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invinciblerodent · 2 months

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yknow, no, i'm not done thinking/posting/being deeply angry about the whole "bbuuuhhh Astarion is gay and was made playersexual as a game mechanic bbbuuuhhhhhhh" garbage some people still spout.

like this type of sentiment is always annoying and wrong, but it's specifically this character for whom it's especially annoying to me, just because on top of all the regular host of issues, it also deeply contradicts what I believe is the central theme of his whole goddamn story.

(excuse the rant please.)

Like, my skin already crawls at that term, "playersexual". I hate it, and find its use either vaguely ignorant at best, or blatantly pan/biphobic at worst. but even just besides that....

This character is a man whose narrative intentionally shows his presentation of himself, and of his masculinity, as being contradictory with convention. This character is one whose entire arc is about discovering who he is beyond the boxes he was assigned: a spawn, a monster, a seducer, a tool, a predator, a plaything, a victim, a sexual object... these are all identities that were forced onto him. And if he's given space to discover them, turns out, none of them are things that he actually wants to be. if you give him space, and affection (romantic or otherwise), and acceptance, and help him attain closure and catharsis, he expresses desire to be... an adventurer, a lover, a friend, a protector, so many things, but all of them in his own way. That's the point of his story, control vs. autonomy.

How.... myopic does one have to be to see that story, to play that story, to play an active, participatory role in that subversion, that search for the self beneath the masks, and declare that actually, they made him this other box for him to fit into, so... it's fine, i guess, to ignore what he says?????? it's fine if they pick and choose among his expressed traits which ones to use and which to disregard, because they decided (based on frankly homophobic and rather misogynistic stereotypes) that he cannot be different from their perception, despite him literally saying otherwise????????

Astarion's entire figure is a succession of trope-subversions. I could write essays about all the ways in which, in the romanced spawn game, the narrative sets up tropes (primarily in act 1), only to then purposefully knock them down and contradict them as the game progresses.

Like..... He was to take revenge by taking power for himself (like he thought he wanted, like Cazador did to Vellioth): ended up taking his revenge and rejecting the power that could have come with it, and despite that having a price, being content and grateful for it (and realizing that the alternative would have had an even greater price he would have paid unknowingly). He starts out using sex and sexuality as a weapon, and a tool of manipulation, like he did for many decades: ends up expressing discomfort with being seen as a sex object, resuming his sex life by saying "I love you" before his partner would have, and proposing sex with them as a beautiful metaphor for his own rebirth.

His whole story starts out with him thinking he requires protection from the player and that the only way to get that is through using his body and looks as a bargaining chip: later he discovers in himself a desire to be the protector himself, which he talks about more than once, and expresses varying degrees of discomfort at the thoughts of both using his body to gain something, and needing a protector.

There's the "this is what I'm good for" type of attitude towards sex morphing into "I am so much more than a thing to be used". There's the whole thing about how important his looks were to both him and his "usefulness" back then, despite him not being able to even fucking see them, (which also kind of includes that silly lovely gremlin-face he sometimes makes), but those are just the ones off the top of my head.

The story, and the romance plot, is about... it's about him regaining ownership of himself, it's about autonomy, his whole recurring "what do you want" line is about respecting his choices and letting him find his way to them, it's about letting him show you who he is, believing him, and loving the man behind the facade.

how absolutely fucking short-sighted does one have to be to then take that incredibly reductive stereotype of "femme-leaning man with theatrical mannerisms who cares about his looks; must be exclusively homosexual and any attraction he shows to women is just a mechanic/fanservice/flattery" (which, that's so fucking insulting to gay men, and bi/pan men, an any man who might express masculinity in a less than conventional way, and to the women who may love them [eta: and of course nonbinary people, and the people to whom masculinity means something wholly different]), and assign it to this character on their own accord, despite him literally telling the player otherwise? despite him verbally expressing attraction to multiple women, and contradicting that stereotypical interpretation wholly and out of pocket??????

like, hello??????? did we play the same game????????? did we play the same fucking game??????????

like don't think for one second that it isn't the pan/biphobia that annoys me more, it absolutely is, but this character is such a particularly egregious example, it's almost fucking poetic.

