered her. It’s not even because she betrays Fitz but because, like Kettricken, she expects Fitz to forgive her for it, to the point of running to tattle to the queen because Fitz isn’t giving her enough attention (I’m also not impressed with Kettricken for actually getting involved instead of just telling her to grow up). Not to mention her constantly misgendering/gendering (??) the Fool or just assuming the Fool’s gender and loudly fucking proclaiming it to everybody is just truly fucking disgusting. Like I cannot even explain how furious I was reading her incessantly using she/her pronouns for the Fool despite no confirmation that her theory is right or that the Fool is comfortable with this and despite EVERYONE ELSE using he/him pronouns. God I’m mad now lol. She just acts like a spoilt brat and it makes my blood boil. But that’s probably because I have known many people like this so… Good character writing lol congrats

Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimised by Robin Hobb (most heartbreaking and/or visceral moments)

The whole first chapter/s are just so heavy and carry on that gut wrenching feeling from the end of Royal Assassin. Fitz just has no real desire to live and watching him systematically severing the last few ties he has to his human life is just so sad.

Even though I wasn’t as attached to Verity this time, his goodbye to Fitz still made me cry

As did Fitz giving Kettle her skill back

Verity using Fitz’s body to have sex with Kettricken really got to me this time, mostly because I either didn’t notice the first time or had forgotten just how much it affects Fitz. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to acknowledge Dutiful as his son when the event that brought that fact into being was so fucked up and traumatic. It’s really upsetting.

Burrich saying he almost took Fitz to Chivalry and he should have never let the Farseers take Fitz just …… breaks my heart. Just seeing Burrich so raw like that in general is so unusual it really takes you aback.

Details, observations, spoilery notes made with the benefit of the full picture

Strap in lads this part is lonnnngggggggg

Is it bad to immediately want to cry just from seeing “Sandsedge” on the map and thinking of Sandsedge brandy

I never really thought about how poor Hap didn’t get the real Fitz all those years and how their relationship could have been if Fitz hadn’t been partially forged

Pls I have no idea why but to picture someone as emotionally repressed as Fitz actually sitting down and writing about his life makes me want to fucking cryyyyeeeee

Fitz in the prologue talks about needing a purpose as something to distract himself from sinking [into his chronic pain, mental illness and addiction] and boy howdy if that ain’t relatable. As someone with mental illness and chronic pain Fitz is just painfully relatable way too often.

“I have never forgiven myself the triumph I ceded him when I took poison and died.” Fitz :(((( my guy :((((((( forgive yourself for surviving however you could baby!!!!!

This book mentions Bingtown providing slaves to Chalced

It’s so funny to me when people expect Fitz to have social skills as if he didn’t literally live as a fucking wolf for weeks at a time. It’s a miracle he bloody speaks

The state Fitz is in at the beginning of this book was literally Burrich’s greatest fear for him, yet Burrich doesn’t just say I told you so and leave. He stays, is patient and even optimistic.

“He (Burrich) is not bigger than I.” Why does this feel so wrong lol??? I just can’t picture Fitz as bigger than Burrich

“When you were younger and not supposed to go into taverns without me…” So it’s fine if the child goes into taverns and gets drunk as long as you’re also there. Got it, Burrich.

Fitz calling Chade “the grey one” wow get rekd old man river

Seeing Chade and Burrich interact is so bizarre

Fitz is still having seizures at the beginning of this book! I had forgotten that

God okay so idk if I can articulate this point super well but the whole thing of Fitz going through this extensive abuse and then essentially becoming an animal feels like a metaphor for the way your brain’s “higher” needs and functions just shut off sometimes under certain levels of stress. Like in order to cope with the trauma you don’t think about concepts, or long-term goals, or other people. You just take care of your basic needs - food, sleep, shelter, water - long enough that you start to feel safe and secure again, at which point your brain can open up a bit more and allow you to really think again; to want again, to plan again etc. Like obviously literally becoming an animal is a heightened version of reality, but the functionality of it is the same; our wounds and our fear stop us from fully embodying ourselves.

Burrich be like, Fitz was getting way too dependent on drugs before all this so let’s steer clear of those. :) LET’S GET HIM ABSOLUTELY SHITFACED INSTEAD

I  love how Fitz has his own unique relationship with Lacey and she’s not just Patience’s servant in his mind

Fitz talking about how even his memories from before his time in the dungeons are soiled by his trauma :( baby boy

Dude it’s so rich Chade lecturing Fitz about not making a life for himself, having friends or just chilling out like???? WHO TRAINED HIM TO BE AN ASSASSIN CHADE?? Like I get your point but what the hell kind of life did you think he was gonna have? Who ever took the time to teach him the importance of making connections with people for their own sake, and when would he have ever had the time anyway? I think Chade himself doesn’t actually know what he expects from Fitz.

