#it's the way he's fucked over his children that's particularly egregious to me

[navree]

@selkiesstories got me thinking about it, so time for yet another round of “y’all tell me you want me to talk about something and i perform a thesis dissertation”, the viserys targaryen is the worst edition. 

so, positives i’ll say for viserys is that paddy considine is incredibly in the role. he’s a good actor and he worked really hard to imbue viserys with a lot of layers that, even while hating him, made me feel emotions for him anyway. there are times during paddy’s role where i could see the glimmers of viserys not necessarily being a bad person, just an incredibly stupid one who doesn’t think about how his choices impact others, and had potential to be something better, a better man and better father and better husband and better king (if he had kept his interactions with alicent strictly platonic, i could see the seeds for him filling a kind and nurturing paternal role in her life, to offset the fact that while otto loves his daughter, he will prioritize his ambitions to alicent’s detriment. alack alack, viserys had to go and crush on a fifteen year old). but also he sucks, and i wanna enumerate why in A List to excise all of my rage: 

viserys is a bad husband

aemma - i know paddy and everyone else and their mother have been on about how aemma was the great love of viserys’s life, and most likely he did love her, but viserys was awful to aemma. aemma’s function in viserys’s life was entirely to be a brood mare. even before she was named queen during the great council and thus had more of an imperative to try for a male heir, she’s pregnant, and not with rhaenyra, as the show has rhaenyra start off at fourteen and the great council takes place ten years before the start of main events. aemma has to endure a constant life in a hazardous condition, given that being pregnant is no picnic generally, and especially not in pseudo-medieval times, for viserys’s sake. and it doesn’t appear that viserys has stopped to think about how that might affect her, not just physically but also psychologically as ALL of these pregnancies, excepting rhaenyra, have ended badly either through miscarriage or stillbirth or infant death. viserys has to be told, point blank, in the simplest language, that aemma does not want to be pregnant again. it’s nearly twenty years of marriage before aemma is able to just firmly tell him that enough is enough, and it’s apparently been nearly twenty years of marriage before viserys even stops and thinks that maybe reducing his wife to a walking uterus is in fact a bad thing. 

and then he kills her. like, that’s the pièce de résistance of viserys’s treatment of aemma, he literally murders her. and the worst part, genuinely the worst part of it, is that he doesn’t let her have any say. he doesn’t even try to talk about it with her, this woman he apparently loves so very much, he does not explain what is happening or offer her the option of choosing, or explaining, or doing anything. he unilaterally makes that decision, and then does nothing to prepare her or help her or even try to comfort her. he lets her die not only in pain but in utter fear, and begging for her life, while people are actively holding her down, on his orders, while she struggles. it genuinely doesn’t matter to me how much viserys loved aemma, or was devoted to her in their marriage, or missed her once she was gone, he was a bad husband to her in her life and was directly responsible for not just her death, but the horrible state in which she died. 

alicent - god let me count the fucking ways. so first things first, i’m going to be really brave and strong and not dwell too much on viserys looking at someone his daughter’s age, a young teenager, and immediately deciding that this is someone it would be appropriate to pursue sexually, we all know it’s disgusting and vile and even if he was the best man on the planet in all other aspects i would still hate him for that alone. but viserys is also a bad husband to alicent, even more so than he was with aemma, as he appears to have no particular care for her as a person, for her own wants and desires and interests or anything about her other than as a fleshlight and a babymaking machine. he also doesn’t appear to have learned anything from aemma, as he has no problem impregnating alicent constantly in the early years of their marriage. the age gap for all of his children with alicent appear to be two years between aegon and helaena and two years between helaena and aemond (in the books there’s a four year gap then between aemond and daeron, but seeing as the writers definitely forgot about daeron until it was pointed out to them via twitter who knows what that will be in the show). considering that a pregnancy takes nearly a year to come to term, and that the human body does need a recovery period and can’t get pregnant immediately, it’s easy enough to infer that viserys was just constantly having alicent pregnant as soon and as frequently as possible from ages fifteen to twenty, and only stopped due to increasing infirmity, and likely the fact that they had four healthy children, three of them sons. 

viserys also shows an astounding lack of care for alicent’s physical wellbeing at all. he drags her to and fro around the kingswood while heavily pregnant, to the point where rhaenyra’s the one noticing that alicent’s uncomfortable while he doesn’t give a shit. not only that, he also summons her for sex in the dead of night at a whim to the point of demanding that she be woken up. alicent’s nineteen years old, she’s just had a baby she’s shown to be active in raising, most people would look at that and think “damn, let’s let her have a break, get some rest and a full eight hours of sleep”, but no, viserys needs to exercise his marital rape license so he has her woken up and brought to him and then doesn’t even give her the benefit of disassociation by trying to check and see that she’s engaged during the assault (i hate him i hate him i hate him i hate him). he also doesn’t compensate for this by caring about her emotional wellbeing. he is repeatedly and publicly dismissive of her and humiliates her in front of other people without a care to how it makes her feel, not just in front of family but in front of the entire court as well. he doesn’t give a shit about times she’s in distress, like on driftmark, or attempt to engage with her about her own feelings or take anything she says into account at all even in their private discussions. alicent is barely a person to him, let alone a wife, she’s a vehicle for him to satisfy his sexual urges, a functioning womb (honestly big “napoléon saying ‘it is a womb i am marrying’ when he married his second wife after divorcing his first solely for her apparent infertility vibes, and guess what i hate napoléon too) that gives him the sons he killed aemma for, and then a nursemaid for the bulk of the marriage. 

viserys is a bad father 

rhaenyra - so first of all, let’s be clear that the gap in viserys’s relationship with rhaenyra vs. his other kids is such pitch perfect “golden child and the scapegoat” that it should be required viewing for half of parents who don’t understand why their children don’t get along. but even with viserys’s clear favoritism and the detriment it causes to his other kids, that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t failed rhaenyra miserably. because he has. for the first fourteen years of her life, viserys appears to have somewhat ignored rhaenyra. she’s his cupbearer, yes, but by all counts they aren’t necessarily the closest behind perfunctory love from a parent to their only child and a daughter to her father, and he was just constantly not caring about her throughout her childhood. rhaenyra seems infinitely closer to her mother, and vice versa. this isn’t something that goes away even when rhaenyra is named heir, as they still seem to have a very stilted and cold relationship with each other, and it isn’t one that gets better, he doesn’t even try to connect with her after his marriage to alicent until she forces his hand through acting out. viserys never tries to foster any sort of personal relationship with his child, the child he’s supposed to love the most, even with the fact that he prefers her over all of his other kids, and even then his personal favoritism is highly likely a manifestation of his guilt over having killed her mother. and in spite of all his love and favoritism and guilt, he doesn’t have any qualms in completely decimating her friendship with the only close companion she appears to have, not to mention doesn’t even care enough to give her the decency or consideration of any prior warning of what he was doing to prepare her for dropping that nuclear bomb on his relationship with her and her relatinoship with alicent, and certainly never attempts to try and repair the damage he’s caused and the pain he’s inflicted on his daughter, or even apologized for the position that put her in. 

viserys has also done an abysmal job in helping rhaenyra at all politically. we see this in episode 2, when he doesn’t want her actually participating in small council meetings, he doesn’t want her engaged in political happenings at all or doing anything an heir would be doing. this only gets worse once he has sons. viserys knows that the legal assumption in westeros is male primogeniture, it’s why he was willing to kill aemma just to have a son even though he already had a daughter in her teens. so viserys knows that, after having aegon, that the entire country is going to assume that aegon is now heir, and he knew that this would only be reinforced one aemond and daeron were born in turn. but viserys doesn’t do anything. he does not publicly state that rhaenyra isn’t going to be supplanted, in spite of what he said to her privately, he does not issue any sort of edict or official code or add and addendum to the targaryen doctrine of exceptionalism that says they’re also allowed to follow absolute primogeniture rather than male dominated primogeniture. he does nothing to publicly support her position at all beyond the original oathtaking, and that is the only thing he does for her in the TWENTY YEARS between proclaiming her as his heir and his death (no, his condition in episode 8 is not an excuse, given that it was apparently a recent enough of a final decline that vaemond needs to inform rhaenys of it as if it’s not entirely common knowledge, and even if we assume that he dropped straight into imhotep mode the second they returned from driftmark after episode 7, that’s still fourteen years of him being healthy enough and coherent enough and mentally agile enough to do his job and as such try to do anything to shore up rhaenyra’s succession and help her out). 

viserys also doesn’t seem to care about rhaenyra participating in the political process, which is a huge misstep on his part. he should be wanting her regularly at small council meetings, he should be wanting her to get some experience as a ruler, as a poltician, as a strategist, hell even as a battle commander, given that she’s a dragonrider and has been since the age of fucking seven. but viserys does nothing to try and help her or prepare her or give her any kind of guidance on what it’s like to be a ruler, to make decisions for other people, to really have any kind of experience in something approaching queenship to prepare for what’s to come. viserys basically ignores rhaenyra not just as a daughter, but as a political heir, except for occasionally telling people to ignore their lying eyes on whether or not a platinum blonde white woman and a platinum blonde black man can have two brunette children with skin so white it might as well be translucent. and given that rhaenyra’s inability to actually govern well is a direct cause to her downfall and eventual gruesome death, viserys is basically 0 for 2 in “not being responsible for the horrible ways his loved ones have died”. not to mention that the entire issue of the animosity between rhaenyra and his other children is due to the fallout of his own favoritism, maybe they’d hate her and her kids less if viserys wasn’t constantly holding up his precious golden child and her kids at the physical and emotional expense of his four other fucking children, god he sucks. good going with your favorite kid viserys, now let’s look at the ones you don’t even give a shit about. 

aegon - i don’t even know if i have the words to describe all the ways that viserys has screwed aegon up. imagine, for a minute, you’re aegon. your relationship with your mother is already gonna have issues, by sheer virtue of the fact that your mother had you at the ripe ole age of sixteen due to unwanted sexual advances by a man old enough to be her father, who is in fact your father. you probably spend a lot of your formative years hearing about how much your father has been wanting a son all his life, to the point where the wife he had before your mother died in the process, but now he’s got a son, and that’s you. but he doesn’t pay any attention to you. he doesn’t nurture you or love you or care about you or even seem to like you that much. is kid aegon going to have the emotional intelligence to think about whether or not there’s something deficient in viserys’s character and to not see his father’s lack of love as a failing on his part? no, he’s a kid. what aegon likely did was blame himself, was think that there was something so lacking in him, so horrible, that his father who is renowned for wanting a son, decided that he was such a bad option that he’d rather have a daughter after all, and would favor rhaenyra over aegon and all the rest of his siblings for the remainder of his life. aegon likely feels responsible not just for his father not caring about him, but for his father not caring about helaena and aemond and daeron in turn, because he somehow messed up. viserys’s abandonment and negligence of aegon is a huge part in why aegon turned to various different vices to try and cope; he has a complicated relationship with his own mother (discussed at length here) and his own father doesn’t give a shit about him. 

and when viserys does deign to remember that he has a kid, it’s never positive attention. we see viserys actually interact with aegon twice, and neither of them are good. in the first interaction, he’s scolding aegon, so already we’ve got an idea that when viserys notices aegon, it’s mostly just to point out his flaws or ways he’s failing, which does a number on anyone, let alone a kid. and the second is at driftmark. viserys at driftmark is a post unto itself because of how abysmally he behaves throughout the entire episode and how he’s the worst man in all westerosi history in that scene, but imma focus on aegon. aegon gets blamed for telling aemond that rhaenyra’s bastards are bastards (understandable of aemond, he wants to protect his mother from his piece of shit father, god bless you my boy), and viserys’s reaction is to get up in his face and scream at him and pull rank, talk to him not as a father to a thirteen year old, but as a king, the supreme law of the land who has the power of life and death over everyone, including his son. it’s the middle of the night, aegon’s not entirely sober, his father’s angry and potentially volatile, and he’s got to make a decision. does he say aemond’s lying and put the onus of the situation back on his ten year old little brother who has been grievously injured and permanently disabled? does he do what aemond couldn’t and blame his mother and potentially shove her at the king’s mercy, knowing it could end badly for her? viserys hasn’t created an environment where aegon can tell him any sort of truth and not have it end badly for people he loves, and he chooses instead to lie, because viserys doesn’t care about the truth, doens’t care about him, and doesn’t care about aemond or alicent. when viserys isn’t completely ignoring him and giving him twenty different complexes, he’s apparently terrorizing him, and forcing his own son to view him not as a parent, but as the head of state, and only the head of state, and to react accordingly. 

helaena - we don’t know as much about helaena and viserys’s relationship, because they haven’t done much to develop helaena as a character, which is annoying, but we still know that viserys is a failfather even with her. for one, he never interacts with her. not as an adult, and not even as a baby, which is put into stark contrast with alicent actively taking a role in nurturing and raising helaena as a baby even though she’s only eighteen or nineteen when helaena is born. but one thing i think is another point int the long list of points against viserys and how messed up his negligence of his kids is, helaena is a dragondreamer. you know, the thing viserys is? if viserys spent any time trying to bond with his daughter, or get close to her, or even just learn anything about her, he likely would have figured it out. can you imagine how nice that would have been for helaena, how much that could have helped her, to have someone who can understand what these random dreams and visions she has sometimes are? we don’t know how helaena feels about her prophetic abilitites, because again, lack of characterization, but we know that a lot of what she sees is violent imagery that she struggles to express properly, like foreseeing aemond’s attack and disfigurement, or getting frustrated trying to tell her mother about the imminent threat of rhaenys at aegon’s coronation. having a present father who would be able to tell that she’s talking about likely would have gone a long way with her, but viserys doesn’t give a shit about his children so he doesn’t even know that his own child shares this ability with him. 

aemond - listen, i am not the first, and i will likely not be the last, to point out that viserys’s treatment of aemond is horrendous. i am not reinventing the wheel by pointing that out, but i am going to talk about it, because it’s truly one of the worst things viserys has ever done. like all of his siblings, aemond suffers from viserys’s neglect and lack of love, he suffers along with aegon and helaena, watching viserys heap praise and devotion on rhaenyra while ignoring them and repeatedly demeaning their mother and he has issues that arise when you’ve got a parent in your life that isn’t present and doesn’t care about you, it’s left him with a constant desire to prove himself and an inability to express his emotions except in times of extreme emotions. but unlike his siblings, aemond doesn’t just have to deal with viserys’s neglect, he also has to deal with the ironclad, irrefutable knowledge that his own father doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. because when aemond is attacked on driftmark, he could have died. and not just in the immediate aftermath of losing your eye, but afterwards, from the possibility of infection or any number of issues that can come from treating a severe wound in a pseudo-medieval society. aegon is, at maximum, ten years old, in a tremendous amount of pain, having to come to terms not just with a long recovery process but a permanent disability that’s going to require him to relearn absolutely everything about the way he lives his life, and does his own father care about it? no, viserys decides that the real issue here is that someone called rhaenyra’s kids bastards. 

viserys’s son has been the victim of an unprovoked attack, he was not only beaten but had his eye slashed out, and viserys does not care. he does not think about comforting his son, or trying figure out what the prognosis is, or do anything to try and help him. he doesn’t even ask that luke apologize for maiming his kid! no, the real crime is that someone said something mean that might reflect negatively on rhaenyra, so he yells at aemond and forces aemond, a child, to make tough calculations, to choose who to sic viserys on next in order to keep himself alive, to have to try and protect his mother at the expense of his brother, to then have to actually be the one to de-escalate the situation in the face of alicent’s distress and viserys’s complete disregard for her emotional state, or aemond’s himself. that’s the position viserys puts aemond in by not caring about anything other than the potential insult to rhaenyra. aemond is now going to spend the rest of his life not just dealing with any trauma from having been physically assaulted and losing an eye at the age of ten, but dealing with the literal proof that his father truly doesn’t give a shit about him. it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to look at who aemond is as an adult, stoic and implacable (with bursts of real rage and hatred like we saw at storm’s end when he lost it at luke) and always keeping himself in check and in control, and extrapolate that aemond realized that he needed to be as strong (pardon the pun) as possible because the only parent he has to protect him is someone who needs protection herself from an uncaring spouse, who is his own uncaring father. 

and then, after years of aemond having to pick himself up and not getting any sort of support from him, or even an ask for someone to try and right this wrong done to his own son, viserys has the gall, the nerve, the audacity, to stand up and basically just say “why can’t we all just get along? for me?” in front of god and everyone. as if his son isn’t sitting right there, dealt a lifelong blow with constant consequences for the crime of...doing exactly what viserys did. viserys claimed the riderless balerion, and aemond claimed the riderless vhagar, viserys should be proud of his son, should be bonding with him over what it’s like to have something so ancient and powerful under his control, a dragon from the conquest itself. but aemond was punished for it because two little girls were grieving and irrational and two idiot boys didn’t stop to point out that they were being ridiculous and instead gang up on someone who hadn’t done anything wrong, and viserys doesn’t give a shit. viserys tells his family to love each other, he’s telling aemond to forgive someone who hasn’t even apologized for the huge wrong he did aemond and doesn’t seem to care that he did it at all. viserys is focused on harmony, for rhaenyra’s sake, at aemond’s expense, and aemond has to sit there and take it because if his sons do something he doesn’t like, viserys will pull rank like he did at driftmark to get them to fall in line even if their physical and emotional wellbeings are at stake (seriously, if you crank the volume at the start of the last supper scene, aemond’s bitching about how much he hates the idea of dinner and aegon’s attempting to offer advice, bad advice yeah but an attempt was made, cuz they both know that there’s no way they can try to get viserys to see their side and let them beg off, because he wants rhaenyra to have happy subjects within her own family). 

daeron - we don’t know anything about daeron because the writers apparently got a 404 error while looking at his side of the targaryen family christmas wreath they call a tree, but safe to say that daeron was probably neglected by him too, and likely made the calculation to spend what appears to be the entirety of his life at oldtown with his hightower relatives rather than be around a father who treats him and his siblings like furniture. but god, viserys has screwed up his entire family beyond repair. 

brief sidenote: viserys is the worst father out of all of hotd’s fathers. no i am not kidding. lyonel, by all measures, is a good dad to his sons, from the little we see of him, daemon in pentos at least was an actively present father who cared about his daughters and the third child he was gonna have with laena (and didn’t make choices on her bodily autonomy that left her dying painfully in absolute terror as people hold her down on his orders, finally daemon doesn’t fuck up, shocking), and otto, for all his myriad of failings and how much he sucks, clearly loves alicent dearly, wasn’t an ignorant or dismissive father to her in spite of actually having male heirs, and was as close and devoted a father as he could be before his own bad choices traumatized his child for life. and then viserys is there, ignoring his children until guilt makes him pick one as his golden child at the expense of all the others, and acting as if any emotional problems of physical traumas they endure are a mild inconvenience from strangers rather than his own children. 

viserys is a bad king

the only thing close to a smart decision viserys ever made was appointing otto as hand, as otto is actually a smart politician who knows how to do his job properly. in all other aspects as a king, viserys sucks. like, he’s just genuinely, incredibly, bad at his job. like, there’s a reason why he needs otto in order to function half the time, because all the things he does are really bad

daemon - viserys should have dealt with the situation better than he did. nearly every episode has daemon fucking up in some respect, but because daemon is his brother, viserys overlooks serious flaws that could cause him problems. daemon’s public contempt for rhea royce puts runestone’s, and the entirety of the vale’s, really, loyalty to the crown in question, and thus viserys’s reliance on one of the major houses of westeros at risk. viserys keeps on trying to give daemon political positions he’s bad at, such as master of laws and master of coin, and we have no reason to disbelieve otto that he was a problem in both positions. and when he was commander of the city watch, he could have seriously turned the population of king’s landing against the targaryens with the way he was acting (and if you don’t think that would be a problem, might i remind you that losing the support of king’s landing was what got rhaenyra in serious trouble, killed one of her sons, forced her off the throne, and ultimately helped lead to her death?). and he continuously lets daemon do whatever he wants, like occupying dragonstone even though it makes him look weak, or waltz back into court after being banished, which also makes viserys look like a king not worth respecting, and a weak politician. and before i get any “daemon’s stronger than viserys and a dragonrider that’s why viserys can’t stand up to him”, viserys is an absolute monarch in a pseudo-medieval society where his word is absolute law and nothing he does can be considered illegal with seven of the finest elite warriors in the country at his beck and call and multiple armies at his disposal, if he wanted to decisively deal with daemon like any decent leader might, he could have. easily. 

the velaryons - the issue with the velaryons is where i get to point out one of the reasons i hate viserys the most, which is ironically why i dislike historical figures like mark antony, or louis xvi: i hate stupid politicians. there is nothing that irks me as much as a stupid politician. viserys is a stupid politician (sorry dave and dan but however much you thought the “i’m not a politician, i’m a queen” line slapped, being a reigning monarch makes you a politician as it is a political position that requires you to participate in politics), and nothing exemplifies that as much as how he’s handled the velaryons. viserys (somewhat) isn’t a stupid man in general, and he’s aware of the fact that the velaryons, particularly corlys, have a chip on their shoulder about the great council and how both rhaenys and any of her heirs were sidelined for viserys’s sake. and in spite of that, viserys completely bungles that relationship time and time again. 

the dismissive and outright rudeness we see him use on alicent in social situations is the same way he treats corlys’s legitimate policy concerns in small council meetings, even though corlys is a major ally and powerful lord who shouldn’t be the constant butt of the joke in front of other political actors in the realm. viserys also publicly humiliates corlys in the ending of episode 2 when he says he’s marrying alicent, not just in having strung corlys along with the potential of the match with laena before pulling the rug out from under him, but also by springing it on him there. what viserys should have done was tell corlys beforehand, in private, that he can’t accept laena’s suit, citing the fact that she’s young and something something can’t wait that long yada yada, and given corlys room to process that in private, so that he’s not taken off guard and make to look a fool in a public setting in front of other lords. 

viserys’s favoritism of rhaenyra also posed problems for him with the velaryons, politically. we know that corlys didn’t care that rhaenyra’s kids weren’t actually laenor’s, but rhaenys and vaemond clearly did, and if corlys had listened to them more, viserys’s stubbornness not to see the truth could have been seen as a massive insult towards them and retaliated, could have decided that house targaryen had broken faith by this point with house velaryon and that they don’t need to be beholden to them anymore, certainly not when house targaryen and westeros at large are dependent on house velaryon and their fleet. and while this is mostly conjecture, as the aftermath is all in the time jump, the fact that viserys appears to have done nothing about laenor’s murder, which becomes egregious when you remember that the prime suspect for laenor’s murder is viserys’s daughter and her husband, viserys’s brother, and that the whole thing reeks of institutional coverup for the sake of rhaenyra and daemon’s reputations. it’s entirely possible that part of what drove corlys off (again, corlys being a powerful ally in the realm and on the small council) was the fact that his own king, who is a stupid politician, isn’t doing anything about this crime committed against his own family, for the sake of his favorite child, and that this is just the straw that broke the camel’s back in a long list of slights that corlys has been putting up with from viserys for his entire reign. viserys’s failure on the velaryon front is extraordinarily bad politics, and bad kingship that could have put himself and his entire line in jeopardy if the writing for the velaryons wasn’t so fucking schizophrenic. 

the succession - i’ve touched on it in why viserys is a shitty father, but viserys’s failure on the succession is a huge political problem as well. viserys all but lit the powder keg of the dance of dragons on fire by not doing anything to shore up rhaenyra’s succession. it’s not just about him being a bad dad, it’s him being a bad king. a good king wouldn’t have just made the lords swear an oath, he would have prepared rhaenyra for power and given her responsibilities and showed her how to rule and planned for her transition into power, like i mentioned above, all of which he didn’t do. a good king would have looked at the time passing since the oath was sworn, and figured out a way to renew it, such as making every new lord come to king’s landing and swear the oath once they inherited, or having a big renewal like it’s a vow renewal ceremony. a good king would have codified rhaenyra’s succession into law, so that it’s not just one man usurping tradition, but the legal qualifications of the realm, especially after sons started being born to him. and if viserys were a good king and a smart politician to boot, he would have, as mentioned, added the idea of absolute primogeniture to the doctrine of exceptionalism (the doctrine of exceptionalism is the general rule jahaerys worked out to explain why targaryens were allowed to marry incestuously even though it was sin in the eyes of the seven, and seriously how hard would it have been for viserys to go “yeah not only are we allowed to do that but we can also go with whoever was born first regardless of gender, #closertogodsthanmen” and be done with it!). but instead, he does none of this, and allows the situation to fester and does nothing to rectify it on any level and lets the problems of the succession build and build and build, doesn’t even put any safeguards in place for when he dies. somewhere in the seven hells, in between the beatings aemma’s ghost should be allowed to give him for what he did to her, viserys cannot be surprised at the outbreak of civil war, he all but ensured that there WOULD be a civil war by not doing anything about all the situations he’s caused with regards to rhaenyra’s succession and the lack of follow through. 

viserys targaryen is a bad husband to both his wives, a bad father to all of his children, and a bad king to westeros, and as much as i love paddy in the role, the idea that he was a good man who was trying his best and as lovable as ned stark himself needs to fucking die. 