#squirrel plays bg3 #i feel like this needs a tw but i just. cannot think of what #i'm just..... annoyed. and ranting. and my brain is full. and i'm hungry.#point is; where Gale's central theme boils down to an exploration of devotion #Astarion's is about autonomy #these are the only two i've done so far so i've not yet looked this much into the others #next is gonna be me ranting for hours about Shadowheart's theme of sacrifice; just you wait #(i hope the person who replied to this post; deleted their reply; and then blocked me #knows how heartily I just laughed at that little sequence of events)#(it's like seeing; idk; a bottle of nice healthy kale-spinach juice discarded in the liquor aisle of a supermarket)#(a telltale sign of DecisionsTM made)#(I can respect a “yknow i don't want to engage with this today”)#(even if i will just outright say that i believe i'm right)

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mel-the-fangirl · 6 years

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In The Rain - Requested

Sam Holland x Reader

Words: 2,513

Requested by: anonymous (anon, please forgive me. please.)

“Could I have a Sam Holland imagine where they have been dating for 4 years but know each other forever(Him and the reader are 20) and he takes her to their spot (your pick as long as it’s outside) and he has this plan in his head to propose to hear, but when he is about to talk it starts raining and he gets sort of sad, but then it’s all fluffy and he proposes?”

Good GOD this took way longer than it needed to. Please support me huhuhu I’m still here guys, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking rusty please bear with me on this one, and please. TELL ME HOW I DID. COMMENT. MESSAGE ME. PLS LOVE ME HUHU I’M SO SORRY GUYS

——————————————————————

You’ve been with Sam Holland for four amazing years, but you’ve known him even longer than that and it was such a beautiful thing to have your relationship progress so naturally. When you two met as children, you two clicked instantly, almost like it was always meant to be. As you two grew older, you never admitted it but you were afraid that you two would grow apart, that Sam would come into his own and forget all about you, replace you with better, more interesting people.

But that never happened.

Regardless of what you thought, you and Sam grew even closer as the years went on. You both knew that you had found something special in each other and nothing could take that away from you.

When you reached the scary and somewhat predictable world of high school, one thing that you never saw coming (but everyone else did) happened. Sam, your best friend, your confidante, your shoulder to cry on, asked you out. On a date.

And that was kind of the shock of your life, I mean, who would’ve thought? But like all things surrounding you and Sam, it just made sense and most of all, it felt right. Besides, you couldn’t really say no to your best friend, could you?

Your first date with Sam was one of the days of your life you would never forget. He took you to the cinema, picking that cheesy romantic comedy you’d been going on and on about for weeks, he didn’t care for it but just seeing you laugh and swoon at all the right moments was more than enough for him. After the film, Sam took you to dinner, holding your hand all the way and wrapping his coat around you when the night got too cold.

The only problem was that you were so nervous throughout the whole thing that Sam had to steal some fries off of your plate just to get you to act like yourself again.

“Oi, put it back where you got it, fucker.” you growled at him

“There she is.” Sam grinned broadly, placing the offending fries back on your plate

With a roll of your eyes and a smirk on your lips, you two eased back into your usual banter but of course the whole situation was anything but usual. Somewhere behind the laughter and the playful shoves was a subtle electricity wrapping around the two of you like a vise, it wasn’t much but it was a glimpse of something more to come.

After dinner ended, you walked to the park and honestly it was such a cliché, would you believe it actually rained? You two were soaking wet, running through the slick grass, hand in hand, laughter echoing all around you.

You two finally found shelter underneath a tall sycamore tree and you promptly wrung the rain water out of your hair while Sam shook himself out like a dog, effectively soaking you again.

“Sam!” you squealed as the cold water hit you

He laughed heartily and you couldn’t help but join in. When the laughter finally bubbled down into breathless chuckles, your eyes met underneath the glow of the moonlight escaping through the trees.

Sam felt like he was floating up in the night sky. His head was light and his freckled cheeks were burning, all that from one night with you. He didn’t know what came over him or how he found the strength to place his shivering hands upon your crimson tinted cheeks, but he did.

You exhaled sharply when his palms made contact, sending sparks and shivers throughout your body. You looked up at him, confused.

If the sound of the rain wasn’t so loud, you were sure Sam would be able to hear how hard your heart was pounding against your chest. It wasn’t any better for him, either. He was so nervous, he felt as if your beautiful eyes were boring holes into his own.

But it was now or never.

So he asked,

“Can I kiss you?”

