#//i love him saying shit like this in his internal monologue and whatnot

[troublcmakcrs]

▸   @nebula-drcams   ⟶   ❛  let me be clear. i don’t believe in any of this. { Velvet @ craig }  ❜   ╱   (  aptly named , accepting .  )

“I don’t blame you,” Craig said, shrugging.  Who was he to tell people what they should or shouldn’t believe?  For years, he had tried to do that and got nowhere.  If there was one thing Tweek had taught him, it was that once someone was convinced of something, there was almost no chance of unconvincing them.

Craig leaned forward on his bench, rested his elbows on his knees, looked steadily up at her.  “Look, nobody knows better than I do that there’s some fucking bullshit that goes on around here sometimes.  If I didn’t have the luxury”—heavy, heavy sarcasm—“of being from here, I’d probably write it all off myself, so I’ll be the last to say you’re stupid.”  At least, for that.  He had no qualms with telling someone they were being an idiot if and when they really were.  He didn’t put half as much energy into convincing anyone of anything these days, but he’d still say they were a moron.

“Stick around long enough, though, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.  You picked on absolute hell of a place to end up, I’ll tell you that.”

[ushioink]

(Part 1 of Careful,)

The world’s a little quiet today, or maybe she thinks this way because the AC is on full mode. Her earphones are pressed on her ears, and her fingers are running over the laptop keyboard in light speed. Everything she’s doing is an example of tranquility. She’s trapped in this sphere of solitude, and she loves it. The library is entirely empty, too, considering it’s early in the morning for torture. But whatever, she likes when things are clear and monotonous.

Of course, every good thing is bound to the burden of decomposition, and so her quiet is disturbed. At first, it’s just a body that’s hovering over her table. A large body. Enough to darken her desk and wide enough to block the cool air of the AC gushing over her. She’s intending to ignore it, but she’s not exactly good at that. So she takes off her earphone and pauses her monstrous clicking. She looks up, glare taking place over the dead shapes of her bitch face, ready to confront the person stripping her of her cocoon. Only, she doesn’t see a stranger.

It’s a man, and she’s not familiar with men - usually she’s just a virgin in all aspects of the opposite sex - but he’s not a face well forgotten. He’s one of the dudes that people whispered about in the hallways, and even her, an antisocial not-give-a-shit girl has heard about him. She’s a bit mortified about his sudden station over her table, but she forgets about her curiosity to resume her glaring. He winces a little because of her harsh glaring, especially when she pulls her earphones so she can hear the sound of her eyes going absolutely still in the dangerous motion. Besides him stands another man, a taller one, and he, too, sparks recognition in her well-organized mind. But she doesn’t give this other man attention; she only looks at the shorter guy.

“I have a proposition.” He says, trying to keep his voice steady. She’s a little - a lot - annoyed about his demanding tone, as if he’s used to dropping requests that take no for an answer. So, she scoffs.

“No.”

His eyes, which were narrowed down in a way to intimidate her (as if) widen a little, and he splutter. “You didn’t even hear what I have to say!”

“Don’t care, still no.” She returns back to her speedy typing, just to have something to do and to irritate the guy. God knows how well-versed she is in the effects of ignorance. She hopes he too, is immensely annoyed by it.

His narrowed eyes go a little wide, before he narrows them again. He looks down at the unoccupied chair across her chair, then at her, who’s still pretending to be immersed in her ridiculous writing, before pulling the chair out from under the table and plopping his pretty little butt over it. She doesn’t give him the attention he desires, not even when he releases a big sigh of relief. She keeps on clicking on her keyboard, completely unbothered. This makes him annoyed for some reason. No other female has ignored him like that when he graced them with his pretty, dark presence, and no other person has taken it so far to pretend he doesn’t exist, either. He’s damn well-aware of what he does to people, both genders, whatnot with his beautiful kohl-ridden eyes, his thin, pink lips that perfectly curl into a pout that’s deadly, and his killer body. What’s wrong with this woman? He actually came here by the stupid, stupid convincing tactics of his friend to beg for help, and he’s being swiped off like dirt? Ridiculous!

He curls a fist over his mouth like a fake posh man and clears his throat, making her look at him with her deadly, iridescent eyes. “What if I offered you ten thousand dollars for catching a mice trap in the Dark Dungeons?”

The Dark Dungeons is a place in the university’s library where everyone just pretends doesn’t exist for some reason - probably because of all the boring past researchers of the graduated students stacked there - and ultimately ended up being deserted. A lot of students are scared to venter there alone, recapping fake tales about pale ghosts and demons that are there to hunt them. She’s not afraid of such stupidity.

“Okay,” she shrugs casually, pausing in her rapid typing and closing her laptop. The student blinks at the quick gesture. “Pay it in cash?”

He’s dumbfounded; of course he is. He hadn’t anticipated his dumb proposition (which isn’t even real) to be met with such ease. He continues to blink, “But you just said no.”

She shrugs again, crossing her fingers over her laptop like a CEO waiting for a colleague’s destruction. The fist he’s holding against his mouth is put down on the desk. He wipes his expression clear of his flabbergast. She doesn’t allow him to say anything, though. “It depends on the proposition, really, and my capabilities in doing it. I can catch a mice trap in the presumptuous Dark Dungeons, and I will agree on it for ten thousand dollars. This is, knowing you, the only good offer you’ll be willing to give. I don’t want to hear the rest, because I know the rest, and I refuse the rest beforehand.”

“So you know who I am?” He sounds delightfully surprised. It’s the only thing he caught from her monologue, the fact she knows who he is despite only discovering about her recently.

She gives him a look as if he’s an idiot. Then, she returns to her work and opens the laptop. His cheeks flush at that look, still surprised that she’s not even remotely affected by him. He finally gives his companion, a tall guy who casually slipped on the seat beside him and practically occupying the entire space with his large body, a helpless look; and his friend merely shrugs disinterestedly.

“Hey,” he changes tactics by knocking on her desk with his knuckles, his eyebrows slightly growing narrowed as he frowns.

The man’s a little bit upturned by the mischievous twinkle that goes on like a bell on her eyes as she ignores him, a spark that would have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t been sitting close to her. But it’s strange nevertheless to see her, a woman so poised, a woman full of confidence and empathy, show such molecular emotion. Mind blowing

“Look at me. Hey!”

She looks up at him, the twinkle shifting into deep, rooted annoyance. “Yes? Is there anything of significance that you want to tell aside offering a proposition to a complete stranger?”

He’s dumbfounded yet again. “Is that a way to talk to someone? What a potty mouth you have! Do you use it to kiss people?”

She’s the one dumbfounded now, fooled at her own game of ignorance. “Excu.. excuse me! Potty mouth! Me? I’m a polite person, thank you very much. I’m just in tune with reciprocation at the moment.”

He sounds extremely frustrated when he says, “What the fuck does that even mean?”

The companion of the rotten boy clears his throat before she can retaliate, and she gives him her attention for the first time since he sat himself next to his friend. His face is long and droopy, lazy, and his eyes are squinted as if he’s trying to make sense of her tiny figure sitting across. When he speaks, his voice is husky. “Yah, don’t yell. We’re in a library.”

They glare at him, their eyes holding icicles. He huffs. “The last time I’ve been here, the librarian kicked me out for knocking one of his shelves. If he knows that I’m here again, which he will by your loud voices, I’m going to be staked. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve seen a lot of vampire movies. Staking seems really hurtful.”

They shoot him disbelieved eyes. He puts a hand over his chest. “I have a sensitive heart. A wooden stake will make my delicate organ scar. That’s not good on my resumé.”

The first guy gapes at his friend, whereas she shakes her head in disappointment of being a part of this conversation. She goes back to her work while poking her tongue on the insides of her cheek, trying to restrain her growing fury.

“What?” The tall companion looks at his friend weirdly, “You haven’t seen the resumés I’ve seen online. They have applications out of this world. What if my beautifully intricate heart is required? Don’t want it marred!”

“Why the fuck would anyone ask for an image of your heart, Yeol? What job even requires the internal lookout of your organs?” His friend rebuts.

“How’d I know? I’m not logged in to alljobs.com!”

“Maybe you should, so you’ll be prepared to have a reasonable answer to your dumb shenanigans!”

“Will you both just shut up!” She snaps, smashing her laptop closed (again). They turn to her, blinking. “Why the fuck you’d even sit in front of a person you don’t know and have this conversation while they’re listening?”

They look scorned, cheeks going red. They regretfully look down at their laps, fiddling with their fingers.

“Now,” she exhales from her nose angrily, resembling a red-faced dragon (she doesn’t actually blush, but the running fury that’s gobbling her up leaves her face looking like a swollen tomato). “What the fuck do you want?”

