#all the rote ladies

[brbarou]

weird girls with multiple personas....i love you....

[els-moonleaf]

pov your best friend™ occasionally turns himself into a beautiful woman and everyone thinks he’s your wife so you gotta be a dick about it because unfortunately you are not as immune to her wiles as you thought you were

[rustyorangee]

i love this guy...

[heyitsrink]

So about those nights in Kelsingra. . .

[sevendutchies]

People in this fandom will really look at The Fool, Patience, Lacey, Carson, Sedric, Hest, Davvie, Lecter, Kennit, Ash/Spark, and yes, even Fitz himself, and still have the gall to call it queer bait.

These characters are explicitly queer, their actions impact the narrative, they are well written, and their identities are treated with respect. That is the best possible queer representation you could ask for in any story.

I've seen people on tumblr basing the likelihood of if they read this series on whether or not it's "actually gay" and I'm here to tell you that it is. There are queer characters. There are queer protagonists. And no matter what you see people in the fandom say, Robin Hobb wrote some amazing queer representation in a genre that rarely sees it at all.

TLDR;

Queer bait = disrespectful marketing ploy that exploits queer audiences

Queer bait ≠ "my two favorite characters never have sex"

[heaartshaped]

This is so funny like is this how they refer to gay people now. A friend of lord golden

[mariajamel]

Grief

Left to right: Chade, Patience, Burrich, Molly, the Fool

[spectrum-color]

It is time to determine which adult fucked Fitz up the most? I will go over all the formative figures of his childhood and the ways they damaged him. Note I will skip Regal because they had a deliberately antagonistic relationship, though the torture did obviously have major effects; this is only for his “good” influences

Chade-Taught Fitz that he is first and foremost a tool rather than a full person, groomed him to be passive and obedient leading to him growing into an adult who struggles to make his own choices, forced him to kill people from a young age

Shrewd-Made it clear that he was only letting Fitz live because he thought he would be useful doing his dirty work and that if he stepped out of line he would be killed, had Chade pull a fucked up “loyalty test” where he tried to make Fitz choose between the two of them

Burrich-Constantly threatened Fitz with abandonment and made it clear his love was conditional, taught him to feel ashamed of an innate part of himself (the Wit,) beat him and generally used violence as his primary method of discipline, told him that relationships are zero sum and “one horse can’t wear two saddles (ie you can’t love more than one person in your life) which caused endless issues with Fitz feeling like he has to choose between people who matter to him

Verity-Dark horse candidate but he exploited Fitz prettu mercilessly, up to and including raping him by using his body to impregnate Kettricken without his consent. Treated Fitz like a replacement goldfish for Chivalry and dumped way age inappropriate expectations on him. Fitz has an unhealthy hero worship toward him and his memory well into adulthood

Chivalry-Abandoned him and refused to meet him or make any kind of contact; did it with Fitz’s safety in mind but it left him with massive daddy issues

Patience-She never did anything wrong in her life actually

Patience-She never did anything wrong in her life actually

[femmefitz]

It truly is so unfortunate that Fitz never got to meet Amber as a person and only met Amber as a coping mechanism.

I don't think this would have immediately solved all of her Feelings about it but it would definitely have been better...

[brbarou]

she moves around!! she's real!!!!

[matthewmoorwood]

Characters doomed by the narrative. That's it.

[chloreen]

Happy RotE Ladies Big Bang 2023 everybody! Prompt 15: Glimmer. @vilyar and @alloysius-g - your art is what even makes this worth posting.

[heyitsrink]

Lady Patience and Lacey on a summer afternoon

[heaartshaped]

Give me a face you could love (top ten sentences that ruined my life)

[chloristoflora]

We ate together and passed the evening telling stories. The Fool and Prilkop seemed to have slaked some of their thirst for conversing in their own tongue. I made up a pallet for the Fool and insisted he lie down near the fire. I tried to tell Prilkop the full tale of how we had come to Aslevjal. He listened intently, nodding, his brow furrowed. From time to time, the Fool would offer a brief explanation to Prilkop of some part of our tale that he did not understand. Mostly he lay still, eyes closed, listening. When he did break into my telling, it was strange to hear how the Fool pieced out our life tale for him, for he made it seem as if always the goal had been to awaken and restore true dragons to the world. I suppose that for him, it had been that. But it was peculiar to see my own life in that light.

It became very late and Thick had dozed off long before Prilkop bade us good night. I knew an odd moment of awkwardness when I spread my blankets separately from the Fool's. There was plenty of bedding here; no need to share anymore. But I had slept beside him for so many nights that I wondered if he would want the comfort of me close by to guard him from his night terrors, but I could not find a way to ask him. Instead, I propped my head on my arm and watched him sleep. His face was slack with exhaustion, yet pain still furrowed his brow. I knew that after all he had been through, he would need time apart from me, time alone with himself to discover once again who he was. Yet, selfishly, I did not want him to grow apart from me again. Not only my love for Molly but my boyish fondness and closeness to the Fool had been rejuvenated, as well. To be the best of friends again, making nothing of one another's differences, to enjoy the days and face hardships optimistically; he represented all that to me, and I vowed I would not let that carelessly slip from my grip again. He and Molly would round out my life to what it should have been. And Patience, I thought with wonder. I would reclaim her too, and never heed the cost.

Fool's Fate, by Robin Hobb (Tawny Man Trilogy #3)

[spectrum-color]

Important question for the RotE fandom. I will not provide reasoning for any of these characters but trust me I did actually think about this.

Just note that they don’t have to fulfill the role to Fitz; many of them do for another character.

(Also, this is supposed to be lighthearted so don’t get offended on Robin Hobbs behalf; I’m not actually accusing her of using shallow character tropes)