#i will say that my utter lack of interest in sports makes the character motivations soooo incomprehensible

[uni-seahorse-572]

just finished aftg and was anyone going to tell me that it's a comedy

[generallypo]

move over maschenny, we’ve got a hotter and cooler Khun princess in the tower now.

introducing Khun Aguero Jahad, the one and only princess that Jahad actually, sincerely hopes never wins the competition.

excessive rambling under the cut + a short fic under that. all my warnings are dead and void as of now. cheers!

-- -- -- -- -- --

i sat on my salt for a couple of days -- and then finally, finally decided to do something about it. my previous TOG post kinda went ham on that. yeehaw.

i imagine jahadprincess!khun is a little more snakey than the original (is that possible?). having climbed the tower at a blistering pace following her selection, she’s also a more competent fighter, though it additionally means she needs to use her brain less. though she plays more by her family’s and Jahad’s rules, she’s not particularly ruled by her bloodlust in the way Maschenny is, or utter complacency like Repellista. her outfit is shamelessly ripped off of Yuri’s and the casual officewear aesthetic khun sports in s1.

anyways, i did The Big Write. it has been 3 years since i have attempted such a thing. the process was complicated and stressful, i drank milk tea to compensate. i wanted to depict the moment of a big decision in which a characteristically selfish person does something shockingly altruistic, as well as the bystander who questions her motives. it’s not quite khunbam, more like an intense, one-sided dedication and some sorely needed soul searching. 

played fast and loose with characterization, timelines, general TOG canon while banging out this beast. like every middle child, i’m not super proud of it, but it gets the job done. i had a great time with it! really!

-- -- -- -- -- -- 

Unsurprisingly, it’s Yuri who finds her first. 

Her heels, lustrous and scarlet, click faintly on the rooftop tiles, and their mild echo belies nothing of the thunder on her face, or the sibilant presence of the Black March at her side. Aguero turns to meet her, inclines her head in response. 

“Why, princess Yuri. It’s a pleasure, as always.”

“Cut the crap, Aguero,” she snaps. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Aguero raises her hands. From one of them, Manbarondenna dangles innocently, unclasped buckles gleaming under fake starlight. 

“Waiting for my ride. I’m not expecting a plus one, though.” She smiles pleasantly, eyes narrowed. “Run along now. This is a single-passenger trip.”

Yuri growls. “Seriously?” She steps forward with intent, and Aguero momentarily tenses, fingers flying to her bag — but just barely, Yuri’s features soften, and she stops. Dramatically, she cocks her head, ponytail bobbing with vigor.

“You,” she points emphatically. “You’re actually going to do this. You’re not worried about the consequences.”

She states it like an accusation, but the palest shade of concern colors her voice. Are you sure of what you’re doing? Leaving this place -- leaving all of us? A complicated expression crosses her features, and she scowls. 

“This won’t just affect you, Aguero.” Firmly, her hand rests on the Black March’s handle. Do you want me to stop you?

“… I’m aware.” A pause, and oh, ugh, Aguero’s doing it again — that nasty, calculating look on her face, the one that reminds onlookers, in no uncertain terms, exactly how the princess had come by her position. Yuri balks uncharacteristically, and steps away. 

It’s not like she doesn’t think she can take Aguero in a fight… but it’s not what she had come here for in the first place. After knowing each other this long, the least she can do is offer her support, not another enemy. Aguero has no problems with making — and gleefully crushing — the latter.

She looks at the woman before her. Khun Aguero Jahad, formerly surnamed Agnis. Not so long ago, a nameless little nobody — somebody’s second, second-choice, second-rate daughter, born in a family with too many offspring to invest attention into a daughter lacking outstanding martial prowess or an especially fetching face. A forgotten girl, wholly incongruent to the imposing figure Yuri knows her as now. 

The air around them vibrates with tension, laced with an inexorable chill -- it’s not a trick of the light, Yuri notices, that her breath seems a little more visible than normal, that the sweat on her forehead feels almost solid to her skin. Aguero is watching her, face bright and predatory, and it’s a stark reminder that even beautiful things can be cold and unforgiving.

The crown jewel of the Khun family sneers, and Yuri braces herself for impact.

— — — 

Khun Aguero Agnis had almost always been a slippery, unremarkable thing, with willow branches for arms and a sullen, snarky mien. On her placid, faintly superior face sat two intelligent, gem-blue eyes — pretty enough, but also afflicted with an attitude chilly enough to wither even the most persistent suitor’s desire. To her family, and an equally hostile Tower, she was both undesirable and unsupported — and consequently, insignificant. 

Yuri had met her before, once. It had been an event much, much longer ago, during a nameless, perfectly ordinary mission to deliver some sealed goods. A loaded favor of sorts, from one family to another. Bright and on the cusp of princesshood, hair still bound in youthful twin tails, she had been greeted at the door of one of the numerous Khun establishments by a slim joke of a girl. 

Thanks for your work, the girl had said, eyes blue and sleepless and unreadable. I’ve been expecting you. With mechanical efficiency, the girl received, inspected, and stowed the package away, vanishing from the gate within seconds. 

Baffled, Yuri withdrew, scratching her head. She’d been given a verification stamp to use at the end, but the package had made it to the correct address regardless. 

I’ve been expecting you, the Khun girl had said. That counted as a mission complete, didn’t it?

If not for the silvery-blue shock of her hair, no one would have guessed the girl a child of one of the great ten families. Favored Khuns, after all, were generally not disposed towards handling petty messenger duties. The observation had barely registered for Yuri, and not much later a more exciting adventure came along to wipe the encounter from her mind. Favored or not, there were more interesting, deadly things in the Tower to focus on.

A couple hundred years ago, though… things had changed, and drastically so. Yuri doesn’t know or exactly care for the inner politics or delicate power balances among the characters of Jahad’s court, but the truth of the matter is this: 

Khun Aguero Jahad might have only been recently crowned — but she has always been a threat. 

Since the dawn of the ten families, the Khun staples of education had remained true to three essential subjects: warfare, politics, and assassination. The children learn young, or not at all. A daughter true to her heritage, Khun Aguero Agnis had bared her fangs only at the most opportune moment, sinking them firmly in the throats of her blood sister, a rival from a nearby branch family, and a number of prominent, up-and-coming girls vying for the princess candidacy. 

It had been, without a doubt — a flawless victory, the perfect display of brains and cruel strength. And of course, with those eyes, a blue as deep and pitiless as the sea: beauty, and the arrogance to wield it.

It had taken the entire upper floors by complete surprise, propelled Aguero’s name to the top of the gossip columns, and whispered unrest among the current princesses in a way that hadn’t been felt in at least half a millennium. All it had taken was a hundred years’ worth of waiting, a lighthouse, a well-placed knife, and some dead girls.

As expected, a mere three months after her candidacy was announced, Khun Aguero Agnis became Khun Aguero Jahad, and not a single voice spoke out to disagree.

— — — 

“Are you going to stop me?” Aguero’s voice is low and cool. Like magic, a small blade glimmers in her hand, and while Yuri can’t predict what kinds of weapons her sister carries on her person, she knows better than to think this is her only, or most lethal one.

“... No,” she admits ruefully. “I don’t think I’d be able to, anyway.” Deftly, she stows the Black March in her inventory, and spins around to sit cross-legged by the princess’s side. It’s always a gamble, relying on Aguero’s temper, but it’s more likely than not that the other girl isn’t actually looking for a fight. She can’t afford the attention a real one would draw, or the physical exhaustion it would inflict.

Aguero lets her, and she grins with satisfaction. “I’ll wait with you until your ride is here!” The and buy you time, if necessary, goes unsaid. Yuri yawns, and then stretches, eyes crinkling with cheeky fondness. It won’t take long for her to get bored. What better way to kill time than with invasive questioning?