The smaller man opens his mouth to say his demands once again, but she rudely raises an open palm up, squinting. “Speak gently. And slowly. And politely.”

He glares but complies. “I have something to ask of you, a proposition. Actually, you’re not a stranger, at least not as if now. I know who you are.”

She quirks a sharp eyebrow up, unrelentingly and very judgmentally. She’s not the type of person to be swayed over anything, definitely not over this man, too.

He rolls his eyes. “You’re one of the smartest students in our batch, and I kinda have been going through a lot with one of my assignments, so this idiot here told me to ask you for help.” He points to his companion, who salutes mockingly using two of his fingers. “It’s about the aftermath of war, and the effects it leaves on the intermingled classes of eighteenth century China. I’m very bad at writing shit. I confuse my statements; I fail at rearranging my paragraphs; I suck at choosing intellectual perspectives; and I most definitely can’t be on the neutral side to the point of sounding extremely radical. Would you help me write my research? It’s worth a bit of my marks considering I didn’t take the midterm for, ahem, certain reasons,” there’s a soft hue of red that glows in his cheeks, and feeling his blush, he scratches them with his long nails awkwardly.

“No.” The cute color doesn’t deter her at all, and she begins to collect her laptop and books to leave. Or, pretending to. She does not have any thought about leaving, not even when there’s a handsome stranger trying to invade her tranquil space. But, regardless of her wants, such gesture made the man nervous. He snaps his head up, eyes wide, and pushes himself to his feet quickly to stop her from leaving.

“Why not?” He begins to be angry. “Is this because you know who I am? Does my... Does our reputation precedes us?”

She gives him a cooly leveled look. “I only give favors to friends. You’re not a friend. Very simply. I couldn’t care less about your reputation, which does in fact precedes you. People tend to talk about things they don’t understand. The juiciest the gossip, the more people want to talk about it.” She pauses a little, confusedly staring at them. “Don’t you guys know that? When you wear these clothes, pierce all parts of your body, flash all of your tattoos, and walk around intimidating people, they will talk badly about you. Huh, I thought you guys are smart enough to discover this much about the nature of people.”

Whereas he looks startled out of his way with the sincerity in her words, It’s the companion who takes the time to speak. He asks her, his eyebrow raised. “Why’d you think we’re smart?”

She smirks at him, and he’s surprised that it’s actually playful, not malicious. “It’s only those that rebel the constant demands of society that have their heads teetered towards either intelligence, or insanity.” She slings her bag on her shoulder, her face going back to its previous expressionless slate. “Bye now.”

She doesn’t leave. She merely just stands and watches them watching her. It takes the two university boys a second to understand the implications behind her words, and when they do, they groan. They stand up, albeit slowly, and the shorter one dares to shoot her a grumpy, malicious glare, before walking away. The taller one simply tilts his head downwards in a respectable nod before following his friend.

Once they leave, she smiles, and the curl of her lips makes her face radiant, a whole lot flowery than the actual blanket of monochromatic nothingness that usually sticks on her all the time. She sits back down on her seat, opens her laptop, and begins to type again.

-

Oh the long road. Oh the long road. She sighs in her head, her legs heavy and unbalanced, almost sending her to the ground with how weak they feel. After almost six hours in university, with three classes and breaks in between, she’s finally done with all the nonsense that she, daily, has to face. Actually, university hasn’t been on her mind before in high school when she was in her senior year for this exact reason. She is too lazy for something overloaded like university. But, if she is being honest with herself, she doesn’t see herself in any place besides university, especially if she wants to have a ‘decent’ job. So, she tries to succumb to the voice compelling her to move forward, and ignoring the one that tells her to fuck everything and flop on the ground, dead.

A sound calling her name stops her in her long, angry strides, and she turns to the back to see her friend, Sami, waving for her, smiling so preciously that actual stars appear on her eyes. She’s not oblivious to the crowd gathering behind Sami, all males (and some females) staring at her with eyes twinkling with hearts. She reluctantly wave back, and Sami comes running towards her, beaming once she’s standing in front of her.

“You’re heading home?” Her friend asks.

She hums without a verbal consent. Her friend beams again.

“Great!” Sami loops their arms together. “Lets go together, and while we’re on the way, buy me a cocktail.”

“Alcohol this early? And why should I buy you one?” She raises an eyebrow up in ridicule, even though she already knows the answer to her rather dumb question.

Sami rolls her eyes. “No, an actual cocktail, with fruits and all. And you should buy me one because I’m your humble friend who asks nothing of you at all.”

“You ask for things all the time,” she narrows her eyes, and points at Sami’s earrings. “I bought you those earrings,” she points at her bag. “And I bought you this bag. And those shoes. I might as well buy you a house to live in if I’m already this much husband material.”

Sami grins, beaming, and her grip over her arm tightens. “It’d be so great if my future husband actually pays for all of my things. I’ll be a pretty, studious, working housewife that do things for him and accommodate all of his precious needs. Aw, I miss him already.”

“You should be careful not to say this in front of another woman that isn’t me.”

Sami blinks cluelessly. “Why? I didn’t say anything infuriating, did I?”

She pats her head sympathetically, her hand calloused despite the gentle, sardonic gesture. “Not at all. Not at all.”

They walk out of the university’s large grounds with Sami the one doing most of the talking, the bouncing, and the gleeful intervals; her grip tight around her arm, and her soft laughter surrounding them whole. She wouldn’t say that she was entirely comfortable about the concept of having a friend, but it has been two years now since she knew Sami, and she began to understand that in order to enjoy something beautiful, you have to watch it burn first, which’s why she, despite not liking it, disposed herself of her antisocial behavior, and stuck around with Sami.

Upon the huge gates of the university, she catches sight of the two students who had interrupted her morning study with their obnoxious presence. They’re standing in front, one of them - the tall one - is leaning against the large beige wall beside the gates, and the nuisance - the one requesting - is crouching on the floor right beside him, a fake cigar made of paper in between his fingers. They’re already staring at her, anticipating her exit. When her eyes meet the dark ones of the crouching guy, he smirks, his pink lips thin and inviting. He puts the fake paper in his mouth, pretending to inhale, and then pulls it off to exhale loudly, his eyes suddenly half lidded. He’s staring at her. She stares back, then she narrows her eyes, ticking her chin to the side in a silent request for him to look away. His smirk widens, and he doesn’t look away; his eyes invading her soul to the point she feels something scratch at the surface of her skin, begging to be released.

She scoffs. And almost as if he’s hearing her, he waggles his eyebrows teasingly. She blanches, disgusted, and her facial expression catches Sami’s attention.

“Who’re you looking at?” Sami turns to follow her friend’s eyes before she can look away, furrowing her eyes upon seeing the two boys. She turns to her friend curiously; nervously. “Do you... do you know them?”

She’s quick to shake her head, “Nah, I don’t know them outside the rumors that I heard circulating about them. I think one of their names starts with a B? Or an H? Anyhow, I don’t know who they are.”

“Why are they looking at you?”

She shrugs. “Beats me. Probably think I’m a visible, touchable time loop or something. That’d be cool. Have you ever seen Doctor Strange?”

Sami stares at her as if she’s an alien. “What on earth are you talking about?”

She shakes her head. “Never mind. Let’s quicken our pace. Maybe we’ll lose them in the crowd.”

As if hearing their words, the two boys jump to their feet (the one standing merely bouncing around) and they follow after them like two little creeps. They don’t say anything for a while, like announce their already large presence, and she ticks her head backwards with raised eyebrows, meeting their amused - yet frustrated - faces. She tilts her head, silently asking them about what the fuck they’re doing, and the shorter one of the two shrugs, the taller one smirking a little, the cigarette roll that was wrapped around the other’s mouth now in his. She looks away.

Sami notices her friend’s head going forward and backward, and turn around to give them a funny look, a little nervous for some reason. She looks back at her friend and pulls at her sleeve, a frozen smile on her face. “They’re following us.”

“If there’s an ice cube, large enough to have legs and is following me, and the world is so flabbergasted by it’s appearance, but you’re only concerned about taking your way home without interruptions. Would something happen if I gave it attention? No, you know why?“ she leans closer to Sami and with her big, wide eyes, she whispers. “Because it’ll melt away.”

Sami shakes her head in exasperation. Even after two years of being friends with her; she’s never getting used to her random thought processes. Either-way, Sami doesn’t feel entitled enough to say anything against that, and although she releases a little grumble from her chest in irritation at the skin contact, she doesn’t remove her arm away. Smiling, she leans her head on her shoulder.

“Yah. You can’t just pretend we don’t exist.” The shorter one says, or yells really.