Fitz saying he’s bad at making decisions because he’s never actually been allowed to make any is literally a point I’ve made lol. This is what happens when you teach teenagers how to murder in lieu of any basic life skills.

Burrich + Chiv were luv at first sight. No I will not elaborate.

“We kept you a boy, looked after you too much.” Huh??????? Fitz was never fucking sheltered lol. He didn’t have autonomy. There’s a difference.

I’m so fucking glad Fitz hugged Burrich before he left and that they actually left off on okay-ish terms. I didn’t remember that and it vaguely dulls the blow of knowing we don’t see Burrich again til Fool’s Fate (and that he thinks Fitz is dead the entire time between now and then).

“If I shaved my hair back from my brow” bitch disgusting

“Honey was the older of the two women. Perhaps my age.” jskfjnajgbl my guy those aren’t women then those are children!!!!!! U freak

I was wondering for ages why Fitz doesn’t mention the Fool like literally at all bc that’s so unusual right? Even in Assassin’s Apprentice he thinks of him when he goes to Moonseye and just in general the Fool usually enters Fitz’s thoughts pretty frequently. So why now, when Fitz doesn’t even know if the Fool is okay, is he just not thinking about him? And then I realised that that is exactly why. Because the only two people from his old life he doesn’t think about are the two people whose fates he knows nothing of: Kettricken and the Fool. So he can let his mind wander to think what Patience and Lacey might be up to at Buckkeep, or who Molly is with or whatever, because he knows they are all safe. But in such a fragile state I don’t think he can bring himself to really wonder whether Kettricken and the Fool made it to their destination - he probably doesn’t really believe they could have, and that is far too painful a road to go down when you are trying not to think at all.

I know the first act of this book is slow and that bothers some people, but I think it is so necessary, not only for Fitz’s arc but also because it really demonstrates just how severe the situation has gotten with the red ships and forged ones AND it shows just how destructive a king Regal is. Without this perspective it would probably be much harder to buy that the extreme measures taken at the end of the book are really worth the sacrifice.

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit A: when Honey is coming onto him, all he can think about is Molly.

Fitz is so scared of the Forged ones :( his trauma affects everything. He has no faith in himself and less heart for the violence than ever.

Speaking of trauma metaphors: the way Fitz tends to drift off into the wit or Skill after a traumatic experience is… pretty much just dissociation but magique

I forgot that witted folk can apparently communicate with each other mentally, not just with animals

“Her head was the size of a bushel basket.” Ah, yes, a bushel basket, a thing whose size we are all intimately familiar with.

Fitz finally finds others like him and even then he is not fully accepted. Told he is doing the wit wrong. Othered by the Others. It’s the queer experience innit.

Also forgot that apparently the forged are attracted to the wit as well as the Skill?

“I wondered if I had as many wolf mannerisms as they had halk and bear.” Yeah no probably not you only bloody LIVED as a wolf, Fitz.

Okay I know it doesn’t need saying but Patience is just so fucking cool!!!!!

Jesus fucking christ, Fitz skilling out to Molly when he knows Will knows he’s alive and is looking for him is just… so dumb. So so dumb. I know he’s just fixating on her because he’s miserable and she’s like this unsullied thing he had before everything went wrong but holy moly is it frustrating 

Not to mention he doesn’t connect the dots between the fact that Burrich went to “help a friend” and every time he reaches out for Molly he sees Burrich sajkdbshkhja dude

Nighteyes leaving just goes to show that Fitz cannot rely solely on Nighteyes for companionship. No matter how innately the same they are they are equally as innately different. Fitz needs Nighteyes but he shouldn’t have JUST Nighteyes (which is why he, Nighteyes and the Fool are the holy trinity). When Nighteyes leaves, Fitz is in way too fragile a state to be left alone, but Nighteyes cannot think of the future or what might happen. All he knows is he’ll be back at some point and that’s all that matters.