“Is he really worth it, Aguero? That boy?” Yuri pouts, eyebrows raised. “This better not just be because he’s cute.” Her words have the subtlety of a berserk Shinheuh, but she’s genuinely curious, and Aguero will understand.

A quiet huff of laughter has her squinting in surprise. Dawn hasn’t quite made it to their corner of the rooftop, but she can make out the faint, yet unmistakable curve of a real smile. 

Huh, thinks Yuri, wide-eyed. It’s not a bad look on her. It’s not that Aguero has never smiled, per se, but the intrinsic softness of it all is a wholly foreign creature to her, and she likes to think Aguero does consider her a friend. Or at least as close to one as a Khun is allowed to call a person.

“Oh, he’s cute all right. Like… a puppy, I guess. Big, gold eyes, really nice voice, listens to everything I say.” Aguero snorts, fiddles with her hair. “… For the most part, at least. There was a girl that he came here chasing after — ” and here she pauses briefly, expression hard like ice chips — “but she’s, ah, not a problem anymore.” 

Yuri blinks. By her feet, frost gleams in elegant, spiraling patterns. For a moment, curiosity steals across her thoughts— what kind of girl could that have been, to catch the eye of Aguero’s sweetheart? To make even the pride of the Khuns lose her famously unshakable cool? And what the hell had even happened? But instinct cautions her otherwise, and it’s yet to lead her astray. 

Yuri shakes her head. Best not to pry into those matters. 

“Okay, then. And what are you going to do after you go?” she presses. “You know you can’t come back.”

At first, there’s no response. The seconds slide uneasily by, thick like a finger swirled through honey. The other girl’s face is thoughtful as she slowly replies: “I’m gonna help him climb the Tower.” 

Aguero shifts slightly, and meets Yuri’s gaze. “To be fair, I wasn’t sure about that either at first. He… he’s really weak, you know.”

Yuri cackles, just to fill the silence. “That bad?”

“That bad.” Aguero exhales. “But he’s a monster, too. He has these… moments, when he gets a certain look in his eyes, and it’s almost terrifying. It’s funny, because he’s the gentlest thing I’ve ever met. But he’s going to be amazing in the future. I know it.” 

“... Like Jahad? Or better?” Is it the boy’s power you’re after? His life? It’s not like Yuri can’t understand. But in the Tower, the asking price of violence and overwhelming force comes laughably cheap, and for something as easy as that Aguero would never be so reckless. The conditions of their status are admittedly stifling, but few things are truly unreachable for a Jahad princess.

Or is it something else?

“They’re nothing alike,” Aguero says flatly. “And I don’t want him to be.”

Frustratedly, she runs a hand through her hair, gesturing vaguely. “It’s hard to explain, but he…he’s good, Yuri. He’s good. All those years stuck in a cave, all the trials the Tower ran him through, all that death and backstabbing and grieving that they make the Regulars practically eat and breathe  —  he fought through it purely by his own merit, and still, nothing's broken him of it. I can’t understand it myself.” 

Aguero murmurs to no one in particular, looking bewildered herself. “… It’s dazzling, honestly.” It only lasts a heartbeat, but there’s a heat to her entire bearing, an unexpected intensity, and it looks a lot like hope.

“He’s going to flip this Tower on its goddamned head, just you wait. He’ll need someone to watch his back when he does.” She smiles again, sharp and secretive — and it leaves Yuri reeling from the whiplash, this girl — who suddenly looks more like sunlight on new snow, like devotion underneath domed ceilings and glass sculptures praising unshakable belief, than the glacial stoicism of her bloodline. “The Regulars are supposed to form teams, right? I intend to be his light-bearer.”

“A-aha…I see it now. You’re crazy,” offers Yuri, more weakly than she would prefer. She thinks she can see the bigger picture now. She isn’t sure whether she likes it or not.

… So it’s his love you’re after. Do you think it’ll make you happy?

“I’ve got it all planned out, of course. I had a quick chat with Headon about starting fresh as well, so the Ranker rules shouldn’t apply to me.” It shouldn’t be possible to make throwing away your life so easy, so fulfilling, but Khun Aguero does it somehow, conviction radiating firmly from her entirety. She laughs, bright and determined. “We’re gonna give the floors so much hell, Yuri.”

“As for being a princess,” she continues, “I have a couple of ideas as to making sure no one looks too closely. That’s a secret, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Aguero shoots her a mild look, and it’s the end of that discussion. She flicks her fingers with impatience. But one last question still burns a hole in Yuri’s chest, the one that hadn’t actually been answered, and she can’t let the other girl leave without a proper response. If she does, there won’t be a second chance.

The first hints of day yawn loomingly across the horizon. Shades of carnation and marigold, thin and pale, send tendrils of light across the sky. In just a few more minutes, the stars will disappear, eclipsed by their vibrance. And Aguero will be gone, gone, another name to be struck from the records. 

After all their years of friendship, this is where the line gets drawn. It’s a little lonely, if she thinks about it. Yuri steels herself. A younger, less jaded girl might have asked Aguero to reconsider. But regardless of whatever answer she would have been given, it’s not the one she needs to know right now.

No regrets now, Aguero.

Princess Yuri Jahad looks the defector in the eye, feeling fully well the pride and colossal pressure of her status. Bending the rules has never, ever seemed so daunting before. Maybe the weight thudding cold in her chest is her grief. Maybe, she thinks sheepishly, it’s her jealousy. She wouldn’t be surprised if it were all of the above, and more than just her own fair share of the bitterness. 

Believe it or not, she has been a princess for a very, very long time. The other girls would want to know the same.

It’s with hushed longing that she opens her mouth again, one last piece of idle gossip. With resentment, for countless eras spent in solitude and misplaced spite; loneliness, for every generation of lost, loveless young women. Every missed opportunity, every broken dream, every petty, contrived falling-out. She’s old enough to remember most of the worst. Aguero is escaping their shiny little showcase of a birdcage, at the price of losing everything else.

Please, she thinks desperately. Let her be right, this time. This is one of their sisters, after all. They must not have another Anaak Jahad.

“...Aguero. He’s worth it?” she repeats. 

Khun Aguero Agnis steeples her fingers against her chin, staring forward. The sun rises ahead of them, unrelenting and pure, and the light catches on her face and draws it all out in ferocious streaks of gold.

“Yes,” she answers. “He is.”

[saltpepperbeard]

Not Her ~An Everlark One-Shot~

A/N: Hello everyone! *hUNGER GAMES INTENSIFIES* am I right? I’m so happy for the Re-Read that’s taking place, because not only is it getting me furiously posting about THG again, but it brought back my quite dead writing motivation! I was reading chapter two, had a, “Okay but what must have this person been experiencing” kind of thought, followed by the instant urge to write it. So here we thankfully are lol!

I’m probably a tad rusty, but I really did want to write a different take on the Reaping Day. I’ve always wondered what things would be like from a certain someone’s point of view after all! So with that being said, I hope you all like it!

And with further adoooooooo...

Not Her

It’s the day everyone in this District dreads again.

The one where families are torn apart for a sick spectator sport. The one where children are torn crying from their mothers, knowing what horrible fate awaits them. The one where loved ones are officially lost to the Capitol.

Reaping Day.

I clench and unclench my jaw, silently filing in after all the other boys my age. The tension in the air is high, as usual. We’re not a District to valiantly offer volunteers, or boast our Tributes’ strengths. We’re a group of reluctant individuals, with many being fearful, silently praying that their name, or their loved one’s name, isn’t the one to be called.

I’m in the latter half of that group. My name being plucked from the large, glass bowl wouldn’t trigger any tears, from me or my family for that matter. There’s a slight sinking in my stomach as I imagine it, yes, but ultimately it wouldn’t hurt as much as others. My family would get on. The District would get on. And maybe it’d be a sick way to spare me from my current way of life.