His friend scoffs, and it’s strangely shudder-inducing because of his low grating voice. “We’ll follow you home if destiny calls.”

Sami lifts her head to peek at them, then quickly looks at her calm, astute friend. “Are you not going to answer?”

“A bird could constantly peck on my window and I wouldn’t shoo it away. I’m too lazy.”

Sami’s eyes mellow down, and her lips smile. “But that’s exactly what you do, sweetie. You can’t handle disturbances, especially when it affects your general surroundings.”

“You’re right. I’m going to kick their ass.” She stops in her gait, turns around, and glares; Sami stopping next to her. The two university boys pause in their strides, blinking.

“Question, exactly why was I chosen among the high grades receiving bastards in our class?” She raises her eyebrows up. “Is it because you think I’m easy? Or I’m a woman? Is it because you think I’m nice?” She says nice as if it’s a heinous word created for her personal offense.

The boys share a confused look. Then, the tall one clears his throat, readying himself for the paragraph he’s about to spout. “I’ve never once thought you’re easy, and neither have Baekhyun. We’ve seen the way you talked back to the teachers, and man, do you have a temper. I’m actually a bit shaky right now because I’m asking this favor of you. I’m not a misogynist, man. Why’d you make me something I’m not. love women. I love all wonen. Perhaps a little too much,” Baekhyun, the short guy beside him, is nodding his head sadly, “I’d have told Baekhyun to choose Dahyeon if I thought she was as responsible as you are. But the girl’s a klutz. She ruined a paper of mine once. Won’t let her do it again,” he then tilts his head, his confused face getting graver. “I’m sure as fuck you’re not kind, or nice. I wouldn’t have already been going through emotional trauma just by the thought of approaching you, yet, here we are.”

“Here we are.” Baekhyun spreads his arm with a surrendering look flashing on his handsome face.

Sami turns to her friend and analyzes the stone cold expression on her face. She hesitates, for a second, before she says. “They do have a point. You’ve traumatized half of the population in this university.”

“We still have two more years for you to traumatize the rest.” Baekhyun comments cheekily. When she shoots him a glare, he winks. She’s a little surprised. She hadn’t met anyone who winked at her deadly stare-offs. People are terrified of her, not amused of her.

“How many pages do you want your assignment to be? Mine’s going to be a minimum of eight, considering it’s only a meager homework, so I’ll try to shove your own pages between my breaks to save time.”

Their eyes go wide. Baekhyun actually gulps, unprepared for the challenge. “You write eight pages for an assignment worth ten marks?”

She raises her eyebrows. “You’re here begging for help for this stupid assignment, so I guess we’re both pulling up our shits, right?”

He shuts up.

It’s the tall one that answers. “Any page number is fine. Take your pick.”

She nods, “You’ll have five pages, then. I take breaks in between my classes. I have two-to-three classes for five days aside Saturdays and Tuesdays, so we’ll write two pages every week until its due date in three weeks’ time,” she takes her phone and shoves it in the chest of the short guy. “Give me your number so I text you the hours I’m free on. I don’t give a shit if our schedules overlap. When I tell you to come, you come, with your laptop and all of your writing necessities with you. One mistake and you’re out, get it?”

Baekhyun sweats, especially since her expression is deadly serious and her hand, which is still clutching her phone on his chest is cold, deadly so. He gulps anyway and nods. “Thank you, really. Appreciate it. Is there anything I can do for you to repay the favor?”

She smirks, and pulls her hand off of his chest after he accepts the phone. “A bad boy who knows how to say thank you? That’s a new one. And keep the favor until after you deliver your assignment. I’m not sure you’ll wanna give me any favors after I’m done with you. Say, are you willing to pay money?”

He pales. “I’m poor as fuck, ma’am, expected of a university student, right? Please say yes.”

She smirks again, amused of the panic in his eyes. “Relax, idiot. Just wanna check something.” She turns to the tall one. He’s staring right back at her, eyes wide and brown hair fluffy. For a bit, she’s taken aback by the actual fact of how gorgeous he is. Wide, almond eyes, soft hair, tall girth like a skyscraper, and she fucking loves skyscrapers, the taller, the better. He’s wearing a weird mesh of jeans, a t-shirt, and a jacket, but he’s also wearing a sweater on top. He must be sweating in there. His wide eyes turn a little confused when she merely gapes at him, and she notices. She clears her throat, and rolls her eyes so the spectators don’t notice she’s a weird bitch.

“What’s your name?” She asks coldly. There’s a strange warmth circulating her body, but of course, she ignores that.

“Sorry?” He splutters.

She lifts a sleek eyebrow up, holding herself from smirking widely. “Your name,” she points at Baekhyun, who’s blinking down at her phone like it’s a foreign industrial scam. “This moron’s Baekhyun. Kinda noticed you mention his name. What’s your name? I’m a bit curious to know about the chaperone’s name, considering they’re always so ignored and unappreciated in movies.”

He looks a bit flustered, as if he hasn’t noticed he has been a chaperone all this time. He wipes the slight vulnerability that flashed earlier, twirls the paper stick in his mouth, and gives her a mock salute. “Chanyeol, ma’am, but don’t bother memorizing it. We wouldn’t be seeing each other enough for the need of that.”

She doesn’t comment on his words even though she’s curious. She merely tells herself he’s as weird as she is, probably a little arrogant, but of course not as her. No one’s as arrogant as her. She sits on the throne of arrogance. Her parents once thought she had narcissistic syndrome, those assholes, but dismissed it later on when she gave them enough evidence she wasn’t. She pays attention to Baekhyun, coughing to alert him of the actual fact he has been taking too much time typing gibberish on her phone, and not his phone number. She swears to God he probably failed to reach her contacts. He looked like a dumb loser up close like that, but she didn’t want to judge him so severely. A guy who winks at her instead of shit his pants must be a dumbass, but again, she doesn’t want to judge.

Baekhyun looks up from her phone upon her cough, smirks his annoyingly attractive smirk, and juggle the phone towards her (after locking it, for some reason) she tries catching her phone, and thankfully she succeeds. She glares, about to scold him about the degrading act of her precious gadget, when he all but announces.

“We’ll go see our own way now. Thank you for such precious moment. Perhaps we’ll be able to create more while avoiding chopped heads, from your part, of course. May the grounds open up to present you with a fortunate gift,” he does a whole theatrics of bowing, while simultaneously taking a step back, bumping into an unamused Chanyeol. “Adios, my lady.”

He turns around to Chanyeol, who whispers something to him. They begin to walk away, and Baekhyun says something to the taller guy, in retaliation, which earns him an eye roll. Not taking this lightly, Baekhyun jumps - to reach the tall giant - so he can wrap his arm around his neck, and pulls him into a headlock. Chanyeol doesn’t fight. He lets himself be dragged like a deadweight doll, like he’s used to such abuse, and she shakes her head. Chanyeol seemed cool with his indifference, but perhaps he isn’t the one in total control here.

Sami calls her softly, and forgetting her only friend for a bit - the two boys have extremely large presence - she turns to her. She offers a small smile, showing a dimple to her left side, and Sami beams.

“I’m not even going to ask what the heck just happened,” she offers her a hand, Sami; and she looks at it weirdly. “Ready to go home?”

Sighing, she accepts the hand, and agrees to be dragged home. Sami looks down at their hands; and thinks a little, her brows going all intersected. She shrugs, cooly intertwining their fingers together. She doesn’t even blink at the gesture, having been used to it. Out of character, the only thing on her mind at the moment is those two, strange university men.

-

Author Note:

So?

We haven’t got anything grounded yet. We still have a lot to cover! The personality of ChanBaek is beautiful, stick to see our dumb yet gorgeous boys.

Also, if you haven’t noticed already, our OC is freaking DANGEROUS! Chanbaek are in for a ride!

[fangirlovestuff]

Holding Out For a Hero- Steve Rogers x Reader Pt.2

a/n- enjoy!<3 italics are for thoughts / dreams.

part 1

Two people decided they didn't really want to join, so you were left five newbies and five Avengers – Tony, Natasha, Steve, Bucky and Sam.

After a short way, you finally entered the tower. You barely registered how modern the interior design was, wanting to get a good look at everything that was going on inside the tower. They herded you all into the elevators, going straight to the roof.

On the roof, a jet waited for all of you. It was surprisingly comfortable and spacious, and you and Julia sat down next to each other. "The flight is about an hour. Feel free to rest, you'll probably need it." Tony said, taking his seat next to Natasha. Sam had to seat next to one of the men who came with us, but they seemed to get along fine.

You were pretty overwhelmed with the possibility that was dropped on you, so you told Julia and went to sleep.