“My anger fed my competence” whatever you need to tell yourself sweetie

I think I had blocked out the fact the Regal was keeping animals trapped in filthy cages so they could ravage people in the king’s circle uggggghhhhhhhhh I hate him

Fitz is down on himself saying that without Shrewd’s largesse, Chade’s information and Verity’s protection his idea of himself has been stripped away and that he’s not actually competent etc. but like. This is an extreme situation!! You’re literally alone in the wilderness with nothing and no one!! Who would thrive in this situation? And nobody gets by without help anyway! The people in our lives do define us to an extent. You don’t have to be able to stand 100% on your own at all times with zero resources to be considered capable. It’s human to depend on others. Yes I am chiding myself as much as Fitz here :))))

Burrich’s earring is the repressed gay earring. No I will not elaborate.

Fitz refusing to sell Burrich’s earring is frustrating yet something I would 100% do lol

Direct from my notes: Celery hiding out in caves?? Bad bitch

“I felt I was within the flames looking deeply into the Fool’s eyes” um okay gay

It’s actually surprising that Fitz admits he would not have gone after Molly even if he had known she was pregnant when she left. On one hand so self aware yet this doesn’t stop him from completely idealising their relationship.

And then you have Molly who says he was supposed to come after her “so she could forgive him”, that he was supposed to be the one to light the candles for her childbirth etc. The fact that she in any way thought he was mature enough to be a father just shows how little they really knew each other.

Burrich treating Molly like a horse while delivering Nettle is way funnier than it has a right to be jskakjasd makes me think of Dwight treating Phyllis’ back injury in The Office lol

The first thing Burrich notices about Nettle is that she has Chivalry’s brow are you fucking kidding me. Gay!

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit B: He had no interest in Tassin whatsoever until she literally started kissing him. At this point his body reacted, which is normal, but as soon as he got a second to actually think about it he stopped, because for him it would not be satisfying to sleep with someone he didn’t have feelings for.

“It seemed to take years for the dried beans and lentils to soften.” Okay mood

I love how Fitz just assumes Molly will take him back. “I have a woman and child awaiting me.” Says who bitch?

Small ferret? More like big legend

Ya know, we give Fitz so much shit but honestly with so much physical, mental and emotional stress on this journey how can we expect his mental faculties to be at 100%? I wouldn’t be making good decisions either, in fact I would be long dead.

Starling telling Nik that the earring once belonged to Chivalry is truly a smooth brain move

“Do not fear, little brother, I am here to take care of you again.” Words can’t explain how much I love Nighteyes and how often his dialogue makes me smile :’)

It’s so cute how Nighteyes is worried about Molly and Nettle until he knows that Burrich is taking care of them

It’s really interesting when Fitz claims “I’d rather be with Molly even if it meant rocking a crying baby in the middle of the night” because, well, he’s literally made other claims to the contrary, saying he wouldn’t have gone with her even if he’d known she was pregnant. Because at the end of the day as much as Fitz is compelled by others to do work for the greater good, I think deep down a lot of the time it is what he would do anyway. Like I really don’t think he could actually enjoy being with Molly knowing that the world is burning down around them. He would want to get out there and help somehow; not only to secure their own future but to reduce other people’s suffering as well. He’s an empathetic boy even though he’d like to be selfish.

Every time Fitz calls Molly his wife I lose ten years off my life

Again, I understand why he’s thinking like this, but Fitz’s ownership of Molly is just so uncomfortable. The fact that he can’t imagine her not having a place ready and waiting for him in her life when he returns just illustrates that she is not a fully realised person to him. She is just a comforting idea.

Oh yes, it was definitely Starling’s “pillowtalk” that got you captured and not the fact that you fit the exact description of the witted bastard right down to having Chivalry’s earring and a whole ass wolf

Somehow forgot that Jhaampe is basically a city of tents with only a few permanent buildings and people constantly coming and going

Fitz’s first words to the Fool are “I’ve come to you.” I’m gonna fucking die

Literally every single word from the moment Fitz realises it’s the Fool and starts describing him is a full body assault and personal attack I am seeking reparations

God the tenderness, the angst, the relief……… shall i pass away

“I doubted he was much taller, but his body was no longer a child’s.” My dude this is a gay awakening if I ever saw one

Fitz be like *spends 87 pages describing the Fool in painstaking detail* anyway I love being a heterosexual male

I’ve heard ppl cite Fitz’s descriptions of Kettricken as evidence of a crush (hard disagree) but literally nothingggggg even comes close to the way he describes the Fool. Not just this once but over and over again it’s insane.