#personal #house of the dragon #hotd #anti viserys i targaryen #sorry for the absolute novel but i'm tired and i'm so angry and all the feelings came bubbling up lol #it's the way he's fucked over his children that's particularly egregious to me #like i'd written viserys off the second he started viewing alicent as a plausible romantic option #because that was so fucking disgusting i was never gonna see past it #but if you think about how he's hurt his own kids it's basically unforgivable #i'm glad he's dead and rotting i hope aemma gets to smack him with a fire poker forever and ever amen

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Visit to the Cottage

AO3 link for those who prefer to read fics there

There's an event called "Let Papyrus Say Fuck", which is about exactly what you'd think. Its aim is to show Papyrus doing and saying things that go against the common fandom misconception that he's just a child (mentally, at least; his actual age is debatable). The actual event is tomorrow (June 16th), but I'm not sure if I really want to take part in it, since there might be antis lurking about in a purely Papyrus-centric portion of the fanbase, and I don't want to have to deal with some asshole minors who think it's fun to harass strangers online for their shipping preferences.

That said, if anyone does feel the urge to harass me, just know that you won’t get a rise out of me. I ignore rude comments and will block those trying to bully me for enjoying what I love (and I report those whose behaviour is particularly egregious). I'm a grown-ass adult who ain't got no time to be playing stupid games with idiot children. I'm way too busy trying to squeeze as much joy out of life as possible.

But forget about all that, this is just a fun little scenario which takes place sometime after my fic "Good Girl Needs Kiss" (also here on AO3). You don't need to have read that, since you should be able to get a gist of what's going on while reading this, but just in case, the basic premise is that Witch!Reader messed up a spell, turning herself into a dog, and got found and taken in by Papyrus. This oneshot takes place after Witch!Reader has broken her spell, and she and Papyrus are officially a couple. I hope you enjoy ^^

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I was up bright and early this morning, to get my cottage ready for my very special visitors: Papyrus was bringing his brother, Sans, over for the very first time, and I was anxious to make sure that my friend, and older brother to my boyfriend, enjoyed his time in my home as much as possible. I’d finally broken that stupid botched spell not too long ago, and I desperately wanted Sans to like me just as much as a human, as he did when I was stuck as a dog. As such, I was rushing all about my cottage, sprucing up the place and making it as welcoming as possible.

I’d spent all morning clearing away any dust and dirt, tidying up my spell books and tomes, putting away all of my magical instruments and various knick-knacks and curios, and cleaning up any potion stains I could find. I’d even scrubbed my cauldron until it gleamed, and arranged my alchemy ingredients into neat little rows. I’d also asked the spiders to make their cobwebs as nice as possible, bribed the resident imps and sprites with honey to stay on their best behaviour around my guests, and even banished the hobgoblin squatting in my attic to the wardrobe, when he’d refused to comply and blown a raspberry at me instead. I dearly hoped Sans wouldn’t try to practise his knock knock jokes on that wardrobe.

Any potentially dangerous objects were sealed away in a secure lockbox, which I’d hidden in the secret storage compartment in the floorboards underneath the large, sturdy bed Papyrus had built for me. My previous bed had been no match for my boyfriend’s very ardent affections, whenever he spent the night here, but Papyrus had proven to be quite the skilled carpenter, and this new bed seemed very robust. Still, I’d added my own reinforcing enchantments to it, just in case. Papyrus was very strong, after all. He was also quite the artist, and had even carved flames and cute, little bones into the frame. So talented, my boyfriend , I sighed dreamily to myself, as I brushed my cat familiar’s fur until it was silky smooth.

As soon as the skeleton brothers had entered the forest I lived in, several tree nymphs had shown up outside my window to let me know all about it, and were currently giving me a detailed, running commentary on the brothers’ trek to my cottage. Nymphs were notorious gossips, nosy, yet reliable with their information, and I always appreciated being kept up-to-date on the goings-on of my home, especially where it concerned anyone coming to see me. Nothing happened in the forest without the nymphs knowing about it, and it was very reassuring to have these nature spirits keeping a close eye on my very important visitors.

I wasn’t too worried about anything untoward happening to the brothers, though. The ancient Forest God protecting this entire area had taken quite the liking to Papyrus (in large part thanks to all of the fun and creative puzzles he’d been coming up with to entertain the forests’ inhabitants), and had even named him an official “Friend of the Forest”, granting him safe passage through these woods whenever he pleased. And since the Old God had given his approval, all the rest of the woodland residents would respect his judgement. Many will-o'-the-wisps had even taken it upon themselves to guide Papyrus back to safe trails, whenever he’d gotten distracted by something or someone, and lost his way. I was truly delighted by how easily and quickly my boyfriend had managed to befriend my friends and neighbours. All the more reason to befriend his friends in turn! And as a human this time.

I’d finally managed to get all of the major chores done, and was discussing with my household brownie if there were any minor tasks that needed doing. The shy, little, brown elf was usually the one taking care of most of the housework, which I was always very grateful for, but this was too big and too important a job for him alone. Nevertheless, his help was invaluable to me, and he knew my cottage even better than I did, so I was seeking his opinion on what else I could do to make the place look more inviting. Suddenly, I heard a furious voice booming in the distance.

“GOD FUCKING DAMN IT SANS, WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY?!?!?!”

I’d recognise that obnoxiously loud voice anywhere! Papyrus! I gasped to myself, as I reached over to help the brownie back onto his feet, after he’d startled so badly from the noise that he’d fallen over. With a quick promise from the tiny elf to keep an eye on my house while I was gone, I ran to the front door, grabbing my broomstick on my way out. Once outside, I hopped onto my broom, kicked off the ground and was up in the air in the blink of an eye, shooting off in the direction of my boyfriend’s irate shouting.

My heart was pounding in my chest as I fretted over what could have happened to Papyrus, my mind racing as it came up with increasingly horrifying possibilities. The forest, while generally peaceful, was nonetheless full of mysterious and sometimes malevolent entities, ever eager to play nasty tricks on unsuspecting travellers. I prayed that my boyfriend and his brother hadn’t run afoul of one of the more malicious creatures living in these dark woods...

The further I flew, the louder the yelling became, until I could hear both Papyrus and Sans’s voices clearly.

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!!”

“but pap-”

“NO!!! DON’T HURT MY DATEMATE’S PLANT FRIEND!! YOU MIGHT MAKE HER HATE YOU!! AND THEN YOU TWO WILL NEVER BE FRIENDS!! WHICH IS UNACCEPTABLE!! SANS!! WE MUST NOT FUCK UP THIS VERY IMPORTANT HANG-OUT, NO MATTER WHAT!!”

Papyrus sounded both panicked and determined, whereas Sans sounded more annoyed than anything, as he responded to his brother.

“then what exactly do you suggest we-”

I finally reached the two skeleton monsters, only to find them both dangling several feet in the air, ensnared in the vines of a gigantic plant, the main body of which was a massive, flower-like creature, whose metres-wide, fuchsia petals formed a humongous mouth, lined with several rows of razor-sharp fangs. Harsh, guttural growls reverberated through the air, seeming to be coming from the main flower. I noticed that a large, draconic skull was also caught in the vines, and instantly recognised it as a Gaster Blaster, although it was wider and thicker than the ones Papyrus would occasionally summon during his training.

Sans had cut himself off when I flew into view, and both brothers were openly staring at me, their eye sockets wide and pitch black, as I took in the scene before me with no small amount of alarm. Sans was the first to recover from his shock, as he waved at me casually, lazy grin fixed on his skull, with only the tightness of his expression betraying how uneasy he actually was.

“oh, hey. ‘sup, kid, howzit hanging ?”

I blinked at him, at a loss for words. Papyrus, however, was not, as he turned an angry glare on his brother.

“SANS!! NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR YOUR AWFUL PUNS!!”

He was struggling furiously within the vines holding him, almost upside down in the air, as more vines rose up to further constrict him. Sans tried very hard to appear unbothered by the situation, as he shrugged carelessly.

“you’re totally right, bro.” He then shot me a wink. “sorry pal, but we can’t chat right now, we’re a little tied up at the moment.”

“SAAAAANS!!!”

As Papyrus practically exploded at his brother’s joking, I hurriedly flew towards the two of them, gripping my broom tightly in my concern.

“Oh shit, are you guys all right?!”

In hindsight, that was probably a stupid question, but this was a ridiculous situation I was in. This was not at all how I envisioned today going, I silently despaired. Papyrus gave a nervous laugh, trying vainly to appear cool and collected, despite his current predicament.

“DON’T WORRY, MY BELOVED DATEMATE! WE’RE PERFECTLY ALL RIGHT! WE WERE JUST HANGING OUT WITH YOUR LOVELY FLOWER FRIEND AND DEFINITELY NOT ATTACKING IT!!”

Sans chuckled, looking more pleased at his brother’s pun than he did his own, but I ignored the both of them to make my way down to the main blossom. Landing on the forest floor, I swiftly got off of my broom, and used it to deliver a firm whack to the flower, scolding it with my best cross look.

“You let my friends down this instant, you ill-mannered lout!”

The plant snarled at me, the sound deep, harsh and menacing, but I just pointed the business end of my broom threateningly at it.

“Don’t you sass me, plant bitch! Unhand my boyfriend and his brother, right now , or I’m getting out the weed killer! And you better be gentle! Or else .”

The flower audibly grumbled at me, before reluctantly lowering the two skeleton monsters to the ground, and released them from its vines. The giant blossom, along with all of its leafy, tentacle-like vines, then retreated into the bushes, slinking away and disappearing in the undergrowth.

I heaved a deep sigh, sagging in relief, before running over to the brothers as they staggered to their feet, checking them both over carefully, and making sure that they were unharmed. Neither of them seemed the worse for wear after their ordeal, thankfully, just a little shaken and covered in leaves. The chunky Gaster Blaster shook itself vigorously as it hovered in the air, looking remarkably like a dog shaking water from its fur, before it vanished, returning to wherever Blasters go when they aren’t being summoned (I assumed, at least, since I’d never actually asked Papyrus the specifics of his skeletal weapons).

As I looked the brothers over, I couldn’t help but notice that Papyrus was wearing the “Cool Dude” shirt he often wore on our dates (he said it was part of his “secret style”, but I’d seen it so often I didn’t know what was so secret about it), as well as a pair of trousers I’d never seen before, with what looked like a Halloween themed design. I wondered if the pointy witch hats, black cats, bats, and pumpkins reminded him of me. A large part of me hoped so. Or maybe he thought I would appreciate them (I did, if that was the case, very much so).

Sans, on the other hand, was wearing his usual outfit, except with the addition of a bow tie, distinctly shaped like a bone. I could practically hear the “bone tie” pun from him, and resolved to not mention it in Papyrus’s presence. Best not to give the local forest spirits the wrong idea about these two.

Once Papyrus had regained his footing, brushing off all of the leaves clinging to his clothes, he reached out towards me with arms wide open and quite literally swept me off my feet, as he hugged me tightly to his chest, and spun the both of us around in a circle.

“WOWIE!! YOU WERE SO COOL! SAVING US FROM YOUR PLANT PAL WITHOUT ANYONE GETTING HURT! SO COOL! SO HEROIC! NYEH HEH HEH!!”

He set me back on the ground, but kept his arms loosely wrapped around me, which I was grateful for, since my impromptu mid-air twirl had left me a little dizzy. He was beaming down at me and I returned his bright smile, feeling my heart flutter in my chest at being so close to the one I loved. I felt a warmth close to my heart, which I recognised as my soul, as it too rejoiced at being so near to Papyrus and his own soul.

“I’m just glad you guys are all right,” I sighed softly, wrapping my own arms around Papyrus, returning his hug. My boyfriend squeezed me tighter in response, drawing me closer to him, and leaned down to place a gentle kiss on my lips. Just then, the sound of a camera shutter going off caused me to jolt apart from Papyrus and whip my head towards the noise. I saw Sans holding his phone up and pointing the lens towards us. He smiled apologetically at us, lowering his phone.

“heh heh, oops, sorry. shoulda silenced my phone,” he then gave us a cheeky wink. “you kids were just so cute, i couldn’t help snappin’ a quick pic. wanna hold tight to the good memories, after all.”

I could feel my cheeks heat up at his words, but I couldn’t argue with his reasoning. And neither could Papyrus, it seemed, as he swiftly made his way to his brother’s side and snatched the latter’s phone right out of his hands, to admire the photo Sans had taken of us. The taller skeleton’s face lit up, tiny specks of light glittering within the depths of his eye sockets, and he started tapping away on Sans’s phone.

“WOWIE! THAT’S SUCH A GREAT PHOTO! WE SURE ARE CUTE, NYEH HEH HEH!! I’M SENDING THIS TO MY PHONE RIGHT NOW! I WANT TO HOLD TIGHT TO THIS GOOD MEMORY AS WELL!!”

I tried to cover my blushing cheeks, but couldn’t contain my smile. Papyrus gushing over photos of the two of us always made me feel giddy, and my soul warmed at how obviously my boyfriend treasured our relationship, new as it still was. I reached up a hand to yank my tall witch’s hat off of my head, and used it to fan my face, hoping to cool down my blush. The tiny, fluffy owl chick which had been peacefully snoozing underneath my hat, stirred slightly at the disturbance, but Papyrus quickly ran a phalange gently over its downy head and along its soft, puffy body, soothing the baby bird back to sleep.

Papyrus had been utterly enthralled to learn that I often kept baby birds, entrusted to me by their parents, underneath my hat, and when this latest owl chick had hatched, he’d immediately started fussing over the little fella, and caring for him like a parent would, even going so far as to keep bird feed on hand at all times. He’d even named the owlet “Voltaire”, proudly boasting about how fitting a name it was. I certainly hoped so, since Voltaire was a very intelligent writer and philosopher. Sans, meanwhile, had greatly appreciated the double pun.

Ordinarily, once the chicks were old enough, they’d fly the nest, so to speak, but Papyrus had grown so attached to this baby owl, and it to him, that I was considering keeping the little guy as my second familiar. My mother had two familiars herself, her cat Artemis, and her owl Hermes, however I’d never felt like my magic was stable enough to support two familiar bonds. Besides, Midnight had always been more than enough for me, and I didn’t want to risk him not liking another companion.

But with my blossoming relationship with Papyrus, and my growing friendship with his friends and family, I felt more confident in myself than ever before. Papyrus had been steadfast in his support of me and my efforts to improve my magical abilities, and had even declared himself my biggest fan. With him by my side, cheering me on every step of the way, I felt like I could accomplish anything. Once Voltaire was old enough, I would perform the bonding ritual, and he and I would be together for the rest of our lives. Hopefully so would Papyrus , my heart wished.

After I’d returned my hat back to its place on my head, and Papyrus had handed Sans’s phone back to him, my boyfriend gave me a deep bow, grabbing his brother’s skull to shove it down as well. I blinked at them in confusion, as Papyrus offered me his apologies.

“MY DARLING DATEMATE, SANS AND I ARE SO SORRY FOR UPSETTING YOUR FLOWER FRIEND! AREN’T WE, SANS?”

Beside him, Sans mumbled a “yep, sure are” and Papyrus let him up, the both of them straightening up from their bow. I hastily shook my head, waving away their unnecessary apology.

“No, no, it’s fine, really! That flower has always been a bit of a grumpy git. Besides, it’s kinda my fault it’s like that anyway.” I sighed, recalling the incident which had led to the plant’s foul temperament and abnormally large size. “You see, it’s a very rare species of flower, whose seeds have many, fascinating uses in alchemy. So, I thought that if I poured some growth potion on it, it’d have bigger seeds, and therefore more material for me to work with. Clever, right?”

Papyrus nodded his skull in agreement, assuring me I was “VERY CLEVER!” and I smiled gratefully at him, before my face fell as I continued.

“Unfortunately, I failed to brew the potion correctly, and while the flower did indeed grow to a gigantic size, as intended, it somehow also gained some level of sentience as well. I still don’t know where I messed up in the brewing process to have caused such an effect...” I bit my lip, frowning thoughtfully to myself, before I shook my head, dismissing the question for another time. “But anyway, I thought I’d managed to tame the nasty beast, for the most part, and it hasn’t attacked anyone in a long while. I don’t know why it chose to attack you two now, but I’m really sorry about that.”

I wrung my hands anxiously, feeling guilty that my past actions had put my dear friends in danger, but Papyrus strode forward and took my hands into his own. He wasn’t wearing his gloves for once, and I enjoyed the feeling of cool, smooth bone against my skin, as he gave my hands a firm squeeze. He smiled down at me reassuringly.

“DON’T BE! IT WAS ALL SANS’S FAULT!” The monster in question huffed a laugh at how easily his brother had thrown him under the proverbial bus. Papyrus leaned his skull down to press his forehead to mine, as he gazed directly into my eyes. “MY FOOLISH BROTHER IGNORED MY INSTRUCTIONS TO NOT BOTHER THE FOREST’S RESIDENTS, AND PICKED ONE OF YOUR FRIEND’S SMALLER FLOWERS. SO YOU SEE, SANS IS ENTIRELY TO BLAME! MY LITTLE LADY HAS NOTHING TO BE SORRY FOR!”

My guilt wasn’t completely assuaged, but I did feel a lot better at his words. I was just glad that he wasn’t upset with me for creating such a menace and allowing it to run loose in the forest. Still, I couldn’t really fault the flower for getting mad at the brothers, if one of its blooms was harvested without its consent. I twisted my head towards Sans, and he hunched his shoulders a little, looking sheepish as he held up the flower which had instigated this whole mess.

“eh heh heh... sorry about that, pal. i didn’t know the rest of the plant would take offence to my takin’ just one, tiny bud,” he glanced down at it, eyelights fuzzing slightly around the edges. “i thought frisk would like it. she loves pretty flowers.”

I thought back to Frisk’s stunning, flower-filled garden, with its myriad of blossoms covering the majority of the area, a veritable kaleidoscope of vibrant colours everywhere you looked. She did indeed love pretty flowers. And the one Sans was holding would fit right in with the rest in Frisk’s garden, with its bright, pink petals. I nodded my head, conceding Sans’s point.

“True, she’ll probably like it,” Sans’s smile widened at my agreement. “Just let her know that while it is edible, it has a rather bitter flavour. Nothing overpowering, but still something to be aware of.”

Sans looked at me a little oddly, for some reason, before shrugging and giving me a wink.

“sure, i’ll tell her that. heh, thanks for the advice, kid.”

I beamed at him, glad to be of help. “No problem!”

Papyrus then clapped his hands, as if he’d just thought of something.

“SPEAKING OF PRESENTS!” He reached into his inventory and took out a bone, with a big, red bow wrapped around it. He held the bone out to me with a huge grin. “THIS IS A GIFT SANS BROUGHT FOR YOU, ON HIS OWN!”

Sans looked to be holding back a snigger, which I found puzzling, but I chose not to question his strange behaviour, as I happily accepted the kind gift.

“Thanks, Sans! How thoughtful of you! I love bones.”

Papyrus’s in particular, but I kept that to myself; Sans didn’t need to know that. The shorter skeleton monster seemed to be trying to hold back another laugh, as he struggled to get out a “no problem at all , buddy”. Huh. He really was an odd fellow, but I was glad to have such interesting friends. I made a mental note to find a present of my own to give to Sans, one that would match the level of care that must have gone into this one.

Clutching my lovely gift firmly in one hand, I bent down to retrieve my fallen broomstick with the other, and suggested that the three of us make our way to my cottage, before we attracted any more unwanted attention. As it was, a group of tree nymphs were already giggling to each other, and would most certainly be gossiping about this encounter for the next few days. I could also spot several curious fairies spying on us from behind tree leaves and bushes, and who knew what else was watching us, hiding from view. I sighed in exasperation. Didn’t these creatures have anything better to do?

Papyrus readily agreed with my suggestion, even volunteering to carry my broom for me, so that he could free up one of my hands to hold it in his. I eagerly accepted, of course, and the three of us marched off in the direction of my home, myself and my boyfriend walking hand in hand the entire way.

Despite the little hiccup with the giant, angry flower, the rest of the day passed by smoothly, and I felt that by the end of it, Sans and I had grown even closer as friends, which delighted me to no end. My friendship power would soon be unmatched! And Papyrus was even more thrilled by this than I was, if his not-so-quiet comments to himself and to Sans were anything to go by. The big guy wasn’t very subtle about his desire for his loved ones to get along well, but that just proved that he had a big heart (metaphorically speaking)!

As an added bonus, I’d learnt that the hobgoblin did, in fact, enjoy knock knock jokes, and a great deal too. Papyrus, however, did not . All in all, today had been a fun and interesting day indeed, and I looked forward to my next hang-out with the skeleton brothers (even if I did prefer my private dates with Papyrus just a bit more).

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This was fun to write. I normally avoid swearing in my fics, just because it feels a little too crass (even though I cuss a bunch in real life, amongst my close friends and family), but just for this special occasion, I'm letting Papyrus swear. It feels a little weird, honestly 'w'

Anyway, to my regular readers, I've got something planned for this coming Sunday, because it's Father's Day where I am. I wrote something for Mother's Day, so I couldn't miss out on Father's Day ^^ It won't be similar to my other fic, though, but I hope people like it all the same.

(Psst! To those who are confused about the double pun in "Voltaire"... "vol" is French for "flight", which along with "air" seemed fitting for a bird. I thought it was fairly obvious, but I'm half French and a friend pointed out that it really wasn't, so here's the explanation for those who want it.)

#JMB writes #papyrus x reader #papyrus #reader is a witch #sans #papyrus my beloved #the perils of going to visit your gf when she's a witch living in an enchanted forest #letpapyrussayfuck #bringbackthecooldude #swearing

[electricprincess96]

There are sadly a lot of moments in comic over the last 10-20 years that really try and depict Bruce as being a bad father particularly towards Jason.