I’m more concerned about my brother, concerned about Rye. I wouldn’t want to see him on that stage, awaiting pain, awaiting death. I wouldn’t want to see anyone I love subjected to that. Having to helplessly watch as someone close to me suffers has to be one of my worst fears.

A heavy breath rolls out of my mouth, my attention zoning out as the typical string of events unfolds. The mayor talks about the past of Panem, the history of the Games, and the reasons we should be thankful for them. It makes me sick to my stomach, the notion of being appreciative of murder, appreciative of suffering, appreciative of torture. So naturally, my attention goes elsewhere.

It doesn’t really come back until our District’s sole-surviving Victor, or our District’s Infamous Drunk rather, makes his grand entrance on stage. I let out a sigh as he leaves a path of chaos in his wake, but I cannot deny the slight ache in my chest. That insanity could be someone’s fate today. Or worse, far worse.

Another interesting character, Effie Trinket, attempts to hurry things along, continuing to try and make this some kind of grand spectacle. It’s ladies first as usual, and despite not really having anyone close to me per say, I find that I’m holding my breath.

When the name is uttered, I’m relieved for a split second, and then utterly devastated in the next.

“Primrose Everdeen.”

My throat locks up, with my entire body to follow. I almost feel a bit woozy, my head spinning at the image of a small, frail, blonde girl reluctantly emerging from the crowd.

I know her. Almost too well for never really formally meeting her. I can see her passing by our Bakery in the morning, completely carefree and casting light as she goes. I can see the way her gaze sparkles as she eyes the displays in the window, eagerly running up to get a better look. And I can see her turning around, excitedly pointing at the various cookies and cakes to the person who’s always with her...

“Prim!”

As unfortunate as it is to say, I should be familiar with that shrill, desperate cry. The sound of a person getting their family member torn away from them at the Reaping, a haunting, eerie noise that’s something of normalcy every year.

But it’s from her. She’s in pain. Her sister is going to the Arena. And I can’t protect them, can’t comfort her.

I can feel myself shaking, small beads of sweat forming atop my skin. I don’t even know her. I don’t know either of them. But at the same time, I feel like I do. I’ve seen them both for so long. My heart has followed the one for as long as I know, which means I’m naturally protective of the other as well.

It’s almost like I can feel her anguish, like my little sister is up there.

Mentally, I wrap my arms around her, holding her as tightly and warmly as I can manage. Even if I really could, I know there wouldn’t be enough love in the world to comfort her in this. But God, would I try. I’d want nothing more than to try and keep her lifted out of the darkness the Capitol tries so desperately to inflict upon us.

“Prim!”

Tears spring into my eyes, my heart clenching something terrible. I watch as she emerges from the crowd as well, darting after her sister. I wish I could be there alongside of her too, offering all the support and help I could possibly muster. But I can’t. I’m always doomed to watch from the sidelines, doomed to watch as things unfold.

And unfold they do.

“I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!”

Everything stops. My world completely stops. 

My heart stutters to a grinding halt. A noise of anguish poised on my tongue gets jammed in my throat. The tears I had been fighting against have no choice but to fall.

No. Not her.

It’s my nightmare. My absolute worst nightmare come to life. I always knew there was a very small possibility of this happening, a very grim chance of this unfurling before my very eyes. But nothing could have actually prepared me for it happening. No matter how many times I see them per night, the bad dreams are nothing compared to reality.

The light goes dark, and sounds go muffled. I can see some slight, desperate movement near the stage, and hear a scuffle of activity, but I can hardly pay attention. I can hardly focus on anything other than trying not to collapse right here and now, to collapse completely in on myself.

I don’t know her. I never got to know her. I didn’t get to tell her how beautiful I think she is, how her eyes remind me of a strong, captivating summer storm. I didn’t get to tell her how I want to protect her and her family for the rest of my days, to ensure they never have to go hungry ever again.

I never got to tell her how much I utterly adore her, how much I love her to the ends of the Earth.

And when she goes on stage, when she utters her name, the reminder makes a shaky, sobbing-like breath croak from my lungs.

Katniss Everdeen.

Not her. Not her. Not her.

Somewhere in the middle of my woes, I can faintly hear Effie Trinket trying to get our solemn District excited, trying to get our District to roar with thunderous applause.

But in true fashion, much to my utmost relief and yet utter dread, they don’t. Everyone remains ghostly silent, before kissing three fingers and raising them high into the sky. It’s a gesture of complete admiration, but also a way of saying goodbye.

I can’t bring myself to do it. Because no matter how much I utterly adore her, I cannot bring myself to say goodbye. Especially without giving the slightest “hello.”

I simply hang my head, fiercely wiping the tears away, clenching both my eyes and jaw. I wish I could reveal my gaze and be free from this, be in a completely different world where I’m waking up to light, waking up to her.

But I’m not. The awful world I’m in continues on.

I can hear the loud clicking of Effie’s heels as she walks from one side of the stage to the other. I wipe the last of my tears away, sighing harshly and attempting to get myself under some semblance of control. I just hope whoever gets reaped can work together with Katniss, and protect her with his life.

The odds must be somewhat in my favor, albeit in a messed up, twisted kind of way.

Because the name that’s called, the paper that’s raised into the air, sends me through a torrent of feeling.

My first emotion, by complete instinct, is shock, my head jolting upwards and my mouth hanging agape. I can feel everyone who’s in close proximity staring at me, their faces either wearing sorrow or some kind of weird relief. And after I’ve recovered from the initial blow, the initial realization that I’m going to the Hunger Games, the thoughts that follow are what give me the strength to walk towards the stage.

Katniss.

I’m going to be with Katniss in the arena.

Not getting to know her doesn’t seem as devastating anymore. Because now I’ll get to die knowing I protected her, knowing I gave absolutely everything to keep her alive. And that’s all I could possibly want. To make sure I gave my all in ensuring her safety.

Maybe she doesn’t need me. Maybe she can get by just fine on her own. I’ve heard about the way she shoots, heard her way of fighting is silent and elegant. It’d be just one other person who wouldn’t be affected by my presence or lack of thereof; my family certainly isn’t.

But that won’t stop me from trying. That won’t stop me from giving myself to her like I’ve tried to all these years. I am hers and no one else’s. My life is insignificant next to hers.

I finally mount the stage, and in seeing her so close, in getting to properly look at her, it locks my sole purpose in these Games completely into place.

I move to stand parallel to her. Before I do though, I give myself a brief opportunity to look at her. To really look at her. To look at her how I would every day if I was blessed enough to actually be with her.

Her beauty absolutely takes my breath away. It always has. Though her face is hard, completely taut with emotion, she’s gorgeous. Her hair looks softer than the dandelion puffs dotting the District. Her eyes look shinier than the sun dancing off the lake’s surface. Her lips look plumper than the strawberries growing in the forest.

I don’t think I could ever capture such beauty in one of my paintings, or ever truly put it into words. She’s utterly exquisite.

I don’t stare, being quick to tear my gaze away and look straight ahead, out into the crowd. Now really is not the time to dote on her anyway. I can’t afford to get anymore attached than I am now. Now is the time to start planning how I’m going to keep her alive.

As the mayor talks more about the Games, my mind is aflame with possibilities, with different scenarios. I think of how I can keep others away from her, how I can potentially side with her, how I can guard her from anyone who might come near...

My thoughts are cut short by Effie yet again, though this time she actually says something significant to me for once.

“Alright you two, shake hands!”

My head turns towards Katniss as hers turns towards mine, our eyes meeting and locking for the first time in...years. Her gaze is just as mesmerizing as it was the first time I held it, just as captivating. And just like last time, I silently tell her I’m going to protect her. I silently tell her that I will take a beating for her. I silently tell her that I love her.

And to prove it, to seal the deal, I put all the warmth I can manage into our handshake, squeezing her hand tenderly with the figurative promise of never letting go.

The odds may not be fully in my favor during the Games, but hopefully now the opposite can be said for her.

