sine lucro friget ludus

Here is my promised missive about RC! Like I said before, I found this one a little hard to get into coming off of PiF, but honestly, the ending was as gutting as every single other of her books, and I was grateful that at least we returned to the subject of the two infants, because I seriously thought Dorothy was going to end the book without addressing them at all.

Because Francis’s reasons for saving Kuzum did make a lot of sense; after the end of PiF, my shippy heart was like—did he do it for Philippa’s sake, saving the boy she had come to love? And even if it was more from the opposite direction (he saved the boy that knew how to love, and more specifically had a place of love to rest in), it is interesting that it’s confirmed at the end of a book where Dorothy’s own insistence about the lack of sentimentality kind of breaks down. Lymond isn’t a machine, and we watch him crack twice (when he falls in love, and then when he confronts Gabriel’s corpse again); he’s outwitted for the first time through the power of love and loyalty; the more he tries to control, the more you can feel his control slipping.

As I touched on before, I did really like the relationships between him and Ivan (partly because Ivan is as much of a freak as he is) and between him and Diccon (partly because Diccon is one of the sanest people in the entire series). I also liked Güzel because she felt like the non-toxic version of Margaret Lennox (who is such a good villainess, by which I mean, I hate her).

I guess my biggest question is about the very final page, where it says that both Ivan and Güzel were still waiting for him (pitch-perfect tragical tone for the book to end), even though it seemed indicated that Ivan was prepared thoroughly to shun him and Güzel had already moved on (either to the Baida, or just in her own mind, prophesying that Lymond would never return to Russia). Did they sincerely hope Lymond would go back to them? Or was it less hope as expectation, as they both had figured out enough of Lymond’s nature to know that he would have gone back if not forcibly prevented, no matter the consequences?

I do kind of feel a little bad for him that he was prevented from returning to Russia, even though I know that was just an escape mechanism and he really does have to come face to face with himself at last. I may have more thoughts as I let this one percolate, but I'm also diving headfirst into Checkmate, so there may not be enough time for that lol.

Your delighted correspondent, @no-where-new-hero

Dear no-where-new-hero,

I think his reasoning for which boy to save is a combination of both of the reasons you listed. It does also explicitly say in the book that he also does it for Philippa, but not for shippy reasons (he sees her as a child at that point, unlike my girl Marthe, who does immediately notice how well she cleans up lmfao), just because it's also an overall net benefit to also not traumatize Philippa too much if he can manage it. Basically he takes everyone's feelings and needs into consideration except his own: he sees himself as a sort of emotionless god/devil floating above them all and making perfectly rational moves, which is exactly what RC sets out to break down. He didn't make a sentimental decision in PiF, he stayed the perfect utilitarian actor throughout, but it destroyed him psychologically, and now Dorothy is gearing herself up to point out that living that way is unsustainable and that true utilitarianism means also taking into account that you're a soft human animal as well :) (and this is also why I insist on people interpreting Lymond's decisions in the previous books correctly - if you don't understand the extent to which he's trying to be an impersonal moral and political actor while sort of dehumanizing himself then the deconstruction of this tendency in the final books makes less sense and hits less hard)

On a very related note, he never would have been able to help Russia like he wanted to, so I don't feel bad about him not coming back. His logic is that having to make hard, rational decisions almost annihilated him psychologically because those decisions involved people that he loved or that were otherwise personally connected to him, so he'll just go to a place where he doesn't know anyone and doesn't connect to anyone and doesn't have to feel anything. But the book spends so much time describing exactly how both Mary and Ivan are slowly going insane because that's what happens when you have only power and no one to address your human needs and emotions or be human with... Note how desperate for any sort of connection both of them are, to the point where they can be alternatively led around by the nose over it and expected to lash out with disastrous consequences.

Also, it's very hard to make permanent changes to a country or society if you don't connect to its mentality or people and aren't really part of its society, because you'll just be superficially imposing your own method without bothering to be a leader to the people. You won't really understand how to make the changes stick, which is why it all implodes as soon as Lymond leaves. What he wants is not sustainable or realistic. The outcome of Lymond going back to Russia isn't, as Lymond likes to believe, him saving and reforming Russia, it's him going insane and his judgement becoming compromised, dropping dead, or both. Which is what the people around him understand as well and why they prevent him from going back.