His face was already mere inches from yours and his breath touched your lips as he spoke. It was dizzying. You nodded your head almost imperceptibly, frozen in the moment.

Slowly, Sam finally closed the distance between you, pressing his lips against yours.

Fireworks exploded behind your eyelids as your eyes fluttered shut. How on earth were his lips so warm in this weather? It seeped into your body as your lips melded together in perfect sync.

You two pulled apart sooner than both of you would’ve liked. You rested your forehead against his and shut your eyes, trying to steady your frantic heart. Unable to contain himself any longer, Sam cupped your cheeks in his hands and pulled you into a fiery and passionate kiss. Finally, you pull apart and open your eyes.

“Wow.” you mumbled under your breath

“I think we should do that again.” Sam chuckled, not wasting another minute before pulling you into him once more.

That was how it all began.

Four years later, on the day of your anniversary, you stood at the ticket booth in the same movie theatre Sam took you to on your very first date, with your hand in his. You watched him as he bought your tickets, his auburn hair flopping against his forehead in that messy way only he could pull off, his emerald eyes were shining underneath the glare of the fluorescent lights.

He just got more handsome as the years went by.

How on earth did you get so lucky?

The sound of his dorky laugh brought you back to the present, just in time to see the ticket clerk hand the tickets over to your freckled boyfriend. With a cheeky smile, he tugged your arm in the direction of your designated cinema number.

“What was so funny back there?” you asked Sam inquisitively, noting that he was more fidgety than usual

“Huh? Nothing! Just a good joke.”

Your eyes narrowed into tiny slits as you watched him fumble with your movie tickets, handing them to the attendant with shaky hands, you observed.

Oh, something was definitely up. You so hoped that Harry didn’t put him up to any pranks, the gall of those twins really if they were going to prank you on your anniversary. As you entered, you swiveled your head around the dimly lit area, checking for any sign of Harry, or even Tom. But strange enough, there wasn’t anyone in there.

“Are we too early?” you whispered to Sam as he led you to your seats

He shrugged his coat off, steeling his face into something more nonchalant.

“Uhhh, no I don’t think so, darling. I think we’re right on time.” he said, crossing his legs and placing his hand in yours

“Okay, what is going on?”

Your question was immediately ignored as the lights shut off and the movie began but even as the first notes of the film’s opening sequence began, you kept your eyes on him. What on earth was he up to?

And where the hell was everybody else in this fucking theatre?

You began looking around the room again to see if anyone else had come in or if either Harry or Tom was lurking around, hovering over your seat with a bucket of water or something to that effect. When you found no one, you settled back in your seat and put your hand back in Sam’s.

Focusing on the film in front of you, you were more than a little confused to hear and see a familiar scene playing out on the giant screen. A huge grin began to spread on your lips as you turned to Sam once again.

“I thought we were seeing something new?” you asked him, realising what he’d done

He let out a little chuckle, turning as well so that you were both facing each other.

The faintest and softest of smiles was playing on his lips, he looked into your eyes for a second before placing his lips against yours.

“Happy anniversary, darling girl.” Sam mumbled against your lips before pulling away

It was nothing short of amazing how after all these years, he could set your body on fire even with the most delicate kiss.

With the very same cheesy romantic comedy you watched on your first date playing on screen, you were reminded of just how much that day meant to the both of you. After the movie ended, you found yourselves on the same road you walked all those years ago.

It was silent, the both of you caught up in old memories. None of you seemed to be aware of where you were going. You two walked and walked, hand in hand, plainly enjoying each other’s quiet company.

You and Sam reached the park, the addictive smell of dewy grass mixed with the fresh night air mingled together, permeating your senses. Neither of you said a word, but almost certainly, you both knew where you were headed.

Underneath the sycamore tree.

Branches stretching and reaching towards the starry night sky, its leaves almost kissing the moon. The two of you sat underneath it, leaning against the trunk.

“You’ve been awfully quiet.” Sam observed, nudging his leg against yours

“So have you.” you replied, nudging back

“I guess I’ve just been thinking.”

“Oh, that’s no good.”

“Hey!” he frowned at you for a millisecond before tackling you down onto the soft grass, his fingers unleashing no mercy on your sides

“Sam, please no!” you begged in between your maniacal laughter

He had you rolling all around the grass, pieces of it stuck to your hair and on your clothes, lucky you weren’t wearing anything white. His attack was severe and you were gasping for air until in a flash, his hands were gone.