However, while Jason fans will harp on about the Batarang throat slit and the Gotham War mind fucking. The one that will always be the worst for me is Bruce taking Jason back to where Jason died to demand Jason help him bring Demon Brat back to life because that is as close as DC have come to outright stating they don't believe Bruce's adoptive kids are his REAL children based on the way Bruce speaks to Jason and about Demon Brat in that scene and I find that disgusting.

Now sure they'll acknowledge Dick, he's been around too long and it too popular in his own right, the only way they'll ever be able to remove Dick Grayson from Bruce's family is if they made it Dick's choice.

But Jason, Cassandra and Tim? As far as DC are concerned they don't count and they made it abundantly clear during that scene (and plenty of others this is just the most egregious to me). Taking Jason to the scene of the most traumatic day of his entire existence and talking about Demon Brat like he's the first son you've ever buried, while speaking to the first actual son you buried, coupled with the fact Cassandra and Tim are basically forgotten by Bruce at this point just tells me that to DC they either don't believe these characters are Bruce's children OR they think Bruce believes that and I honestly don't know which is worse.

Like I don't care how grief striken Bruce was, if Bruce still loved Jason even the slightest bit he would not have done that.

#batman comics blogging #this is not anti bruce #this is anti bad writing #because i dont believe bruce views his kids as lesser for not being blood related to him #but there are definitely some in the fandom and in dc who do

[voiceless-terror]

#21 and #46 for kiss prompts, maybe? I can't get enough your writing tbf

kiss on a dare- a little jonmartin season one fluff <3 All in all, this is one of Tim’s better Friday nights.

It’s been ages since Jon’s hung out with them, and never with Martin along for the ride. The Archives had been off to a messy start after the Dog Incident and Jon’s subsequent panic over the state of the place. What used to be an ‘every couple of weeks’ tradition turned into an almost-never one as the newly-assembled team got buried under more and more boxes of dusty statements. He’s pretty astounded that Jon agreed to dinner and drinks- although it’s a Friday night, Jon’s been apt to stay weekends more often than not. He figured if he arranged for it at one of theirs instead of a pub, Jon would be more likely to come. He always preferred less crowded settings.

No, the real feat was getting him to come knowing Martin was invited.

Jon’s been getting...better around him, that’s true. He was perfectly fine at his birthday party, going off about emulsifiers for a solid fifteen minutes. Tim’s always been rather fond of Jon’s infodumping, and if he’s comfortable enough to do it around Martin that must be a good sign. Despite an initial freeze-out, he now thanks Martin for his tea and saves his most pointed comments for Martin’s more egregious screw-ups (and even those have less bite than usual). Still, a colleague does not a friend make, and Jon’s never been good at opening up to people he doesn’t know all that well. However, Jon just nodded at the Martin caveat, seemingly not giving it a second thought. And Martin didn’t seem all that worried either.

Whatever, Tim’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s just happy they’re all here, having a good time. It’s late and Jon’s had enough wine to keep a smile on his face. He missed that. It’s nice how easily they slot together, even with all of the upheaval and a new addition. Martin himself isn’t so shy after a drink or two, more willing to engage in banter and keep the conversation going. This is what it should be like all the time, Tim thinks. Shitty archive job or not. 

It’s when they retire to the living room, drinks in hand, that he finally notices the little grin on Sasha’s face. And Tim, knowing exactly what that means, is both a little afraid and excited. Four-drink-Sasha has always been a host unto herself.

“Why don’t,” she begins, a hiccup interrupting her as she slumps into an armchair. Tim snickers and ignores the glare this earns him. “Why don’t we play one of our old games-”

Tim raises a glass in agreement as Jon, predictably, groans. Martin looks quizzically between them. Ah yes, time for your initiation, Marto! Not that they’ve played this in about a year or so, of course, but it's always fun to revisit the good old days.

“Seriously? We’re not children-”

Tim gives Jon a playful slap on the back that sends him flying forward on the couch, spilling a bit of wine on Sasha’s rug. He hopes she doesn’t notice. “C’mon, it’ll be fun, boss! Nothing like it to break the ice, and there’s definitely some ice that needs breaking.”

Martin blinks, hand tightening on his glass. He looks nervous, like he always does when he doesn’t know exactly what’s going on. Which is a shame, because he’s been so nice and open all night. Even chatting with Jon. “Sorry, what are you talking about?”

Jon rolls his eyes, giving Martin a commiserating look. “Truth or dare.”

Martin lets out a disbelieving laugh, relaxing minutely. “Wait, really?”

“Yes, really.” Jon’s foot reaches out to shove at Tim’s leg. “Tim loves pulling ridiculous stunts-”

“-Hey, you loved the karaoke idea-”

“You sing?”

“No.” Tim would dispute that, but the look on Jon’s face declares it a bad idea. “And Sasha likes to ask probing questions.”

Sasha preens, though the remark was certainly not meant as a compliment. “What can I say, I’m the Queen of Truth-”

Tim snorts. “Hacking and blackmail more like-”

“Anyway-” Sasha sings out as Tim dodges a pillow to the face. “Tim….truth or-”

“Dare, always dare.”

“You’re absolutely no fun,” Sasha pouts, though it doesn’t take long for her eyes to narrow in thought. There’s very little Tim won’t do, but that’s a dangerous look. “I dare you...to text…”

“Text? You can do better than that, Sash.”

“Text...Elias.” That’s more like it. 

Jon immediately scowls. “Tim, no-”

“I don’t have his number-”

“I do-”

“Sasha!”

“Jon, it’ll be fine! He’ll just say ‘oops, wrong number’ afterwards, no harm, no foul-”

Tim takes this time to snatch at Sasha’s phone, sitting precariously on the arm of her chair. She doesn’t notice, too busy gesturing at Jon empathically. He scrolls through her contact list.

“And then it’ll come down on me-”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “How is he going to connect it to you? It’s not like he knows we’re all together-”

“Done!” Tim tosses the phone back onto the couch with a little grin. Sasha blinks, looking down in confusion.

“Wait, that’s mine-”

The screech and smack on the arm at Tim’s hastily fired off ‘u up? ;)’ to Elias Bouchard were definitely deserved. He’s sure he’ll face consequences for that in the near future, but Jon and Martin’s immediate laughter had been well worth it. Shouldn’t dish it if you can’t take it, that’s Tim’s motto.

In the next round, Tim manages to get Martin to confess to his poetry-writing habit, an admission that has him turning an attractive shade of red. Jon just giggles quietly to himself as Martin reads through one of his poorer attempts at rhyme saved to the notes of his mobile. Tim watches the two of them; Martin keeps looking up at Jon throughout it all like he’s the only one in the room and god, his crush is so evident and yet Jon is oblivious, smiling at him like he’s not on the receiving end of some of the most loaded glances of all time. 

Martin gets Sasha to admit to her most recent perusal through confidential institute records, which turned out to be previous archival expenses (solely to find out what Elias would cover with their new jobs, of course). At first glance, there wasn’t much in the way of extravagant meals or supplies, but a bit more digging had her finding Gertrude’s extensive travel budget. For an old woman, she certainly was a globe-trotter.

“All I’m saying, Jon, is that we could definitely do with a trip to China-”

“Yes, I’ll be sure to ask Elias about Gertrude’s trip to China, something I certainly shouldn’t know about, and he’ll have to let us go.”

“Refill?” Martin’s on his feet, taking Jon’s wine glass in his hand and Tim watches as their fingers brush- go Martin!- and yet Jon just nods his thanks, completely oblivious to the seduction taking place before him. Tim’s given it some thought and honestly, he thinks they’d make a cute couple. An odd pair, for sure, but Jon’s so soft once you get to know him, and Martin’s one of the funniest, sweetest guys he knows. They could be good for each other.

“Well, I still think it’s worth a try.” Sasha’s eyes are starting to blink heavily - she’ll be out for the count tonight, for sure. “Anyway, it’s your turn. I dare you-”

“I didn’t even pick!” Jon says, though he doesn’t seem too put out by it. This is the Jon Martin should know, the easy-humored, smiling man sprawled out before him. He’s even taken his little sweater vest and tie off, looking more like the familiar friend from research Tim knows so well. It warms his heart.

“Fine. Truth or dare?”

“Dare, I suppose. Seeing as how you already have one queued up.”

“I dare you to...to...to give a little kiss to someone in this room.” She waves her glass around imperiously. “Anyone you like.”

Silence. Tim gives Sasha a warning look that she ignores. She’s well in her cups, and he supposes any sense of propriety has gone out the window along with her sobriety. He’s actually seen Jon give quite a few kisses on a particularly memorable New Years Eve, but that was a different time. He doesn’t want him to feel pressured, not when he’s just starting to open back up.

 “Jon doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to-”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, you remember-”

“It doesn’t matter- Jon, you can skip this one if you like, we can think of something else-”

“Tim, it’s alright.” Jon puts a hand on his arm to stop the argument, and there’s a strange look in his eyes that can’t be attributed to liquor. It’s mock-serious, almost playful paired with his little sly smile. He thinks for a moment that Jon’s going to lean in and kiss him but instead he gets up from the sofa in a smooth motion and walks across the room to Martin, who’s just turned around with two glasses in hand. He freezes in place as Jon gets on his very tippy toes, takes his face in both hands, and kisses him. 

Jonathan Sims. Kissing Martin Blackwood. Against a kitchen counter. Martin Blackwood, who, once he’s over his surprise, puts the drinks down behind him and kisses right the hell back, arms winding around Jon’s waist like they belong there.

What. The. Fuck.

_____

“The leg bit was a nice touch.”

“Hmm?” Jon’s in Martin’s lap, sprawled out on his couch back at his own flat, eyes closed in contentment as he leans back against the other man’s chest. Martin’s got one hand in his hair, and the other entwined with Jon’s, twirling the black ring on his finger. It’s heavenly.

“Thought you were trying to climb me.”

“Well, you usually pick me up at that point, make it easier.”

“Sorry, next time.” Kissing Jon’s always fun but kissing him out in the open, in front of their friends? Was that something they could do now? “Should we tell them we’ve been dating for two months?” 

Two whole months since that night in Document Storage when Jon had finally let his guard down. When Martin had held him in his arms. Jon was very particular about keeping up appearances, though that all seemed to have crumbled tonight. Sasha rather fashioned herself a matchmaker, and Jon didn’t do anything to dissuade the fact. It’d been nice, having their relationship to themselves, the secret of it, the obliviousness of their friends who still thought Jon only tolerated him. It’s not that he wanted to keep it that way, of course, but it was nice while they were still figuring it out. 

“If you’d like. Maybe it’s time.” Jon tilts his head back, giving Martin a fond look. “Though I know how much you enjoy playing the lovesick fool-”

“There’s something so poetic about unrequited love, yknow?”

“All the more when it’s requited, I’d say.” Martin couldn’t argue with that. He leans down to give Jon’s forehead a peck. 

“Hmm. Give it a few more weeks. Act out the honeymoon phase for a bit, it’ll be fun.”

And when Jon squeezes his hand and smiles back, Martin thinks he won’t need to do much acting at all.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31318724

#tma #the magnus archives #my writing #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #fluff #kiss prompts #i have a little backstory to how they got together in this one that maybe one day i will write #but heres a lil something something #jonmartin secret dating is fun okay #v enjoyable #jaybirdsfall #reblogs appreciated <3

[cosmicjoke]

I thought I was crazy to believe Misumi could be a potential villain but after reading your meta about it I realized I wasn’t that crazy.

People claming he saved yashiro when he groomed him, gaslighted him and forced him to enter the yakuza is fucked up. As much as yashiro’s life was messed up and in danger that doesn’t mean what misumi has done “””for him””” is right. What misumi did to “””save””” yashiro’s life was anything but right, on contrary he made his life much worse. Traumatized people can’t be saved by some old creep who obsess over them, gaslight them, abuse them and control them this narrative is dangerous and toxic has hell. Just because Misumi gave him a chance to live a life in better conditions (a roof over his head, and some kind of job which wasn’t really a job) doesn’t mean it is the right thing to do especially if he didn’t want any of this. Everyone is entitled of their own opinion about characters and their dynamic with others in the story but I’m sick and tired of this narrative and all the justifications that come with it.

Haha, yeah. It confuses me a little how Misumi is seen by the general fandom. I get that he's charming, and has qualities that can be interpreted as good. But the bottom line is, he forced Yashiro into a life he didn't want, he forced Yashiro to do something he didn't want to do, he manipulated and coerced Yashiro into becoming a criminal. And then, afterward, he continued to prey on and exploit Yashiro's insecurities and weaknesses in order to keep him trapped in that life. Yashiro's own wishes weren't just secondary to Misumi, they didn't matter at all. In a story that deals with issues of consent, the fact that so many people seem to miss that Yashiro was dragged into the world and life of a yakuza without his consent is a bit mind boggling. Especially when we're talking about Yashiro, who is someone who has had things done to him again and again, since he was a little boy, without his consent, without his agreement. It's particularly egregious to force a dangerous, uncertain, and violence-filled life on someone who's already been so horrifically abused and exposed to brutality and cruelty, and who, because of that, has such a compromised sense of self-worth. I agree with you, it's dangerous and toxic to label Misumi and his relationship with Yashiro as that of a "doting father" or loving parent. No, loving parent's don't, as you said, gaslight their children and manipulate them into believing the worst about themselves, and don't coerce them into becoming criminals against their will. Yashiro said again and again that he wasn't a yakuza, that he didn't want to become a yakuza, but it didn't matter one bit to Misumi. He forced him to become one, and it's done nothing but feed all of Yashiro's worst beliefs about himself since then, done nothing but amplify Yashiro's misery. Yashiro's never been given a choice about anything in his life, since he was a child. And Misumi, sadly, is another person who perpetuates that pattern. He could have helped Yashiro in any way he wanted. The way, for example, he tried to help Amou, by offering to send him to college, and pay for it, etc... But no, Misumi sees Yashiro as a replacement for Korubane, as something to help soften the blow of his own loss, and, well, we all know what happened to Korubane. The same nearly happened to Yashiro, because of Misumi's possessiveness.

#saezuru tori wa habatakanai #twittering birds never fly #Yashiro #Misumi

[the-yellowturtle]

The Curious Case of Master Katara (Pt.1)

Rating: T

Relationships: Minor Katara/Zuko, Minor Katara/Yue, Katara & Toph, Katara & Sokka, Katara & Zuko, Katara & Korra 

Summary: In the sixth year of Fire Lord Zuko’s reign, Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is assassinated. (OR: Katara Becomes the Painted Lady!AU) 

CW: some cussing, mentions of violence, brief mention of the the desecration of a corpse, misogyny and Katara slander

Special thanks to @levitatingbiscuits for the beta :3 

AO3 Link 

An extremely popular saying in the Western Earth Continent, to save the Fire Lord and Avatar in your past life, means that an individual is extremely skilled or fortunate in some way; so much so that the only way a person could have earned such a splendid life was by living a virtuous past one. 

The phrase references Master Katara’s actions during the final year of the Hundred Year War, in which she saved the lives of Fire Lord Zuko and Avatar Aang. Although initially not common knowledge in the immediate years after the war, Fire Lord Zuko and Avatar Aang would go on to confirm multiple times that Master Katara saved both of them with her healing abilities. Strangely enough, it was Princess Azula, Fire Lord Zuko’s younger sister, that landed both of these mortal injuries. 

However, it is mainly thanks to Master Toph Beifong that this saying became commonplace. While teaching metalbending, Master Beifong was known to ask particularly arrogant students, “Do you think you saved the Fire Lord and Avatar?” Often hearing this remark, Master Beifong’s pupils soon began to compliment one another by saying that an individual “must have saved the Fire Lord and Avatar” to be so skilled in the bending discipline. When these students finished their metalbending training they would go on to further spread the saying throughout what was then known as the Earth Kingdom. 

-The Origins of Common Earth Phrases

Toph knows who she is. She is the Greatest Earthbender in the World. She is the inventor of seismic sense, truth seeing, and metalbending. She is the teacher of the Avatar, and one of the people responsible for ending the Hundred Year War. She is a Beifong, but she has carved out her own destiny and chosen her own family. 

Toph knows who she is and she is proud of that person, but it’s not until Aang comes to her one day after her metalbending class that a part of her wishes that she was only the second best earthbender in the world. She could keep metal bending and seismic sense, but truth seeing? She didn’t need that anymore; she didn’t want it.

“Toph, Katara… she… she’s missing.” True. 

“What are you talking about, twinkletoes? What do you mean, she’s missing?” Toph can barely feel his heartbeat over the ringing in her ears. 

“There was an attack. We don’t know what happened to her…. We can’t find her.” True. 

“You need to come with me to the Fire Nation, the rest of us are gathering and trying to find out what happened.” True. 

In the beginning, she is eager to help. This is her friend, and she’s probably out there waiting for them to find her. Toph can also totally hold it over Katara when she has to rescue her like a damsel in distress. Besides, she can’t sit around in the palace waiting for good news. Zuko isn’t allowed to go out there, but there is nothing stopping her. Toph volunteers her services without a question. She will be the investigative bureau’s lie detector; she is the only person in the world with this skill. They will get to the bottom of this in no time. 

They don’t. 

“She was purifying the water when all of a sudden she was struck by an arrow.” True. 

“No, it was two arrows!” True. 

“Arrows? I’m not sure… I didn’t really see anything. It looked like she just fell over… maybe she just tripped or something?” True. 

“One minute she was there and the next minute she wasn’t!” True. 

“She had to have been there! I even found the necklace she was wearing in the water!” True.

“It was the strangest thing. She got shot and then before my very own eyes she disappeared. She just vanished into thin air.” True. 

“Vanished? Her body? You think you’re all so mighty bowing down to the usurper, but then you trust gossip from the rabble. She didn’t disappear. One of the higher-ups brought the body back to the headquarters. Saw it with my very own eyes. Blue robes and everything.” True. 

“Yeah, I saw the corpse, too. We had a feast to celebrate killing one of the war heroes.” True. 

“It wasn’t the waterbender. It was some random peasant girl he came across on the way back.” True. 

“Where is the waterbender? Beats me, probably only the Spirits know now.” True. 

“I don’t know where she is! I shot her twice, she fell back in the water, and then she was gone! I blinked and she was gone!” True. 

“Why? Why did I do it? Because it was easy. You all think you’re so great, but she went down without a fight, that pathetic bi—” 

Toph is given the day off after she pummels the perpetrator through the wall. 

Eventually, they find all the hideouts and headquarters of the New Ozai Society. They find the leaders, their secret stash of funds and a list of their supporters. They find the body of the farmer girl the assassin happened across during his escape, and return her to her family for a proper burial. 

They never find Katara. 

In the past, Toph treated truth-seeing like a fun party trick; a way she could make her friends squirm. Now? She’s tired. She doesn’t want to know that Zuko is lying when he agrees that it wasn’t his fault. She doesn’t want to know that Sokka thinks Katara being alive is an unlikely possibility. She doesn’t want to know that Suki has doubts when she suggests that Katara’s reported injuries would have resulted in a quick death. 

She doesn’t want to see what people believe to be the truth anymore. 

Some semblance of closure finally comes to the group when Aang returns from his journey to the Spirit World. 

“Sokka was right. She’s with Yue,” he states, “She’s a spirit now… the Painted Lady.” True. 

Toph doesn’t know how to react to that statement. She knows Aang believes what he said to be the truth, but a part of Toph wants to scream. Stop using the flowery language, Twinkletoes! With Yue, with the Spirits, is a Spirit, dead; they’re all the fucking same! It doesn’t matter if she’s having a grand ole time with the Moon! It doesn’t matter if she’s some type of Spirit now! She’s gone! She’s not coming back! 

For once in her life, Toph Beifong doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing. She hugs the others, visits the South Pole for the first time, and offers a shoulder to cry on. However, the tears don’t come for her. Not yet, at least. Maybe she’s tougher than she thought. Maybe that’s a lie. Maybe she’s just in denial. 

Maybe it’s real, though. Maybe Katara really is gone forever. Letting the entire world mourn her doesn’t seem in character for Miss I-Will-Never-Ever-Turn-My-Back-on-People-Who-Need-Me. Because Toph really needs her right now, and she’s still nowhere to be found. 

___

At first Toph doesn’t talk about it. She says her bit at the South Pole, and then Katara and all things relating to Katara are locked away, never to be prodded again. She’s a busy person, being the inventor of metalbending and all, and she doesn’t need to rehash her feelings over and over again for any curious passerby. Besides, isn’t this what Katara would want? For them to get on with their lives? 

So with the resolve of a saber-tooth moose lion, Toph decides to “get on with her life” and resume her position as the Greatest Earthbender in the World. 

Her plan quickly falls to shambles when she attends a play with her metalbending students as a reward for their progress in the discipline. She had thought the night out would provide her with some content to tease the rest of the gang about during their upcoming Ember Island trip. Oh, how wrong she was. Toph at twelve would have found the play hilarious, but Toph in her twenties, with a better understanding of the world, was furious. She was not sure how they managed it, but somehow a post-war Earth Kingdom production managed to treat Katara with less dignity than Fire Nation war propaganda.

Reduced to the ‘Water Tribe Girl,’ the role blatantly reflecting Katara was egregious in every manner. Throughout the play, when Water Tribe Girl wasn’t crying out for someone to save her, she was seducing the two main protagonists —the Fire Lord and the Avatar— thus causing a rift in their friendship. After a brutal onscreen death where a local hunter mistook her for game and accidentally shot her, the Fire Lord and Avatar rejoiced, for they were finally free of her wicked temptations. 

Despite using the Beifong name to promptly end the playwright’s career, she soon learned the production was not particularly unique. Once she started looking, there was a plethora of plays, stories, artwork, and rumors that seemed to thrive off of smearing Katara’s name. The better ones would portray her as the supportive love interest, the Avatar’s Girl, the cheerleader that had no skills of her own to offer. In the worst, she was an immoral temptress threatening to wreck the balance of the world, or a parable for children to learn about the dangers of not planning ahead. 

Toph had fucking had it the day she overheard her students using “tearbend” to mock one another. She couldn’t track down the creators of every shit opinion and piece of art, but she could directly influence the opinions of the people around her. She was never going to give them a rendition of her eulogy all those years ago nor was she going to let them see all the precious moments they shared, but she could tell them the truth. A version of the truth, anyway. 

“Katara was the only person in the world that could claim to be a Master of all three waterbending styles: Northern, Southern, and Foggy Swamp.” 

“Katara successfully traversed the Si Wong Desert with only a single pouch of water.” 

“Katara was such a badass in the North that they decided to start training women in martial waterbending.”

“At the age of fourteen, Katara led a prison uprising that freed hundreds of earthbenders.”

“During Sozin’s Comet, Katara defeated Princess Azula and saved Fire Lord Zuko’s life in under three minutes.” 

“Using only scrolls and secondhand accounts, Katara successfully revitalized Southern Waterbending.” 

It got easier for Toph to talk about her as time went on. She was neither an artist nor a poet, but she could do this. She could get it into her pupils’ heads that while she may be the Greatest Earthbender in the World, Katara was the Greatest Waterbender, and that they better not forget it. The statue she had metalbent of them together that stood outside in the school’s courtyard was sure to remind them if they slipped for even a moment. 