It's funny because of all the Lymond books, this one is basically... set out to underline the inherent flaws of white saviourism, while also being the most, er, orientalist one of the bunch? Because the Russian characters barely felt human to me, which, ok, is also a question of POV (compare Turkey through Jerott's POV and Philippa's, for example), but probably also a consequence of the time period the book was written in haha :')

Also, Güzel non-toxic? Did you miss the part where Lymond is sort of blackmailed into sleeping with her so she'd stop molesting the underaged servant boy? I love her character and find it really fun but non-toxic she is not and that was also part of Lymond's plan btw, attaching himself to a woman who, even if she ends up suffering because of him, sort of had it coming. Anyway, I think she made her play as she always does and I think she had plans B, C, and D as she always does. If it looked like Lymond wasn't coming back, Baida was option B, but she'd have preferred Lymond and screwed over Baida to rejoin him had Lymond come back.

Ivan is very erratic, so he'd have taken Francis not coming back very personally and childishly, but Francis believed that he could turn him around if he came back, and jury's out on how accurate Francis's assessment is. A little bit of Column A and a little bit of Column B, I guess.

Your obedient servant (hopefully you catch the reference this time around?),

-- mala-taste

Two very interesting points to address in your reply!

It's funny because of all the Lymond books, this one is basically… set out to underline the inherent flaws of white saviourism, while also being the most, er, orientalist one of the bunch?

I 100% agree with this, which I think was also part of the reason I found the book hard to sink into at first. Dorothy is throwing huge chunks of formidable research into this narrative, but the execution is much rougher than it was in DK and PiF. I was starting to think she had reached the peak of her form, but it seems it was not a seamless improvement. I also see why you say it's not a political thriller (honestly, I don't know where anyone could get that impression?) because the politics is the boring bit (unlike QP or DK, I'd argue) and all the interesting stuff happens in the psychological detailing.

Did you miss the part where Lymond is sort of blackmailed into sleeping with her so she'd stop molesting the underaged servant boy?

...I guess I did? Of course, Lymond obviously chose to start sleeping with her to prove a point, but maybe I had been blinded by Vencelas's coding (beautiful, attentive, compared to Robin Stewart), that I thought Lymond's reasons for that were detachment from Vencelas--that he was going to slam down any possible channel of connection to another useful boy who served him by choosing heterosexuality and aligning with the image of luxurious lover that everyone seemed to be expecting. And only after that was firmly established could he ask for Vencelas back as his servant. Maybe that was twisting the vague descriptions too much. But yeah, "non-toxic" isn't really what you can describe anyone in this series as, that was a poor choice of words.

I 100% agree with this, which I think was also part of the reason I found the book hard to sink into at first. Dorothy is throwing huge chunks of formidable research into this narrative, but the execution is much rougher than it was in DK and PiF. I was starting to think she had reached the peak of her form, but it seems it was not a seamless improvement. I also see why you say it's not a political thriller (honestly, I don't know where anyone could get that impression?) because the politics is the boring bit (unlike QP or DK, I'd argue) and all the interesting stuff happens in the psychological detailing.

I was comparing it to the earlier books in the series, which in my opinion are more political thrillers than people give them credit for. In the first three or so books the stakes are external and the choices that Lymond has to make are rooted in various political decisions that represent different principles related to being a political actor. The themes are about what political goals or ideals you should adopt and work towards, what you should or shouldn't do to others, how you should carry yourself in a complicated and unjust world, how you should navigate it, what you can and cannot be held responsible for, what you can and cannot hold others responsible for. It's like a mini manual in utilitarian ethics masquerading as a swashbuckler/political thriller/spy novel - it's not an accident that we're introduced to the universe of this book through Will Scott, who just came back from Moral Philosophy School.

PiF is kind of a turning point because it says, "Okay, cool, but what if you cannot fulfill all your responsibilities? What if you're forced to betray one thing to sacrifice another one? What if you have to make choices that break you psychologically? Can you really always expect to be a perfect machine? What happens if you can't?" (themes also anticipated in, e.g., Marthe's subplot - we are invited to empathize with Marthe because, unlike Lymond, she's in a position where she has very few choices she can viably make and get out ahead. And it's also fun to contrast Marthe with Robin, who THINKS he's Marthe but really hasn't even tried most of the non-dysfunctional choices that he has available. But I digress!).