You were left with your back on the ground, your eyes facing towards heaven. As you took in lungfuls of air, you watched, entranced, as the stars danced in the sky. It just couldn’t have gotten any better at that moment.

The events of today took you on a trip down memory lane, you felt like you were sixteen years old again, holding Sam’s hand throughout the day, sneaking little kisses in the movie theatre, laughing like mad..

“This has been the perfect day, Sam. Thank you so much.” you said, hoping he would hear you despite how breathless you were

When he didn’t respond, you sat up and almost fell back down at what you were seeing.

Sam, a little pale, with one knee against the grass, holding a little velvet box in his shaking hands.

“Sam..” you drew a long breath in. Your heart was pounding and you hadn’t even recovered from his tickle assault.

“Y/N,” he began, his deep voice wavering ever so slightly

You watched him in a state of shock, your hand was covering your mouth and your chest was rising and falling rapidly. He took your stunned silence as his cue to begin.

“Y/N, my darling, my love, the light of my fucking life, I love you. And I know that in the majority of proposals, they always say stuff about looking to the future and things like that but I want to take a moment to look back,” Sam gave you a wobbly smile as his eyes began to shine with unshed tears, he didn’t want to cry, not yet.

“My entire life so far, I’ve spent it with you. We’ve had the most incredible adventures together, and I want you to know that I am so grateful for you, your presence, your advice, all of it. And I-”

Just as the first tear dripped down the side of his cheek, a crack of lightning shot through the sky, and pelting rain came not long after. He stood up abruptly, looking all around him as what he thought was going to be the perfect setting for his proposal turned into a fucking huge muddy puddle.

“Fucking shit.” he muttered in sheer annoyance, running a hand through his dampening hair

“Excuse me?” you called out to him, arms crossed against your chest

He spun on his heel and walked briskly to you, placing his hands on the sides of your arms.

“I am so sorry, Y/N. I didn’t think it was going to rain and I just wanted everything to be perf-” you cut him off by placing a finger to his lips

“Take the knee, Holland.” you commanded him

Sam looked into your shimmering eyes, smiled, and plunged a knee into the muddy ground without hesitation. You nodded your head in approval, struggling to maintain your composure as you took in the sight of him kneeling in front of you, ring box in his hand, and love glowing in his beautiful teary eyes.

“Please continue.”

“Right. So, as I was saying,” he chuckled, wiping at his eyes with his free hand

“I just can’t describe the feeling you give me. It’s like the feeling you get when your favourite song plays on the radio, the sky is that colour that makes you whip your phone out to take a picture, and the air isn’t too cold or too hot, but just perfect so that the wind can blow against your face,”

He took a deep shaky breath. Your heart was being pulled in so many different directions as you watched him start to cry freely, putting every emotion he was feeling into his proposal.

“God,” Sam sighed, shaking his head. “Y/N, you just make me forget everything that’s going on in my life and I don’t care how cliché it sounds, but you make me so incredibly happy.”

He looked up at you with more tears in his eyes and opened the tiny box. Nestled inside in a bed of black velvet, was the most gorgeous ring you’ve ever seen. It took your breath away and more tears began to streak down your cheeks with lightning speed, mingling with the rain.

“Marry me?” Sam whispered just above the roar of the downpour

You two were soaking wet and Sam’s trousers were getting muddy but neither of you cared. You took one look at your dashingly handsome fiancé and nodded your head, droplets of rain water shaking off of the ends of your hair.

“YES!” you screamed, jumping up and down where you stood

“Yes?!” Sam echoed ecstatically, getting up and immediately taking you in his arms

“Oh my God!” he laughed happily, slipping the ring onto your finger with ease despite his shaking hands

“Perfect fit.”

Sam held you gently, cupping your face with one hand. He gazed at you lovingly, the woman of his dreams, his best friend, his fianceé.

With the incredible thought in his mind that he was actually going to marry you, Sam wasted no time in placing his lips on yours. And just like the first time and every time he kissed you, sparks flew in every direction, and the world slowly disappeared around you.

——————————————————————

permanent taglist: @theholyholland, @optimisticbee, @johnxstilinski, @lyssamorgan, @osterfield-holland, @planet-holland-writing, @draqcnheartstrinq, @leahhensonx, @twong2001, @cubedtriangle, @sebenagomez, @aussie-mantle, @the-crime-fighting-spider, @writerunhuman

(please message me if you’d like to be added!)

