The Blog of Roon

Rangoon is peachy-keen-fine—more or less. Father Dean appears to be approximately two years older than God, with none of the benefits of being a deity. When you arrive in his study, he puts down his pen, goes to look for the ledger, realizes that he can’t find his pen, looks for it and picks it up, forgets that he was looking for the ledger, forgets who you are, and upon being reminded, goes through the entire cycle again before you manage to sign in. Also, the token is an odd three-dimensional elliptical item (blimp-shaped), rather than the medallions you have been receiving, as if someone misunderstood the design specifications. Still, he’s very pleased to
make your acquaintance and offers his assistance with… what was it you needed?

Shirley is very patient with him, even kind. He has seen such before; they rarely have long to live.

On the way to hiring your horses, you pass through the market, where a very enthusiastic girl of perhaps ten years is desperate to sell you a basket of frogs. She assures you that they are “Quite fresh and most delicious.” Taste may be open to question, but the frogs are definitely fresh–still kicking, in fact.

I enjoyed this essay on why most slash involves male characters even though I, um, don’t actually read much slash. I think the author’s right on: it’s substantially a power thing.

This bit caught me where I live, though:

If there were ever a universe with two women, each magnificently strong and good at controlling themselves, though with a tinge of hatred that goes deeper than simple surface dislike (a family debt, or class hatred, or something that can’t be written off as being catty for cattiness’s sake), then I’d slash ‘em. Hell, yeah.

Aigh! This means I have to slash Renate and Dorothy Durai! Because that’s their dynamic now to a tee. But, ewwwwww!

With Alan’s usual talent for making everything More Complicated, treacherous Dorothy has managed to irritate even patient Renate past all patience—but Renate has more or less promised to try to bag Dorothy for her Faerie patroness Lyria, and Renate never gives up on a promise. For her part, Renate has been pretty smooth about not letting Durai get a handle on her, which must irk Durai exceedingly.

Which leads us to last night’s Dragonhunt session, a living example of the truism that all rules have exceptions. The rule in question is “never rape a PC,” an excellent rule indeed—but broken (though metaphorically) and intelligently so.

Back in Chapter Two, Renate stole a street gang out from under the non-twitching nose of a vampire named Linetta Jenner. It’s one of the best things she’s ever done, no matter what yardstick you choose—impact factor, audacity, moral courage, coloring outside the lines.

Jenner, however, didn’t take it well, and it turns out she puppet-mastered the vampire murders we’ve been struggling with during the Purgatory tour, purely in order to revenge herself on Renate. During the Eridu concert, she tucked Dorothy Durai out of the way (we’re not sure quite when, and we’re not sure quite how; Dorothy may have been bought off, or she may have been forcibly or opportunistically drugged, or she may have been bit, though I doubt that last) and impersonated her via illusion, pitching a gorgeous Durai-esque temper tantrum that Coris threw Renate at for lack of any better options.

(Exactly how Coris—or for that matter, the real Dorothy—will react to their roles in this little drama I am quite curious to find out, actually. There’s that damn slash again.)

Seeing a dazed, incoherent, pathetic “Durai” on the floor of her dressing room, Renate quite naturally shut the door behind her and went to help, walking right into the vampire’s deadly but irresistibly seductive embrace. She didn’t even have time or will to scream.

Aryk and Rien promptly got medieval on Jenner and took Renate to the Raphaelites for resurrection. They might have done better to let the five minutes elapse that would have wiped Renate’s memory of the event, though. Renate can accept being tricked, can accept being attacked (she invited such an attack at a previous concert in hopes of trapping the culprit), doesn’t think any the worse of Coris for sending her in there—but what she’s going to have a really wretched time with is her remembered enjoyment of the draining. No, she never consented, but is taking pleasure in it some sort of implicit consent? And what does that mean?

This is Dragonhunt canon; vampires create a dreamy, semi-sexual pleasure in their victims, sapping all will to resist. I don’t even want to argue with canon in this case, because it’s a neat coda to Renate’s troubles with her death-wish. (Sex and death; isn’t it just downright literary of us?) She just had that wish fulfilled in glorious fashion indeed. I don’t think it turned out to be quite what she’d hoped.

But wait—there’s more. The real Dorothy Durai staggered out from who-knows-where in the middle of the fight with Jenner—and recognizing Renate’s drained corpse on the floor, actually pitched in, using her bardic gift to keep Jenner from escaping Aryk and Rien. Oh, $DEITY, slash much?

What would really irritate Renate if she knew about it (in my interpretation, Renate’s soul trapped inside Jenner got a hazy impression of events after the draining, but I’m dead sure she missed this) was that Durai called her “Rennie.” Renate has this byzantine, almost Japanese thing about forms of address. Her circle of friends may call her Lady Renate or just Renate, though the latter depends on an explicit exchange of permission to drop titles. (She offers permission pretty freely, but she’s still formal with quite a few people she likes who haven’t given her leave to call them by their first names. They don’t realize they have to, of course, because Renate’s manners are far more formal than is usual in Northrock.)

Coris has settled on “Wren,” which suits her fine. (She calls him “heart” in private, because of the resemblance of his name to the Latin word—I don’t think he’s figured that out, but he hasn’t protested the monicker either.) Only Sabine, Aryk, and Rien get to call her Rennie. (And Aaron, but he mostly doesn’t. Her brother Emil used to have permission but has forfeited it, as I daresay he’ll find out one of these days.)

Anybody else had just better damned well use her proper title. She’s corrected archdemons on this point. Dorothy Durai, of all people, making free with the name reserved for her sister, her adopted brother, and her most intimate friend—well, that’s just beyond offensive.

And, of course, incredibly slashy. Dammit. Grrrrr. As if that weren’t slashy enough, we’ve got a damaged, vulnerable heroine in Renate and a cynical, opportunistic manipulator in Dorothy—with a fully canonical mutual suppressed attraction. The slash just oozes forth.

Resolving the incredible oozy slashiness of it all will have to wait, as Our Heroes have a new problem: another of those annoying Rocks o’ Power has turned up, and we’ve got a three- or four-way race on for it. As usual, Renate isn’t keen on any of the easy answers. If she were, she’d already have signed up with the shadowy “Soleil” (one race entrant) merely because he/she/it is openly and really quite effectively anti-dragon in a dragon-controlled world.

Renate, however, heavily suspects that there’s more to Soleil’s motives than that, and she simply won’t sign on blind. She’s been used by some really talented users just a wee bit too much. If Soleil were mortal, she might be a touch more willing to give him/her/it the benefit of the doubt, because she’s received much generosity from mortals with no expectation of return. Anybody else? Had better lay out cards on the table, dammit, or she’s not playing, because non- and immortals in this game have proven themselves over and over again to be users.

Not that she shuns them; she can’t. Nor does she always turn down a quid pro quo deal, or she wouldn’t have signed on with Lyria. But Renate will always ask questions of a non- or immortal first—and then shoot if necessary.

Come to think of it—nah, Durai’s mortal. One bad apple. No matter how I scrub my brain, though, I can’t get rid of the slash now!