#eric mitchell

chapter 21:

Vipers together 🥰 🐍🥰

Cobra on chapter 8 stated that he didn't wanted romance main characters because of all this things and then HALF OF THEM actually happened:

• High-speed chases - chapter 21 was one big chase 

• Epic speeches - chapter 33 the blood oath happened and if that wasn't epic speech I don't know what is

• Buildings collapsing - again chapter 33  ghouls and icy riders were fighting, the city was on fire which means some buildings must be collapsing, right?

And this kinda makes me afraid of what happens in the next book between him and Marius because what do you mean BETRAYAL?! I mean, a dragon also sounds scary but not as half as this.

Like who is gonna betray whom, and why, and when, and what's next.

Answering the last one, a dragon, possibly. And I think this and the resolve of the betrayal will happen in book 3 which makes things worse cause we don't even have book 2 yet.

BUT ALSO absolutely fucking hilarious. This poor man spent YEARS being absolutely baffled by Eric, going though so much unnecessary emotional torment because he just could not fathom Eric's internal motivations/values. When Marius goes to make the oath it feels like, without even realizing it, he FINALLY turns the tables and gives Eric a heart attack for a change.

Okay genuinely, I recommend you guys go in blind like I did to this book and read spoiler-free first like I did because oh my god. what a ride. Wonderful story. Anyway--art underneath the cut.

@sarahreesbrennan's the author, by the way!

(tagging @jackofallrabbits too because she's the one who recommended this book to me in the first place.)

Eric being a free spirit (or at least he pretends to be) who is trying to save everyone in the story he can, but this means he's burdened with knowledge of what could happen if he does or doesn't intervene versus Marius being the most repressed man alive who just wants to be told what to do (by Eric) because he fundamentally doesn't trust himself and believes he's inherently bad (and he trusts Eric's judgment more than anyone else's).

But on rereads, I have thought more about how the Cobra's actions are flawed in their own right. He occupies the Sarah Rees Brennan character archetype of 'Local Man Cursed with Nuance', meaning that he is very aware of all the bad things he does, and does them to minimise harm, but still does them and feels supremely guilty, leading to a subsequent lack of self-worth and self-preservation. When Eric enters the story, he doesn't jump to 'other people aren't real', the way Rae does, but his outlook still categorises people in one of two ways. There are the 'little people', disenfranchised by the narrative, the economic system or both. These are the ordinary servants, criminals and working people of Eyam; people the author and society don't care about, and who the Cobra decides it's his responsibility to save. Notably, he considers himself one of the unimportant little people, despite his wealth and status (Marius does Not agree). On the other hand, there are the Big People, the main players from the original novel. Eric thinks these people are real, but crucially he thinks he knows them already, because he's read their stories. Unlike the little people, who's actions are unspecified enough not to be predetermined, he does not believe the Big People capable of changing themselves or their fate. This affects Eric's actions and expectations in a number of ways. The reason he's so thrown by Marius's resentment of his blackmail isn't that he never thought of Marius as having interiority, but that he never considered that Marius's interiority could involve him in any meaningful way. For the same reason, he never considered the possibility of Marius not falling for Lia. This belief also affects how he treats people like Rahela and Octavian, who abuse their social and economic power but who the narrative has told him will never amount to much. It's notable that he always knew Rahela's fate, and that she didn't deserve such a cruel death, and never took any steps to stop it. (Marius tells us that the Cobra always avoided her, and muttered 'shoes' under his breath.) We don't know what happened to Octavian in the original novel, but we do know the Cobra thinks he isn't worth bothering with or trying to influence. The thing is, these aren't bad decisions. If you believe that you can't save everyone, why would you choose to save the self-centred nobles who are currently exploting everyone else, even if you don't believe their fates and personalities are sealed. But making those kinds of decisions (as well as setting clear limits on the people he is going to help; he never planned on saving the palace guards for example) can still make you feel like a terrible person. Rae's reveal of how the story has already changed is the catalyst for the Cobra slowly starting to change his fixed beliefs, to start to believe that Emer and Key could want to be friends instead of enemies, to believe that Key could find a new obsession, that Lia could join the Vipers, and finally to believe that he himself could be important to the narrative and to Marius.