And once we turn to be beckoned into the building behind us, away from our District, my life is hers.

[fozmeadows]

Rumours About Rumours, or: The Kent Parson Meta That Nobody Asked For

As is well-documented by this point, I’m a hopeless fan of @omgcheckplease, to the point where a gay hockey comic has turned me into an actual fan of ice hockey, dear god, I’ve become invested in a sport that’s barely even fucking played in my country, what is this even?? Naturally, this means I follow a few CP-heavy blogs on tumblr, and recently I’ve noticed a few people expressing confusion about why so many people like Kent Parson, given the fact that, canonically, his big introduction involves him being goddamn awful to Jack.

Now: straight off the bat – and I’m saying this, obviously, as someone who finds Kent Parson a fascinating character – I want to acknowledge that fandom, as a general entity, is heavily biased towards white guys. It’s one of those raindrop-in-a-storm problems where, at an individual level, everyone is entitled to their own personal preferences (always bearing in mind that said preferences can be influenced, either consciously or unconsciously, by cultural bias), but where the cumulative, collective effect of those choices amplifies the effects of cultural bias. It would therefore be disingenuous to deny that, whatever my thoughts on or interest in Kent as a character, there’s still a collective issue with how much more attention he often receives than more canonically prominent – and non-assholish – POC characters like Ransom, Chowder, Nursey and Lardo.

(Sidenote: as part of various race-oriented meta about CP, I’ve seen it pointed out that, in fanworks, the POC characters are most often romantically paired with white characters rather than other POC, and that this is a worthy point of investigation and criticism. I agree on both counts, but also feel that, in this specific instance, it’s important to note that, in canon, all the POC characters are primarily – either romantically or platonically – paired with another white character, and that these pairings dominate their appearances in the strip. (Ransom and Holster, Chowder and Farmer (or Chowder and Bitty, platonically), Nursey and Dex, Lardo and Shitty.) So while that doesn’t excuse the comparative lack of creative licence taken in moving beyond those pairings, as is common fanwriting practice, it does explain their existence as a non-trivial narrative baseline. ANYWAY.)

As to why Kent himself is interesting - well. There are, I think, two main reasons for this:

1: He’s Jack’s most significant ex; and

2: He’s presented as an antagonist.

If only the latter point was true, then I’d be much less inclined to invest in him emotionally. What matters is the fact that, despite all the wonderful shipping opportunities afforded by CP, Kent is one of only three (thus far) canonically queer characters – and not only that, he has an existing, complicated backstory with Jack, which therefore connects him emotionally to both Jack and Bitty. Any canon-compliant take on Jack’s romantic history must therefore feature Kent, and with that particular speculative door cracked open, it’s natural to wonder about Kent’s version of events.

Which is where my personal interest in Kent comes in. Because Jack Zimmermann, despite being our noble hockey hero and the protagonist’s love interest, is, by his own admission, an unreliable narrator of his own emotions. And as Jack’s narration is the only insight we get into his and Kent’s relationships, it’s not unreasonable to wonder what we’re missing out on – to say nothing of the possibility that Jack, historically, might not have been great for Kent.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

Jack “emotional range of a teaspoon” Zimmermann

From early in the comic, it’s clear that Jack isn’t great at expressing his emotions – which is why, for the whole first year of their friendship, he’s presented, not at Bitty’s love interest, but as his antagonist. In the fifth strip, Bitty says he’s “thinking of quitting” because Jack “chewed [him] out – in front of everyone. Again.” The others try to reassure Bitty that Jack “gets real bitchy” during pre-season, but will return to “regularly scheduled levels of bitchy after the first game”: even Jack’s closest friends recognise his habit of taking his stress out on other people. This is when we learn about Jack’s father, and the pressure Jack feels because of it: or, as Shitty puts it, “When a bro’s dad is Bad Bob, a bro’s gonna turn into a fucking hockey Nazi every once in a while.”

By itself, this information doesn’t exonerate Jack’s behaviour towards Bitty. The subsequent strip, however, is crucial to our understanding of – and the creation of sympathy for – Jack, telling us, the readers, about his history of anxiety, his overdose, his feelings of guilt, and why success at Samwell is so important to him. This piece of backstory serves to recontextualise Jack’s prior treatment of Bitty while adding an interpretative lens to everything we subsequently see. As such, when Bitty talks about “Reason #17 to hate Jack” two strips later, and Jack pushes him to get past his fears of checking, it’s easier to view his brusqueness in a kinder light than if we didn’t know his personal history. Without knowing that fear of failure is one of Jack’s most powerful demons, Jack telling Bitty emphatically that they’ll work “Until you stop being scared” could easily read as insensitive or angry, even with the more light-hearted line that follows.

From this point, the development of Jack and Bitty’s relationship is one where the reader knows more about Jack’s motivation than Bitty does. (Potentially, at least; we know that Bitty has Googled Jack’s dad, but not whether that search turned up information about Jack’s time in the Q.) This means that, when Bitty finds Jack sitting alone and anxious in the loading bay before his father’s visit, we have a deeper understanding of Jack’s pregame stress than Bitty does. As such, even when we sympathise with Bitty afterwards, when Jack, jealous and stressed, tells Bitty that his game-winning goal was “a lucky shot,” we still understand Jack’s feelings. Our awareness of him is layered: he’s just done something incredibly hurtful and dickish, but we know that he’s hurting, too.

In the sixteenth strip, Bitty still thinks that “Jack hates [his] guts,” and is upset by Jack glaring at him when Bitty is put on his line, yet the readers know that Jack is stressed by the implied criticism of being told that “you’re a better player when you’re with Bittle.” Their relationship changes on both sides when they start officially playing together: it’s the first time Bitty really speaks positively about Jack, and the first time we see Jack being impressed by Bitty as a player – a development which is immediately followed by a dash of mutual hurt/comfort to cement their sympathies. Bitty, for the first time, sees Jack belittled for his stint in rehab by a sportscaster post-game, while Jack sees Bitty concussed on the ice for attempting a risky play. Jack subsequently apologies for his actions: not only to Bitty personally, but to the team as a whole. And thus ends Bitty’s first year at Samwell: with Jack as a friend instead of antagonist.

 Even so, this changed relationship doesn’t make Jack any better at expressing his feelings. At the start of Bitty’s sophomore year, Ransom notes that “Goal celebrations provide the rare opportunity for the stoic Canadian warrior to express his emotions,” with Holster adding, “Many believe this is his only way of emoting.”

Enter Kent Parson – or rather, our first oblique reference to him, when Jack is talking to Bitty about his NHL prospects: “They said with the way the teams are stacking up? With how Kent– uh, the Aces won the cup a couple of years ago…”

The fact that Jack stumbles over his name is telling: he doesn’t want to talk personally about Kent, though at this point, we don’t know why. The next strip marks Kent’s actual first appearance, chirping Jack for taking a selfie with Bitty: the fact that Jack is visibly shocked to see him is likewise a clue to their complex relationship.

Kent Parson: Rumours About Rumours

When Ransom and Holster give us Kent’s backstory, they emphasise the “rumours” about Jack and Kent’s relationship when they played together – a statement accompanied by the image of a younger Kent sitting on younger Jack’s lap at a party – complete with reference to “a trove of Zimmermann/Parson fanfiction”. At the same time, they’re also clearly unsure as to what Kent and Jack think of each other now, noting that “Jack doesn’t really talk about him much.” The flashback image accompanying this claim is significant: while younger Jack frowns anxiously over a newspaper article about the draft, a younger Kent is shown sitting beside him, a hand on Jack’s arm and a hopeful smile on his face – the attitude of someone trying to comfort a person they care about. Equally significant as a narrative hint is the fact that, in quoting the synopsis of a piece of Zimmermann/Parson fanfic, Holster tells us, “It’s not that Jack wasn’t into relationships, it’s just that Jack wasn’t a relationships kind of guy.” This is noteworthy, not only as foreshadowing, but because it shows us that, canonically, Jack was perceived by shippers to be emotionally distant – something that tracks accurately with his characterisation as someone who’s Bad At Feelings.