#sam holland #sam holland x reader #sam holland fic #sam holland imagine #tom holland #harry holland #hollander #quacksons #holland family #requested #requests are open #im sorry im sorry

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hectorgamesmksq846-blog · 4 years

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4 Dirty Little Secrets About the Full Version Games Industry

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The deeper you wish to try, the new roadblocks you arrive at. Perhaps this sensible that the game with no large freedom to cross would not feature bicycles, although I even miss drive around town, moving over rise and complete valleys until I access the churchyard and pursue the ghosts there. Not solely is moving left, but so are the hills and valleys, all of them smoothed out into a uniformly flat surface that doesn't support basements or terraforming. Elsewhere, the emphasis on specific tasks detracts from the freeform noodling. While offer the former birthday organization, for case, I happened subsequently focused on fulfilling assigned jobs like doing drinks i did not notice how differently The Sims 4 handled birthday cakes than its predecessor. I skipped being able to simply buy the cake, spread about some balloons, and have a wonderful moment. When I got never choose the wedding woman, I didn't air as though I received given everyone a good enough time--I air like I took clicked for the actual factors in the moral direction. It is wearing that distinction that you find the disparity between The Sims 4 and its predecessor.

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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Revenge is Not So Great Acktually

by Wardog

Monday, 06 July 2009

Wardog gets typically epic and ambivalent on Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold.~

Damn you, Joe Abercrombie, damn you. I was fully intending to wait until Best Served Cold came out in paperback but I made the mistake of “perusing” it in Borders coffee shop while waiting for a friend. Well, one thing led to another and, what can I say, less than an hour later I'd bought the thing. My attitude to Joe Abercrombie is probably best described as ambiguous; I found The First Law trilogy

exciting

but also

frustrating

and ultimately, I ditheringly concluded,

unsatisfying.

As with The First Law trilogy, I started Best Served Cold in a paroxysm of wild enthusiasm that got more and more complicated as the book progressed. By the end I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought, although the fact I got there at the speed I did proves one thing at least: the man can write a gripping story. And, even though I have yet to fully establish whether I actually like what he writes, I’m still hopelessly intrigued by his books.

Best Served Cold is one of those rare, under-appreciated jewels: a fantasy one shot. It’s also, as the title indicates, a revenge-tale, with all the attendant heritage. The heroine is a member of a deadly assassin squad but when she tries to leave the group, their leader finds her and shoots her. But she doesn’t die, she just goes into a coma and when she wakes up she vows to get even on all the people who tried to murder her … oh wait that’s something else. Let me try again. The heroine is the leader of a mercenary army but when she gets too powerful, the man she is working for arranges to have her murdered. But she doesn’t die, she just horribly scarred and broken and when she wakes up she vows to get even on all the people who tried to murder her.

Okay, my plot summary is now unhelpfully crap because I wanted to make a cheap point about revenge stories. The heroine is called Monzcarro (Monza) Murcatto. Her nemesis is Grand Duke Orso, although her hit list totals an ambitious seven, all of whom were in some way involved in the brutal attempt on her life that led to the death of her beloved brother. Along way to vengeance she assembles the expected motley crew, a distinctly unmagnificent seven. What starts out a relatively simple slaughterfest soon spirals out of control in a way that cannot fail to affect not only those caught up its immediate vicinity but a battle-torn kingdom. The cast encompasses some familiar faces from the First Law trilogy, the Northman Caul Shivers, Glokta’s assistant Vitari, and, of course, the famed soldier of fortune, Nicomo Cosca, but they’re joined by an array of new and original misfits, including Morveer the self-proclaimed master poisoner, his pretty assistant Day and Friendly, the number-obsessed, borderline autistic murderer.

The main problem with revenge stories is that you have to suspend your disbelief over the premise itself. So you have this Duke, right. Who’s so totally ruthless he spent the last eight years subduing Styria so he can be King on’t. Who’s so totally ruthless he’s willing to murder his Captain General for fear of betrayal. Who’s so totally ruthless he gets five guys to carry it out while he and a random banker look on. But who’s not quite ruthless enough to ensure he’s done the deed probably before flinging the body down a cliff.

As Dan would say, that’s a very specific level of ruthlessness.