You felt his warm lips on your neck, then your jaw, then kissing your mouth fervently. You eagerly returned his kiss, running your hands on his toned arms and abdomen. He pushed you into the bed, and you felt his body on top of yours. You hummed in pleasure as he continued his attack on your mouth, and you tangled your hands in his hair. He began trailing down your body, leaving open mouthed kisses on his way to where he knew you wanted him the most. "Steve," you moaned at the sensation of his beard between your thighs. You looked down at him and he grinned at you, kissing up your thigh, closer and closer until he was so near your folds you thrust your hips, and his mouth landed on your—

"Hey! You okay there girl?" you opened your eyes and saw Julia's face staring at you, concerned. You stretched your neck and moved in your seat. Your dream left you a little disoriented, and – shit – a lot wet. You came to your senses quickly. "Why did you wake me up?" you asked Julia upon seeing you were still mid-flight.

"You were fidgeting and breathing really heavily, I thought you were having a nightmare so I woke you up."

"I didn't say anything though, right?" you asked, concerned.

"No, nothing. Why? What was your nightmare about?"

"I don't really remember, that's why I asked. Anyway, you should probably get some sleep too. I'm gonna rest some more."

You put your earbuds in and put your playlist on shuffle. You closed your eyes, thanking every god possible you weren't a sleep-talker. You felt kind of bad about lying to Julia, but you just met her, and really, it was a white lie anyway. With a sigh you shifted and leaned back in your sit.

That's gonna be a problem.

Julia and Natasha already figured out your crush on Steve. You had to make sure he would never ever find out, because if he did you would probably be kicked off the team. despite still having no idea what exactly they expected you to do, working with the Avengers wasn't something you wanted to miss out on.

To Natasha and Julia you could belittle your feelings all you wanted, but you couldn't lie about this to yourself. Sure, you weren’t in love with him, but your crush was massive, as you were sure his—nope, not gonna do that. You giggled internally at your own bad joke. You had to admit – Steve Rogers was your dream man. Aside from being a super-hot super soldier, with great ass and abs for days, and a really sexy beard and his strong arms that that looked like they could manhandle you in the best way possible, and a– dammit. Why do I keep coming back to that? To get back on track, you were sure the super-soldier serum had its physical advantages. But over the years, the world, you included, got to know the man better, and honestly? He seemed amazing.

Steve Rogers will forever be known as the man who, in spite of being a super-enhanced soldier, solved almost all of his arguments in words. Even though he could definitely beat his opponent in a physical fight easily, he chose to put his intelligence and eloquence to the test, and verbally convinced them he was right. He was kind and considerate to every kid or adult that came up to him to express their gratefulness or appreciation to him, always making sure to tell them if they put their mind to it, they could do whatever they wanted. He was an inspiration to an entire generation of kids who were growing up with him as an example. Surprisingly, he learned to manage Twitter, and was constantly tweeting for Lgbtq+ rights, supporting the #BlackLivesMatter movement, or any other good cause he found. He raised money for charity and marched for women's rights. And in addition to all that, he was saving the world one catastrophe at a time.

So yeah, no one could really blame you for having a crush on Captain America. Hell, probably half the country did too.

The Avengers did a lot of press as well. Steve got asked tons of questions about Peggy, until one of these times he lost his patience and almost lashed out at the interviewer, who looked scared for her life.

"Listen here. Peggy is long gone from my life and you never knew her. I think the minimum level of respect you could give her is to not treat her as a love interest." His eyes blazing, he continued, "So if you have questions about Peggy as a person, go ask her family and leave me out of it." He stormed away from the interview.

Later that month an interview went out with the same interviewer.

"I wanna start by apologizing for the last time we met, you were just the hundredth person to ask me that question so I kinda lost it and I'm sorry." Steve apologized.

"No problem." She smiled at him. Sure, hot blonde interviewer. We all know he's hot when he's angry, you thought amusedly.

"It's just that, I really do miss her. She was a remarkable woman, and she achieved so much in her life when I wasn't around, so it bugs me to see her treated like my "love interest" in the media, and not acknowledging her accomplishments really sucks." Steve explained. "I will say though, ever since then no one asks me this kind of questions anymore." He chuckled, "So you did do me a great favor." He smiled at the interviewer.

They continued the interview, talking about Steve's new charity project "All in Challenge", about the Avengers and whatnot.

You shook out of your reverie. In the time you took to have this entire inner monologue, you noticed you were preparing for landing. You resolved to forget your crush on Steve. No matter how wonderful or single he was, you couldn't risk this opportunity. You had to keep it professional.

You landed quickly after that, getting off the plane and stretching your limbs. Tony signaled to come after him, so you followed. He led the way to the compound, where you entered and Wow it's so awesome in here! You couldn't wait to see everything, but before you could start asking questions Tony started talking.

"Hope you had an okay flight. Now you'll be led to your rooms. You can take a shower or something. There are some clothes already there for you. In exactly," Tony looked at his watch, "30 minutes someone will come pick you up and give you your missions, explain how is this gonna go and answer whatever questions you have as long as you don't annoy them too much. Dismissed."

Natasha approached Julia and you. "follow me, your rooms are pretty close to each other."

You took the elevator silently, without any floor cutting lasers this time.

She led you through multiple corridors and stopped in front of a door. "This one is Julia's." Julia went in after hurriedly exchanging your phone numbers.

You and Natasha walked another minute and then got to your room. "Here you go. This one is yours." She smiled at you. "Thanks." You smiled back and entered.

The room was fairly big, and the soft-looking queen size bed caught your eye immediately. It had a set of neatly folded clothes on it. You sighed, knowing you needed to shower and also wouldn't be able to sleep because you slept on the plane.

You got in the shower, enjoying the feeling of the warm water on your skin. You really wanted to sing in the shower as you usually do, but you didn't know how soundproof the walls in here were. Well, gotta kick that habit, you thought.

You got out of the shower, drying off and putting on the clothes that were on the bed. They fit you quite well and were comfortable. You checked your phone- no new messages from Julia. Guess she's still in the shower.

There was a knock at the door. You opened it, expecting to see a serious S.H.I.E.L.D agent. Instead, you found yourself staring into Natasha's blue eyes. It was a very pleasant surprise.

"Come on. You're getting your mission from me."

[doraspn]

i have thoughts (12x19)

but like can we talk about 12x19 just randomly and the way cas’ return to the bunker is framed like a good friend/brother in law’s reaction vs a husband’s reaction

cas shows up, says hello

sam’s like hi but we get a close up of dean instead?? 

looks shocked out of his mind, like he got electrocuted or some shit. sam? why he seems dandy, he recovered immediately 

again, sam asking the question but dean’s the one who’s in the shot okay then

i love how sam’s like hi cas you’re fine thank god where were you?

and dean’s like *hands on hips* no no no back up where the HELL have you been and please tell me you got the milk like i texted you three times i saw you read the texts so where’s the milk also what did you do to those shoes i just bought them for you why are you like this also where the HELL were you?!?!

cas is just an angel standing in front of a hunter asking him to love him just standing there like a drenched puppy who also maybe peed on your carpet and he’s like i had no reception 

dean ain’t having none of that BUT LOOK AT SAM HE’S LIKE UH-OH SHIT I KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING CAS YOU BETTER RUN I’LL HOLD HIM

sam’s internal monologue: i can’t believe i’m getting caught in the middle of this shit agaaaaaaaaain what did i ever do to deserve this

and fucking tell me dean isn’t acting like an angry housewife whose husband can’t make it to his mother in-law’s house for dinner this weekend because of “a work engagement” 

on a scale of 1 to how old the earth is, how much are we pitying sam rn?

imagine how much less drama there would be in this show if it was just sam and cas. 

cas steps closer to dean and explains about angels and whatnot and

surprise surprise he’s looking at dean only

bc sam is easygoing and happy he’s back but look at the jilted husband’s face oh my god dean, chillax

ET TU BROTHER? 

tell me he’s not acting like he’s expecting sam to be on his side in this DOMESTIC because he’s his brother 

“i thought that maybe we could get through this the easy way”

“but i was wrong nothing’s ever easy with these two schmucks”

just, sam’s face in the background. his whole body is bracing for the oncoming storm

“look down look down don’t make eye contact”

like all sam does in these situations is act as the awkward third wheel bystander who’s family so he has can’t just leave. dean’s antics though, i mean dean is such a melodramatic bitch i love it.

cas doesn’t know what to say so dean’s like i know how to end this conversation, like every angry spouse ever

*angrily storms out of the room*

like i get why dean’s upset but come on, this is just such a married couple thing i can’t even

not to mention this is the episode that has the gay mixtape moment which is right after this lmfao 

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 20

In which Mat shows up for the first time this book, and I am...underwhelmed

Chapter 20: On a Broken Road

I return! Adulthood is overrated and I would much rather just read books for a living. Alas.