The most telling clue we’re given about Jack and Kent’s relationship, however, comes two panels later, from Shitty. As was demonstrated early in the comic, the fact that Shitty is Jack’s ride-or-die best friend doesn’t make him blind to Jack’s faults, while a key part of Shitty’s characterisation is his utter hatred of douchebags. As such, it’s doubly significant that Shitty is the one to warn Bitty, not that Kent is a bad guy, but that Jack is bad to Kent. Specifically, he says: “Jack can get pretty jealous, okay? Like, the last time Parson dropped by – yeah, it was after he’d won a fucking Stanley Cup, but it wasn’t like he had his Calder under his arm. Parson’s a modest bro. And the way Jack acted… brah. It freaked me out! It was kinda how Jack used to treat you.”    

In other words: Jack was antagonistically jealous of Kent’s success, even though Kent did nothing to lord it over him, in the same way Jack was once antagonistically jealous of Bitty’s success. In Bitty’s case, the mutual hurt was only resolved when they started to play together: their on-ice chemistry let them see the best in each other, and as Jack’s teammates have all observed, Jack – at this point in his life, anyway – only really expresses his feelings on the ice.

Which is when we learn that Kent has come to ask Jack to play for the Aces.

Which brings us to the argument Jack and Kent have, which ostensibly cements Kent’s status as an antagonist. But let’s, just for a moment, view this scene from the little we know of Kent’s perspective.

The last time Kent came to see Jack, Jack reacted with hostility, pushing him away despite the fact that nothing we’ve seen in the flashbacks to their relationship is indicative of bad behaviour on Kent’s part. Instead, they look happy together, with Kent offering comfort and optimism in response to Jack’s anxiety. We also know that Jack has difficulty expressing his emotions, especially negative ones, being more likely to lash out or withdraw than to try and address them productively. It’s also not a stretch to imagine that Kent, as a former teammate – someone who once played spectacularly with Jack, the same way Jack now plays with Bitty – knows, as Jack’s current teammates do, that Jack works through his feelings best on the ice.

In their argument, Kent says that he only came unannounced to Samwell because Jack “shut [him] out”, suggesting that Jack refused to talk to him – and not, given what Shitty said about Kent’s last visit, because of anything Kent himself did. And the first thing Kent sees, on walking into the party, is Jack smiling at a short, blonde hockey player who looks a bit like a younger version of Kent, one who plays on Jack’s line and makes him better the way Kent used to do. Kent, who could easily react with jealousy here, is polite to Bitty instead; goes out of his way to take selfies with everyone who wants them; takes Lardo humiliating him at flip-cup in good humour: behaves himself, in other words. A modest bro, just like Shitty – whose judgement we ought to trust at this point – said.

When Bitty comes upstairs, he doesn’t immediately overhear an argument between Jack and Kent, because at first, they’re not arguing. Kent is asking Jack if he’s thought about coming to play for the Aces, and while it’s hard to prove, the way Jack’s speech is broken up mid-word, followed by overt pauses, suggests that Kent kisses him, as does the fact that Jack says “I can’t do this” immediately afterwards. Kent begs Jack to “just fucking stop thinking and listen to me for once,” suggesting both that Kent knows Jack is prone to overthinking, and that Jack has refused to hear him out on the topic previously.

The point where the conversation turns hostile comes when Kent calls the Wellies “a shitty team”, followed immediately by an attempted contrast to their old style of playing together: “you and me –”

But Jack doesn’t let him finish. Instead, he tells Kent to get out. This is when Kent yells that he only came the way he did because Jack shut him out, adding that he’s “trying to help”. At this point, Kent is desperate, his plea very clearly an appeal to an emotion he himself feels deeply: “What do you want me to say? That I miss you? I miss you, OK?... I miss you.”

(When Kent walks into the Haus and sees Jack, he says, “Didja miss me?” Because Kent misses Jack. He wants Jack to miss him, too, and is desperately insecure about it.)

Jack replies with an absolute dismissal of Kent’s feelings: “You always say that.” Meaning, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. I don’t care.

And it’s then, and only then, that Kent becomes aggressive. What he says is calculated to wound, just as Jack telling Bitty his winning goal was “a lucky shot” was calculated to wound: and as such, I’d argue that the two scenes are paralleled in more ways than one. When Jack dismisses Bitty’s goal, he’s acting like an antagonist because he thinks Bitty has taken something from him – his father’s approval – that Jack feels ought to be his. Similarly, Kent is acting like an antagonist because he thinks Jack has taken something from him – their partnership – that Kent feels ought to be his, too.

And so Kent insults Jack, though his wording is curious (bolding mine): “You think you’re too fucked up to care about? That you’re not good enough? Everyone already knows what you are, but it’s people like me who still care. You’re scared everyone else is going to find out you’re worthless, right? Oh, don’t worry, just give it a few seasons, Jack. Trust me.”

Jack tells him to get out, to which Kent replies, “Fine. Shut me out again.”

The final blow comes as Kent is leaving : “Call me if you reconsider or whatever. But good luck with the Falconers… I’m sure that’ll make your dad proud.”

It’s not until the following year in the comic that we’re given a flashback that shows us Kent’s face as he says this. Kent, like Jack, is shaking – even more, is crying as he walks away, the image juxtaposed with present-day Jack telling a reporter that his history with Kent “is all in the past”. Which, for Jack, it is. But not for Kent.

And it’s here that the visual medium of comics becomes relevant to our perception of dialogue, because while particular words can be given an emphasis, all the verbal subtleties that differentiate tone and meaning are absent. When Kent finally rips into Jack, it’s telling that he doesn’t insult him directly: instead, he attacks Jack’s self-perception, and in such a way that, depending on spoken emphasis, he’s arguably saying one of two different things. In one version of Kent’s dialogue, he’s agreeing with Jack’s fears: offering a confirmation that he’s worthless, that (in Kent’s mind) nobody but Kent will ever care for him, and that, once he starts playing professionally, everyone else will see what a failure he is. And certainly, this is how Jack seems to take it.

But in the other version, Kent is angrily ridiculing Jack’s self-perception: You think you’re too fucked up to care about, but I still care, even though you don’t think I should. You’re scared that people will think you’re worthless, but everyone already knows what you are. (A desired player; one Kent came to recruit.) You don’t need to worry; you’re Jack Zimmermann. Just give it a few seasons. Trust me. And because of the context, this version is still hurtful to Jack: not only has Kent just verbalised his deepest insecurities, but he’s effectively mocked him for having them at all. But Kent has every reason to hate Jack’s insecurities at this moment, because Jack’s tendency towards emotional shutdown is why he keeps shoving Kent away, refusing to talk about a relationship that Kent, quite clearly, needs and wants – and, I would argue, deserves – to discuss with him.

Because when Jack later explains his relationship with Kent to Bitty, he doesn’t say anything about his treatment of Kent. Again, the structure of what he says is telling (my bolding): “We only hooked up a few times back in juniors… and with the draft changing everything… I don’t think he got over it… He got drafted. I didn’t. And it… stopped. Looking back, it really wasn’t anything more than physical. Hockey. And after taking my break, then Samwell… it takes a lot of growing up to realise someone wasn’t good for you… It kind of had an expiration date from the get go, you know? Push comes to shove… hockey came first. Something like that could’ve really messed with our careers.”