If that doesn’t bug the crap out of you from the get go, I suspect you’ll do all right with Best Served Cold.

It should go without saying but: there’s gonna be spoilers okay but nothing too catastrophic

Like The First Law trilogy, there’s an extent to which Best Served Cold is an act of deconstruction, aimed both at the fantasy genre and at the tropes of the revenge plot as well. One of Abercrombie’s strengths was a writer is the way he constantly forces his reader to evaluate her own expectations by refusing to fulfill them. Best Served Cold, which is presented in a rather episodic way, is a succession of misdirections and wrong-turnings. This is reflected in the chaotic way the events unfold, repeatedly defying even the most meticulous planning, and in the flawed, inadequate interactions of the characters, for example the spiraling tension between Morveer and his assistant, and the abortive love affair between Monza and Shivers. Revenge piles upon revenge, betrayal upon betrayal, and the personal and the political become hopelessly entangled. The problem, however, with the revenge story is that, deconstructed or not, Abercrombie doesn’t seem to have much to say on the subject beyond “is not so great acktually.”

Although I did it primarily for laughs, the comparison between Kill Bill and Best Served Cold has slightly more thought behind it than I initially indicated. If I was feeling particularly glib I might be inclined to say Joe Abercrombie is the Quentin Tarantino of fantasy fiction. He’s obsessed with genre conventions, he’s extremely stylish, violent and action-orientated, but when you stop and think about it for a moment it’s all just a little bit shallow. Here’s one of Monza’s victims on the subject of revenge:

"If you could get even what good would it do you? All this expenditure of effort, pain, treasure, blood for what. Who is ever left better off for it ... not the avenged dead, certainly. They rot on regardless. Not those who are avenged upon, of course. Corpses all. And what of the those who take vengeance what of them? Do they sleep easier, do you suppose, once they have heaped murder on murder, sown the bloody seeds of a hundred other retributions?”

It’s all been said, and shown, a thousand times before. What Abercrombie does accomplish, however, alongside standard meditations on the futility of revenge, is its diminution to something banal. Everyone’s got something against someone, and the nested sequences of betrayals and retributions are very effective. Ultimately, Best Served Cold is well worth a read. If you’re a supporter of stand-alone fantasy, you enjoyed The First Law trilogy or you like your fantasy low and nasty, I’d heartily recommend it. Abercrombie writes well, especially his action sequences. He’s one of the few fantasy authors I’ve encountered whose battle scenes I can read without glazing over. I don’t know how he does it but not only do I understand what’s going on in them, I’m actually interested:

“The Baolish were breaking through in earnest, boiling out of the widening gaps in Rogont's shattered right wing like the rising tide through a wall of sand. Monza could hear their shrill cries as they streamed up the slope, see their tattered banners waving, the glitter of metal on the move. The lines of archers above them dissolved all at once, men tossing away their bows and running for the city...”

He’s also very funny, in a grim kind of way. Here’s Nicomo Cosca (famed soldier of fortune) hiring some violent scumbags who claim to be entertainers:

Their eyes darted about, narrow and suspicious, dirty hands clutching a set of stained instruments. They shuffled up in front of the table, one of them scratching his groin, another prodding at a nostril with his drumstick “And you are,” asked Cosca. “We're a band,” the nearest said. “And has your band a name?” They looked at each other. “No, why would it?” “Your own names then, if you please and your specialities, both as entertainer and fighter.” “My name's Solter, I play the drum and the mace.” Flicking his greasy coat back to show the dull glint of iron. “I'm better with the mace if I'm honest.” “I'm Morc,” said the next in line, “pipe and cutlass.” “Olopin. Horn and hammer.” “Olopin as well.” Jerking a thumb sideways. “Brother to this article. Fiddle and blades.” Whipping a pair of long knives from his sleeves and spinning 'em round his fingers The last one had the most broken nose Shivers had ever seen and he'd seen some bad ones. “Gurpie. Lute and lute.” “You fight with your lute?” asked Cosca “I hits 'em with it just so.” The man showed off a sideways swipe, then flashed two rows of shit coloured teeth. “There's a great axe hidden in the body.”