So. I have tea, and Chapter 20 of The Gathering Storm, and a promise to myself not to leave this chair until the chapter is done. Let’s do this.

“Women,” Mat declared

Well aren’t we off to a great start.

“are like mules.”

*raises eyebrow* done with your shit and liable to kick you where it hurts?

“Wait. No. Goats. Women are like goats.”

So that part last chapter where Tuon thought to him not to dig himself into deeper trouble than he can climb out of? It only took about three words for him to toss the shovel aside and rev up the fucking bulldozer.

Come on, Mat. You ended last book on such a high, don’t ruin it now.

Also that line doesn’t sound very Mat – in terms of diction and syntax, not in terms of sentiment – but I’ll class that as a nitpick and move on.

“Pure poetry, Mat,” Talmanes said

That also doesn’t sound particularly like Talmanes, but in fairness we haven’t seen all that much of Talmanes.

They’d been lucky to find this ancient road, which must have been made before the Breaking. It was mostly overgrown, the stones shattered in many places, large sections of the roadway just…well, just gone.

Almost as if the path is hard to follow, as if there are places where it seems not to connect or make sense, or where there are pieces missing and it’s not at all smooth, and so it’s like a metaphor, you see. The right hand falters and the left hand strays, but they’re both making their way back towards the centre now, even if one is on a broken road and the other is still trying to find his path, so it’s all symbolic and whatnot.

Sapling pines had begun to sprout at the sides of the roadway and between rocks, miniature versions of their towering fathers above.

It’s the ciiiiiircle of liiiiiiiife…..

I’m sorry.

“It’s like...Well, reasoning with a woman is like sitting down to a friendly game of dice. Only the woman refuses to acknowledge the basic bloody rules of the game. A man, he’ll cheat you – but he’ll do it honestly. He’ll use loaded dice, so that you think you’re losing by chance. And if you aren’t clever enough to spot what he’s doing, then maybe he deserves to take your coin. And that’s that.

“A woman, though, she’ll sit down to that same game and she’ll smile, and act like she’s going to play. Only when it’s her turn to throw she’ll toss a pair of her own dice that are blank on all sides.”

So this feels…off, to me. And not in an overly critical nitpicking sense, but in a this is actually jarring to read sense.

Mostly, I think, it’s because Mat shouldn’t be saying all of this out loud. This reads much more like his internal narrative, and even then it’s usually broken up a bit more. The sentiment – much as it makes me roll my eyes because who doesn’t love misogyny in the form of ‘women are mysterious and entirely incomprehensible creatures set on playing games with men’ – isn’t too far from things Mat has thought before, but the way it’s framed feels wrong.

The long, drawn-out metaphor, the way he’s just monologuing his merry way down this road…on the whole, Mat doesn’t do that. When Mat’s exasperated, we usually get the occasional grumble or maybe an exclamation out loud, and the rest is in his internal monologue, interspersed with the action of the scene.

This is much more suited to Thom Merrilin, really.

Also, when it comes to the subject of Women, Mat definitely makes generalisations both in his thoughts and out loud, but they’re usually more closely linked to specific characters.

“Now, you’ll scratch your head and look at the dice. Then you’ll look up at her, then down at the dice again. ‘But there aren’t any pips on these dice,’ you’ll say.

“’Yes there are,’ she’ll say

Mat just doesn’t talk like this. He doesn’t create entire metaphorical scenarios, complete with dialogue, and then narrate them to make his point. When Thom goes off on his bootmaker story, Mat interjects with “what in the Pit of Doom does this have to do with making those fool women see sense?” And then Thom proceeds to tell this long and supposedly didactic story, while Mat sits there and wonders when we’re going to get to the point, which is Elayne and Egwene and Nynaeve.

This whole game-of-dice metaphor could work, perhaps, if it were broken up into single sentences – most of them unspoken but instead just part of Mat’s own thoughts – and scattered throughout the chapter to form a mini-theme. That’s something Jordan does with chapters from time to time. A Cluster of Rosebuds last book did something similar, actually, with the running theme of courtship-as-tactics.

Mat has just spent an entire page monologuing, uninterrupted even by his own thoughts or narrative. The only other time I can think of where Mat even comes close to talking for that long is when he pulls the stole off of Egwene’s shoulders and starts his ‘no, you listen to me’ routine with her and Elayne and Nynaeve. And the whole point there is the lack of interruption, because the reader knows he has everything completely backwards and is digging himself a rather spectacular hole.

Oh, and the time he gets annoyed at the Eelfinn not answering his questions, and starts running off at the mouth without realising what’s happening. Again, this serves a rather important purpose, because it’s what lands him Odin’s role.

Mat’s character relies heavily on the contrasts and interplay between what he says, what he thinks, what he does, and what happens around him. The play of ironies that drives Mat’s character is created by the dissonance between when he says and thinks, and how he actually interacts with the world around him and how other characters view him, so that the reader actually knows him better than he knows himself. Mat’s character depends on context.  

And you can strip him of elements of that context in certain scenes, but it’s usually with a deliberate purpose – upsetting the balance of his narrative by letting him speak uninterrupted (or think uninterrupted or act uninterrupted) has consequences one way or another.

Here, though, there isn’t any of that. There’s just…nothing but Mat talking. And so we’re completely stripped of the balancing effect that allows his character to work.

“’Clearly you can see that they actually came up as twos!’ And she’ll believe it. She’ll bloody believe it!”

“Incredible,” Talmanes said.

The other issue here – or rather, part of the same issue of a complete lack of context or framing or interspersed balancing narrative, action, or other characters to serve as kaleidoscope lenses – is that Talmanes is being used here as an entirely flat sounding board, rather than as a chorus. The difference between the two can be subtle, which no doubt makes it difficult to write well, but there is a difference. All this line from Talmanes does is to remind you that Mat is not giving a soliloquy, and it doesn’t even do that particularly well.

The point of surrounding Mat with other characters is not so they can act as mirrors or supports but so they can act as lenses, giving the reader a different perspective through which to view Mat, in order to build a more accurate picture of him than he presents on his own.

You have to surround him with chorus and context, so that everything he says and does is filtered and reflected and bounced around off of all these different mirrors, each reflecting a fragment froma  different angle, so that all the fragments come together into a mostly cohesive whole that is more than the sum of its reflected parts for the reader. That leaves Mat free to dive headfirst into the nearest pile of dramatic irony.

Without the chorus, though, without context or characters who serve to inform and illumnate rather than provide a simple and unaltered reflection, you’re forced to more or less take Mat at face value. Which flattens him as a character and also makes things like the misogyny of this absurd dice analogy far more frustrating than it might otherwise be, because the narrative is doing absolutely fuck-all to contradict, qualify, or moderate that view.

So now that I’ve spent more words talking about that monologue than it actually contains…

Oh wait nope we’re still going.

This would probably annoy me significantly more if I liked Mat more than I do; I admit that I’d rather see Mat written weirdly than more or less any of the other major characters. Sorry, Mat. I did name my new fox-neighbour after you, though, so there’s that.

As is, it actually doesn’t annoy me much more than Jordan’s Mat was wont to do, and instead is weirdly interesting to me from a meta perspective, in terms of working out exactly what feels so wrong about this, and why it would have been written this way.

“By the time they’re done,” Mat continued, almost more to himself

Almost? Please. The attempt at putting Talmanes into this conversation is almost more awkward than if Mat has actually been talking to a tree this entire time.

And is far more awkward than if this entire thing had been in Mat’s thoughts. Preferably chopped up and scattered as seasoning throughout the chapter.

“You’ll sit there and stare at the table and begin to wonder, just maybe, if those dice didn’t read twos after all. If only to preserve what’s left of your sanity. That’s what it’s like to reason with a woman”

Actually there’s a name for that; it’s called gaslighting and it’s far more commonly done to women than by them, especially in abusive relationships. But sure, let’s just flip it around and turn it into an accusation against half the population, conveniently placing men as the victims and women as, yet again, mysterious incomprehensible creatures who delight in toying with men.

And speaking of ‘toying’, I wouldn’t find this whole rant nearly as irritating if it were about a woman specifically rather than women in general. It would be more interesting than offensive if he were talking about Tuon here, because their whole relationship is a mess and there’s so much to play with there. This would fit right in with the characterisation of their courtship as a game of strategy and tactics, of manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, of two people at the table each playing a slightly different game.