And this is where, for me, Jack Zimmermann becomes an emotionally unreliable narrator: his account of their relationship is not only clinical, but emotionally contrary to what we already know. The draft changed things, not because it was inevitable, because Jack was jealous that Kent was drafted. Shitty explicitly says as much to Bitty, but Jack doesn’t mention his jealousy here: instead, he says that the relationship was always going to end, and that – by implication – Jack chose hockey over Kent. Jack also says the relationship just “stopped,” which implies a mutual end to things, despite his simultaneous claim that Kent never got over it. Kent, however, has consistently expressed his frustration at Jack shutting him out; has likewise told Jack that he misses him on multiple occasions. So when Jack says the relationship was only physical – that it was nothing but sex and hockey, even though we’ve seen how close they were as friends in flashbacks – it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that he is severely downplaying the emotional aspect of their relationship.  

When Jack and Bitty tell their teammates they’re dating, Jack admits to Shitty that “I don’t think I realised I wanted to be with Bittle until the last minute. Right at graduation… I don’t think about this stuff too much to be honest. Or I didn’t. Bittle says I’ve gotten better with my feelings.” Meaning that, for the better part of two years, Jack thought that his feelings for Bitty were platonic, even though he was acting in an ultimately romantic way, or at least in unconscious pursuit of a romantic end. Which means we have a strong canonical basis for asserting that, once upon a time, Jack treated Kent the same way – in a caring, enamoured fashion – while under the impression that their relationship, and his own actions, were strictly platonic. The only difference? Kent and Jack were actually sleeping together, and after Jack overdosed and nearly died, he cut Kent out, the relationship a secret from anyone Kent could’ve talked to.

In canon, we don’t know how Kent reacted to Jack’s overdose. In fanfic, however, it’s an incredibly powerful speculative point. Was Kent the one who found Jack when it happened? Was he allowed to see him in the hospital, or to visit in rehab? We know Jack’s parents eventually knew about Kent, but did Kent know they knew? Did Kent, a teenager whose secret boyfriend nearly died just days before he was forced to make the biggest career choice of his life and move, alone, to another state, ever get any help to deal with his feelings?

When Jack says in one breath that his relationship with Kent “wasn’t anything more than physical” and then, in the next, that Kent “wasn’t good for [me]”, he’s contradicting himself. Either there was an emotional relationship that went sour or was negative in some way, or they had uncomplicated casual sex – and from Kent’s perspective, there was clearly an emotional component. At the very least, and regardless of whether Kent actually behaved badly when they were together – a statement for which we have no tangible evidence – it’s clear that Kent has been hurt by Jack, having invested emotionally in someone who doesn’t want him. That Kent still wants Jack back after almost five years, and yet has barely interacted with him in that time, is telling: Kent’s attachment is unhealthy only because it’s unrequited, not because he’s been relentlessly and constantly pursuing an uninterested party.

When Jack tells Bitty that his relationship with Kent had an expiration date because of their careers, it makes Bitty insecure: he worries that Jack is going to eventually leave him, because, in Jack’s own words, hockey comes first. Similarly, in discussing why things ended with Kent, Jack emphasises the impossibility of the relationship, the inherent impermanence of it, which fits with the fact that, when Kent propositions him at Epikegster, Jack says “I can’t do this” – can’t, not I don’t want to. Suggesting that, if Jack ever gave Kent a reason for ending things after the draft, it was the same one he gave Bitty: we can’t do this anymore because of our careers. In which case, it makes perfect sense that Kent has spent five years pining for Jack: because Jack “I Don’t Understand, Recognise Or Articulate My Own Feelings” Zimmermann never actually told Kent that he didn’t want to be together – only that they couldn’t.

So Kent has waited. He’s made a name for himself, keeping his distance from Jack but always making it clear that he misses him, returning even after Jack acted like a jealous ass about Kent’s success. And when he comes, he has a plan: they can be together again. Jack can be on his team again, they can date again, and why the fuck won’t Jack talk to him –

And then Jack throws him out, and Kent, who is fucking heartbroken, finally lashes out at him.

For all that Kent says some truly awful things to Jack, they ultimately fall into the same class of antagonism that originally characterised Jack’s treatment of Bitty – except that, in Kent’s case, we have to piece his sympathising motives together from context cues instead of being given a neat synopsis. Jack’s relationship with Bitty – the way he learns to identify and express his feelings, to prioritise his boyfriend’s life – is predicated on an arc of emotional healing, one where Bitty makes Jack a better person. Kent at Epikegster is the result of Jack’s attempt at relationships before he learned to do this.

For Bitty, Jack Zimmermann is a romantic hero; for Kent, he’s a messed-up origin story.

And that is why I’m interested in Kent Parson.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I'd love to hear opinions for Megamorphs 4

Short opinion: I giggle every time I read the line “President Clinton urged everyone to remain calm” but seriously this book is so scary specifically because it feels so realistic to canon.

Long opinion:

I’ve always felt like this book takes place in direct conversation with #1, fleshing out the existing personalities and relationships of the team as of the moment that they walk through the construction site.  The actual first book in the series sweeps the characters along so quickly toward their destiny (by necessity, because anything else would be bad writing) that we get extremely few details about what these kids are actually like before the war ruins their lives except in the retrospective.  Back to Before feels like a chance to go back and find out who exactly these kids were before they all became homicidal cinnamon rolls.  Of course I’m a sucker for the details about Tom (He has a driver’s license!  He wears a denim jacket over blue jeans like a true 90s fashion victim!  Temrash 114 keeps at least two separate dracon beams in his room!  His parents think he should pay more attention in school!) but there are also a ton of rich characterization moments for all six Animorphs.  

This book really shows us for the first time why Tobias is so desperate for his life to change that he throws himself into a war (and maybe-maybenot gets himself trapped in morph) just to have friends and a purpose.  He belongs nowhere—not at home with his alcoholic uncle, not at school where he’s constantly under threat of physical violence, not at the mall where Jake listens to him out of pity while Marco’s openly hostile—which means that he grabs the first chance he can to fly away from it all.  Maybe he’s being short-sighted, since by #3 he already knows he had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he’s so desperate to get out that one can hardly blame him even when he resorts to becoming a controller in order to have someone to talk to and something to give him meaning.  

It’s also striking that Tobias is the one who ends up recruited by the Sharing, while Jake attends one meeting and leaves.  Most of the series has this implicit assumption that if any of them will be the first one taken, it’ll be Jake, since he’s the one with a controller already living in the house.  (For instance, #41 and #7 both feature variations on the theme of everyone getting caught because Tom saw something he shouldn’t, and in #49 everyone is shocked when the yeerks’ DNA match isn’t between Jake and Tom.)  However, here Jake sees everything the Sharing has to offer… and tells Tom “I’m not really a joiner,” because he’s really really not (MM4).  The unfortunate flip side of the coin of Jake’s leadership ability is that he makes a fairly terrible follower.  In this book it saves his life, but there are other instances (when dealing with the andalites in #18 and #38, during the negotiations with the Arn in #34) where everyone would probably be better off if Jake could find it in himself to sit down, shut up, and do as he’s told.  Non-Animorph Jake is probably at risk of becoming a useless washout (between the crappy academic performance, the mediocre athletic performance, and the lack of motivation to do anything, he’s probably destined to spend the rest of his life as a failed artist living in a studio apartment in downtown LA paid for by his parents’ money), but he’s also not at risk of becoming a voluntary controller, because he’s perfectly content with his mediocre life.  

Rachel, by contrast, is incredibly restless in her normal life.  Cassie describes her as “hunting” with “laser focus” when looking for bargains at the mall (MM4).  It takes her about ten seconds to get on board with chasing down and attempting to tackle some random stranger because Marco thinks said stranger looks like his dead mom.  She snaps into action the second that Ax broadcasts the news that aliens are attacking the planet, and keeps fighting with whatever tools come to hand (including a severed hork-bajir head, because this girl is hardcore) until she gets killed.  For all that she loves it, this book implies that the war might be the worst thing that could have possibly happened to Rachel.  After all, she’s quite good at channeling all that pent-up aggression into verbal sparring the way her mom does (notice how much she enjoys arguing with Marco in the planetarium) and also releasing that extra energy through athletics the way her dad does (unlike Jake, she’s not deterred in her sports ambitions by a mere hiccup like utter lack of talent).  She also has a lot of friends and admirers, a track record of being one of the highest performers in her class, and a casual self-confidence that is rare enough for a girl her age to win her a lot of favors with a lot of people.  Non-Animorph Rachel (in a world that also had no yeerks) would probably thrive in whatever career she chose for decades before dying at a ripe old age surrounded by her highly attractive husband and seven fat grandchildren.  