“Talk fell off between us. The bottle of brandy was empty. We were reduced to silence, staring at one another drunkenly.” skjakfnajghajgnaLNGJ is it gay to silently gaze into thine homie’s eyes

The Fool protecting Fitz from everyone - especially Starling - in Jhaampe is often hilarious and always heartwarming

Realising Fitz was skinny enough for the Fool to lift on his own ahhh no wonder he said the famous “When I recall how beautiful you were” line, Fitz is a total wreck

I love that the Fool actually gives Chade shit for his plan to take Nettle. I love him.

“Too few folk cared for me. I could not hate a single one of them.” Oh, Fitz :(

I always wonder how the Fool really feels about Molly. Is he jealous? Does he compare himself to this woman Fitz idolises and he doesn’t know? Does he know that Fitz is barking up the wrong tree or is he stuck thinking Molly must really be Fitz’s soulmate since he won’t shut up about how much he loves her and can’t wait to get back to her? He just never really lets on how it makes him feel when Fitz has relationships with women. We know Fitz gets jealous of the Fool (for litch rally like no reason lol), so with the Fool being much more honest with himself/in general about his love for Fitz and having much more legitimate reason to be jealous, is he? Or is it just something he’s made his peace with, that these women give Fitz something that he cannot? Is he okay with that cos he has to be or does he have a different, less monogamous view of love and relationships (he does have three parents after all). I dunnoooo dude I just have so many questions. Like obviously - OBVIOUSLY - if Fitz and the Fool didn’t have romantic feelings for each other before, there is no doubting that romantic feelings appeared the moment Fitz appeared in the Fool’s hut. Fitz won’t admit that but mere chapters later the Fool is talking about how he loves Fitz in every way so like. He knows. So how does he feel when Fitz is calling out for Molly in his sleep, or openly speaking of seeking her out when all this is over, and lying to the Fool to protect Molly and his daughter. Really makes u think!!!!

Fitz reuniting with Sooty and going to see her every day in Jhaampe is so cuuuute and made me so happy. Sooty is a good girl :’)

Fitz be like *leans against the table where the Fool is carving and watches his fingers at work like a true repressed gay*

Verity is literally so strong???? He submerged himself in skill and was able to pull himself back from the stream can u imagine? Go off king!

Bro I literally can’t with the Fool mentioning Jofron so casually and Fitz immediately thinking wow oh my god they’re definitely fucking oh my god the Fool has a girlfriend - Fitz sweetie calm down

I love how Fitz and the Fool just naturally walk together :))) and Nighteyes babysitting Kettle is so cute

Molly never once says that she misses Fitz. She says she always expected him to do the right thing, to come after her and not leave her alone with a child. But she doesn’t look back on their time together fondly or have much positive to say about him as a person. And all that is fair, but it’s also just… Not really the behaviour of someone who’s been separated from their soulmate. It’s more just someone who’s been left in a shitty position by someone they cared about but hardly knew.

Fitz asking the Fool what is between him and Starling when they’re literally just being civil is sooooo fucking funny. Not everyone finds the Fool as irresistible as you do, Fitz.

The Fool just casually finding a pretext to call Fitz the light of his life

Fitz telling Kettricken firmly that he will not travel if the Fool is ill is one of the only times he ever puts his foot down with her GEE I WONDER WHY

I’ve said it before I’ll say it again…… there really do be something about the way Fitz can’t meet the Fool’s eyes………. It’s not like they’re weird and colourless anymore like they used to be!!!

The Fool already talking about Clerres in this book!

Fitz and the Fool and Nighteyes playing in the stream is too fucking pure omg, it’s what they deserve

And then Starling has to bloody ruin it bc she’s homophobique

But seriously, Fitz actually lets go for the first time in ages and has a nice evening only for Starling to go tattling to Kettricken, and Kettricken having the gall to confront Fitz about it. And then Fitz solves the problem by saying he doesn’t disdain her when like!! He has every right to!!!! She sold him out, sold his daughter out. She never even apologised but instead has just been totally petty and self-righteous and stirring up trouble amongst the group. She hasn’t earned or even asked for his forgiveness. So fitting that she’s the one constantly judging Fitz for his relationship with Lord Golden in Tawny Man lol, she just cannot let Fitz and the Fool be the queer icons they are!!!