___

For the majority of her life, Toph spent her summers the same way. Once the students were out on their summer break, she would first visit the Fire Nation, then Kyoshi Island, followed by the Southern Air Temple, and finally the Southern Water Tribe. She would often see her family throughout the year, but it was important to set aside a time where it was guaranteed. It was a tradition, and not even the daunting task of traveling with a newborn could stop her from following it. Toph was extremely grateful, however, once Lin was old enough to be an eager participant. 

It’s only when she’s starting to get up there in decades that she adds a new stop to her route. About a day’s journey by foot from her bending school in Yu Dao, there’s a harbor town situated near a waterfall. It is here that one of the Earth Kingdom’s first shrines dedicated to the Painted Lady was constructed. After tales of a civilian ship avoiding disaster by being guided to the eye of the storm by a veiled woman had spread throughout the Western Coast, the Spirit had boomed in popularity. It was now a common practice before setting sail for people to visit the shrine with offerings to pray for a safe journey. The Painted Lady had come to be seen as the guardian of clear skies and smooth waters in the Western Earth Kingdom. 

Although it was never going to be the same as seeing her in person, Toph had found herself adding the shrine as the last leg of her summer vacation. Once arriving in town, she would use the ingredients she had purchased in the Southern Water Tribe and the knowledge Gran Gran had shared with her decades ago, to prepare a pot of stewed sea prunes. After her hard work, she would carry it with her up the steps to the Painted Lady’s shrine to present as an offering. 

Most people would donate money for the maintenance of the shrine or light incense when praying to the Painted Lady. However, Toph wasn’t begging a Spirit for any favors; she was visiting the dead. Gaoling may no longer be her home, but some of the traditions were still ingrained into her. In the Southern Earth Kingdom, you present your loved ones with food, and Katara’s favorite most definitely was her grandmother’s sea prunes. 

Toph has never encountered the Painted Lady in all of her years visiting the shrine, not that she ever really expected to. However, sometimes after she’s done wiping her eyes, she swears that her aching joints feel a bit lighter. 

“‘Till next year, Sugar Queen,” is how she always concludes her visits. If sometimes she hears a “Thank you” in the wind, then that’s between Katara and her. 

#zutara #yuetara #katara #toph #katoph #mine #katara & toph

[rotzaprachim]

in secret, between the shadow and the soul 1/2

Kanej, Inej-centric. Teen ish, marriage of convenience, 3000 words 

(About 6 years post Crooked Kingdom) 

Read here on ao3

The apothecary asks her how long it’s been since she’s been intimate with her husband, and Inej almost chokes, says no, she hasn’t been in a very long time. Honesty is always difficult in her carse- dealing with her own past, own demons is hard enough without having to watch other people attempt proper emotional responses on her behalf, and maybe the apothecary senses that because she doesn’t ask more.

----

“It’s legal more than anything. A question of economics,” Kaz said, and Inej nodded, because it's kerch and how could it be anything but? Certainly nothing as tawdry as emotion or desire, let alone love, could interfere with so large a life decision.

Only Kerch citizens can hold berths in the water, and its significantly easier to manage bank accounts and conduct major financial decisions of the kind Inej needs to make on the near daily when restocking her ships. There's one route faster than all the others to becoming a Kerch citizen.

Inej suggested it before Kaz did.

She isn’t ready for marriage, she said. She isn’t ready to be tied to a man, to be anything more or less than herself alone. The Kerch made the whole business easy by never referring to this thing they’re doing as a marriage, all the paperwork is about Economic Units, Civil Unions. There’s so many pages of jargon it made Inej’s eyes bleed. Future children held less inches of fine grey type than agreements on pigs and shipping company stocks, and were described in the same economic language.

Kaz went through the whole thing line by line until the shore she was going to call for an annulment before they’d even gotten the damned thing notarized, or else make herself a tastefully rich and very young widow.

“It’s a contract,” he said. “You should know all the details before you sign your life away.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Inej said, irritated by the last several pages about Property Division in the Event of Medium Sized or Larger Storms, Grisha Attacks, and General Flooding, “I’m not signing my life away.”

“When you get married, it might be difficult to annul if you’ve still got a legal Kerch-”

“When I get married?” she shoots back challengingly. “To who?”

“I don’t know. That fire-tongued revolutionary who writes you poetry and will make you a new world. The Kaelish tavern maid who always pours you a free beer in her bar while you sing about the plight of the repressed. Someone hopelessly moon-eyed and optimistic, who thinks the world shits rainbows and knows what you’re worth.”

“You, Kaz Brekker,” she finally sighed, “are a hell of a lot dumber than they say you are.”

---

She doesn’t tell her parents. She’s not ready for that conversation.

---

She doesn’t tell Nina. She’s not ready for that conversation either.

---

The whole thing was finished in a notary’s office in ten minutes.

Kaz’s gloves were off, more because they both need to be fingerprinted than anything else.

He swore a short, official oath of his loyalty to both her and the Kerch market, promising not to cheat in foreign ports and to provide for and any hypothetical children. She thought of the paid-off indenture and the ship and the found parents and berth twenty-two and and her room in the house in bought on the Zelverstraat and thought that maybe he’s better at doing that than he thinks he is.

She swore a shorter official oath about fidelity and staying true and all her children being her husband’s, because to do otherwise would be bad economics and make her a poor investment, a value-destroyer, on the family line. Because it’s Kerch and of course it is.

---

“What are you thinking about?” he asked her afterward in an attempt at being casual. They’d been sipping at warm lukewarm flagons of beer in one of the harbour’s more reputable establishments and looking out at the water for twenty minutes.

“I’m thinking,” she said slowly, tasting her words, “that Alys Van Eyck is a very, very lucky woman that we came around when we did.” She’s still thinking about the various punishments for women who pollute the family line, which even if motivated by economics over faith as such things would be in Fjerda, are not dissimilar in practice. She’s realising more and more the Kerch neuroticism over bastardry probably comes from having so many of the young men gone for half the year at sea.

Kaz guffawed, which was not a sound she was really used to him making. “You never fail to surprise me, Wraith.”

“How is the Vrouw Dazi”

Kaz shrugged. “Not useful to my purposes anymore. Wylan’s got her an Bajan set up in a little cottage outside Pijl with a tidy sum tied to not making too much noise.”

Sometimes she fantasized about breaking into that cottage and putting on a performance similar to the one that sent Pekka Rollins screaming from Ketterdam. She didn’t, because she didn’t subscribe to the idea of the sins of the father and thought Saartje Kazanja deserved a da with his mental pieces mostly intact. But saints take all, she wanted too.

“How’s Saartje?”

“I don’t know. Kid? Looks more like she could be ours than Jan Van Eyck’s, that’s for sure.

The tips of Kaz’s ears went red before he finished that sentence and he stared into the foam at the bottom of his glass, head turned decisively away from her.

“Fine, I think. In school now. No reason to keep tabs.”

They toasted her new Kerch citizenship. Inej swore she saw his hand shaking.

----

Her citizenship documents, stamped with a wax seal of three flying fish and a small Kerch flag came three days later, expedited by Kaz in ways she cannot begin to fathom. It’s only then she realised that they’re for the new Vrouw Rietveld, that she made her vows to Kasper Rietveld. It’s only logical- Rietveld can be the upstanding businessman who only exists on paper in a way Kaz Brekker cannot, all the better for her dowings, but it still feels like a piece of himself gifted to her.

She could forge Rietveld’s name for her own purposes too; they practiced on old betting slips that she then threw into the fire. Kerch women can legally make almost every kind of financial decision and dealing, less due to the Merchers’ Council’s upstanding opinion of the female gender than the portion of the year the men are at sea, the incredible odds they won’t come back.

(They’ve rather flipped that scenario.

“How much cross-stitch will you do do fill up the void of my absences, she chided him. “They say the old sailor’s wives used to knit lace from the white froth of the sea.” Nowadays Wealthy Kerch women waiting for their husbands to come home tended to stick to knitting hats and scarves for orphans. So saints-damned many hats and socks, and yet you could still scarcely move for the number of bare-headed, barefoot orphans come winter. It was one of Ketterdam’s greatest mysteries.

“Inej,” Kaz sayid, eyes closed, genuine concern cutting his voice. Ever more she was picking up a sailor’s sense of gallows humour.)

---

They exchanged rings at the registry. Inej’s was a simple band, no gemstones but she suspected it was solid gold. Inside was etched a wave pattern, an endless strip of open sea.

Wearing it on her finger meant something, soo she looped it onto a sturdy chain that she hid between her shirt and her beating heart. That seemed appropriate, doable. Young sailors often took the bracelets and handkerchiefs of their sweethearts out to sea as good luck tokens; Inej had a gold wedding band.

Kaz’s fingers brushed the chain in the warm dip between neck and collar as he said goodbye to her on the docks, and after she nodded infinitesimally, telling him to go on, finish this chapter of the story, he slowly pulled up the rest of the chain and found the band.

“I thought-” he said, but she looked him in the eyes, square as she could, and he halted. She doesn’t know what he thought.

“There was not and is not and will probably me a different man for me than you, Kaz Brekker.

He swallowed thickly and then slowly lifted her skin-warmed band to his lips, even though he did not believe in luck, had said he believed in nothing but her.

---

The Kerch don’t have seperate words for “husband’ and “man.”

---

“Mijn mann,” she says in response to the curious looks her crew gives her after the band slips free during repair work, and it doesn’t feel like anything more or less than the truth.

“Mijn mann,” she says tacitly when border authorities raise their eyebrows in suspicion at her Kerch passport.

“Mijn mann,” she begins her letters back to him. “Dearest Inej,” his come back, sometimes even “Loveliest Inej,” but he never uses a possessive pronoun form.

---

Having any kind of passport, official documentation, feels alien and strange. She comes from a people without a land, and for her entire childhood they Suli were denied any official documentation of Ravkan citizenship. That’s changing now, but many are still wary, and with very good reason to be.

---

The quick bureaucratic sketch to mark Vrouw Inej Rietveld as a Seetsen Van Det Kerchrepublik, looked absolutely nothing like the drawings on the three individual sets of national wanted posters that keep cropping up in seedy port cities. Absolutely none of the above get her nose right.

“I look white in this one,” she said, holding a particularly egregious example up to Aigerim, who commiserate mightily. “Look how fucking straight this nose is. No eyebrows.”

Hitting the nose furnishes very fun target practice for when her fingers itch to throw knives.

Inej wins a lot of games of darts in a lot of seamy seaside pubs tucked into a lot of different gritty port cities.

---

They dock in Pijl before Ketterdam to catch their breath and do repairs. Ketterdam’s a good place for business and to look for secrets and plan strategy but a shite location to re-sew a sail or patch up a wall, unless you like replacing your supplies every time they’re stolen. The prices of grain and barrels of water and apples are lower are lower closer to the fields as well, even if that involves bartering loudly in a Centraalmarket that smells like spilled cider and pig shit, straw crunching underfoot, rather than the hallowed halls of the Exchange.

It takes her three days to come down with the evil hybrid chest cold-stomache flu of her fucking life. Ameera shoves her back into bed with ginger tea and another blanket. The thing they don’t tell you about awesome pirate ships with awesome international crews is that you also get the full spectrum of awesome international germs.

By the fourth day, she’s putting on all three of her coats and stuffing a wad of kruge and her passport into a pocket to visit the clinic in town.

---

Other people seem to register this whole being-married business than Inej ever does. She just prefers the expedited customs lines.

The splotchy faced, matronly woman at the clinic sits her on a paper-covered table and reads through a list of questions on a clipboard. Nian loves the lab smell of pure alcohol, would probably dab it on as perfume if she could, but Inej only associates it with injury, with being patched and stitched up after a bad scrape, with the white-coated doctor who came in every two weeks to swab Tante Heleen’s girls for disease, with the brown bottle of the stuff she uses to clean blood and worse off of her knives.

“Family history of pulmonary infections?” the woman asks her. “Smoking, alcohol, jurda use?” Every question makes her squirm slightly, as if in the historyof her wheezing lunghs is some sin she’s committed and will only now find out about. Nejn, nejn, nejn. Inej forgot how much she hated being looked at.

No grisha in her family that she knows of- scribble scribble scribble- but a lot of bad eyesight.

“When was the last time you had intimate relations with your husband?” the woman asks bluntly, and that’s the question that knocks the air out from her. The woman’s thin yellow eyebrow quirks up, but Inej manages to disguise her gasp as a particularly bad fit of hacking. She knows its nothing but a bit of intrusive medical questioning, but words can have many meanings and the answers to questions can be both yes and no at the same time and a certain turn of phrase can punch like a fist and cut like a knife. So she just says “six months ago,” and gives the woman her answer for the write-up.

“Long time.”

“He’s a sailor. I cry as I wait for him to return to me.”

“Ghezen’s speed that he does.”

---

She isn’t quite sure the Kerch even believe in Ghezen as anything beyond a bit of window-dressing to their financial affairs and the punchlien to jokes. Not like she honours her saints, the small painted icon of Sankta Inej she also keeps next to her heart, her daily prayers in the dark comfort her her room. She stands with Merjan, one of her crewmates, at the grave of Sankta Mahari, Queen of Mercy and Patroness of the Lost as they read the ancient prayers together, their voices settling into the steadiness of bees. Our queen, protector of our people, give us mercy, pray for peace, pray for us, pray to bring light to the shadows of the things we have done.

Sankta Anastasia, Sankt Dmitri, Sankta Mahari, she whispers into her knuckles, her fingers moving along the prayer rope with the decisive snapping of wooden beats, pray for our safety in the storm and bring us to the shore.

---

If Inej has found her own name, written with a familar jagged hand, among the prayer-knots tied to the Zentzbridge in a plea of mercy from the sea, she will not mention it.

---

Ketterdam is ugly and bright and familiear. You can smell the rotting flesh and beer smell before you see the smoky smudge of the city on the horizon. The crew makes quick work of unfolding the grishaworked official three-flying-fish flag that gives them clearance to enter the harbour without having their decks searched by the council of tides and carefully docks at Berth 22. Considering that the berths are now being numbered out into the two-hundereds, its a plum location, but its also damn close to the action, meaning that she can already see the glimmer of plastic beads floating on the water, the dark smudges of drunkards bobbing along. A few of the crew memebrs are going to get their pockets picked right off the bat. Inej already has a slush fund tucked away for precisily this reason. She’s getting better at this, she hopes, being a leader. Predicting what will happena dn why and when. Being someone that other people- many younger and more vulnerable than her- can rely on.

“AIGERIM,” she screams as she buttons up her city coat, “only two of thsoe pink trinks with the paper umbrellas MAXIMUM. You hear me?”

“Yeah, boss.”

She sighs. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s boss. “If there’s anything like what happened with the canal and the Stadwatch last time happens again, I think I’ll find the decks need a good scrubbing.”

Aigerim gestures wildly. “Course, boss..”

She tries to take deep rbeaths to calm her nerves. Maybe she’s becoming a worried old crone forty years early, but she’s the one who survived this hellhole of a city. She’s the one who survived this far. In this world, twenty-three is a badge of honour.

---

He cuts a familar figure on the docks. THey each have their own webs now, know of each other’s doings three or four times removed, like recognising a faovrite drinking song on it’s third round of translation. The recognition of a familiar trick, hand, murder method. Kaz will read in a news paper of a mysterious storm that’s tripled the price of indigo and sweet-wood fans after a whole line of ships went missing off the Southern Pelagic Reefs and Inej will hear in a greasy Kaelish bar about the shocking downfall of an old Kerch trading family and they will each smile, privately, and admire the other’s handiwork.

But seeing him in person is something altogether different, and she still rushes over the slats of the quay, coat streaming behind her, stopping abruptly when she comes to him. They pause there for a second and then he lifts his arms and they wrap themselves together around each other, hesitantly but then warmly, firmly, sturdy as a sailor’s knot and with all the inevitability of the sea wearing stone to sand.

“I’ve missed you, Wraith,” he says into her hair and she shrugs into him, her head level with his chest. His chin rests neatly on her head now, if he leans down slighlty, and she swears that wasnt the case the first time they embraced, the first time she left Ketterdam. He denies that the Ice Court, Van Eyck, all that happened while he was a boy not finished with growing. Yet she herself’s tried on that first Wraith outfit- a costume of sorts, really, how different was it from the Scarab Queen’s glass-bead veil in the third act of the Komedie Brute- to find it no longer fit, that she couldn’t easily do up the buttons on the front. She has more of a woman’s set of curves to her hips and long, hard-earned muscles on her legs and thighs, and even if she is creating some new kind of legend it is under her own name now.

Sometimes, Ketterdam feels like that too-small jacket; it cannot fit the woman she’s becoming. So she sews herself a new coat from the fabric of the world.

“Mijn mann,” she says, because she likes the way his body flinches and then stills under her fingers with those words, sharp and unexpected as any knife. “I’ve missed you too.”

#my writings #kanej #i'm surreee there's spelling mistakes #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #kaz x inej #kaz brekker x inej ghafa #kanej fic #six of crows fic #grishaverse fic

[full-course-identity]

gonna split this between canon character ships and oc-sprinkled ships. we'll start with canon (i also know most of these answer but eh): jeremy/rich, mr. heere/mr. reyes, michael/chloe, jake/rich, squip/michael, squip/brooke, brooke/madeline (STILL COUNTS, SHE'S TECHNICALLY A CANON CHARACTER), squip/rich's squip (in general fanon 'rich's squip isn't mo' situations--i'mma ask about OUR r!squip in the next ask)

HI SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG

Warning: Some of this goes into darkfic territory, and is lightly NSFW/NSFT.

Jeremy/Rich

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell (when this option is italized, it means OTP feelings, not Shipping Them As Problematique)

THIS IS MY FAVORITE ALWAYS-FLUFFY (or the comfort portion of hurt/comfort, or tragic lovers, etc) SHIP. It makes me SO VERY INCREDIBLY happy; Rich and Jeremy have this magnetic chemistry in the musical and in fandom--Hell, I even genuinely enjoy most fanon interpretations of the ship, which is really rare for me (still don’t read much fanfiction besides yours though... >u>; )

Also? Hot. Very hot.

... that was not meant to be a pun but I think it probably is...

Mr. Heere/Mr. Reyes

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell (bolding this one means it is/can be Problematique, obvs)

Platonic H/R? Nahhh. I think portraying both of them as queer is a good idea (Reyes gay and aro, Heere bisexual with a strong preference for women and femme enbys), but it just feels like Mr. Heere would want something else tbh. I mean, Mr. Reyes is pretty openly anti-children during the play, and Mr. Heere really loves his son and his son’s friend. I just can’t imagine they’d have much chemistry if they tried dating

Oh but what if... they were predators bonding over their mutual love of abusing the vulnerable people in their lives... haha jk... unless?

Michael/Chloe

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

This... is fascinating. I’m getting more into bisexual Michael for the sake of variety, and this would be... a very fun ship, actually. Especially if it was the two of them targetting Jeremy together... or, oh, actually, this would be a FANTASTIC companion to a Jeremy/Brooke story, w/ Michael and Chloe playing the villains... hm...

(I just really like playing around w/ evil Michael)

Jake/Rich

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

I’m so torn on this one. I really dislike most Jake/Rich in large, large part to just... the fandom around it... but I can also picture it being really fucking good in NSFW art, portrayed in particular ways (especially if it doesn’t act as a companion to boyfs), or like, if you did it? IT COULD GENUINELY WORK, but I haven’t seen it done in a way I particularly enjoyed.

Evil!Jake on good!Rich is fun, though I’m not suuuuuper into it--it’s a VERY nice change of pace with us, I like it in AUs, but I prefer Jake to just not be involved or else a small blip/one-off mention... or as the metaphorical sugar daddy to shenanigans gfnbhjvgfdfvdjnjvhfk

Squip/Michael

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

... I’m sorry friends, I’m just not interested. I see why it’s intriguing, I can see that it has what-if potential, but I just can’t care. Not even in an OT3 with Jeremy (though Jeremy being in a relationship with both of them separately would actually be pretty cool). 

tbh, if I have to ship the Squip with a human that isn’t Jeremy, I reaaaaaally like your growing interest in his and Rich’s relationship. 

Oh, and...

Squip/Brooke

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

Much as I think Squip is generally boy and nb masc-attracted attracted, Squip/Brooke would be genuinely, extremely, incredibly fucking adorable. I wouldn’t do much with it personally, but this is the sorta thing I’d love to see shippy art and/or an ask blog for if that makes sense?

Fuck dude, Jeremy watching his Squip come back in a body just to fuck his ex is the funniest shit ever tho, he’d be so disgruntled.

Brooke/Madeline

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell

[insert heart eyes emoji]

Even though we’ve generally portrayed Mads as het-but-fools-around-a-little, this is probably my other Really Good Brooke Endgame Ship right next to Brooke/Jenna. I just feel that like... their chemistry, both how we portray it plus the canon stuff (“implied sluttiness” and the way Brooke thinks she’s so cool and tries to model herself off her) is. Mmm. Mmmmmm. 

Plus, not to be all My Autism Makes Me Hyperfocus On Other Character’s Autism, but like... their autistic peculiarities would line up fantastically? Imagine them cuddling and like... touching each other to stim...

squip/rich's squip

vomit / don’t ship / okay / cute / adorable / perfect / beyond flawless / hot damn / screaming and crying / i will ship them in hell / additional category: I’m genuinely unsure because I’ve only seen hints of how other people portray Rich’s Squip

So the thing about Rich’s Squip in the fandom is that like... outside the occasional character design making a brief appearance in larger prints, nobody really talks about them?

I mean. Okay, granted, I haven’t read enough fanfic yet (... God I really want to eventually, I’d just like a Handy Guide for Who Is And Isn’t An Anti and also I keep going “okay but x character would never be like that” even though that’s wroooong and I don’t seem to have that issue in visual media and....... you get the picture), but after... 2017? After the fandom’s first explosion died down, people rarely talked about R!S. 

I think this was a direct reaction of the Anti movement finally making the solid change to fandom landscape it’d wanted to, unfortunately; this found a swift and sudden tidal wave of backlash to most Squip (primarily shipping) related anything, seemingly killing ALL Squip content that was not sufficiently “briefly used for boyfs or JakeRich angst” enough for a good long while.

Eventually, the growing rise of a sub-fandom around Squip thirsting and Squip redemptions (attempting to be ~untainted by gross shippers~, usually) started around the time badlydrawnBMC started to really pick up steam along with a few selfshippers, inspiring people to Squip-ship in an “acceptable manner”.

The problem is, none of this has affected Rich’s Squip--at least, not yet. The kinda people scared of (or that are) antis have “no good reason” to redeem Rich’s, since “she” (he/they at the beginning of BMC fanon, widely-used she now) did or caused stuff way more egregious, IE the fire, making Rich a bully, and stifling his bisexuality. As a result, there’s a very subtle, unspoken pressure not to really... use her much. 

Jokes are... mostly okay, but there’s a huge preference for Kermit!Rich!Squip if you do.

Anyway.

From the little bit we hear of her in actual canon, Rich’s own words and her brief voice and stuff... I could see her being much colder, possibly meaner then Jeremy’s Squip, probably. They probably have a dom!bottom/sub!top abusive slave relationship. She makes Rich fuck her while mocking everything he does, and then seduces him and promises a little bit of love when he tries to refuse. He would be hopelessly devoted to her, desperate for her approval, and she’d string him step by step. By the time he realizes how well and truly fucked he is, it’s too late; the last stand happens, they fight in front of everyone, and it all goes up in smoke.