Maybe my favorite piece of Marco characterization from this book is the way it establishes there is actually a lot more to his crush on Rachel than thinking she has beautiful hair and looks cute in a leotard.  He’s considerably less comfortable in his own skin than either of the Berensons, but he also practices what he preaches by appreciating a joke at his own expense just as much as one he uses to mock another person.  This book makes it obvious that he looks up to Rachel (not just literally, although Marco’s jokes about his own height are also amazing) because he recognizes how intelligent and ruthless she is, and those are the qualities he values the most in himself and others.  Cates pointed out that it’s interesting almost all of Marco’s role models are female (Xena, Alanis Morissette, Carmen Electra, Eva for that matter) and in a lot of ways he doesn’t just like Rachel; he admires her.  

And then there’s the portrayal of Ax when no one comes to rescue him.  #4 and #8 only hint at what it must have been like for him to spend weeks stuck in a tiny dome at the bottom of the ocean, not knowing whether anyone was coming for him, suspecting more and more every day that his whole crew was dead, but here we get a much deeper look at those long days of solitude.  He comes off almost like a prisoner in solitary confinement in the scenes before he manages to use the shark morph to escape: compulsively addicted to routines, talking to inanimate objects, starting to hallucinate when left alone for long enough… Ax is a survivor, tough enough to live through years of loneliness and grief while fighting a war on a foreign planet.  This book shows just how much of that strength comes from within, fire-forged by his traumatic introduction to Earth.  

Oh, and Cassie is sub-temporally grounded, apparently.  I have nothing nice to say about that concept so I’ll settle for saying nothing at all.

Anyway, I love both the opening and closing of this book.  The first scene has one of those UTTERLY HORRIFYING banality-of-violence beginnings, where we open on the aftermath of a battle that may or may not have accomplished anything other than giving the kids involved a few more nightmares.  Jake is disturbingly casual about the fact that he has lost an entire leg and is slowly bleeding to death, making wry jokes about how he and the three-legged table match each other. We can tell why: this isn’t the first (or even the thirtieth) time he’s been fatally maimed and then forced to shrug it off in order to keep fighting.  The kids try—and fail—to save the host of a fatally injured yeerk a few minutes of pain, and end up watching both beings bleed to death.  And then Jake goes home, and he once again plays the game of Lying For His Life with his parents and Tom, and he goes to bed ready to do it all again the next day, wondering what dreams of Sauron Crayak will come.  This poor schmuck literally never catches a break.  No wonder his little deal with the devil seems so tempting for the millisecond that it takes for Crayak to pounce.  (By contrast, the TV episode features Jake asking the Little Blue Ellimist to make him a Real Boy because he doesn’t want to do his math homework and plan a battle at the same time. What a whiner.)

Ugh, and then the ten little soldiers go out to dine, and they drop off one by one so fast that most barely get the chance to fight back.  Rachel and Ax especially do their best to battle the oncoming horde, but they’re largely unarmed and clueless against the yeerks. Tobias becomes the living puppet of a living puppet of Visser One, and then there were five.  Marco stands a little too close to a Bug fighter, and then there were four.  Rachel runs straight into turret fire because Rachel is still Rachel even without unleashing her inner grizzly bear, and then there were three. Cassie is in the wrong shopping mall at the wrong time, and then there were two.  Jake faces down an army of hork-bajir as just his little human self, and then there was one.  Ax might be able to survive—but he isn’t looking to go home and be safe, he’s looking to save the world.  And then there were none.  

A lot of the point of this book is that of course the Ellimist “stacked the deck,” because these kids in particular are the the only ones who have the necessary combination of idealism and grittiness to take on an entire army and win (MM4).  Marco says it best in #54: “We beat an empire, my friend, the six of us, and we did it in large part because you didn’t know any better than to trust your own instincts.”  Ax has the tech savvy and determination to engage in total war, but he can’t survive on Earth without human friends.  Rachel has the ferocity to be a one-woman army, but without her friends to ground her she’d get herself killed a lot sooner.  Jake might be a natural leader, but he’s also naive enough not to know how to balance ethics in times of atrocity without Marco’s ruthlessness and Cassie’s pragmatism to guide him.  Without Marco, the team would never succeed in taking down Visser One.  Without Cassie, they would never get in contact with the Yeerk Peace Movement.  Without Tobias, they’d never succeed at freeing the hork-bajir.  These six form a constellation of skills and needs and strengths and neuroses that balances the fate of the entire galaxy on the shoulders of a bunch of middle schoolers.  They don’t need morphing power to be badass—but they do need it to win.  

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Melusine - A Review

by Wardog

Saturday, 27 January 2007

Wardog indulges herself with Sarah Monette's debut novel, Melusine.~

Don't you just hate it when you start out liking something in a smug, ironic way and somehow end up it liking it for real? I began Sarah Monette's Melusine (which, for the record, sports a half-naked wizard on the cover with a haunted look in his eyes and a flag of red hair flying out behind him) expecting trashy, easily mockable fun but, having devoured the book with such enthusiasm and responded in such a genuine way to the characters, I cannot in good conscience deride it. Yes, it's trashy fantasy but only in the sense that it possesses in abundance all the strengths of that kind of book, by which I mean it's engrossing, intriguing and blissfully easy to read. Textual chocolate, if you will; the best, sweetest most meltingly delightful Lindt chocolate. Indulge yourself.

Here be (mild) Spoilers

Set in the pseudo-Renaissance(ish) city of Melusine, the book follows the fortunes of two half brothers, the seemingly upper-class Felix Harrowgate, spectacularly screwed up wizard, and the staunchly lower-class Mildmay, slightly less screwed up cat burglar. Felix gets tangled up in a Dastardly Plot to overthrow the city's magic and goes through about three hundred pages of hell, in which he is raped, abused, threatened, driven mad, sent to a lunatic asylum, forced to take the fall for the Dastardly Plot and generally broken into a thousand tiny pieces, before he and Mildmay finally meet.

As I said earlier, the book capitalises on many of the strengths of the genre, but it also shares some of its weaknesses. If you actually want, y'know, something to happen fantasy is perhaps not the genre for you. There is, I am sure, a plot in there some where but the characterisation is so deft and the world so well delineated that I actually didn't notice its absence. The book only really finds its focus when fate and circumstance bring Felix and Mildmay together; the preceding action feels rather like an excessively long prologue. Felix's plot, at least, has the virtue of necessity; understanding what he's gone through is a small step in the direction of not finding him unbelievably irritating and he is, after all, the key to the plot. Mildmay, however, seems to be marking time until the book moves on sufficiently to allow him to fulfil his main role in the story as Felix's only protector. Although things happen to him, they all feel a little irrelevant.

Ultimately, though, this is typical of the genre; it doesn't have prologues, it has first books. And, on the subject of first books, Melusine is clearly the introduction to a series, and very little attempt is made to maintain its readability as a standalone book. If I didn't know Amazon was winging book two, The Virtu, to me as I type, this review would be harsher because I'd be screaming with frustration. The internet tells me Melusine and The Virtu were originally planned as one book, which perhaps goes some way to explaining (if not excusing) the weakness of the ending.