It doesn’t even all need to be specifically about Tuon – Mat certainly isn’t above a bit of sweeping generalisation – but there needs to be a few anchoring mentions of her. Give 90% of this to his internal monologue and make it mostly about Tuon, and then let him say the other 10% aloud, about women in general, and then Talmanes is only getting pieces of the whole and is responding to those, the reader gets the entire thing, and you start to get some of Mat’s typical contrasts back.

I don’t know who this is but it sure as hell isn’t Talmanes.

Of course, few ‘mountains’ in this area were impressive, not compared to the Mountains of Mist, back near the Two Rivers.

Or, you know, Dragonmount.

But then, it’s hard to be impressive compared to a magic volcano that is pyre, grave, and cairn to humanity’s recurring nightmare and answered prayers.

And Mat was determined. Determined not to be pinned in by the Seanchan again

Militarily, at least.

Innuendo aside, though, this is what I want to see more of with Mat. The whole clusterfuck that comes of being in love with (and now married to) the empress of a nation you despise. It’s an interesting version of the ‘enemies-to-lovers’ trope in that they are both, simultaneously, but in different capacities and contexts, and that? Is fascinating to me, as a concept.

But I also feel like, as with so much else about Mat, I want something written in E but his story is actually written in G. If that makes any sense at all.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is why I have never been able to like Mat as much as I sometimes feel like I should. On paper, there’s a lot about him that’s right up my alley. But then the way it’s executed tends to put more emphasis on the things I’m not so interested in, and leave unexplored the things I am intrigued by. I tend to say that Mat is just Not My Type, but I actually think it’s a case of me being able to see all the ways in which he comes so close to being my type but the story chooses to focus on different things. It’s almost more frustrating, that way.

I should clarify that I don’t even mean this as a criticism. No doubt if Mat were written the way I would want him written, plenty of other people would be having exactly the same issue I’m having now. But it does explain why he irritates me sometimes, and why I can’t quite seem to enjoy him much of the time.

He wanted out of this hangman’s noose of a country.

I See What You Did There.

In truth, Master Roidelle didn’t have a lot of experience being a guide. He was a scholar, an academic. He could explain a map for you perfectly, but he had as much trouble as Vanin making sense of where they were

I don’t know what kind of scholar you’re thinking of, but scholarly and academic mapmaking in my experience involved a hell of a lot of hiking through very real bogs with a compass and a notebook and no free hands to hold an umbrella. Also through a desert taking bearings from the rather homogeneous landscape of low hills because your GPS ran out of battery but like hell were you going to waste an entire day in the field to go back and change them, so you’d better know how to navigate by compass and aerial photograph and make sure the features you plot are still accurate to within a few metres.

Academia and practical field knowledge are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, is what I’m saying here. Anyway. Moving on…

Since this roadway was so disjointed and broken, the pines high enough to obscure landmarks, the hilltops all nearly identical.

Okay, fine, it’s a metaphor. I will grudgingly accept this.

But seriously. Try to tell a geologist that scholars don’t know how to use the maps they make and you’re likely to get a compass-clinometer in the face.

“I’m just asking,” Mat said, pulling down the brim of his hat against the sun. “A commander’s got to ask things like this.”

That second bit, again, should be in his thoughts rather than out loud. Probably with some follow-up thought about how he isn’t going to start being bloody responsible just because he’s married. Something like...I don’t know. This, maybe:

“I’m just asking,” Mat said, pulling down the brim of his hat against the sun. A commander had to ask these sorts of questions. A commander! Burn him, he wanted to avoid battles, not command them. Only, avoiding those battles behind him would have meant leaving all those Seanchan to chase after Tuon. Tuon. His wife. A commander, a husband, and a noble. He had to laugh – it was either that or weep. Just when he had started to think he understood the rules of the game she was playing, she had to marry him and make him some Prince of the bloody Ravens. Well burn him if he was going to let that turn him into a bloody noble, but he was the Band’s commander, whether he wanted it or not, and they were counting on him to see them out of this butcher’s yard. “Just find the flaming mountain,” he said to Vanin, frowning when the man only looked amused.

I mean that’s rough and not really in Jordan’s style either (trust me I would not even for a moment try to claim that I could do a better job of finishing this series than Sanderson; that is not at all the purpose of this), but it’s kind of how I picture this working. Mostly internal monologue, an occasional mention of the whole dice game thing here and there to keep a running theme rather than beating you over the head with a clumsily narrated analogy, Tuon coming up frequently in his thoughts as she’s sort of the cause of his current crisis of self, and a contrast between what he thinks and what other characters see of him.

“Don’t look so glum, Mat,” Talmanes said, puffing on his gold-rimmed pipe. Where’d he gotten that, anyway? Mat didn’t remember him having it before. “Your men have full bellies, full pockets, and they just won a great victory. Not  much more than that a soldier can ask for.”

I think what’s bothering me about Talmanes is that he sounds more like Nalesean here. I liked Talmanes better; can I have him back now please?

“There aren’t losses when you don’t fight in the first place.”

“Then why ride to battle so often?”

“I only fight when I can’t avoid it!” Mat snapped. Blood and bloody ashes, he only fought when he had to. When they trapped him! Why did that seem to happen every time he turned around.

This is better. ‘I only fight when I can’t avoid it’ still feels to me more like something Mat would think rather than actually say, but overall this exchange feels much more true to both of them. And I rather  like Talmanes’s question here.

There aren’t losses when you don’t fight in the first place…it reminds me actually of Rand’s there was a price to be paid for any decision he made. There was a price for who he was. Other people paid it. He had to keep reminding himself that it was a far smaller price than they would pay without him.

Because the answer to ‘then why ride to battle so often’ comes down to something similar, really. There aren’t any losses when you don’t fight in the first place in the same way that Rand’s existence brings a price. Without it, that specific price wouldn’t be paid, but another would. Mat can’t run from battles, and by leading his people through them, he is almost certainly helping to keep the cost from escalating. (Even as he’s helping to change warfare into something even more destructive by introducing gunpowder weapons). There’s a whole interplay, with so many of the main cast, between cost and mitigation, between salvation and destruction.

And so you run into questions like how much destruction is the salvation of the world worth? At what point does the cost become too high? At what point do the scales balance? And how can you accept those costs and not let them consume you, while still retaining enough humanity to care about them at all? Rand’s quickly sliding towards a threshold in that regard, but it comes up in variation with the other characters as well.

Mat tells himself that he avoids battles, but the Aelfinn named him Son of Battles and the name has proved true, and his denials do not always ring entirely true. And yet he does truly hate the price that always must be paid; Mat in the aftermath of a battle is often when I enjoy him the most, because there are some truly beautiful scenes and lines that come out of it.

But perhaps it is precisely this balance he strikes between the thrill of the battle and the stakes and the strategy and the despair at the thought of the cost that makes him a good commander, strategy aside. He can denounce responsibility till he’s blue in the face, but at the end of the day he is always trying to minimise that cost, to keep those who follow him safe. They weren’t even his during that first battle in Cairhien, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon them. Leading them meant paying a certain price, but leaving them would have meant paying a higher, though he wouldn’t have been there to see it.

Why do you ride to battle so often? Because the cost would be higher if he did not.

Probably.

(It’s that ‘probably’ that can cause so much doubt and anguish. You never can prove a negative…)

Of course, Mat was now a nobleman himself. Don’t think about that, he told himself. Talmanes had spent a few days calling Mat “Your Highness” until Mat had lost his temper and yelled at the man – Cairhienin could be such sticklers for rank.

When Mat had first realised what his marriage to Tuon meant, he’d laughed, but it had been the laughter of incredulous pain. And men called him lucky. Well why couldn’t his luck have helped him avoid this fate? Bloody Prince of the Ravens? What did that mean?

This is definitely better. It still feels different from Jordan – and perhaps explains things a little too directly – but it’s far less immediately jarring than the start of this chapter was.

Would the Seanchan chase him? He and Tuon both knew they were on opposing sides now, and she’d seen what his army could do.

YES I WANT THIS. I want Mat to face the Seanchan Army on the battlefield, with them reinforced by the Deathwatch Guard and armed with knowledge from Tuon of Mat’s strategy and style. With women on the front lines because Tuon knows Mat has sworn to himself never to kill another woman. I want a scene that alternates between Mat’s perspective, facing this battle, and Tuon in the Tarasin Palace, unrolling a report delivered by raken with her long lacquered fingernails, calmly issuing orders to her commanders on how to proceed. Mat as the general and Tuon as the Empress, enemies. And that battlefield is between them when next they meet, but they meet as Mat and Tuon this time and so it’s not the same but nor does it erase the blood, and okay I’ll stop because I feel like this is unlikely. Still, I want it, and I will take whatever I can get. I do enjoy the setup, and even these thoughts from Mat about how they are on opposing sides, while in the next sentence he wonders if she loves him. What an excellent fucked up mess.