Thanks for the question! Hopefully the next doesn’t take this long @_@

#bmc #be more chill #jeremy heere #rich goranski #the squip #flightysquip

[rjzimmerman]

There are hunters who follow the rules, and then there are very bad people who hunt and ignore the rules. The good hunters generally are disgusted with and angry about the bad hunters, because the good hunters follow the law, the rules, and the ethics, but the bad hunters just say fuck it, I’ll do what I want to do. I don’t hunt, and morally cannot do that. But I’m not judging the hunters who hunt within the parameters of the rules, the law and ethics. But for the bad hunters: fuck them. They should be treated as harshly as possible, plus.

This video is disturbing and morally and physically gruesome. Very disturbing, particularly if you’re like me and love bears and hate the fact that humans will kill babies, regardless of the species. You will hear the baby cubs shrieking. But in order to understand my and others’ position, the video is important. We need more rules and stronger laws, and more vigorous and consistent enforcement of those rules and laws, in order to seriously punish the bad hunters and get them behind bars, for the rest of their fucking miserable lives, if necessary and appropriate.

Of course, trump and the trump people are proposing the loosen the rules, which may allow the sort of carnage you’ll see here. Fuck trump and all that he stands for.

Oh, by the way, these men are from Wasilla, Alaska. Does that sound familiar? That is where Sarah Palin is from, and where she was mayor. Sarah and her family, including her children Bristol, Trig, Track, Piper and Willow. Yes, those are the correct names, including spelling.

Excerpt from this Chicago Tribune story:

The film was rolling because the bears were part of a research project by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Forest Service, a study to determine how a dwindling bear in the region had adapted to an increase in human activity. Killing the cubs or a mother with cubs is illegal on Esther Island by state law.

Had it not been for the camera, the duo's illegal hunting - and efforts to cover up what they had done - would not have led to criminal charges last year.

Now, two months after the Renners pleaded guilty to charges related to killing the animals and lying to officials, video from the illegal hunting situation has been released this week.

The gruesome clip, released Wednesday by the Humane Society of the United States, underscores what could be happening in the American wilderness when no one is watching.

"Federal law currently forbids this practice on national preserves in Alaska, but the current administration is looking to remove such prohibitions," the Humane Society said in a release. "If this heinous cruelty occurs while protections are already in place, overturning them would all but encourage these massacres to continue."

According to a January news release from the Alaska Department of Law, Alaska Wildlife Troopers recovered the camera from the den on April 23, 2018. Both Andrew and Owen Renner were criminally charged over the incident. The charges included the unlawful killing of the bears, unlawfully possessing the bears and falsifying the sealing certificate. Both pleaded guilty.

Last January, Andrew Renner was sentenced to three months in jail, and ordered to forfeit his rifles, handguns, iPhone, skis and truck used in the killing, and was hit with a $9,000 fine. His hunting license was also revoked for 10 years. Owen Renner was sentenced to community service and required to take a course on hunter safety. His license has been suspended for two years.

At the sentencing last year, Alaska Assistant Attorney General Aaron Peterson said the case was "the most egregious bear cub poaching case his office has ever seen."

#bears #bear hunting #Alaska

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: An Internal Affair - Chapter 11 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: The Flash Pairing: Leonard Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: Leonard Snart, the CCPD Captain of Internal Affairs, is known as Captain Cold for a very good reason: He hates corrupt cops with a merciless vengeance, and once you’re on his list, you’re in serious trouble.

His next target?

A CCPD lab tech named Barry Allen who’s developed a suspicious habit of disappearing at random intervals.

—————————————————————————————————

Len had been having such a good day before this, too.

Allen (Barry, you should call him Barry - but not yet) was knee deep in CSI work, so he hadn't had time for a proper date, but they'd been texting and had met briefly to go for coffee once or twice and then again a couple of days later for lunch. All in nice, well-lit places that appeased Danvers.

Thawne reported that he and Iris were making some progress in their investigation of the disappearances, mostly interviewing people who'd submitted complaints that appeared Flash-related. They’d exhausted the list of people who’d complained to the CCPD and had gone to the mayor’s office to dig into the complaint archive there in case there were others.

Danvers had shaken his tree of contacts on his behalf and continued to find no evidence of Allen's corruption in relation to any Family, although his involvement with STAR Labs in some capacity was at this point undeniable.

He still hadn't gotten a warrant for STAR Labs (oh, did he ever want a warrant!), but the pile of evidence he was going to use to apply for one was growing nicely.

And then he'd come here and his world had fallen apart.

"So what's that mean?" Len asks through lips that feel like they've gone numb. "Does that mean - are you saying we gotta -"

"No, no," Dr. Callahan assures him. She's a competent-looking Latina woman in her thirties, whose usually mildly distracted air could turn into razor-sharp focus at a moment's notice. Len had picked her to be Mick's primary physician because he'd been oddly comforted by her habit of always carrying a small, thick paperback in her coat pocket. "We're nowhere near the point of needing to make end-of-life decisions."

Len nods shakily. That's good. Because if they asked him to pull the plug on Mick, he's not sure what he'd do.

Shoot himself next, maybe.

"I just wanted to be clear with you about timeline," Callahan continues, gently but firmly. "He's still well within the boundaries of a plausible coma, but given how well his burns are progressing, we're starting to get to the end of where we feel comfortable assisting with medical induction. But the more we phase it out, the less positive the signs are."

"What's that mean?" Len asks again. "Does it mean there ain't no hope of him waking up?"

"There's always hope," she says. "But this next month or so is probably crucial: he either wakes up on his own, or we have to start seriously considering the possibility that he won't wake up at all and adjusting his care accordingly. And that means discussing what might be the best care going forward, which does include end-of-life options."

Len nods dully. Mick hadn't had a DNR order on file, the idiot, but Len knew he didn't want to be one of those unfortunate creatures kept alive by machines years after all hope was extinguished.

He'd made that clear to Callahan, and that's what she was referring to: if Mick didn't wake up, they were going to talk about - to talk about -

Len's killed men before. Some women, too, if they were rotten - never children, despite a few jokes about wanting to strangle particularly loud ones.

He's never killed a friend before.

"I wanted to discuss this with you now so that you had time to get yourself ready, should the worst come to pass," Callahan says. She's sympathetic, he can tell, but she knows him well enough by now to know that he wouldn't appreciate any expressions of that sympathy. "We're going to do everything we can this month - pull out all the stops, so to speak - but in the end, it's going to be up to him."

Len nods mutely. His hand has somehow found Mick's on the bed, through no intention of his own, and he's squeezing it hard enough that his knuckles have gone white.

Callahan says some other things, more reassurance that there are still things they have to try, but he mostly tunes her out and eventually she goes away and leaves him there.

"Mick," he whispers, and his voice is scratchy. "Mick."

He hasn't really faced up to the idea of Mick not waking up. Oh, he's thrown in an "if" in his thoughts and words, but he's never really believed it.

His whole life is still centered around the belief that Mick will wake up one day: Danvers' increasingly long group chat of updates on Len's life, meant for Mick to one day read; his ridiculous crush and now possible-relationship with Allen, meant for Mick to learn of and hopefully approve...

His revenge, meant as a gift to help convince Mick to forgive him all his lies.

All dreams. All hopes.

All dust in his mouth.

He's never going to talk to Mick again. Never get the benefit of his kindness, his crass humor, his understated wisdom and insight into the human soul. Into Len's soul. He's never going to hear Mick lecture him on his health, on eating his vegetables, on not hanging out with Charlie too much. He's never -

There's still hope, Callahan said. Still hope.

He just can't see it right now.

It's a bad night.

Allen tries to text, but Len turns off his text notifications. Danvers calls, but he hangs up on her - not that that stops her from actually coming and banging on his window, but he snarls at her to go away and she does. Even Lisa calls - at Danvers' encouragement, no doubt - and Len's sense of duty as an older brother makes him pick up, but he doesn't actually say anything more than "This ain't a good time, Lise," and remaining otherwise mute.

Hearing her voice does help a little, though.

It helps enough that when Danvers shows up to escort him to work the next morning, jaw set in a manner that suggests refusal isn't an option, he agrees to go.

Work will be good, he thinks. Thinking certainly isn't doing any favors.

It doesn't work.

Len spends the morning staring down at the paperwork he's supposed to be filling out with an overwhelming feeling of despair. He knows he's doing good work, necessary work, vital work cleaning up the city police into something worthy of the name, but what good is it, really, if Mick's not going to be around to see that Len being a cop isn't actually all that bad?

When you have nothing, you still have your duty, he reminds himself, and forces himself to pick up the pen. You still have your city, which you love.

Paperwork isn't really doing it for him today, though. Necessary, yes, but he's already gone as far as he can right now - the DAs won't take any new cases out of his backlog unless he can prove something truly egregious, and there's only so many subpoenas and wiretapping warrants he can fill out.

He needs action.

That's why it's a relief when Iris sweeps into his office in the early afternoon, taking one look at him and announcing, "You look like reheated crap."

"Reheat crap often, do you?" Danvers asks grumpily from her desk. She's been stressing about him since last night; she's entitled to a bad mood. "We usually just flush it away, here."

Iris is surprised into a snort, which interrupts the entrance line she'd no doubt had lined up. "Okay," she says. "That was a good one. That was really good. A+ for both timing and delivery."

Danvers smiles a bit at that. "Captain Snart's not exactly feeling up to company right now," she adds.

"Captain Snart is right fucking here," Len says through gritted teeth.

"See?" Danvers tells Iris, who nods.

"I just need something really quick, I promise," Iris says, shifting over to speak to Len directly. "Eddie got pulled away on a precinct-wide thing going on today - something about a gorilla? I'm not sure - and I wanted to follow up on a lead that I got, but he insisted I clear it with you first. We all good?"

Len, not being an idiot, blinks slowly at her. "Funny," he says. "Nowhere in that sentence did you actually inform me of what lead you're intending on following up, where, and what you're planning on doing that Detective Thawne sent you here first."

"Damn," she says mildly. "You're sharp as a tack, aren’t you? Okay, fine. I want to go question a guy who supposedly got fired from STAR Labs right before the Particle Accelerator went live. I found his name in Mason's notes."

Mason Bridge - that was the newspaper editor from Iris' internship, the one that had been her supervisor. He'd been one of the more recent disappearances.

"I thought all his notes had disappeared along with him," Len says. "What with him being paranoid over anyone getting a glimpse at them."

"Says the hypocrite," Danvers coughs.

"So did I," Iris says, smirking at Danvers. "But then it occurred to me - after talking with Kara here, actually! - that he might've asked one of the CCPN secretaries for some help with them at some point during his career, and one of them was actually able to show me a secret nook in his office where he kept some files in the event of a fire. Sadly not all of them, but it did have this one guy's name. That's something, right?"

"That sounds like a very promising lead," Len says.

"That's what I thought!"

"What's the guy's name?"

"No way," Iris says. "I'm not telling you that; you might try to assign the follow-up to someone else. I’m tired of sitting around in the mayor’s office’s archives digging through papers; this is my only leverage to make sure that I get to go."

She's not wrong. Len appreciates that, even if it’s annoying.

"Makes sense," he says.

"So you approve?" she asks hopefully.

"Why don't you tell me why Detective Thawne wanted you to ask my permission before following up on it, first," Len says wryly, "and then we'll see?"

Iris is a positive sneak; he likes that in a person.

She makes a face at him. "Well, this individual - er - may or may not be - uh - living in the Keystone slums."

Len arches his eyebrows. "Where in the slums?"

"...near Leopold Ave."

"Ah, yes," Len says. "Now it all makes sense. I have no idea why Detective Thawne might have any hesitation about letting you go down to Murderers' Row all by your lonesome."

"...so that's a no, then," Iris concludes.

"Oh, no, I think it's a great idea," Len says. "In fact, I'll go along with you."

"What? No!" Danvers exclaims. "Are you crazy?"

"Danvers -"

"Don't you 'Danvers' me! Do you have a memory problem or something, where you can't remember that the Families are trying to kill you? Murderers' Row is prime Family territory!"

"Technically not -"

"Only because no one wants to deal with disciplining it! Just because it's too unorganized to be properly called organized crime does meant that -"

"I need to do something," Len says flatly. Something about his voice makes Danvers pause and look at him warily. "This will do just fine."

"...fine," she says. "Will you at least wear the -"

"I ain't wearing the mask to Murderers' Row," Len says, rolling his eyes. "Keystone ain't Central like that; they'd shoot me just for hiding my face."

"But -"

"No. And that's final."

"Fine!" she exclaims, crossing her arms and glaring hard enough that Len fancies that he can feel the hair on the back of his arms crisping up again. Danvers has a good glare. "But I'm coming with you."

"I don't think taking either of you is a good idea," Iris says. "Snart, you're wanted by the Families, and Danvers, listen, it's dangerous -"

"What, and it's not dangerous for you? You're literally a civilian!"

Technically, as admin staff, so is Danvers, but Len's not dumb enough to say as much.

"One person can more easily escape notice than two -"

"If by 'escape notice' you mean 'get kidnapped and sold into human trafficking,' which I suppose is one way to interpret that phrase, albeit an uncommon one," Len says dryly. "No. We all go, or I go, and those are our only options. And Danvers, if you really want to do this - which you don't have to -"

"I know that, and I'm doing it anyway," she says stubbornly.

"- then at the very least I insist you take a service weapon with you," Len continues. "I don't care if you don't like guns."

"Fine. But I get hazard pay for this!"

"Of course you get hazard pay for this," Len says.

Danvers blinks at him. "I - wasn't expecting that to actually work. I really get hazard pay?"

"Why not? This is what hazard pay was meant for."

"Can I get -" Iris starts.

"You're a consultant, it was your idea in the first place, and you're basically blackmailing us into taking you along with us by threatening to withhold the witness' name," Len points out. He likes people with spirit, but even he has reasonable limits. "No hazard pay, you take a stun gun, and if we all survive, I'll consider giving you a bonus in retrospect. And if you ever try to blackmail anyone over anything bigger than a ridealong, I’ll crush you like a gnat."

"...understood,” Iris says. “Also, a stun gun, seriously? I’m a cop’s kid; I can handle a real gun -"

"And until you can handle it to my satisfaction on a police shooting range, you take the stun gun," Len says firmly. He was a cop’s kid, too, and while he’ll allow that it typically provides some knowledge of how to use a gun, it doesn’t instill significant confidence in a person’s ability to know when not to use a gun, which is more his area of concern. "Now, we're wasting daylight. Shall we catch a ride into Keystone?"

The original taxi they catch takes them into the center of downtown, which is as close as the driver is willing to go to Murderers' Row. Len can't blame him; the area's awful at the best of times, and the times following the devastation wrought by the Particle Accelerator could hardly be considered the best of times.

"We can't walk there from here," Iris objects. "It'd take us over an hour even without factoring in Snart's crutches, and - all jokes about stupid bravery aside - I don't want to be stuck here past sundown."

"No problem," Len says. "Why'd you think I asked him to take us to the corner of Rundown Street?"

Iris glances at the street sign with a frown. "It's called Sundown Street -"

A car zooms them by at illegally high speeds, coming out of nowhere on a sharp turn, passing close enough for the wind to buffet them. It's followed a second later by another one.

If they'd been even a single step off the curve, they'd be dead.

"Like I said," Len says wryly. "Rundown Street. Otherwise known as the most popular drag racing strip inside Keystone City proper. C'mon, we're not far from the finish line - we'll be able to get one of the losers to give us a ride if we pay his loser's fee."

"Loser's fee?" Danvers asks.

"The buy-in amount," Len says. "Not too expensive, but more than most drivers can afford - but it can be waived if you're willing to bet your car as collateral."

"I get it," Iris says. "We save someone's car - and their livelihood - and they drive us wherever we want. That's...kind of cold-blooded."

"Well," Len drawls. "They do call me Captain Cold, you know."

"I bet they wouldn't if they knew how much you enjoyed it," Iris says, but she's grinning.

Their selected driver turns out to be a young African-American man on the verge of college age, who goes by the street name "Wally Wheeler", and he's incredibly grateful about them saving his car.

"I'm trying to save up money for my mom's medical treatments," he explains to a sympathetic Iris and Danvers. "I got a part-time job at first, but it didn't make enough. And I was good at this, so..."

"As long as you stick to racing," Len says. "Those sort of problems are what lead people to the Families, but if you go there, you'll get trouble you won't get out of."

"Isn't racing also illegal?" Iris asks, giving Len a look.

Len shrugs. As vices go, racing's far from the worst one to have.

"The boss is a big believer in victimless crime," Danvers tells Iris, sounding long-suffering. "He thinks it's a panacea against crimes that do have victims, like the corruption involved with and caused by Family work. Also, don't ask what he considers to be 'victimless', it'll just turn into a rant about the modern state of property insurance."

"Chattel insurance," Len mutters under his breath.

"That's not necessarily wrong, though," Wally - Len refuses to call any human being 'Wheeler' - says. "About the difference between petty law-breaking like drag-racing and, well, worse stuff than that. I know lots of guys that do stupid stuff and justify it on the basis that at least it's not the Family biz."

"Hmm," Iris says. "That's interesting. Tell me, would you consider letting me interview you..?"

"Yeah, sure, if you'd be willing to get tested for bone marrow compatibility for my mom," Wally says. "One interview if you get tested, and if you’re a match, well, I'll do all the interviews you want."

"Deal," Iris says. "Danvers, what about you? Want to get tested together?"

"I can't," Danvers says apologetically. "Medical issue. But I have a really, really rare blood type, so I wouldn't be a match anyway."

"Snart?"

"My doc says she's the only one allowed to stick me with needles for the foreseeable future," Len says, waggling his crutch pointedly. Giving blood after getting shot in a dirty warehouse is just asking to potentially spread some sort of blood-borne disease, even if the tests have come up negative so far. "Anyway, Wally, about that ride – we need to go to Murderers' Row."

Wally's eyebrows go straight up. "You gotta death wish or something?"

"We need to talk to someone there," Iris says. "You don't have to stay -"

"Are you joking? Of course he has to stay," Len says. "How do you expect us to get out again?"

"But -"

"No, it's cool," Wally says. "Your man here looks like he can handle himself - you're packing, right?"

"Of course."

Wally nods. "Then I'll stick around. I've never been in Murderers' Row long enough to see what it looks like."

"Me either," Iris says, sounding excited.

Len blinks at them. "It's a slum," he says blankly. "It doesn't look like anything."

Danvers pats him on the back. "The guy with a ranking system for different prisons doesn't get to throw stones here, boss."

...it's not his fault Iron Heights sucks balls. Or that Len has a multipage spreadsheet to prove it.

Murderers' Row, on the other hand, is just your average old slum: ratty dirty buildings halfway or more to falling apart, shoddy half-hearted repairs, people hanging around looking at each other suspiciously, everyone packing more heat than a summer's day - lead in the walls, dirt in the water, and violence in the air.

Len feels at home already.

"You're humming, boss."

"Nice to be back in the old parts of town," Len says. "Though of course this don't have anything on Central's slums - now there's a prime bit of slum territory -"

A member of the local gangs - not Family, just a local - who was oh-so-casually loitering ever closer to them, hand on the gun in his pocket in the event of their being either a threat or unwary prey, gives out a snort at that, his shoulders dropping.

"Shoulda known a Middleman'd be the only one dumb enough to bring two bits into Murderers' Row," he says, friendly enough.

"What, and after all the effort I went getting one of each color, too?" Len replies, smirking back even as his voice drops back into the comfortable nasal drawl he grew up with. "Archboys got no taste - and no discernment, neither, if you think these here are bits. You really think I'd come here with one leg and no protection?"

The gang member nods amiably. Like most low-level thugs, he's willing to give the benefit of the doubt to just about anything he doesn't understand - and the idea of a slum kid like Len showing up with crutches and two pretty ladies ripe for kidnapping is just ludicrous enough that he's willing to believe that Danvers and Iris are both enforcers hidden in sheep's clothing.

"Don't start nothing," the guy still says in warning, clearly more reflexively than anything else, and heads back to rejoin his gang.

Iris does Len the tremendous favor of waiting until he's gone to ask, in an undertone, "Middleman? Archboys?"

"Middlemen are Central City slum kids, born and raised," Len tells her. "Archboys are the same but for Keystone. There isn't an official divide, of course, but everyone's got their loyalty, what with the two cities being so close."

"And bits?" Danvers asks. "What's that mean?"

"Uh," Len says.

"Whores," Wally says, amused. "Except your guy here somehow convinced him that we must all actually be really dangerous because it'd be too stupid to come here otherwise."

Len shrugs modestly. He's always had a gift for bullshit. "Now's your turn," he says to Iris. "The name?"

"Hartley Rathaway," Iris says.

Len's eyebrows shoot up. He's not the only one.

"I know, I know, a Rathaway here of all places; it sounds dumb," Iris says, seeing his expression. "But he was disowned by his family after he came out and then blackballed from the scientific research industry after getting fired from STAR Labs, and Mason'd traced him here."

"Well," Len says. "At least he'll be easy to find."

"Not without street numbers," Iris says, scowling at the rundown buildings.

"Who needs street numbers when you've got cardboard?" Len asks. "Wait here."

He hobbles over to the nearest outpost of the cardboard brigade - not far, there's a nice alleyway where a handful of homeless people are congregating.

Len likes the cardboard brigade. His usual contact – a crazy ageless woman called the Mad Magpie that likes to hang around the police precinct, thus the ‘crazy’ moniker – likes him back, and that usually means he can ask for favors other people wouldn’t get. In this case, he gives them the usual set of passwords and asks for the courtesy of an hour's head start before they start spreading his name and face around.

They agree cheerfully and direct him to one of the buildings on the street, the one with a green door and boarded-up windows.

Their target supposedly resides on the third floor.

"This is wild," Wally murmurs, staring at the entranceway to the building with some trepidation. "I can't believe you're going to go interview a guy in Murderers' Row, ex-millionaire's kid or not. You journalists have got some serious balls."

Len decides not to correct Wally's misapprehension as to their profession, as cops are as little liked here as anywhere in the slums. Besides, that comment was mostly aimed at Iris, who is, in fact, a journalist.

...technically.

Being a blogger counts, right?

Len struggles up the steps. The slums are not exactly handicap-friendly, to say the least, but at least he has Danvers' strong arm and excellent sense of discretion to help get him there.

By the time they're on the third floor landing, he's breathing hard and both Iris and Wally have identical worried expressions.

Literally identical, actually; Len wonders if they're related. Sadly, there's probably no polite way to ask Iris if her dad happens to have any illegitimate kids out there.

"You sure you're -" Iris starts.

"I'm fine," Len says, catching his breath. "What's all that PT for if not for climbing stairs and interrogating witnesses?"

"Assuming this guy's there at all," Wally says.

"That's a good point," Iris says. "He could've been disappeared, too."

Wally looks intrigued. "People have been disappearing? That sounds bad. Can I help?"

"You're already helping," Iris assures him.

"Danvers, how much of a budget do we have for interns?" Len murmurs as quietly as he can, knowing that Danvers' ridiculous bat-ears will hear anything he says as long as there's even the slightest exhalation giving sound to the words.

"You could use having a more reliable driver than Charlie, of all people," she whispers back. "I'll check when we get back to the office, but we can probably make it work."

"S'long as he never intends on being a real cop later in life, it could get him outta some of his current trouble..."

With that settled, Len decides to ignore Iris' attempt to brief Wally on what they know (nothing, but told from a fairly pro-Flash perspective) and knock firmly on the door.

Nothing.

"Danvers?" Len asks.

"There's someone inside," she confirms. "Only one person, as far as I can tell."

"How can you tell?" Wally asks.