The other big advantage of reading Abercrombie is that he ruthlessly cuts through all the crap I hate about fantasy fiction. I still remember the dizzy joy I felt when, after a small amount of build up regarding the invasion of the Gurkish in Before They Are Hanged, the Gurkish did, in fact, invade. Instead of waiting obligingly until the climax of book three. In Best Served Cold, the first vengeance-killing occurs within the 50 pages, and the next about 50 pages after that. Words cannot express how much I adore the way Abercrombie has things happen in his books. And it’s refreshing to see the usual conventions of fantasy get torn down around you – people break under torture and the damage is permanent, love and sex aren’t redemptive, if you go up against a superior swordsman you will lose.

The characters are your usual Abercrombie Bag of irredeemable, flawed but somehow weirdly sympathetic arseholes. Because there’s a significantly larger major cast than in The First Law Trilogy, I found Abercrombie’s handle on them a little less assured. Unlike The First Law trilogy in which changes of perspective were, for the most part, limited to chapters, the POV jumps around quite a lot and it’s easy to lose track of whose head you’re supposed to be in. They mostly have distinctive voices – Shivers says ain’t and ‘em, Friendly thinks in numbers, Morveer is florid – but it feels like linguistic frosting. Possibly I’m just wearing my Nostalgia Glasses but to read the First Law trilogy is to be completely saturated in the thoughts and worldview of Glokta, Jezel and Logen, whereas Best Served Cold seems to offer only the tourist highlights of personality. Furthermore, juggling such a large cast means there are some characters who barely register – Vitari, doting mother and torturer, is sidelined (again) and I have no idea what Abercrombie was trying to do with Morveer’s assistant, Day.

I had trouble with Monza, as well. She’s not designed to be a sympathetic character but, I suspect, she’s meant to be understandable and even attractive. She’s certainly a more successful attempt at a strong woman than Ferro was. I usually find there’s a point in vengeance narratives in which I lose all ability to empathise with the main character, the moment when Dantes becomes Monte Cristo; a deliberate device, on the part of authors, I’m sure, to show the de-humanising affects of an obsession with revenge. However, I never lost touch with Monza in that way, which, again, contributed to the way revenge functions in the text: not as something alien and outlandish, but as something common to all. The problem was, I didn’t really manage to invest her in the first place. One of the main reasons Monza retains her humanity is that her revenge is as much for her brother as for herself. This taps into yet another convention of the genre: the idea that vengeance for others has an inherent nobility, compared to vengeance for oneself. As the story unfolds, we learn that Monza’s brother is a traitorous, avaricious waste of space, which, I suspect, is meant to problematise Monza’s crusade, and undermine any nobility we might have attributed to her. Unfortunately, since her brother is practically introduced as Bastard McBastard of the Principality of Bastardry and everyone, I mean everyone, is constantly going on about what a bastard he was, the overall effect of this is to make Monza look like a total idiot. And I can’t imagine that was deliberate.

On the other hand I did really like the way her relationship with Shivers developed and then fell apart. At first it seems that Shivers, clinging to his vow to be a better man and characterised by by an innate sense of decency, might serve as a redemptive influence upon her. And there’s a nice gender-reversal to it at as well: he is both materially dependent upon and emotionally vulnerable to her. Shivers, in his way, wants to find hope in the world. Monza believes there is none. Watching them ruin and break each other, each at times denying the other salvation, and Shivers’ eventual transformation into Monza’s creature entirely (albeit not in any way she would want) is deeply unpleasant but also strangely satisfying. It is a tale not so often told, and rarely done well.

The other stand-out character of Best Served Cold (I’m deliberately not mentioning Nicomo Cosca, famed solider of fortune, of whom Abercrombie is blatantly far too fond) is Castor Morveer, master poisoner. Again, he is deconstructed over the course of the novel from leet poisoner stereotype to self-deluding fool whose dedication to science and maxims of caution offer no protection against the cruel whimsicality of the world in which he lives.

He was beyond doubt the greatest poisoner ever and had become, indisputably, a great man of history. How it galled him that he could never truly share his grand achievement with the world, never enjoy the adulation his triumph undoubtedly deserved. Oh, if the doubting headmaster of the orphanage could have only witnessed this happy day, he would have been forced to concede that Castor Morveer was indeed prize-winning material. If his wife could have seen it, she would have finally understood him and never complained about his unusual habits!