She’d stayed in his possession, enduring captivity, never running. But he had little doubt that she’d move against him if she thought it best for her empire.

And he will continue to oppose that empire. “You are not my enemy, but your empire is.” Where do you go from there?

Yes, she’d send men after him, though potential pursuit didn’t trouble him half as much as the worry that she might not make it back to Ebou Dar safely.

I rather like this as well – the protectiveness here is rather fascinating in contrast with the fact that, from a military standpoint, the Seanchan are a truly formidable enemy (and more so if Tuon does make it back to Ebou Dar safely).

Puts rather a twist on ‘love thine enemy’, doesn’t it?

So we’re once again in a place where the entities and emblems and figures and thrones are set against one another, even as the people occupying those roles still love. It’s a balance that cannot hold long without collapsing one way or another, but that’s part of what makes it fascinating. Mat and Tuon, Rand and Egwene, Egwene and Gawyn and Elayne and Galad…also Rand and Moridin, if you think about it, which is Fine, I’m fine, this is not a problem at all…

“Mat,” Talmanes said, pointing at him with the pipe again. “I’m surprised at you. Why, you’re starting to sound downright husbandly.”

TALMANES. IS. NOT. NALESEAN.

Also Naleseamanes, you can stop saying Mat’s name every single sentence. Though I suppose it’s understandable; I too would need reassurance that this version of Mat is in fact Mat.

Mat’s denial is also weird and this whole ensuing conversation is weird and feels off. For mostly the same reasons as I’ve already gone on about at length.

“What was that? What does that mean?”

“Nothing, Mat,” Talmanes said hurriedly. “Just that, the way you’re mooning after her, I—”

“I’m not mooning,” Mat snapped […] “I’m just worried. That’s all. She knows a lot about the Band, and she could give away our strengths.”

Just…nope. That first bit is not how Mat talks at all, and his denial takes a very different form to this. This is almost more Nynaeve’s style, though even then it’s not a perfect fit. And while Mat is similar in many ways to Nynaeve, they don’t talk the same way.

There are some moments where he reads just fine, but then something like this comes along and it’s just…I’ve tried in TGS thus far to avoid excessive pointing out of differences between Sanderson and Jordan because for the most part it would be an exercise in futility. There are going to be differences because Sanderson is a different author, and with occasional exceptions I haven’t minded them too much. But this is to a much greater extent, and is to the point where it’s actually distracting.

Maybe if I liked Mat more, I would be more inclined to find things I liked about this chapter? I don’t know. Well, it is what it is. And at the end of the day, weighed against the alternative – the series remaining unfinished – I’ll take this in a heartbeat.

“Ever consider marrying one of them?”

“No, thank the Light,” Talmanes said. Then, apparently, he thought better of what he’d just said. “I mean, it wasn’t right for me at the time, Mat. But I’m certain it will work out fine for you.”

I would not be so certain and also I want my Talmanes back.

Mat scowled. If Tuon was going to bloody finally decide to go through with the marriage, couldn’t she have picked a time when others couldn’t hear?

Okay that got a smile. Well, a fond rolling of eyes anyway.

Aes Sedai were great at keeping secrets unless those secrets could in any way embarrass or inconvenience Matrim Cauthon. Then you could be certain the news would spread through the entire camp in a day’s time, and likely be known three villages down the road as well.

Definitely better, especially because here we’re back to the contrasts and contradictions that are so fundamental to Mat’s character. Because certain key secrets known to some Aes Sedai, such as the fact that he sounded the Horn of Valere, have actually been kept very quiet indeed.

“I’m not giving up gambling,” Mat muttered. “Or drinking.”

“So I believe you’ve told me,” Talmanes said. “Three or four times so far. I half believe that if I were to peek into your tent at night, I’d find you mumbling it in your sleep. ‘I’m going to keep bloody gambling! Bloody, bloody gambling and drinking! Where’s my bloody drink? Anyone want to gamble for it?’”

Hello, 999? I would like to report the abduction and probable murder of Lord Talmanes of House Delovinde. Please let me know if you find him; he was supposed to be here several pages ago and his family and I are growing very concerned.

“You won’t go soft just because you got married, Mat. Why, some of the Great Captains themselves are married, I believe. Davram Bashere is for certain, and Rodel Ituralde.”

Gareth Bryne…well, we’ll have to wager on that one.

“No, you won’t go soft because you’re married.” Mat nodded sharply. Good that was settled. “You might go boring though,” Talmanes noted.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH TALMANES. I miss Talmanes. I suppose this is how I would feel about Mat if I liked Mat more. Huh. Okay, those of you who like Mat more than I do…in the immortal words of Zuko, that’s rough buddy.

Talmanes would be a wine snob, though. I will give him that.

Mat exhaled in relief. He’d begun to think that they might end up wandering these mountains until the Last Battle came and went.

Lost and uncertain, the left hand strays…only not anymore.

This thing with the maps, though…this is another part, I think, of why this chapter isn’t working for me. There’s nothing happening. That in itself isn’t completely new; there are plenty of chapters in Jordan’s books in which not a whole lot actually happens in terms of events, but there’s usually still a purpose to them, and they tend to be done differently for different characters. Someone like Elayne can just about pull off a scene that’s mostly just conversation (well, given some people’s comments, I guess these scenes also don’t work for everyone, but at least they’re in line with Elayne’s character as a politician in a political arc).

Mat also definitely have scenes that aren’t action-packed, but Mat’s ‘passive’ scenes serve a very specific purpose; in these, the passivity is a point unto itself. This sort of scene, with a long stretch of nothing but talking and analysing something, is more suited to Perrin. Mat’s scenes, when they’re not the contemplative storm that precedes a character moment, rely on action to bely the thoughts. There’s a constant play of contractions between what he thinks or says and what he does, and removing the active element causes that balance to collapse. We’re effectively getting only half the picture here, and it throws everything off.

The action can be subtle, but it’s nearly always there. Otherwise, everything is silence and we’re entirely in Mat’s thoughts. Mat doesn’t do ‘talking heads’ scenes. They don’t work for him.

So the tone feels wrong, and the ratio of thought-to-dialogue feels wrong, as does the balance of thought/dialogue and action, but also just the way the scene is framed and planned and outlined feels wrong. It isn’t the right kind of scene for Mat. The conversation might have felt less jarring if it were set against a stronger backdrop, but it isn’t, so there isn’t even anything to distract from the wrongness of the conversations.

Sigh, hello Joline.

Mat and I can agree on one thing: Joline is annoying. And annoyingly incompetent. It doesn’t help that she has the bad luck to show up in scenes that annoy me all on their own, but she really does have a gift for being irritating, and I don’t often side with Mat on who he considers irritating, so that’s saying something.

She couldn’t hurt him with the Power, of course – even without his medallion, since Aes Sedai were sworn not to use the Power to kill except in very specific instances. But he was no fool. He’d noticed that those oaths of theirs didn’t say anything about using knives.

The funny thing is, I don’t know how many Aes Sedai would have noticed that loophole. No doubt some would have. Those who involve themselves with the world, rather than closing themselves off from it. But the others? It would be a very Aes Sedai blind spot for them to have.

Still, from the way each of those Aes Sedai looked at Mat in turn as they reached the front of the line, you’d never know that they owed him their lives. That was the way of it with women. Save her life, and she’d inevitably cliam that she’d been about to escape on her own, and therefore owed you nothing. Half the time, she’d berate you for messing up her supposed plans.

Sigh. This is entirely true to Mat, and true to Jordan’s writing of Mat, and it annoyed me as much when Jordan did it as now, because the narrative continues to back him up on this.

‘Here now’ is an Elend phrase, not a Mat one. The fact that I cannot stand Elend is probably not helping matters here.

Teslyn, at least, continues to be her surprisingly awesome self.

If they’re headed to Caemlyn, that means there’s a good chance of a reunion between Elayne and Mat. I am genuinely looking forward to this. He can teach her to swear and she can teach him to royalty and it’ll be great.

After that, he could make good on his promise to Thom.

YES! MOIRAINE! GO GET MOIRAINE! GO TO THE TOWER SON OF BATTLES! GO TO THE TOWER, TRICKSTER! GO, GAMBLER! GO!

Can I please just skip over Mat and Joline talking to each other? Do I have to read it? I don’t want to. I don’t like these conversations; they always make me annoyed and tired.

“You’re welcome to go on your own,” Mat said.