And from then on the themes become more internalized - they stop being completely about what choices you make in relation to others, or in relation to ideals, and the consequences that they have on the world outside of you, and start being more about what choices you make in relation to yourself, and what consequences they have on you and your subsequent capacity to function, because you're also a living creature who inhabits the same world as everyone else. Now obviously there's still some of the former - especially in Checkmate, which takes the "Okay, you'd die for me, but would you LIVE for me?" cliché and turns it on its head by pointing out that making someone else live for you while you make yourself live for them is also not exactly the healthiest mindset to have (and also note how even this relational aspect takes your own continued life and well-being into account in a way that, e.g., the themes of QP don't) - but the framing's a lot tighter and more psychological, because with DK and PiF we've pushed the political/idealist/greater good aspect to its breaking point and concluded that no matter how brilliant you are, your morality will always make you hamstrung compared to completely amoral actors, and no matter how brilliant you are if you play the game long enough you are going to run into a situation where you have to deliberately sacrifice something you care about, you live in a Society and you cannot be the Unconquerable Great Man Master of the Universe, and now you have to figure out what to do with this fact and position yourself in the world somehow and then live with yourself knowing that you can't save everyone and end injustice completely no matter how hard you try.

So while the earlier installments invite you to pay attention to what the various sides are doing and why and exercise your moral reasoning by deciding whether they're right or wrong (both in terms of intent and in terms of expected vs. effective outcomes), TRC's political bits have a laser focus on Ivan and Mary and invite you to ask more psychological whys about their erratic behavior and the psychological reasoning behind it. Dorothy takes great care to transmit the fact that these are people with lots of good, redeemable qualities - intelligent, well-meaning, lovable people, who nonetheless become insane tyrants because they have all this power and, because of that, none of the human connection that they need.

Now, I think that this is a really hard theme to convey in fiction, because it's fundamentally about characters being static and having few genuine interactions with their environment. It's about the absence of a character arc, an absence that stems from simply not having any genuine interactions to change and shape you, about being metaphorically frozen like a Muscovite corpse. And obviously them being famous historical figures means that you know from the get go that the fictional characters' influence on them is limited - Ivan the Terrible and Bloody Mary infamously do not transform into nice and well-adjusted people later in life. And Lymond's static as well, because he's actively marching towards the same end state that Mary and Ivan are already in, and he's doing his best to not connect with anyone or anything, and this is simply not very satisfying from a narrative POV unless you immediately pick up on the themes.

Add to that that Dorothy's strength is in her insane character dynamics and the way they bounce off of each other, and it becomes really tricky to pull off a book where the focal point of at least half of it is about people not interacting vulnerably or influencing each other or changing, but rather being stuck in a holding dysfunctional pattern.

It's also really hard to do a culture justice when your protagonist is just completely refusing to connect to it - I do think the Russians become a bit more human as soon as Diccon comes onto the scene - but with so many secondary POVs like Adam and Danny I really wished to see at least a leeettle bit more humanity from the Russians. You don't even have the PiF excuse of Gabriel deliberately sending you to all the most squalid corners of a country - and even with that PiF gives the locals more humanizing moments, even though the protagonists are constantly moving and meeting new people!

Finally, I do have to repeat that the cliffhangers from PiF really don't help! Knowing how all the mysteries fall out and how all the separated characters react when they meet each other again really helps with appreciating TRC and all its lavish detail a lot more! It's much cooler on a reread!

...I guess I did? Of course, Lymond obviously chose to start sleeping with her to prove a point, but maybe I had been blinded by Vencelas's coding (beautiful, attentive, compared to Robin Stewart), that I thought Lymond's reasons for that were detachment from Vencelas--that he was going to slam down any possible channel of connection to another useful boy who served him by choosing heterosexuality and aligning with the image of luxurious lover that everyone seemed to be expecting. And only after that was firmly established could he ask for Vencelas back as his servant. Maybe that was twisting the vague descriptions too much. But yeah, "non-toxic" isn't really what you can describe anyone in this series as, that was a poor choice of words.

The way I read it, when Güzel takes Venceslas as her own servant she starts sleeping with him herself, partly because Lymond refuses to sleep with her and partly because her view of leadership and power also involves taking what pleasures you may if you have the power to. When Lymond encounters him in front of her bedroom (IIRC, I'm still on my PiF reread - it's that scene where Lymond notices that he's half-dressed), he figures out that she's making him sleep with her - the rigid hierarchy of Russia and the way the servants are incredibly servile is hammered in over and over again beforehand so we know that Venceslas absolutely cannot and would not say no to her - and he also sees Venceslas's clear discomfort, so he starts sleeping with Güzel so she'd stop sleeping with Venceslas.

And I think Güzel arranged that whole situation so that she could get what she wanted in the end, which is sex with Lymond (and a chance to seduce him/make him more dependent on her), because she could predict how he'd react. It's a sort of unspoken bargain between them where they both know that the other one is following along with the game.