"Danvers has ridiculously good hearing," Len says proudly. "The only way she could be more accurate about this sorta thing is if she had X-ray vision."

Danvers flushes.

It’s simultaneously hilarious and rage-inducing (mostly at her family) how shy she is about how awesome she is.

Len knocks again, this time harder. "C'mon," he calls. "We know you're in there, we mean no harm, and anyway, I hear that the price of door replacements on Murderers' Row is killer."

Danvers groans, Iris smirks, and Wally stares up at the ceiling like it can give him answers to how he ended up here.

A second later, the door swings open.

"That was fucking awful," the man inside informs them, smirking.

Len frowns at the man - about the same height as Len, Caucasian, brunet, and scruffy like he thinks Indiana Jones is a role model, wearing a dark green hoodie and cheap jeans - and says, "I'm gonna assume you ain't Hartley Rathaway."

"No shit," the guy says. He looks vaguely familiar, now that Len thinks about it. "What gave it away, the extra foot of height or the fact that I don't talk rich?"

"The latter," Len says. "Given that I ain't never met the guy in person to know about the rest. He live here?"

“Who wants to know?”

“A nosy asshole,” Len says. “Don’t make me go ask the cardboard brigade to tell me the same thing, okay?”

The guy snorts, acknowledging the point.

“So does Rathaway Jr. live here?” Len prods.

"Usually, yeah," the guy says, giving in. "He’s my roomie. Ain’t been back in a couple weeks, though."

"He's been disappeared?" Wally exclaims.

The guy gives Wally a weird look. "Or he's just not been here for a couple weeks. It happens sometimes – jobs, laying low, that sorta deal."

"Oh."

"What’s that about people getting disappeared..?"

"Can we come in anyway?" Len interjects, not answering the question. "I could use a chair to crash in before attempting those stairs again."

"Yeah, sure, come in. Do I know you from somewhere?"

"I was just thinking that," Len says. Danvers is shaking her head at him pointedly like she's trying to tell him something, but he's not sure what; he's too busy trying to place the guy. "What's your deal?"

"Usual cut crew work, largely freelance - used to work with my brother -"

"Do you have a name, maybe?" Iris asks, following them inside, even as Len's nodding. “That might help more than your profession.”

The guy flushes, remembering his manners. "Uh, Mark. Mark Mardon. Nice to meet you."

Len snaps his fingers as it comes to him. "The Dollarhyde Street diamond job! The getaway drivers!"

"Holy crap," Mardon says, recognition lighting up his own eyes. "Leonard Snart?! I heard you went straight!"

Danvers puts her head in her hands.

Oh, right. That's what she'd been hinting at him about: Len's a wanted man in criminal circles.

Damnit, Danvers, thirty years a thief and four months a proper cop - he's going to mess up sometimes!

"Uh," Len says, wondering if this is about to escalate into a firefight.

"You were badass, man," Mardon says admiringly. "We got away clean with the cut from your job with no sweat, and it lasted us nearly a year of good living. One of the best jobs we ever did. You're good people, man; the criminal underworld lost a genius when you turned."

Aw, Len's touched.

Also rather relieved.

(Danvers' shoulders are now shaking with laughter, while Iris and Wally both gape.)

“Always a pleasure to meet a fan,” he says, ignoring his audience. Hopefully they’ll know well enough to stay out of this conversation and leave it entirely to him.

He knows how to talk to criminals.

"Is it true that you sent fifty pigs to jail in one month alone?" Mardon asks eagerly.

Len grins. Being admired for his cop work by criminals is somehow even sweeter than being admired for his top-notch criminal skills. "Almost. Some of 'em refused to plea bargain out and are going to trial - or are supposed to go to trial. They're begging for a plea bargain now."

"Fuckers deserve it," Mardon says fervently. "Every one of 'em. I hate cops."

"Corrupt cops," Len corrects.

"Aren't they all?" Mardon asks.

"Leave me some hope here, please," Len says dryly. "I don't wanna have to start the whole thing from scratch."

"Hey, they're not all bad," Iris protests. "My dad's a cop! So is my boyfriend!"

"Can we keep it down with all this cop talk?" Wally hisses. "My old man was a cop before he ditched my mom, but I don't go around boasting about it! Especially not here of all places!"

Mardon's frowning at Iris. "You’re from Central," he says slowly. "Your dad wouldn't happen to be Joe West, would he?"

"Uh," Iris says instead of confirming it, proving that she's not a total idiot. "Why do you ask?"

"Because Joe West murdered my brother," Mardon says, still frowning suspiciously at Iris. "My baby brother, Clyde - West shot him right in the fucking back. And one day, I'm going to get back at West by murdering someone he loves, too."

"Lucky for us that she’s a Lloyd, not a West, then, ain’t it?" Len interjects, lying his ass off with the name of the first black cop he can think of that isn’t West and extremely uncertain as to whether it's going to work. He wishes he were less surprised that even when he's not part of the investigation, Joe West still manages to fuck everything up. "You know I'm not going to let you do that, right?"

Mardon glances at him, scowling, and then just as Len's considering going for his gun, suddenly relaxes. "Should've figured," he says with a grin. "I know your code against killing civilians; if you had that as a thief, I can't see you changing it as a pig."

Len shrugs. "What can I say? I never much liked the idea of some civilian getting iced just 'cause they happened to have the wrong blood. If the whole world acted like that, I'd've never made it out of the crib before someone would've put me out of my misery to make a point to my old man."

Mardon grunts. "Yeah, I guess," he says reluctantly. "Sure wouldn't've have wanted someone going after Clyde because of some damn stupid thing I did, I guess."

"Exactly," Len says, then hesitates. "You want me to look into hammering West for that shooting?"

Sadly, he knows it's probably a lost cause if the officer-related shooting's already been resolved by the bureau. They don't reopen stuff like that without evidence of some sort of cover-up or something, and it sounds like Clyde Mardon being shot in the back was pretty public already.

Still…

"Might not go anywhere,” Len continues, ignoring how Iris is trying to death-glare a hole into his back. She’s got nothing on Danvers. “But at least it's better than you getting sent down for life 'cause you murdered an innocent, yeah? What do you say?"

"No," Mardon says. "Thanks, and I appreciate the offer, but no. I've got a back-up plan in place that ought to show West what for without getting in your crosshairs. Property, not people."

"It'd better stay property not people," Len warns him. "I'm gonna have to tip off the CCPD about this little convo; you'll get pre-med for sure if anyone goes down, and that means the death penalty gets put on the table."

"Yeah, whatever," Mardon says. "The pigs won't be able to stop me even if they tried."

"That's what they all say," Len says wearily. "Now listen, can you help us or not?"

Mardon blinks at him. "Help you? With what?"

"We're looking into some disappearances, most of which seem to happen right around the same time as a Flash sighting," Len says. "We think Rathaway might have some insight. Can you tell him to call when he gets back? And let us know if he doesn't get back?"

"Sure," Mardon says, accepting Len's card. "But only 'cause you go exclusively against cops in your new job. D'Angelo said you were still cool with the trade for the most part."

"D'Angelo also promised to keep his mouth shut," Len says with a sigh. He really hopes Iris doesn’t remember to pay attention to this part of the conversation, but she’s a would-be journalist; he’s sure she will. Well, he always did believe in the philosophy of not doing anything you wouldn’t want to go down for doing later on, and he’s perfectly willing to face the music on this one. After all, working with D'Angelo got him the best lead they’ve had yet on the Flash. "Amateurs. Anyway, I didn't say it before, but I'm real sorry to hear about Clyde; he had a beautiful way with just about anything on four wheels."

Mardon smiles. "That he did. That he did."

Len nods and gets painfully back up to his feet. "Don't suppose you've got anything to add about these disappearances yourself? Or the Flash?"

Mardon snorts. "No. Or, well, yeah: if you don't see anything really big go down by the waterfront in the next few days or so, assume that I've been disappeared, too."

"So noted," Len says, then turns his attention to his small crew, mute and watching. "C'mon, all, we're wasting daylight. We'll hear from Rathaway when or if he comes back."

They follow Len down those horrific stairs – he needs so much more PT than he thought he did before he tried those stairs, but his leg is considering secession in self-defense while his side and spine are basically giant screaming pits of agony – and back out into the street.

"So, that went - uh - interestingly," Danvers says, her voice somehow still cheerful even though she’s looking at Len a little worriedly. "At least we got a heads up about possible violence, right?"

"Honor among thieves," Len says, nodding. "Mardon's a bit old school at heart; he didn't have to give us that much."

"Probably not. And, uh, weird question," Danvers says. "Did anyone else notice how right in the middle of the conversation the weather right outside the window got all -"

"He's going to do something terrible!" Iris explodes. "We have to stop him!"

"We'll tell everyone," Len says soothingly. "Including Detective West; we’ll just get him to avoid the waterfront for a bit. It'll be fine."

"You sure?" Wally asks anxiously. "I mean, I've never met this West guy, and I'm sure he's a total dickbag, but that doesn't mean I want him to get hurt."

"He's not a -" Iris starts, then pauses. "Listen, he's not a total dickbag, okay? Not all the time."

Len would disagree, but whatever.

"And what do you know about him, anyway?" she continues accusingly. Clearly a believer in the ‘I can criticize him but you can’t’ school of thought, Iris West. "You're not even from Central; you’re from Keystone! He’s never even policed your area – you don’t know anything about him! You don’t have any reason to say anything about him!"

"Yeah, well," Wally says, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms. "According to my mom, he's my old man."

"He's what?!" Iris shrieks.

Oh, boy. Len'd thought they looked similar, but he hadn't really thought that whole 'illegitimate child' theory had water in it.

This is going to get unnecessarily emotional fast, he just knows it.

"What do you care?" Wally snaps. "Your old man's Lloyd or whatever; mine's the one at risk!"

"I'm not a Lloyd, I'm a West!" Iris exclaims. "Snart was just lying so I wouldn't get shot!"

"Uh, guys?" Danvers says. "Maybe we should be having this out in Murderers' Row?"

"But," Wally says, then falters. "If you're a West – and if he really is my old man –"

"- then I'm your sister," Iris finishes. "Holy crap. You're my brother!"

“Holy crap!”

“Holy crap!”

Yeah, Len's done with this.

He gives his best ear-piercing whistle.

All three of them look accusingly at him, clutching their ears. Danvers in particular looks like a sad miserable puppy that’s been betrayed by a surprise visit to the vet or something.

Too bad, so sad.

"Everyone get back in the car," he orders. "You can talk about all this family stuff on the drive back to Central. And maybe let’s do this before we all get shot? The cardboard brigade only promised me an hour before they sold my presence here to the Families."

That, at least, gets everyone moving.

Len resigns himself to the worst car ride ever.

#coldflash #leonard snart #barry allen #iris west #mick rory #kara danvers #wally west #mark mardon #Hartley rathaway #my fic #an internal affair

[tacitwhisky]

How to Write ASIOAF Fanfic That Actually Feels Medieval

A Song of Ice and Fire fanfic writers fall into three major groups: bad writers, good writers, and good writers who are bad at writing in an even vaguely medieval setting.

I don’t know what causes it, but writing in an medieval style they doesn’t sound either too modern or too pretentious is something that regularly trips up even my favorite authors. Every time it feels like they dropped modern people into a renaissance festival. And while I’m by no means an expert, as someone who’s reread ASOIAF far too many time there’s a few simple tricks you can use to improve your canon set stories.

Please note before we start that is not a guide on how to write in an authentically medieval manner: this guide is concerned with writing that feels authentically medieval to your readers and doesn’t shatter their suspension of disbelief.

Anachronistic Word Choice

The first, and worst, problem is anachronistic word choice and sentence structure. This seems like something obvious: just don’t use words that’ll ping on your reader’s radar as a modern, right? But the amount of writers that manage to screw it up is amazing. Often they don’t use something completely egregious like “Ok” but things like having the king say “sure” in answer to a question will slowly strip the veneer of authenticity from your work.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, let’s use a simple example.

Drey sleeps with both Arianne and Tyene.

On the surface this is pretty unobjectionable: there’s no egregious use of modern slang like “smashed” or “hit that”. But it can be better in a few key ways. First, “sleeps with” is actually a form of slang, and not what people largely use in ASOIAF: “beds” is a more appropriate and less anachronistic term.

Drey beds both Arianne and Tyene.

Better. But you know what might improve it? Fucking with the word order.

Drey beds Arianne and Tyene both.

Don’t ask me to explain what this does because I can’t grammar even a little. I also have no idea if this is even vaguely accurate to how medieval people spoke, but it feels more medievaly and that’s what we’re aiming for.

Now a note of caution: the more you fuck with word order the harder it can be for your reader to grasp what’s going on and the more you flirt with purple prose. The above is a pretty straightforward sentence so I’m not in too much trouble, but with longer sentences or paragraphs this can be a serious problem. It’s also something that can be exhausting if every sentence does this, so use it sparingly but strategically to achieve the atmosphere you want.

Now let’s work with a more complicated example, but instead of moving from less mediavely to more, let’s devolve it. Here’s the opening paragraph to a fic I wrote that I think works pretty well as is:

Jon speaks the words of the Kingsguard kneeling in a sept of seven glass walls before seven southron gods that are not his own. Barristan Selmy touches his sword to either of Jon’s shoulders and Jon swears to these strange gods to serve a king he hates, to forsake lands and titles and to never father sons or know a woman’s touch. When it is done, Selmy drapes a white cloak across his shoulders and bids him rise. “Rise as a knight of the Kingsguard,” the old knight tells him, “rise as our brother.”

Not bad. Watch what happens when we devolve it by replacing the old timey words with more modern ones:

Jon says the words of the Kingsguard while kneeling in a church with seven glass walls in front of seven southern gods that aren’t his. Barristan Selmy taps his sword to both of Jon’s shoulders and Jon promises to protect a king he hates, to never inherit lands or have children or sleep with a woman. Afterwards Selmy puts a white cloak over his shoulders and asks him to stand up. “Stand up as a knight of the Kingsguard,” Selmy tells him, “stand up as our brother.”

Notice how much flatter this reads? The bones of it are still solid in terms of its structure and flow, but it doesn’t feel nearly as atmospheric. Now, you may quibble with words here or there: maybe you like “promises to protect a king he hates” better than “swears to serve a king he hates” but overall the paragraph is hurt by having the language be so modern.

A list of modern words you shouldn’t use would take to long to put together, but just think about the sources of the words you’re using. For example, nothing annoys me more than polytheistic settings like ASOIAF where characters say “God damn it.” Stop it. There’s no one god in this world. It makes no sense for the character to say it. Also don’t capitalize “God” unless you’re specifically referring to the God of the abrahamic faiths. Think through the setting, don’t just apply modern day slang and expressions.

Don’t Be Overzealous

The other big problem I see in fic is the author being overzealous in trying to make their work feel medieval. Sometimes this takes the form of word choice: GRRM’s infamous use of “nuncle” in A Feast for Crows is a good example of this as it grated at least half the fandom the wrong way. Other times it can be this weird thing where the word choice and sentence structure becomes increasingly stilted and formal and the characters start talking in circular and obtuse ways like they’re in Shakespeare or Jane Austen (which is fine, but not what we’re going for).

To illustrate this, let’s go back to the above paragraph, but this time turn up the dial on how old timey it is:

Jon utters the vows of the Kingsguard kneeling in a sept of seven glass walls before seven southron gods that are not his own. To either of Jon’s shoulders the old knight Barristan Selmy places his sword and with bitter tongue Jon forswears holding lands and titles or begetting sons upon a woman or lying between the sheets with another. When Jon has relinquished all he holds dear Selmy casts a white cloak across his shoulders and commands he rise. “Rise as a knight of the Kingsguard,” the old knight commands, “rise as a brother.”

This feels like a parody, and it is a little, but I swear I’ve read stuff this stilted before. Having so many unusual words gums up the flow of the paragraph, and makes it hard for the reader to keep it all in their head. Each blip of obtuseness fogs the paragraph just a little more until the whole thing is almost opaque. The sentence where Barristan places his sword on Jon’s shoulders twists and turns and goes on too long without a clear succession. And “with bitter tongue” is just trying too hard.

What you want to do is incorporate old timey words that don’t ping as particularly egregious, use them sparingly, and to always read over your work to make sure that the readability isn’t being hurt by either them or an overly labyrinthine sentence structure.

Going back to the original example:

Jon speaks the words of the Kingsguard kneeling in a sept of seven glass walls before seven southron gods that are not his own. Barristan Selmy touches his sword to either of Jon’s shoulders and Jon swears to these strange gods to serve a king he hates, to forsake lands and titles and to never father sons or know a woman’s touch. When it is done, Selmy drapes a white cloak across his shoulders and bids him rise. “Rise as a knight of the Kingsguard,” the old knight tells him, “rise as our brother.”

The bolded words fall into that middle category: not anachronistic, but also not pretentious enough to distract the reader. A few of them (speaks, father, know a woman’s touch) aren’t egregious but still subtly reinforce the atmosphere: “forsake” and “bids” are little more overt but still relatively tame and slip in organically. 

It’s always going to be a balancing act in medieval-esque fic between sounding overly modern and overzealously old timey, and only you can really judge which is right for your story. But please, at least try and write and stick to some of the above. It’s painful to read your favorite fanfic writer and keep wincing each time they try to write in canon.

(also here’s a shameless plug for the fic I’ve been quoting: tumblr / A03)

#fanfic #gotfic #how to write #fanfiction advice #how to write medieval #how to write fanfiction #seriously I'm not an expert #thoughts #writing advice #meta #my meta

[theliterateape]

The Old Lady Who Hated Halloween Put A Sign Up Letting Us Know

By Don Hall

When I lived in Arkansas, there was a woman in our neighborhood who absolutely hated Halloween. I don’t know if it was that she was extremely Christian and found the themes of ghouls and monsters and magic to be offensive or if she simply didn’t like kids. Perhaps she had some sort of traumatic event on Halloween when she was younger. No matter. Every Halloween, she’d sit outside her house to scream at the kids as they would come up to her yard — every other home in the neighborhood was decked with fake spiderwebs and jack-o-lanterns and were reservoirs of candy. Chris (one of my roommates) and I would buy tons of the good stuff (aka full-sized Snickers, Twix, and Reese’s Cups) and had a blast with the kids. But not this lady. 

At first I was annoyed by her curmudgeonly attitude toward a harmless kid’s holiday. I mean, these weren’t the asshole kids who fucked with your house if you didn’t provide them the sugar-rush they so craved. These were mostly littler kids and the old lady scared them by screaming from her porch.

One year, as October was at the halfway mark, Chris went over to talk to her. He said later that he had suggested she put up a simple sign on her lawn that declared to all walking by that she did not participate in Halloween and that the kids should just pass her place by. It did not go well, according to him. She felt that she shouldn’t have to be singled out, that the children shouldn’t be bothering people anyway and why not just do away with the practice on the block altogether instead of forcing her to put up some sign.

We didn’t push the issue as it wasn’t really our business. On the day of Halloween, however, sure enough, she put up a very nice sign that said “This House Does Not Celebrate Halloween. Please Come Back at Easter and Candy Will Be Given Out Then.” And, lo and behold, the kids left her house alone. I don’t know if she gave out candy at Easter but I thought it was a nice way of dealing with it. She managed to protect herself adequately without forcing everyone else to stifle the joy and enthusiasm of the night which, despite it being Chris’s idea, I thought was both responsible and kind.

Just lately, Vice President Joe Biden is under attack for touching women inappropriately. He’s not being accused of sexually harassing anyone because the man is ebullient and tactile with men, women, children with no regard for sex. The man is just enthusiastic about hugging and showing affection in a physical way. I can’t say why so many women have an issue with this, as if consent is required in every physical interaction but I respect their position. Maybe they don’t want to be touched because they had a traumatic experience earlier, maybe because they grew up in less tactile families, maybe they are using this issue as a way to sour voters on Biden so Bernie or Kamala are more viable options. The why isn’t really all that important. 

What is important is that most people don’t mind him hugging them or the onslaught of complaint would be voluminous. I mean, over the forty or fifty years as a political figure, I’d guess the guy has hugged and enthusiastically greeted thousands upon thousands of people so the seven women complaining about his hugging them without explicit consent is a margin of a margin of a sliver of that number.

Most people don’t mind a big, friendly greeting. But a few do. They really do. They have prioritized their personal space in such a way that they feel requires everyone to forego the spontaneous joy encapsulated with a happy to meet you greeting. A backslapping, fun way of saying hello or showing affection. I think they are right to feel that no one should invade their person should they feel it is a violation but I hardly think their peace of mind is worth the stifling of joy that everyone else gets from a grand, high-minded hug.

My suggestion is simple. If you feel somehow that no unsolicited physical contact is appropriate, wear a sign or a t-shirt or a hat that declares that you do not want to be touched without expressed permission to do so. If you have kids who have suffered trauma and they need some sort of badge to indicate that grandpa shouldn’t tussle his hair, treat it no differently than a peanut allergy rather than expect everyone to stop eating peanuts.

It is completely your right to protect your personal space and for whatever reasons you may have. It is, however, unreasonable to expect those with no sexual or harmful intent to read your mind and somehow know that this will be interpreted as inappropriate. It is unreasonable to expect that no one ever engage in any spontaneous hugs because you don’t care for them. I’ll add that, unfortunately, this isn’t going to stop the assholes looking to cop a feel which is an entirely separate issue but it will let the Joe Biden’s of the world, the truly gregarious, genuinely affectionate humans out there understand where your boundaries are.

I suppose a better way of looking at it (and in an unusually funny piece of satire on behalf of SNL) is this (watch it to the end):

The saddest thing I can imagine is the looking out among all the people in the world and only seeing predators when so many simply are not. Some, like Joe Biden, are just really nice people who like to express their affection by getting up in there and touching you. I’d prefer to live in a world where those people are not shut down because there’s enough anger and suspicion in society as it is to paint us all as monsters.

I’ll quote a Faceborg post of a friend who sums this up so much better than I can:

As both a woman and a survivor, I actually have a problem with the idea that this whole thing is supposed to be about women reclaiming their voices and rejecting victimhood. Barring obvious and egregious assault, if you can't own your own boundaries and articulate them at the time they're being breached, that is the opposite of empowerment and the epitome of victimhood.

Maybe articulating those boundaries is uncomfortable for whatever reason. I get uncomfortable asking for a raise even when I know I deserve it. But I don't make my boss read my mind that I want a raise and then torch him two years later because he didn't give me one. Life is sometimes uncomfortable -- learning to recognize and enforce our boundaries respectfully (unless real danger is involved), and learning to operate outside of our comfort-zone sometimes, are fundamental adult skills. Sometimes we'll be better at it than others, but it's not reasonable to expect others to know my boundaries, nor is it reasonable to expect everyone else to adopt my boundaries just so I'll never, ever be uncomfortable.

When I was in my early 30s I moved to a new town where I knew no one. A friend of mine contacted a friend of his and before I even got there I had been invited to a party by someone I'd never met. This guy was part of a close-knit group of friends; the very next time I saw these people, the women hugged me and the guys all kissed me on the cheek to say hello, even though I had only met them once. It was clear that this was how they always greeted one another, and not only did I not take offense at near strangers touching or kissing me in what was obviously meant to be an affectionate gesture, but it actually meant a lot to me to be so quickly and obviously accepted as part of this group during a particularly lonely time in my life, and to know that they were happy to see me. FWIW, I eventually married one of them.