Please. Please take him up on that. I am so ready to be done with Mat And The Three Aes Sedai. I’ve liked some of his interactions with Teslyn, but aside from that, it has been a trial. (‘A Cold Medallion’ is in the running for my least favourite chapter in the entire series, if that gives you an indication of how very, very ready I am for this particular part of this subplot to end).

Damn it.

“I count two of you,” Mat said, his anger rising. “That means four horses. I figured you’d be smart enough to do that math, Joline.” And then, softer, he added, “if just barely.”

Excuse me, I need to go hit my head against a wall several hundred times. EVERYONE IN THIS CONVERSATION PISSES ME OFF. Joline, because she’s being arrogant and incompetent. Mat, because this kind of insult irks me, for reasons you can probably guess, but also I can’t entirely disagree with him on this one, but also…

*hits head against wall a few more times*

Are they done yet?

Also it’s yet another line that doesn’t really read like Mat. Not that the sentiment is wrong, because Mat does not hold Joline in anything much higher than contempt, but that specific brand of under-his-breath mockery isn’t really his style.

Teslyn gave him a shocked glance, seeming disappointed.

How…meta.

To the side, Talmanes just lowered his pipe and whistled quietly.

I see Talmanes as more of a lowered his pipe and raised an eyebrow type if anything, or he could pull a Lan and suddenly become completely absorbed in studying the contents of the bowl of his pipe until the awkward stops (while of course following every word because he’s as Cairhienin as they come).

“That medallion of yours makes you impudent, Matrim Cauthon,” Joline said coldly.

“My mouth makes me impudent, Joline,” Mat replied with a sigh, fingering the medallion hidden beneath his loosely tied shirt. “The medallion just makes me truthful.”

The tone – weary rather than flippant – and that second half of the line almost makes this work, but it’s still a bit too…well, a bit too Sanderson to feel like Mat. Which I think is part of the issue; Mat is the sort of character who you could at first glance toss in the same group as some of Sanderson’s characters, but on a closer look Mat really doesn’t belong there. This is Sanderson’s humour, and the humour Mat serves to provide is different.

Mat’s humour isn’t in witty retorts; those are reserved more for the Aiel (and occasionally Rand, oddly enough). Mat’s humour comes more from the piling-on of minor dramatic irony throughout a scene or arc, so that what he says is funny because he’s the only one not in on the joke.

And that’s…not a style of humour I’ve ever seen Brandon Sanderson write, that I can think of. His humour comes from the characters themselves saying or doing things that are funny or witty or clever. Mat’s humour comes from the way Mat’s statements fall on the surrounding story. It’s situational humour rather than intentional humour. It’s saying something unintentionally funny rather than cracking a joke.

Mat has never really struck me as a funny character. He’s used for comic relief sometimes, much as Nynaeve is, but I wouldn’t actually call either of them funny, for the most part. Mat’s funny to read – if your humour runs that way; mine often doesn’t, so I could be wrong here – because the reader actually knows him far better than he knows himself. You’re not laughing with him, you’re laughing at him.

And on the occasions when what he actually says is meant to be funny, it tends to be more a tone of irreverence than an actual joke or wisecrack or one-liner. This seems to fall into that second category, though the fact that the tone isn’t presented as flippant definitely goes some way towards mitigating it. Still, it reads more like a character who’s used to making witty and cutting rejoinders and is now doing it out of force of habit, which…isn’t Mat, because that’s not his style to begin with.

Anyway. Now we’re bartering with horses as the currency and ‘an end to Mat and Joline ever having conversations’ as the much-coveted item for purchase.

The fact that Joline hasn’t thought about the logistics beyond the immediate numbers needed for her convenience is entirely true to her character, I must say. She’s a great example of all the negative traits of Aes Sedai and precious few of the positive ones.

If the land didn’t decide to start blooming soon…

Not sure our wounded Fisher King is in much of a blooming sort of mood at the moment, so you might be shit out of luck on that one, sorry. But you never know; maybe if you ask him nicely?

“But with only one horse each, we’ll barely be faster than the army!” Joline said.

You are an embarrassment to your Ajah.

“And Vanin,” Mat called. “Make sure Mandevwin is aware that when I say ‘a few of us’ will go down, I mean a very small group, led by myself and Talmanes. I won’t have that village invaded by seven thousand soldiers looking for fun!”

No fun is to be had! By anyone! Not one single fun! If I have to be all responsible and shit then damn it, so do you. You hear me? No. Fun.

Mat turned back to the Aes Sedai. “Well?” he asked. “You taking my kind offer or not?”

It seems like such a small thing, this feeling that some of the things he says aloud in this chapter should really be in his internal monologue. Surely it shouldn’t make that much difference…and yet it really, really does. This, at least the way I interpret Mat (and there is of course the possibility that I’m talking out my ass here and am completely wrong about all of this) should read more like... ‘Mat turned back to the Aes Sedai. “Well?” he asked. Joline sniffed, and he knew all too well what that meant. He would have been glad to be rid of her, but not for any twenty horses! That was pure madness, so why did Teslyn look so disappointed? She usually had some sense, for an Aes Sedai. It had been a perfectly reasonable offer, burn him. It had!’

Well, or a better-written version of putting everything in Mat’s thoughts rather than out loud.

Teslyn trailed after, regarding Mat with a curious expression. She still looked disappointed in him too. He glanced away, then felt annoyed at himself. What did he care what she thought?

This is done much better, with the contrast again between what Mat says and what he feels, between what he feels and what he tells himself, between what he tells himself and what we see of other characters’ perceptions of him.

And it does better than the entire chapter thus far in showing that Mat is on edge. Which is entirely true to character, but unfortunately gets overshadowed by the chapter…trying to illustrate it and massively overshooting the mark.

Has Talmanes uttered a single sentence without appending Mat’s name to it this chapter? I’d look back and check but the very thought fills me with dread.

“You really do miss her,” Talmanes said, sounding a little surprised as their horses fell into place beside one another.

Talmanes? Is that you? I’ve missed you!

This is so much more like him, though, to see straight to the heart of the issue and state it like this. It reminds me a little of his conversation with Egwene. Ah, that conversation. That was a wonderful thing.

“What are you blathering about now?”

Damn it, stop ruining this moment! It doesn’t help that I dislike the word ‘blathering’ in any context, to say nothing of how it feels wrong here.

“Mat, you are not always the most refined of men, I’ll admit. Sometimes your humour is indeed a bit ripe and your tone on the brusque side. But you are rarely downright rude, nor intentionally insulting. You really are on edge, aren’t you?”

Mat said nothing, just pulled the brim of his hat down again.

It’s like they’re taking it in turns to be in character. Talmanes was fine with the ‘you really do miss her’ line and Mat was way off with the ‘blathering’ and then it flipped and now Mat’s alright but Talmanes is saying too many words.

Also it’s almost amusing on a somewhat meta level, because basically what Talmanes is saying is ‘you are out of character’ and…oh, you have no idea. I get that the chapter is intentionally aiming for Mat to feel a bit off, because he is on edge. But that, done well, would look different. This just looks…like Sanderson doesn’t quite have the hang of writing Mat, yet.

Again, I’ve felt that way with his first chapters of a few other characters (Aviendha comes to mind), but even those stood out less. They were more within the ‘margin of error’ I had expected, but this is…not.

Ah well. You can’t have everything, and one chapter out of twenty so far really isn’t doing all that badly, when you think about the task as a whole.

“We’re done with this conversation,” Mat said […] “I just—” “Over,” Mat said.

Talmanes wouldn’t protest; Talmanes would give a solemn nod or slight bow, and Mat would have no way of determining whether it was mocking or entirely sincere. This, here, is a very Sanderson-esque exchange.

“We’ll buy what we can at the village,” Mat said.

Hopefully with Mat’s luck that’ll work better for him than So Habor did for Perrin.

I don’t like sidekick!Talmanes. He makes me sad.

“You’re going to kindly take me up on my offer to go enjoy ourselves at the tavern,” Mat said. “And while we’re at it, we’re going to resupply. If my luck’s with me, we’ll do it for free.”

If Egwene or Nynaeve had been there, they’d have boxed his ears and told him he was going to do no such thing. Tuon probably would have looked at him curiously and then said something that made him feel his shame right down into his boots.

You kidding? She’d have asked how many knife fights there were likely to be, and then gone and ordered an ale to sip while she watched.

The good thing about Talmanes, however, was that he simply spurred his horse forward, face stoic, eyes betraying just a hint of amusement. “Well, I’ve got to see this, then!”

Nope.

Cut out that last line of dialogue there and it might be fine.

As is…well, the chapter ends approximately how it started. Let’s leave it at that.

Next (TGS ch 21) Previous (TGS ch 19)