In a sense, here too Lymond sees himself and Meg Lennox, and is saving an innocent from a predator. It's another callback to his more innocent youth as the machine is breaking down!

I think that he thinks about Robin Stewart for several reasons: one is that he feels like his neglect of his relationship with Güzel and failure to anticipate how she'd respond make him responsible for what happened to Venceslas, just like what happened with Robin, and the other one is that he is invited to maintain a personal/intimate relationship he doesn't want to prevent an erratic person from hurting others, just like what happened with Robin. Robin is sort of split into two here - Venceslas is the poor victim of Lymond's neglect, like Robin, but Güzel is the erratic person doing the emotional blackmailing, like Robin. Which also shows what a muddy view of responsibility Lymond really has - was Robin a manipulator, a victim, both? Which parts were Lymond's fault? It's easier to take blanket responsibility than figure it out.

It's also important to note - especially coming into Checkmate - that Lymond sort of sees the world - and especially sexuality! - in terms of innocents and predators, and whom he does or doesn't choose to sleep with reflects this framework. It's a bit of a Madonna/whore complex that extends to men as well rather than him giving a fuck about aligning himself with homosexuality or heterosexuality or managing impressions or other people's expectations. If you look back on the series he's only willing to initiate or accept sexual contact from people he sees as corrupted like himself - Oonagh, Robin, Meg Lennox, miscellaneous cynical egoistic French courtiers, JOLETA, Güzel in this book - but sticks to chaste flirtation with the people he sees as good people.

Which I think makes your observations about Güzel vs. Philippa right on the money - after what happened in PiF, and also in the context of his parentage (more on that in CM), he cannot help but see himself as part of the ruthless, cynical monster group, so he chooses to share his life with a person he considers similar to himself, and Güzel also reinforces this by focusing on their shared education in scheming and manipulation (and suffering!) to convince him that she's the only option for him.

But he's actually just an idealistic and passionate and well-meaning person - like Philippa - who's ruthless about his tactics and not his goals, which is why he connects with her so effortlessly and why he finds it so easy to understand her. Philippa can also be quite cunning and manipulative, mind - she has her moments peppered throughout the earlier books if you pay attention to them - and she also provides the bratty, aggressive back-and-forth power plays that he's into sexually, but Francis doesn't really know what to do with that because he thinks it's either/or and Philippa is a Good Person. Philippa is sort of Himself if he were a Good Person - he's not a good person because, like Güzel, he was forced to make hard choices, hurt people, hurt himself, serve truth in a crooked way and all that, and this has twisted and warped him (according to himself) and made him a violent sicko, but he's making sure that Philippa never has to do any of that and stays a Good Person and firmly on the very psychologically functional and healthy Pedestal that he's placed her on. I'd also like to point out that this worldview also likely contributed to the decision that he made at the end of PiF!

Which is where I'll stop because it's a nice intro into his sex-related breakdowns in CM, in which she continues being bratty as a flirty harmless game but, since nobody taught him to distinguish between a play fight for fun and a real fight with real knives, he equates the desire to bend her over and fuck her silly with the inherent evil aggressive monstrousness inside of him :'D With very stupid and melodramatic consequences! Enjoy!

Yours truly,

-- mala-taste

Hercules and the Hydra by John Singer Sargent 

American, 1922-1925

oil on canvas

as the snake sheds her skin 🐍🩸

By definition you can't accidentally queerbait. Queerbaiting is specifically using a same sex pair from the show to market the show to queer audiences with no intention of ever following through on a romantic relationship.

There is officially licensed Destiel merch signed off on by Kripke. Teen Wolf had a commercial with the actors for Derek and Stiles draped over each other talking about being "on a ship." Both shows actively used scenes between them as marketing while actively mocking fans for wanting them together. Sherlock has multiple characters refer to Johnlock as a couple, including characters we're supposed to believe are never wrong about human behavior and pushed those scenes in marketing. Then they acted insulted when fans saw them as a couple.

That's queerbaiting.

Done on accident it would just be queer subtext. Done because they had no other choice due to censorship is queer coding.

The specific meaning of the word is really starting to get lost and it's a pretty important one to keep accurate. It describes a very specific phenomenon that was done repeatedly and maliciously for decades and is meant to examine that specifically.

European Adders (Vipera berus), gettin freaky up in tha cut, family Viperidae, Helsinki, Finland

Venomous.

European Adders often form these mating aggregations, after emerging from hibernation, in which multiple males will try to mate with the same (much larger) female.