So why is it okay that someone who doesn't communicate her own boundaries gets to decide that her boundaries should be the default for the rest of us? If I had been a different person, perhaps I might have felt uncomfortable with physical affection from people whom I'd just met, but then it would have been my responsibility to say so. Maybe it would have been awkward. Maybe I might have been afraid that if I rejected their gestures they wouldn't like me. But on the flipside, if that's all it took for them to withdraw their friendship, I would have been better off without that friendship in the first place.

I certainly respect someone else's right to feel that discomfort. But I don't respect their right to impose it as the standard by which everyone else has to operate, especially when they don't speak up for themselves and give people the chance to respect said boundaries. (Again, I'm not talking about egregious words or acts like, say, talking about grabbing women by the pussy....)

The world owes none of us a life free of all discomfort, free of all awkwardness, free of all confrontation. And this kind of hysteria robs young women (and the rest of us) of real agency instead of teaching us to speak up when it really matters, to shake off that which really doesn't, and to understand that that line is different for everyone.

— Risa McDonnell

#do not stifle enthusiasm #not all people are predators #Old Lady #Joe Biden #Halloween

[themyskira]

Wonder Woman #49

Previously in James Robinson’s sad spiral into senility: Wonder Woman accidentally summoned +~teh D4rK g0dz~+, a group of alternate-universe Greek Gods who are allegedly extremely dark and gritty and terrifying. ROLL CALL!

Mob God: goddess of chaos, shit version of Eris

The God With No Name: loser who walks around with a sheet on his head

Savage Fire: auditioned for the part of sexy Satan, was disappointed to be cast as a war god instead; crotch is literally on fire

Karnell: evil love god who is ~tortured~ because insert generic fridging story here

King Best: calls himself that with a straight face; giant stone Darkseid knockoff

Written as devastatingly evil heavy-hitters, they mostly just succeed at invoking intense second-hand embarrassment.

Now, after being AWOL for an entire issue, Diana is back and ready to take the fight to the Dark Gods. It’s time for a showdown!

…ooooorrrr we could just fart around for twenty pages and end on the most obvious fake-out imaginable.

First off, we need to talk about Stephen Segovia’s cover because WHAT.

Segovia is often praised for his dynamic, action-oriented art, and it’s not necessarily undeserved. Action is clearly his strength, and he excels at fast-paced fight scenes.

But he also has a tendency to deliver pages like this one, or like the splash page in WW #46, where no one part of the (invariably female) character’s anatomy seems to connect to any other part. Absurd boobs-and-butt action shots are nothing new in comics, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen such egregious examples. 

Look at Sexy Satan Lady: what is happening to her arse in that scene? Her left shoulder seems to have slipped halfway down her torso, and god only knows where her hips have fucked off to. Diana’s upper torso, on the other hand, seems to be directly attached to her hips, and she’s missing half her left leg.

But moving onto the bad joke that is this entire issue.

Diana and Jason are preparing to take on Best Buy, who seems less interested in transforming the Earth into a glorious hellscape than he is in playing out his monster movie fantasies by making himself giant and stomping on houses.

I’m serious. When the Biggest of Bads eats the entire Justice League, giving him access to unimaginable power, and he chooses to use that power to animate an impractically large and stupidly-taxing-to-operate body, enabling him to go on a slow-moving rampage through DC, I can only assume that his motive is ‘RAAAAA LOOK AT ME I’M GAMERA!!’ Because he could legitimately have used that power to consume the entire continental US in flames if that was what he wanted to do.

Steve radios in, and Diana instructs him to give the readers an exposition dump. She actually flags it, as if she’s a news anchor interviewing a reporter on the scene: “What about the other gods? Where in the world are they and what kind of damage are they causing?”

So Steve tells us who the other Dark Gods are, where in the world they are and what kind of damage they are causing.

James Robinson has been professionally writing comics for almost thirty years. I think it’s past time somebody told him to stop.

Sexy Satan Lady is inciting all the nations of South America to war.

Mobglob has the population of Britain in a rapturous thrall, which seems a little outside her ‘chaos and rioting’ wheelhouse. People are just staring into the sky, not eating or drinking or noticing anything around them. Steve says that children, babies and the elderly are already beginning to sicken and die from dehydration and exhaustion, which is strange, since this has only been going on for a good ten minutes.

Kandy Krush has the entire population of China consumed in a violent orgy, and the Horse With No Name is inciting Russians to suicide.

“And none of this includes the acts of madness and violence happening everywhere else in the world just from the Dark Gods’ presence on Earth,” says Steve, finishing his news report.

Remember, aside from Steve’s second-hand updates, we’ve seen no evidence of the Dark Gods’ presence infecting the world with this wide-scale hysteria and violence, aside from two people losing their shit at Diana.

Robinson tries to correct this now: over three pages, he shows us snapshots of four individuals in each of the four regions under assault from the Dark Gods, as their ordinary lives are swept up and consumed by the violent, chaotic supernatural forces that are slowly reshaping the world.

It’s a familiar device, particularly in horror comics, and the best writers can use it to truly chilling effect — think Alan Moore in Swamp Thing, Neil Gaiman in Sandman.

Robinson is no Moore and he’s no Gaiman. His is simply a by-the-numbers effort, one that in illustrates the chaos on the ground in technical terms, without imparting any particular sense of horror or empathy for the characters.

Panel 1: Character is going about their ordinary life.

Panel 2: Character comes in contact with the Dark God’s influence.

Panel 3: Character is consumed.

It’s weak, bloodless writing that only serves to rehash the two-page infodump we just got from Steve.

Diana and Jason take on Emperor Awesome.

“This planet will be unlike anything you could ever image after we’re done with it. Your hell. My heaven. Earth first and then the universe. Remade in horror.”

Again, so far you’ve done nothing but squander the power you’ve harvested on living out a kaiju fantasy, so I’m less than terrified.

Diana fluffs up her air, pushes in her neck, thrusts out her boobs and attacks tits-first.

“That’s it, brother! Hit him hard with the wind power of our father, Zeus…”

WHO TALKS LIKE THIS?!

This isn’t just lazy writing, it’s downright contemptuous. Do you think your readers are so absurdly dense that they’ve somehow forgotten that Jason has wind powers, which he inherited from Zeus, who is his father, and Diana’s as well because they’re twins? Because that’s the only justifiable reason to include such a stilted, pedantic line of dialogue in the middle of a Big Boss battle.

Jason doesn’t need reminding, and Diana’s not going to waste both breath and precious seconds. All she needs is three words: ‘Jason! Wind blast!’

(I’d argue she shouldn’t be saying anything at all here, since generally announcing each of your attacks to a larger and stronger opponent is a surefire way to get flattened, but then again, Jason is incompetent and in need of direction.)

There’s an unintentionally comical sequence in which Jason uses his wind power to lift Sir Excellent into the air and he and Diana manoeuvre the apparently unprotesting giant over the Atlantic Ocean, before dropping him in.

Thus, the scariest and most evil god that ever is or was is rendered temporarily helpless by a strong wind.

Obviously he won’t be out of the fight for long, because Robinson is nothing if not predictable.

In the meantime, Jason goes to have another crack at fighting Sexy Satan Lady. She gloats and he charges at her, while silently begging for Athena to give him the wisdom to best use the power of Dolos — Dolos being the personified spirit of trickery and cunning deception. Basically, he’s telling us that he’s planning to deceive the Dark Gods. Keep this in mind.

Diana has joined Steve for another multi-page infodump.

“We’re getting ready to deploy the Suicide Squad — multi-team, biggest version ever, actually. Plus the Titans and any Justice League reservists I can get my hands on… the trouble is, the gods keep turning the heroes, making them as insane as everyone else. The Ray, Zatanna, Damage, Beaumont and Sunny Jim in Britain, to name a few. The list goes into the hundreds. That, or as with the Justice League, they get absorbed by the gods who are made all the stronger for it.”

Hey, you know what’s more fun than watching superheroes team up to fight a world-ending threat??? Having a secondary character describe that happening from a safe distance!

Robinson has ample page-space to show us these things. The amount of time he spends each issue dicking around, rehashing things we’ve already been told and having characters deliver unnecessarily long infodumps, he could very easily devote to scenes like the ones Steve is describing here: Amanda Waller deploying a last-ditch, multi-team Suicide Squad. Other heroes and teams coming up against the Dark Gods and being overwhelmed. Magic users being consumed by the Dark Gods’ bloodthirsty and intoxicating energies. Heavy-hitters being made to turn against their own, or simply being devoured without laying a single blow.

And if Robinson is too lazy or too incompetent to write those scenes, then the very least he can do is shut the fuck up about it, instead of having Steve describe what sounds like a much more interesting comic.

Steve and Diana get word that all of the Dark Gods just vanished. (Actually, they get word that all of the Dark God just vanished, because nobody is editing this comic.) Then all five are sighted in the skies over Paraguay, where Jason had gone to fight Sexy Satan Lady. Diana rushes to Jason’s rescue aaaaaaand…

Jason: Looking for me, sister?! I have something for you— the lightning of our father combined with the fire of Hephaestus. Diana: Jason! NO! They can’t have driven you mad! I thought you’d be stronger— Jason: Mad? Why, sister, I’m saner than I’ve ever been. I see everything clearly. The Greek gods are nothing… ALL PRAISE THE DARK GODS.

In fairness, on its face this is a perfectly plausible twist, because Jason has continually shown himself to be weak-willed, incompetent and selfish — and has a track record of being tricked into the service of supervillain conquerors with only the lightest bit of prodding.

But since we’ve already been as good as told that this is a fake-out (two pages ago, when Jason announced his intention to deceive the Dark Gods), this cliffhanger just feels like more padding. There’s so little substance to this story, I can’t believe it’s gone on for this long.

Fortunately, next issue is the final one of this garbage fire of a run. I’m hoping desperately for Jason to die in the final battle, but I’m willing to settle for banished out of reach.

However, I’m pleased to note that my Jason’s-magic-armour-doesn’t-do-anything theory remains intact.

#the james robinson shitshow #comics talk

[coll2mitts]

#97 Were the World Mine (2008)

This movie was made in 2008, and it hits differently in 2020.  I feel like it wasn’t that acceptable in 2008, either, but whatever.  I sat on this review for a few days because I wanted to see if my opinion softened over time, but it hasn’t.  I need to also place a disclaimer that I’m a bisexual woman, not a gay man, so I’m not the target demographic.  I would love to get other perspectives on the impact of this movie, because it did nothing for me. 

Timothy attends an all-boys school and is bullied constantly for being gay.  His literature teacher encourages him to audition for the school play, and subsequently he is cast as Puck in his high school’s rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  He DaVinci Codes the play’s text and discovers the formula for a potion that will turn anyone he sprays it on gay.  He then sprays it on half the town, and they all start making out with each other.  At the performance, he nullifies the effects of the potion and everyone is suddenly nice to each other because being gay for 24 hours made them empathetic people.

I have to approach this like a fairy tale, because every single person in this movie is a stereotype.  All the students at his all-boys school are dude-bros.  The rugby coach (like, where do they live?!) is extremely homophobic and is constantly saying that pesky things like education and the arts are getting in the way of his team playing sportsball well.  The entire town, save his two friends and his love interest, are also vocally homophobic.  His MLM hun mom’s upline literally starts screaming at her on a street corner when she finds out Timothy is gay, like OK.  

The weirdest choice this movie makes is how it handles Timothy’s mother.  In the first 10 minutes of the movie, she reacts disproportionately every time there is a hint her son is gay.  He gets a black eye from being beaned with a dodgeball, and she throws dishes across the kitchen because she thought someone punched him for being gay.  She finds out he’s cast as Puck and she gets angry because Puck is a fairy (and her son is a fairy, because he’s gay, get it?).  In one particularly egregious scene, she tells her son it’s his fault his father left her, and that she’s also suffering because he’s gay.  After all the work they do setting up the unsympathetic “why can’t you just be different?!” mother type, some off-screen miracle takes place and she begins sewing him fairy wings out of her wedding dress.  She also spends the rest of the movie telling everyone her son is gay and she’s proud of him.  It’s like the movie didn’t like the narrative and pivoted immediately because they needed Tim to have more allies.

Here’s my problem with portraying people like this... not all homophobes are Westboro-Baptist-sign-waving-funeral-protesting nightmares.  It’s easy to portray those people as wrong and absurd, even in 2008, because the general attitude of the country was supportive of the LGBT community.  Not to be glib, but this is post-Queer Eye and Ellen.  There were a lot more queer-positive media streaming into boomers television sets.  Homophobia was being OK with gay people, but not wanting your children to be gay.  It’s saying consenting adults can do whatever they want, but then getting upset when your kid’s boy scout leader is gay.  It’s saying you have a lesbian friend, but not wanting to live with her because you’re afraid they’re going to fantasize about your body or whatever.  It’s hush toned dissent that is the most prevalent, and this movie does nothing to address that.  It’s all dudes spray painting f-bombs on Tim’s locker and parents screaming at administrators that Shakespeare was a queer and having their kids act in this play has made them want to kiss each other.  What kind of message is this this trying to send to heteroes?  That you’re either rainbow flag-waving ally, or beating up the gay kid just because you don’t like that he’s gay?

...I’m about to address the consent problem in a second, so here’s a palette cleanser of a genuinely adorable moment of Timothy dancing in his kitchen.

Timothy sprays the entire cast of his production of Midsummers with this potion he creates, including the guy he likes, to seemingly “make” him gay, and then he spends the next day pretending he’s his boyfriend.  This guy was in a relationship with someone else at the time, and when that got too real because she was upset her boyfriend randomly left her for another person, Timothy sprayed her with the potion, too, to make her infatuated with his best girl friend.  Everyone is now gay and horny and making out, and the ones who were not sprayed are trying to get the people attracted to them to go away because they are relentless.

I mean, this is perpetuating 3 terrible gay stereotypes:

The Gay Agenda is real, and gay people are just trying to convert other people to be gay.

Gay people will not back off if you do not share the same sexual preference

Gay people are just constantly horny and weirdly do not care about consent?

Did nobody think about this for more than a few seconds?  Are these people acting on their otherwise buried attraction, or are they forced to have this attraction now?  Because I highly doubt everyone in this city was just closeted and now that the potion is coursing through their veins their inhibitions are down.  Like, don’t fuck your friend when they’re too drunk, or under the influence of a gay aphrodisiac, is what I’m saying.  BUT IT’S OK GUYS, when the potion wears off, nobody is upset, and it turned out his crush wanted to date him this whole time!  What a hero, changing the world by drugging one person at a time.

Yeah, this premise was never going to work for me.  Which is a shame, because I enjoyed the musical numbers a lot, even though there were only like 4 in the entire movie.  The lyrics are based on passages from A Midsummers Night’s Dream, and their portrayal themselves live within Timothy’s fantasy.  

I liked how they take place in heightened, romantic versions of real locations, and that the costumes were clearly of the homemade high school stage production caliber.  They were great interludes into Timothy’s mindset, and had the most beautiful imagery of the movie.

I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I really wanted to like this movie, guys.  I have been disappointed by more than a few straight girls, but not once did I have the fantasy “but what if I could change them to make them love me?”.  It just feels gross.  But I will be the first to admit that I’m overthinking this, and maybe it’s 12 years too late for this movie to make an impact on me.

Next is Meet the Feebles, which looks like it involves puppets of some sort...

#unwarranted opinion #100 best musical movies of all time rotten tomatoes

[thesffcorner]

Reign of the Fallen

Reign of the Fallen is the first book in a YA fantasy duology written by Sarah Glenn Marsh. It follows Odessa, a master necromancer who lives in the Kingdom of Karthia. The King of Karthia has ruled for centuries, resurrected by his royal necromancers, and the Kingdom has entirely forbidden change. When she and her partner Evander see the corpse of their former master during one of the King’s resurrections, they stumble onto a plot to overthrow the King; and possibly destroy necromancy forever. I went into this book with pretty high expectations, because I had heard people say it was their favorite book of last year and that it’s a really unique fantasy, that happens to center queer characters. I have to say that while that last bit is true, I was more than a little disappointed by the book.

Let’s start with the writing. This is not Marsh’s first book, but in many ways it feels like it is; from what I know she’s primarily a children's author, and despite the copious amounts of sex/making out in the book, this felt very young. Had it not been for the sexual content and rather violent deaths, I would firmly say that this could be a middle-grade book, since it’s so simple in its writing and world-building. Karthia doesn’t feel like a real place; none of the descriptions stood out or made me feel like I had a grasp on the culture, customs or even geography of the place, and for the most part I felt like this could have been set in any generic fantasy Kingdom. I’m not saying I need a Game of Thrones style detailed map and history, but having a bit more creativity in how the land is described, what the people wear, what they eat or drink would have been helpful. It’s not just the physical descriptions of the place that are a problem, it’s also the history and logic of the country. This is a Kingdom that’s stuck in time, since the Elder King is afraid of change and has banned it. And yet, the consequences of this seem to be nonexistent. First, how come there are no people, especially ones who live in the Ash, where the Black Plague is apparently abundant, who have ever rebelled against the King? How come no one is concerned or angry that because he has made no improvements over the centuries he has ruled, his subjects are dying off, and how has the plague not spread further? Moreover what doesn't change exactly? Are people still farming the same way? What about new generations? How are there very few mages if there's more people? If the dead can't reproduce, how are there any living royals left if the King has ruled for centuries? There is some mention of the palace being added more towers and rooms to host the ever expanding royal population, but wouldn't that be change? Or is it only change if it benefits the poor? Even the little things that should build on the world are neglected, like fashion trends and clothes staying the same for centuries. Even villagers in far away provinces have made no secret efforts to make improvements in their lives, or rebel; the most we get is some contraband coffee . There is an interesting set up here for a potentially serious situation if there are new types of mages that exist, or people from the Ash being fed up with being forced to live in squalid conditions with no work, but we never get any pay off. The atmosphere in the book isn't oppressive either; we never get the sense that things are bad or people are unhappy, which would make no sense considering how things are presented to run in this place. For a better example of what being frozen in time would actually look like, and is an inspired take on this same concept, I suggest An Enchantment of Ravens. The biggest issue I had with the book is that everything is very surface level, and even the characters can't escape it. All of the characters suffer from inconsistent characterization and informed traits, but also a specific thing that FPS books do that I hate, which is where characters flat out tell you exactly what they are feeling and thinking. For example: we have Odessa, our lead. She is afraid that if without being a master necromancer, she would be nobody. She has no family and no name, outside of her work. First, this is not true; we are shown from the start that Odessa has a loving relationship and lots of close friends; second do you know how I know this is her central conflict? She flat out spells it out for us, in chapter 1. We don't get any scenes or moments of her being devoted to the job, no points where her being a workaholic meddles with her personal life or threatens something else she cares about, there are no characters who react poorly to her being an orphan (in fact everyone seems to love and care about her). Her being the king's favorite necromancer is mentioned several times, but the King has barely any presence in the store, so we don't really get to see what kind of relationship they have. The most we get are a few moments of her being defensive or bitter that Evander wants to leave Karthia, (which is forbidden), but it doesn't make much sense to me why she wouldn't want to leave if they are so devoted to each-other. He too is a necromancer and if he can find work and travel in the outside world, why couldn't she? He's offering to leave his title behind, so if they were to leave Karthia, they would both be nobodies so I genuinely didn't understand why this was a fight they were having at all. Odessa isn't the only one who suffers from this, though she is hit hardest because we get the story from her PoV. The other characters have this same issue; they spell out their character traits, opinions, feelings and even entire relationships, and there is never any ambiguity about what they are thinking or feeling. The most egregious example was the relationship between Master Cymbre and Odessa. They are supposed to have this really tender mother-daughter bond, and we never see any of it. We are told by Odessa how she was raised and mentored by Cymbre, we are told she considers her a mother and how she always counted on her for guidance and help, but on page, they have 2 conversations, both including other characters, and the few scenes they do have alone, they aren't even communicating. I don't understand how you can fuck up a mentor figure this badly; Master Cymbre was a completely superfluous character and she might as well not have been in the book. Even the conceit of this book was not taken to its full potential. First, the Deadlands were woefully underdeveloped; I liked the idea of the stillness, treachery of the spirits and changing landscape, but the writing didn't convey any atmosphere. The Deadlands weren't creepy, they weren't eerie or sad, they were just there. This is especially sad, because the Shades that lurk there are supposed to be what nightmares are made off. The Shades too were just there. They are supposed to be incredibly powerful and repulsive, but the writing just didn't convince me of either. There was so much potential to describe them as this amalgamation of bile and rotting corpses strung together by dark magic, but they are never written as particularly threatening; most of the time when they kill someone we are just told they screamed and fell dead, which has no bite as something terrifying. The only creativity I could see in the book were the mechanics of the dead. I liked the idea of them being these slowly rotting corpses, being constantly cold and hungry, of having to cover all their skin in case someone lays eyes on them and they become Shades. There is a real sense of dread about these creatures, and if Marsh took the concept to the extreme, we could have had this genuinely deep, interesting exploration of what the price for bringing someone to life would be, and if being alive was worth the misery of such an existence, and the constant peril of turning into a monster. For a book about necromancers, necromancy is a subplot. We go to the Deadlands and we find a spirit, but we never get to see what a raising actually looks like. This happens a lot in the book, where what could be an interesting scene or concept is just skipped over. The plot was very simple, and I immediately guessed who the main culprit would be. Even if I had any doubt, there is a scene in the book that outright tells us who it is, but Odessa is too stupid and naive to notice, which is not a good sign from the supposed best necromancer in the land. The character too is a complete waste of potential; they are not developed beyond a very surface level, we never get any hints that they are secretly planning a coup, they never act like they could be against the way the Kingdom is ruled, and yet it was still so predictable they would be the villain. There could have been a really interesting moral and philosophical debate about the price of what they have done being worth the change that it will inevitably bring about to the Kingdom, and how such sacrifice is necessary for things to change for the better. If it had tied in with the poor and plague victims it would have had some actual bite, but no; they are just a one dimensional villain and the good guys are good, even if they are objectively wrong. One big focus of the book, is interestingly enough, addiction. I was not a fan of this plot point, even though it was one of the few things in the book that were done well, mostly because I find no joy or investment in reading about a self-destructive character spiraling deeper and deeper into lethargy and misery while all their friends watch and do nothing. I would have been more interested if the things Odessa does while being addicted to the potion actually had any consequences, like destroying her friendship with certain characters, leaving someone to die because of her incompetence, or hurting someone in her daze, but no. I also found the rehabilitation part too short and inconsequential; again, we skip over most of the harrowing stuff, and 7 days pass in the span of a few pages so that Odessa can be back in business like usual. It felt like a massive inconsequential detour, and it served more to pad out the page count than actually developing and informing her character. Let’s talk about the characters. I already mentioned how the main villain was a wasted opportunity, but so were their allies. They all had a compelling reason to do what they were doing, and if they had been better developed and we actually got to spend more time with them, we could have seen how the state of the Kingdom had brought them to their point. Instead, what we get is one character standing in the way of Evander and Odessa's romance... right. Ok. Danail, Simon and Jax were fine. Simon was Odessa's brother, in that they were both raised at the same convent as kids. The fact he calls her 'sister' all the time, made me cringe, because it's not a title, it's supposed to be sibling talk (do you call your siblings brother and sister as anything but a joke? Yeah, didn't think so). There is a bit about Simon being from a noble family and having night terrors about being separated from them, but we never follow up on it, so it just seems... irrelevant. Danail is Simon's boyfriend, and he has no personality. He is feminine, which I appreciated, in that he wears eyeliner and cares about clothes and fashion, but he neither does much nor contributes much to the plot, other than when Simon tells us they have been fighting. Jax was probably the best developed of the bunch and I actually liked him best. There are some interesting implications about his relationship to Evander, which if intentional are never followed up on. He and Odessa have a thing which was actually written surprisingly well, and he's the only character that exhibits any nuance, in that he doesn't flat out state what he wants and shows care or anger through his actions. However, what he Odessa do in the guise of comfort and moving on is never really explored fully, and I'm having a hard time believing that their 'friendship' could survive beyond the point that Odessa gets sober. We are presented this volatile angry character, and yet he's completely fine that Odessa uses him as an emotional clutch, and negates any bond they might have developed while grieving? Nah. For the girls, we have Valoria, Mereday and Odessa. Valoria was the least interesting character; she is a princess and an inventor. She wears glasses. She is shy. That’s about it for her character. She loses her entire family in one day and has nothing to say for it. Great. Mereday was more interesting, but again, it's all surface level stuff. There could have been something truly interesting about her nursing this crush on Odessa since childhood, but staying away because she has family problems, and because she doesn't want to get in the way of Odessa and Evander. However, we get very little, if any of this, and instead we focus on a really ill-timed romance. Mereday loses her girlfriend and brother in the span of a month, and yet she's fussing about Odessa and kissing her? People process grief in different ways, but this was just... woefully underdeveloped for it not to be squeaky as a plot point. I already talked about Odessa, but I'd like to point out that she could have been a more interesting character if she had been written consistently. She's mean and selfish, which is fine as a starting point for her character, if the book actually addressed these traits. She uses people left and right, is completely immersed in herself and her own pain and loss, that she is incredibly rude to Evander's mother and sister, and dismisses their feelings. She shrugs off her mentor and her friends, and yet at no point does she experience consequences for her actions, not to mention that she feels jealous and entitled if they are friends with each-other or care about anyone more than they do about her. I'm not saying I want Odessa to be alone, I'm saying I want to see her work to regain the people in her life, and make amends for what she does. There was the opportunity here for a genuinely interesting character arc, and instead we get... kissing. The other problem with the characters was that they all sounded exactly the same. With the exception of Jax who swings between kind of sexist and jokey, to violent and jockey, everyone else is indistinguishable. Simon is supposed to be sarcastic, but his jabs and jokes are indistinguishable from the ones Odessa or Evander make. It’s a fantasy book where the characters sound like they stepped out of high school, and I didn't much care for that. Overall, I did not like this book. It was too short, too superficial and too underdeveloped to be engaging. It read like a first draft of a story that’s in desperate need of some personality and editing, and even the cool concept and possibly interesting world couldn’t save it.