On the other hand, although not a satisfactory conclusion to the action of the story, it was nevertheless a satisfactory conclusion in terms of character. One of the things I particularly relished about Melusine is the depth and detail of the characterisation and, whether it not it was a deliberate decision or a consequence of the division of the book, I found myself appreciating the way the Big Plot is always subsidiary to individual actions and character, especially in the sort of genre where saving-the-world-from-evil tends to be the order of the day. Basically I'm trying to say that if you're used to the way fantasy works then you'll have no problems with Melusine and you'll be refreshed by things-not-happening for legitimate character reasons as opposed to pointless fantasy tourism or spurious authorial intent. If you're not a fantasy aficionado, Melusinemight still be an excellent place to start but wait until Sarah Monette has finished the series.

Melusine is narrated in alternating sections from the perspective of its two central characters; the constant changes in perspective and attitude works exceptionally well, and gives the book the same sort of bite-sized moreishness as the early Song of Ice and Fire novels. Felix and Mildmay have very different voices, Felix's very i-centric, faintly evasive, often madness-driven, interiority-focused narration contrasts strikingly with Mildmay's wryly humorous and action-packed street cant. It's the perfect device for exploring the world without subjecting the reader to tedious world-building exercises (sorry if I sound bitter, I've been living on the equivalent of a Super Sized Me diet of fantasy novels) and very soon creates an intense bond between the reader and the characters. I am hugely impressed by Monette's ability to evoke the atmosphere and the richness of her world without sacrificing the pace of the book in unnecessary explanations for the sake of the reader. The complicated calendar is an excellent example of this; knowing it's there enriches the reader's experience but I am infinitely grateful that Monette felt no obligation to inflict its intricate workings upon me.

The character of Mildmay is, quite simply, wonderful. Monette somehow succeeds in completely rejuvenating the stock fantasy trope of the thief-with-a-heart-of-gold. His street-slang is very well judged, never impedes intelligibility and never feels like a gimmick. The language slips occasionally. I remember tripping over "it commenced to rain" Mildmay, surely, would never use commence if he could say start. But for the most part he's beautifully written; his stories of the city and its history, particularly, are fascinating.

The Felix sections are slightly more difficult to deal with than the Mildmay ones I was certainly interested in him but I'm still not sure whether I like him, or how far the author wants us to forgive his flaws and think he's cool. To be fair he spends most of the book being mad or driven mad but, regardless of whatever brilliance he possess, he is still vain, self-destructive and shallow. There are reasons for this but the fact that Mildmay survived his (admittedly slightly less gruelling) upbringing with compassion, integrity and generosity intact and Felix turned into an utter prick doesn't do him any favours. As a case in point, near the end of the book, the brothers finally arrive at the Gardens of Nephele where they hope to find a cure for Felix's madness. Mildmay nearly kills himself getting Felix there; it is telling that, on waking up, his first act is to ask about his brother, whereas Felix's, on being cured, is to ask for some earrings to remind him of his former life of high society glory. Enough said?

Although an utterly absorbing technique, there are some problems with the alternating narration. It focuses the book so completely on Felix and Mildmay that secondary characters seem shadowy. The wizards were particularly indistinguishable, and very often secondary characters would fall away with little or no explanation. It makes sense that they would (Felix and Mildmay aren't omniscient after all) but it does make the book occasionally emotionally unsatisfying. Furthermore, because we only ever see other characters through the eyes of Felix or Mildmay it makes them less convincing than perhaps they could be. The villain, Malkar, for example, purrs in a sinister fashion and does terrible things to Felix but his plans, motivations and behaviour remain so oblique that he seems to be being Evil simply for the sake of it. And as for Felix's former lover, the beautiful Shannon, he basically flounces through the book, professes love for Felix but fails utterly to support him and throws a huff when the abused and broken Felix won't sleep with him. This little betrayal would have been far more effective had I been able to see even slightly what Felix saw in him. Similarly, we are constantly told that Felix has a cruel and devastating wit; but, when he isn't being mad, his flaying tongue seems primarily capable of delivering a fairly juvenile brand of sarcasm. I feel his pain.

Before I wrap this up in a storm of praise and adoration, I probably ought to make some mention of non PG content. Some pretty nasty stuff happens to Felix early on in the book including a rape scene that, although not graphic, is still quite unpleasant. And, let's face it, any book in which one of the protagonists could be described as "an ex-prostitute gay wizard" isn't likely to be appeal to everyone. Oh yes, I should probably say that Felix is gay, which could presumably be offensive to homophobes. I should add that Felix is gay in a rather well-done and understated way. He just is: no big deal. Move along. Nothing to see here.

In conclusion then, and nitpicking aside, this book is one of the most enjoyable works of fantasy I've read for what feels like a very long time. If you don't mind the slightly risqu content and won't be put off by the lack of a concrete conclusion, I heartily recommend that you give Melusine a go. It's immensely engaging, has a genuinely rich and complex setting that never oppresses you with unnecessary detail, and two excellently written protagonists. I'd even go so far as to say that it has revived my interest in fantasy. I could gush more but The Virtu has just arrived and I have to run off and read it.Themes:

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Rami

at 22:17 on 2007-01-27Sounds good! The only other fantasy I've ever read that featured a gay character was Trudi Canavan's Black Magician trilogy, which did do the "OMG it's a GAY! How will the society DEAL with THIS?" thing a bit too much...

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Wardog

at 22:54 on 2007-01-27Yeah, I loved it to pieces. I've so far ducked the Black Magician Trilogy but I may get round to it at some point. Mercedes Lackey does a selection of gay wizards as well, but they spend all their timing angsting and never getting laid. What is with wizards and teh gay - there's probably an article in there somewhere. I think it must be the fact they're generally depicted wearing dresses...err...robes. Can't be good for the manhood. I really like the fact Felix's sexual preferences are incidental - of course he's getting all incestuous over Mildmay now so it'll be interesting to see where Monette goes with that.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 10:51 on 2009-09-13Another one wich is perhaps rather more bisexual is David Feintuch's The Still, which is also handled very realistically when it comes to peoples reactions and all.

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Wardog

at 13:05 on 2009-09-13Oh really? I'm kind of burned off pretty, vulnerable, sexually ambivalent heroes for the moment (I didn't enjoy the 4th book of this series, for example, there's a Damage Report knocking around somewhere) but thanks for the recommendation. I'll look it out one of these days.

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 13:00 on 2009-09-16It's a good book and it was nice to remember it after I read your article. That has happened quite often after I stumbled in your site while reading the articles. I read The Still as an adolescent in 1997 and I was a bit confused to really appreciate its kind of...hard fantasy, if that's the correct term.

I should probably read it again myself, since on recollection, it is a very well written work, with good characterization. It takes the risk of intentionally building the central character as an arrogant whiny teenager who, although with some reason, alianates people close to him before he learns how to behave like an adult and be a good leader. Although the he is a he and a heir to the throne to boot, it really centres on his development into aa adult and what it costs a person to be a leader.

Also, I'm not sure, but I think it might be pretty unique in a western fantasy story to have a love triangle of two males and a female where its center is on the male and it is represented completely straight and serious without comedy and with significant effect on the plot and not necessarily in a good way.

Sorry, but I'm unaccustomed in writing in english so the sentences seem to build up a bit. Oh well, more practice I guess.

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Wardog

at 16:32 on 2009-09-16Your English is thoroughly excellent - and much better than my command of any other language. I'm definitely curious now, sounds like a really interesting book and I'll certainly try to lay my hands on a copy now, and I think you're right, a straight up love triangle that isn't two women / one man seems pretty rare. I can't think of any other examples, actually.

I'm not quite sure what 'hard fantasy' is compared to say, 'hard sci-fi' (which I know is lots of science) but I guess I'll find out when I read it :)

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http://ruderetum.blogspot.com/

at 19:35 on 2009-09-16I use it in the sense that if there's a thing called magic, it is very rare and very restricted in its application if there is any magic at all. For example Guy Gavriel Kay's The Sarantine Mosaic with only mystical phenomena a few times during two books compared to the Wheel of Time series.