Verrrrrrrrrrry interesting that Fitz only “suddenly missed the human warmth and comfort” of Starling taking his arm or sleeping against him literally IMMEDIATELY after the plumbing and love confrontation with the Fool. I mean he has been doing all of those things with the Fool (sleeping together, walking arm in arm etc.) so it’s not about human touch at all, it’s about convincing himself that a WOMAN’S touch is somehow inherently different.

He does the same thing with Starling as with Kettricken. She technically apologises but it’s not sincere and that’s not why he forgives her. Same as Kettricken, she tells her sob story and he can’t hold onto his anger. It makes sense, but it’s just very toxic. It would be nice if at least one person would really recognise how much they’ve hurt Fitz and really, genuinely want to atone for it, or apologise without expecting forgiveness. The onus should not be on Fitz to forgive Starling but on Starling to grow up and not need Fitz to like her in order to remain civil and do what they have to. Also “I do not find your wit bond offensive” has the same energy as someone telling you out of nowhere like “It’s fine that you’re gay :)” like wow thank u?? lol

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit C: “I wanted her with a desperation that had nothing to do with love, and even, I believe, little to do with lust.”

“By his love he is betrayed, and his love betrayed also.” So fate agrees with me, Fitz and the Fool are in love? :)

Anytime the potential that Fitz might have to choose between Molly and Nighteyes I lose brain cells. That’s ur brother Fitz!!! It’s not even a choice!! How dare u

It’s just sooooo intentionally laid out for us in this book that Fitz’s relationship with Molly really wasn’t good or healthy and that his fixation on it is misguided, and I think that’s why I struggled sooooo hard with the ending of Fool’s Fate, because it kind of implied the exact opposite. I’m hoping on this reread I will pick up on it being laid out as a result of Fitz getting his memories/teen feelings back rather than it just feeling like a lowkey retcon, but I guess we’ll see lol

“I felt I was a bit in love with him, you know. That sort of lift to the heart.” the confirmation that the Fool KNOWS HOW IT FEELS TO BE IN LOVE sends me deep into the swamps goodbyeeeeeeeeeeee

“The one who loves him best will betray him most foully.” So fate agrees, the Fool loves Fitz best :)

“You do love me! … Before, it was words. I always feared it was born out of pity.” Godddddd Foooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!! 

Everything about Fitz, the Fool and Nighteyes meeting in the skill for the first time is just truly perfect iconic unparalleled.

Fitz’s love for Verity hurts my heart so much. Just think of the relationship they could have had if they weren’t stupid royals.

Kettle’s whole speech about Fitz and Molly… Just yes to every word.

Look I’m just gonna say it… The way Burrich reacts to Molly’s advances … like I know it’s probably not intentional but it just reads as very much fitting in with my headcanon that he is gay. As soon as she makes it clear she wants to sleep with him he like leaps across the room lol. I do believe he cares for her and loves her in his way, but it does feel mostly like he’ll just do whatever he needs to to care for her and the baby.  Sowwy

I wonder why the Fool wasn’t as affected by his giving up of memories to Girl-on-a-Dragon?? Or was he, and he just gets them back before we see him again in Tawny Man?

“Take my hurt that I never knew my father, take my hours of staring up at his portrait when the great hall was empty and I could do so alone.” um this is so fucking sad

It was the Fool who sent Starling to find Fitz after Verity uses his body and again I have to ask, wtf is going on in your mind, Fool!

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit D: Even once he actually sleeps with Starling he has no enthusiasm about it, he just kind of goes along with it, likely to prove to himself that he has really let go of his past/Molly. 

I always wonder why the Fool leaves now. Is it because he thinks their work is done and doesn’t want to risk messing things up by hanging around his catalyst like at the end of Tawny Man? Does he intend to come back and find Fitz again but get sidetracked by a lead or a new dream? Like it’s just weird because at first he was like “Prophet and Catalyst stick together” and was gonna stay with Fitz - or was that just an excuse because he was obsessed with Girl-on-a-Dragon? Fool u spicy lil enigma

It’s blood and the wit that wakes the stone dragons so does that mean King Wisdom was witted? Or is that obvious lol

Fitz isn’t even bothered by the Fool’s kiss, just shocked. I am looking.

Patience shouting orders at Verity-as-Dragon is beautiful ksjjk

Of courrrrrssse Burrich names his first son Chivalry

In the epilogue, the Fool is the only one Fitz actually says he misses. Exquisite.

I know some people have an issue with Regal’s death but personally I find it delicious

Okay that’s all (I say as if this wasn’t 139841989 pages long). See y’all in 92 years when my sister finally starts reading Liveship!