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#reign of the fallen #reign of the fallen review #moni talks #book review

[preserving-ferretbrain]

City of … You Get the Idea

by Dan H

Thursday, 23 July 2009

Dan is almost positive about Cassie Clare’s City of Glass~

A couple of weeks ago, our Esteemed Editor got an email from A Reader asking if we were going to review City of Glass. Apparently they’d enjoyed my previous reviews of the books, and had felt that they articulated some of their own issues with the series. I can only assume that said reader’s issues with the series had been “this is shit, shit, shit and I want to tear my own eyes out rather than read another page of it” that being roughly the contents of the last two articles.

The reader particularly wanted to hear about City of Glass because their friends had told them that it was much better than the previous two books.

Well, random reader whose name I don’t know, it is and it isn’t.

A few articles back, I expressed the rather controversial opinion that a TV series (and by extension any other series, including books) doesn’t just suddenly get “good” after a couple of volumes or series of being “bad”. Rather it gets more polished, more competent and more sure of itself and therefore improves immeasurably in the eyes of people who were already sold on the basic premise.

I’d like to go further now, and add that one’s perception of the quality of any given work depends not only on the (to use a loaded term) objective merits of that piece of work but also on the context in which that work appears. In my review of Trudi Canavan’s Age of the Five trilogy (sorry, this article is getting really heavy on the self-linkage) I pointed out that I found the series a little disappointing not because it was actually worse than the Black Magician Trilogy but because it wasn’t much better, and I felt I’d already read a lot of the ideas in it before.

I found that City of Glass had the opposite effect. When you get right down to it, it has all the same problems as the previous two books. Clary is still an infuriating self-insert, Jace is still a whiny little prick whose self-destructive urges grow increasingly tedious, and the whole plot still makes virtually no sense at all. On the other hand once you've come this far, you start to take all that pretty much as read, and enjoy the demon-punching shenanigans.

The other factor that left me slightly better disposed towards City of Glass was, ironically enough, the fact that it still read like Harry Potter fanfic. For the first books, this was a weakness, since it invited comparison to the early Potter books, to which The Mortal Instruments compared unfavourably. The same issues in City of Glass invite comparison with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which is a far better light to be standing in.

Indeed there's a lot about City of Glass that reads like an attempt to address common fan criticisms of, and disappointments with, the final volume of the Potter saga.

The point at which the similarities with Harry Potter got too much for me in the first book was the point where I discovered that a scruffy, paternal character who had been a little bit like Remus Lupin was actually a Werewolf and was therefore exactly like Remus Lupin. This turned into one of the saving graces of City of Glass. If nothing else, post Deathly Hallows “contains a character that is similar to Remus Lupin” can not be considered a point of comparison with the Potter books.

Okay, sarcasm aside, one of the big wasted opportunities that fans complain about with Potter is the various “seeking allies amongst the other magical races” arcs (Hagrid's overtures to the giants, Lupin's infiltration of the werewolves, and so on). There was a lot of buildup in the first five books based around the idea that even without Voldemort's influence, Wizarding society had deep-seated inequalities and bigotries which needed to be addressed and a lot of fans were rather annoyed that they weren't. A lot of fans were even more annoyed that the implicit racism of Wizarding society wound up being reduced to a way that the Wizarding elite could display their superiority.

Where was I. Oh yes, Lupin and Clare's Lupin-analogue. One of the seemingly-major subplots in books five and six of the Potter Saga involves fan-favourite Remus Lupin being sent to infiltrate the Werewolves in an effort to make sure that they did not support Voldemort. This lead to many fans making the foolish assumptions that (a) Lupin might actually do something in book seven and (b) that the Wizards might actually have to fight alongside the other races as equals. Of course what they actually got was Lupin marrying a teenager and dropping dead, and the other races fighting for the wizards in a manner that felt distinctly subordinate.

By contrast, pretty much the whole setup of City of Glass is that the Shadowhunters' only hope of victory is to ally themselves with the four races of Downworlders, and to do so in a way that genuinely involves giving the Downworlders greater respect and increased political power. Indeed, even Clary's super-speshul ability to create new runes is suborned into service to this goal, with her great rune-crafting triumph being the creation of the Rune of Alliance, which allows Shadowhunters and Downworlders to share their powers, creating a union that is part vampire, part lycan and stronger than both. Furthermore, this magic rune-crafting only seals the deal, it's Lucian the Lupin-Analogue who orchestrates the alliance, who brings the Downworlders together and introduces them to the Clave. Clary's role is important but ultimately secondary.

Indeed one of the interesting things about the plot of City of Glass is how little – comparatively speaking – it has to do with Clary and her super-specialness. Yes everybody still wants to do her, but in this volume a lot more attention is paid to the fact that ... well ... Valentine has come back and is fucking killing everybody. It ultimately isn't Clary's specialness that defeats Valentine, it's the support of the Downworlders combined with Valentine's own hubris. Set alongside the messianic delusions of Rowling's “protracted plea for tolerance” it seems oddly mature.

It's been over a thousand words now and I've been broadly positive, so as to avoid losing my internet cred entirely I should point out that there are a lot of things in the book that still annoy the hell out of me. There's still the odd what-the-fuck-inducing simile, although none of them stood out as badly as “almost precisely the colour of black ink”. The characterisation is still slightly wobbly. Alex's homosexuality in particular strayed close to what I would consider offensively tokenistic. A certain amount of page-space is given to Alex's relationship with Magnus Bane, with whom he does in fact wind up. The problem is that all of the page-space devoted to their relationship is devoted to them talking about the fact that they're in a relationship, with a side-order of coming-out angst, and no time or thought seems to be put into the question of why these characters are actually attracted to each other, beyond the fact that they are both males of the homosexual persuasion. I'm straying back into Minority Warrior territory here, but it has a nasty whiff of Clare wanting to include a gay character, but not wanting to actually think too hard about the nasty details of two men being a couple.

She also hasn't got over her irritating tendency to show off. As well as eleven out of the twenty chapter titles being pretentious literary allusions (for a full list see the comments section of this article) she keeps dropping in completely pointless psudo-highbrow references for no clear reason. Jace quotes Catullus for no particular purpose other than to show us that Clare has read Catullus, and there's a particularly egregious sequence which unfolds as follows:

Jace smiled. “De ce crezi ca va conversatia” Sebastian met his glance with a look of pleasant interest. “M-ai urmarit de cand ai ajuns aici,” he replied. “Nu-mi dau seama daca nu ma placi ori daca esti atat de banuitor ce toata lumea.” He got to his feet. “I appreciate the Romanian practice, but if you don't mind, I'm going to see what's taking Isabelle so long in the kitchen.”

Look at meeeee! Look at meeeee everybody! I speak Romanian! Isn't that awesome! Don't you want to have sex with me right now! And I've read Milton! And Rimbaud! And Lawrence! And Euripides! And the Bible! And Wilde! And Pope! Look at meeeeee!

What do you mean you expected something relevant to the story?

Anyway, long story short, if you liked the last two books, you'll probably think this one is, like an orgasm on toast or something. If you didn't like the last two books, you probably won't actually like this one either, but you probably won't want to throw it across the room in anger more than once or twice.Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Young Adult / Children

,

Cassandra Clare

~

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~Comments (

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Wardog

at 22:20 on 2009-07-23What's *truly disturbing* about this whole business is that articles on the subject of Ms Clare have slipped over 3 which means SHE GETS HER OWN THEME! ARGH!

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Arthur B

at 22:28 on 2009-07-23Isn't it over 4, in fact?

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Viorica

at 23:13 on 2009-07-23

but it has a nasty whiff of Clare wanting to include a gay character, but not wanting to actually think too hard about the nasty details of two men being a couple.

She comes from fandom, and fandom is very big on fetishising gay relationships without actually respecting the particpants as *people*. Basically, there's a lot of porn, and angst is poured on lke chocolate sauce, but the characters themselves might as well be actors in a pornography for all the depth they get. That sound about right?

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Dan H

at 15:53 on 2009-07-24The weird thing is that it isn't even porny, it's totally perfunctory. The only evidence that they're remotely attracted to each other is the fact that they talk about it a certain amount.

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Arthur B

at 17:04 on 2009-07-24Sounds like tokenism to me - idly mentioning that two characters happen to be gay and into each other in order to tick the box, and then forgetting all about it.

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Arthur B

at 22:43 on 2009-07-25Behold:

the serpent eats its own tail

.

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Viorica

at 00:59 on 2009-07-26You know what's really funny about the whole thing? One of the first stories posted in that section was a well-known

Roswell

fanfic with the names changed. The best part was when one of the "author's" defenders pointed out that "Even CC used to borrow from people!"

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Leia

at 09:31 on 2009-10-14Now that I've finally got round to reading these books, I can finally comment on your reviews, Dan. What was your take on the incest?

The weird thing is that it isn't even porny, it's totally perfunctory. The only evidence that they're remotely attracted to each other is the fact that they talk about it a certain amount.

But can't one say the same thing about Clary & Jace or Simon & Isabelle & Mai? I mean, there isn't really much reason why the respective individuals have fallen in "love" each other (put in quotes because I am old and jaded and wary of using that word to describe teenage romantic relationships) in the space of a month other than they just are...

That aside, I am torn between really liking the original ideas that CC put in the books (and the trope reversion she did on some of the more derivative ideas) and despairing of the way the protagonists are portrayed. I have less problem with Clary being able to make new runes - there is at least an explanation for that in-story and the hero being "Chosen"/"Super-Speshul"/"Uniquely Powerful" is a trope as old as time and it's not going to change with this book - than I do with Clary being written as an inconsistent and generally unlikable person and at the same time as a character that the writer evidently expects us to love and admire.

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Dan H

at 16:02 on 2009-10-14

But can't one say the same thing about Clary & Jace or Simon & Isabelle & Mai?

To an extent, but I think there's a difference. Clary and Jace, for all its histrionics is actually given pagecount. Within the worldview of an adolescent power fantasy, meeting the Boy of Your Dreams and falling in love with him instantly is perfectly acceptable, and we get *genuine* evidence that Clary has feelings for Jace. She thinks about him all the damned time after all.

Simon's relationships are given cursory treatment, but they really are cursory relationships.

Basically Simon gets relationships that are like real teenage relationships, founded on convenience and vague physical attraction. Clary gets a relationship that is like teenagers *think* their relationships are or should be (q.v. Buffy/Angel, Bella/Edward etc). Alex gets ... sort of arbitrarily paired off with a man, because he is a gay.

I think you're right that Magnus/Alex is no *less* satisfying than Simon/Isabelle, but it's given greater significance within the text. Simon's relationships are secondary to his relationship with Clary, while Alex' "gay arc" is basically his entire story.

As for the incest, it didn't bother me, chiefly because I fully expected her to cop out at the end, which she duly did. On a more general note, I do find Fandom's obsession with incest slightly squicky, particularly when paired with its obsession with homosexuality.

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Leia

at 16:27 on 2009-10-14Well, I don't know if pagecount alone counts (pun unintended!) as substance. I mean, Clary's romance(s) will definitely take center-stage because she is the main character and naturally, anything that has to do with her will be the focus of the story. Also, TMI is pretty much a romance between Clary & Jace with the backdrop of a demon-infested Manhattan and an impending war to keep things interesting. But despite all the paragraphs used to describe their epic love, Clary's and Jace's feelings for each other don't seem to be anything deeper than physical attraction. Unless they're making out, they don't even act as if they *like* each other most of the time. The same can be said about Alec and Magnus. They apparently "love" each other because they're both hot and oriented in a way that make them attractive to each other.

Simon's feelings for Clary (and Alec's for Jace) are the only ones that might actually make sense - but again, you wonder why *anyone* would fall in love (not lust, but love) with people who resemble Clary and Jace in real life.

I'm miffed that she copped out of the incest at the last minute, especially after she claimed that she wrote TMI because of research done on Genetic Sexual Attraction and the Westermack Effect. There was something almost intellectual about the emphasis on Clary having no physical attraction to Simon because of their close history while she had a strong attraction to Jace because of the GSA effect. Then she nixed that completely and completely contradicted every attempt at intellectualism by adding the melodramatic and medieval angle of Clary being violently repulsed by Sebastian/Jonathan's kiss.

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Dan H

at 00:26 on 2009-10-15I think we're talking at slightly cross purposes. I don't think Clary/Jace is *functional* but I think it's *believable* not in the sense of being realistic, but in the sense of being something you can understand. You can understand that Clary is invested in the relationship.

By comparison, Alex/Magnus has a bit of the old Tonks/Lupin about it. It just kind of comes out of left field.

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Leia

at 07:35 on 2009-10-15OK, I see what you mean. I don't really agree with it. Alec/Magnus didn't appear out of the left field to me - CC's writing isn't particularly subtle. What seemed debatable was whether Alec was invested in the relationship and I think the scene with Jace, when Jace confronts him about his (Alec's) own crush on him (Jace) and Alec faces the fact that his crush isn't so much about love but about safety, covers this.

Er... I can't believe I am defending TMI! I'm not saying the Alec/Magnus romance was particularly well done... but it's about par to most of the other romances in the book. It certainly was better than the Jocelyn/Luke which was one that I really thought came out of the left field and was just CC's insistence on having a cookie cutter happy ending for all characters.

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Dan H

at 11:53 on 2009-10-15I think the thing is that in most of the other relationships I can see what the partners find attractive about each other, even if I don't necessarily agree with it. Clary is attracted to Jace because he's exciting, dangerous and forbidden. Simon is attracted to Clary because they're good friends and he'd like to be "more" (plus Clary is of course super-speshul).

By comparison, Alex seems to be attracted to Magnus because ... well ... because they're both gay. Part of it is simply that Alex isn't a viewpoint character so we don't get his perspective on things, but I do think that you have to be very careful with homosexual relationships in fiction not to reduce them to "I'm gay, you're gay, let's do gay together".

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Sister Magpie

at 15:20 on 2009-10-15Heh. You're reminding me of that movie Grand Canyon where a characters sets up two people he barely knows, telling them they're perfect for each other. And it turns out they do get into a great relationship. But then one day they realize that neither of them knew the guy very well...so why exactly did he think they were so perfect for each other when he didn't know either of them.

And then one of them says--quite possibly correctly: "Maybe we're the only black people he knows."

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Andy G

at 15:42 on 2009-10-15

"I'm gay, you're gay, let's do gay together"

This could have a certain appeal as a very direct chat-up line however ...

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Jamie Johnston

at 00:28 on 2009-10-16Ooh, I can one-up Sister Magpie's story with an anecdote from Real Life! A show I was in had two and only two gay men in the cast, and practically everyone else was seriously shipping them throughout rehearsals. I was all righteous and "Yeah but you're only saying that because they're the only two gay men", and everyone else said, "Mm, true", and then they got together and remain to this day a lovely couple. Don't you hate it when tokenism works?

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Leia

at 07:27 on 2009-10-16

Oh I certainly agree that one has to be careful with tokenism and there is a lot of tokenism in TMI. At the same time, I think - as much as I hate defend CC - that I'll have to give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she put just as little thought towards Alec's feelings for Magnus as she did to Isabelle's feelings for Simon and certainly more than she did to Jocelyn's feelings for Luke. In fact, that's probably not even a compliment!

I'm actually more miffed about the "Sebastian is eveeel" because he has demon blood when the whole series hinges on the concept that it is wrong to discriminate or persecute the Downworlders for their demon ancestry.

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Wardog

at 09:40 on 2009-10-16Just to throw in my two coppers, about a book I haven't read ... I think the difference is that thoughtless heterosexual relationships have, well, centuries of cultural precedence behind them. It is very easy to invest in heterosexual relationships because we join up the dots automatically even when the author doesn't bother to do it for us. It doesn't matter whether we personally find the *depiction of the relationship* convincing.

Take Clary and Jace - as Dan says above, The Dangerous One and The Superspecial One is a well-established trope.

The problem with homosexual relationships is that what you tend to get is The Gay One and The Oher Gay One.

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Dan H

at 10:25 on 2009-10-16

I'm actually more miffed about the "Sebastian is eveeel" because he has demon blood when the whole series hinges on the concept that it is wrong to discriminate or persecute the Downworlders for their demon ancestry.

Once again it's rather reminiscent of the treatment of muggles and muggleborns in Harry Potter.

Treating non-wizards as second class citizens because they can't do magic? Fine. Treating wizards as second class citizens because they have ancestors who can't do magic? Not fine.

At the risk of getting onto highly dangerous ground, it's a lot like some of the well-meaning-but-actually-rather-dodgy stuff you got post 9-11 about how you shouldn't be prejudiced against Muslims that all wound up saying "remember, some Muslims aren't terrorists, although they probably know people who are".

Although on a wider level, I think that might be a problem with using "demon" as a metaphor for "minority". There's a big difference between being black or gay and being a bloodsucking corpse that regularly kills people.

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Leia

at 10:46 on 2009-10-16

The politics of the TMI fantasy world certainly isn't very well thought out. The Shadowhunters are supposed to protect the mundies from demons... but they despise them and treat them like dirt. And like the Muggle/Muggle-born dilemma of HP, this is something that is never addressed in the books. If anything, the author supports the "Mundies suck!" rule when she turns Simon into a vampire so that he can be more of an equal to Clary and her new gang of super-speshul teens. Then going back to Sebastian - he's evil because he has demon blood as a result of Valentine's experiments but why aren't Clary & Jace saints for having angel blood?

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Dan H

at 23:42 on 2009-10-16

but why aren't Clary & Jace saints for having angel blood?

I'm not certain that we aren't supposed to think that they are...

Gosh that's a lot of multiple negation.

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Wordless

at 07:23 on 2009-11-12Im sorry I know this petty but did you notice the number of punctuation errors in the entire book. Comma splices, nonsensical metaphors....alright its a personal issue but when your grade average goes from A to B/C because of lousy grammatical errors in an essay and you see a grown woman publishes an entire fucking book AND its a bestseller!!! well...just makes you wanna piss on education doesn't it?

Jace smiled. “De ce crezi ca va conversatia” Sebastian met his glance with a look of pleasant interest. “M-ai urmarit de cand ai ajuns aici,” he replied. “Nu-mi dau seama daca nu ma placi ori daca esti atat de banuitor ce toata lumea.” He got to his feet. “I appreciate the Romanian practice, but if you don't mind, I'm going to see what's taking Isabelle so long in the kitchen.”

That just pissed me right the fuck off!!! the guy already SAID he speaks Romanian....I sat for another hundred pages waiting for the relevance of that. Well...at the point where Sebastian died, i realized there wasn't. call me an idiot but I thought there'd be a last little dialogue: Maybe a "remember what i said..." or something.that was a stupid piece of paragraph that was pretencious and made me wonder what people who actually read Romanian and felt like

you know, someone comes up to with a superior expression and says;

Hi My name is Kimberly. I speak English. How are You?

Plus Magnus as a character intrigued me for a while, at least in the beginning before the whole gay thing....i liked his little autobiography even thought he would be that gray character that was a little complex. then he said he loved Alec. then I threw up.

*sigh*no im not done yet.

but to speed it up I'll ask my problems in the form of questions.

Did anyone notice that Aldertree read like a mixture of Fudge and Umbridge?

Malachi was that new minister of magic watisface-the lion dude!

what was the point of he clave?-they did nothing significant from start to finish

where was the Urban fantasy? it read like a medieval one-no electricity, cars basically most of the stuff that makes urban life well...urban. Clares exact words were:"these urban landscapes hold their own reverence, beauty"blah blah blah... so yeah where was that?

ugh.

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http://quimtessence.livejournal.com/

at 01:51 on 2009-12-08Agreed. On everything. Agreed!

My point, however, is on the bit of Romanian that is gratuitously quoted above by you: It. Does. Not. Make. Any. Sense. At all.

Just... What the fuck? It's pointless. There are spelling mistakes in it. It's... so random. I feel violated, truly.

I wish I could add more to this, but the trilogy is just as bad as I always knew it would be from the instant someone mentioned to me that Cassandra Claire, known Harry Potter fan fiction plagiarist, had been professionally published.

*headesk*

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Bookwyrm

at 03:39 on 2013-02-06Oh the Mortal Instruments Series... how I loathe thee.

I'll spare you all rant about all the things I detest about this series and just ask a few questions about some major plot points.

(Spoiler Warning)

Do you think the reason that Clary and Jace's attachment to each other is a result of the angel blood? If I recall correctly the Faerie Queen said something about a predication about Clary falling for someone with the same blood. Maybe having angel blood creates some kind of magical soul-link or something.

When the angel gave Clary a wish why did she only use it to save Jace instead of asking the angel to resurrect all of the people who died in battle?

Also is it wrong that I somehow liked Sebastian better than Jace even though I knew he was evil before I read the book?

#Ferretbrain #The Mortal Instruments #City of Ashes #Dan H #Harry Potter #Cassandra Clare