Yes, he’s a messed up little bunny and so utterly broken, hopeless and thwarted it’s hard not to feel a certain pity for him although he’s also a masterpiece of irritation. Although they have little in common on the surface, he reminded me a great deal of Jezel in the sense that both are characters who exist to have their illusions of themselves utterly shattered. As with Jezel, the presentation of Morveer made me faintly uncomfortable, not so much because of who he was or what happened to him, but because of an ill-defined extra-textual element. I remember finding Jezel as much as the victim of authorial malice as anything and, again, I rather felt that Abercrombie wanted to condemn Morveer for his hypocrisy. This is pure speculation of the kind that would get me thrown out of any lit class in the land, but I think one of Abercrombie’s personal bugbears (and one he shares with Dan, actually) is “people who are more shit than they think they are” and that he takes a grim pleasure in having such people come face to face with irrefutable evidence of their own shitness (there’s even a brief cameo from Jezel, suitably cowed). Unfortunately it’s very difficult to communicate the subtleties of that effectively, and the result is characters like Jezel and Morveer, who come face to face with their own shitness primarily because the author wants to show it to them.

They are presented as characters whose self-perceptions are flawed but they are flawed primarily insofar as they differ from the author’s. The result of this is to highlight their artificiality in that you’re always aware of them as an authorial creations, and the only possible perspective you can take is the one prescribed by the author. I didn’t like Jezel but I did sympathise with him greatly (I think, perhaps, his shitness resonated with my shitness), but I felt there was no room for that within the text, because the author had nothing but contempt for him. Essentially, when constructing self-deluding characters, there must be a distinction drawn between “this character thinks they’re great but they’re not necessarily as great as they think they are” and “this character thinks he’s awesome, I (the author) think they’re a dick, therefore they’re a dick.” And that, for me, is the problem with Abercrombie’s Jezel/Morveer archetypes.

There’s something Chaucerian about Abercrombie’s work, not just in a shared relish of jokes about poo, but in the sense that the primary virtue espoused by both writers is not necessarily moral good but a kind of animalistic cleverness. Rewards, such as they are, come to those who are smart enough to know when they are beaten (Glokta) and those with the wit to see themselves as they truly are (Cosca). For everybody else, there is merely destruction, self-destruction and death, as they become helpless slaves to the cruelty of others, their own needs and the vagaries of fate.

There’s a lot to like about Best Served Cold. A well designed world, snappy dialogue, some great writing, colourful characters and lashings of ultraviolence. It bogs down a little about 3/5s of the way through but finishes nicely. But there’s also a certain sense that Abercrombie may be a one-trick pony. It’s set in the same world, it has a similar approach, similar characters and, hell, even the same damn cover. It has the comparable strengths and weaknesses of The First Law Trilogy, except the weaknesses bothered me less and the strengths seemed more pronounced. In short, if Joe Abercrombie is a one trick pony, it’ll be a fucking stallion by the time he’s done.Themes:

Books

Joe Abercrombie

Sci-fi / Fantasy

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 21:32 on 2009-07-07I've always had a certain fondness for fantasy settings, despite hating most fantasy tropes with a passion, so it sounds like I should like Abercrombie. Would you recommend starting with this or the First Law trilogy?

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Wardog

at 23:05 on 2009-07-07Oh gosh, that's a rather difficult question actually. Given what you've said about your attitude fantasy, I think you might really dig Abercrombie - I know I do, when I'm not feeling ambivalent :) This has the benefit of being a one-shot so it's less of an investment but ... it's set in the same world as The First Trilogy and it does have characters and settings in common. I don't think it would necessarily interfere with your enjoyment of the book but it might be slightly bewildered.

I'd actually start with The Blade Itself - firstly it's in paperback (hehe) but I remember thinking it was one of the most interesting, exciting fantasy books I'd ever read when I began it. And even thought I'm personally not sure the second and third books live up to the potential of the first, at least you'll know whether his style grabs you. Also I think his grip on his characters is better in The First Law trilogy, maybe just because he has more time to establish them.

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http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 20:51 on 2009-07-08I was thinking I could just flip a coin, but you make a good case for The Blade Itself. (Actually, you had me at "it's in paperback.") :)

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Michal

at 03:10 on 2011-07-30I'll always remember this book as "that one with the most disappointing sword fight ever." (I'm sure you remember the one)

Not to say that I didn't like the book as a whole, but I also disliked a good many things about it, and it hasn't convinced me to pick up any more Abercrombie.

#Ferretbrain #Joe Abercrombie #Best Served Cold #Wardog

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