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Apparently, constant posting is my default mode now
I got tired of beating on my NaNo (... not gonna post a word count update; too depressing) and went to finish reading Turn Coat instead, which means that now I'm even MORE depressed. Not in a seriously depressed kind of way, I mean; just more of a "wow, I really need some kittens and puppies now" kind of way.
I did have an interesting thought, though. I suppose this is too obvious to need stating, but if Ebenezar is Margaret's father, then that makes him Thomas's grandfather as well as Harry's ...
OH MAN I WANT TO SEE THE SCENE IN WHICH THEY FIND OUT. XDDD In addition to everything he says in Turn Coat about vampires and the inherent evilness thereof, Ebenezar is like ... the anti-Thomas. They'd annihilate each other on contact! But they're both almost fanatically loyal and protective of family. The cognitive dissonance is going to be AWESOME. (And I must say the idea of Ebenezar going all protective-grandfather over BOTH his grandsons is kind of awesome too; goodness knows Thomas could use someone else in his corner who's not evil and/or crazy.)
Except I'm not precisely sure how they're going to find out, since the only person who knows both of their secrets is, well. Dead.
Think I'll go take a shower and try to get my NaNo plot to shuffle into something that makes sense.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/300269.html with
comments.
I did have an interesting thought, though. I suppose this is too obvious to need stating, but if Ebenezar is Margaret's father, then that makes him Thomas's grandfather as well as Harry's ...
OH MAN I WANT TO SEE THE SCENE IN WHICH THEY FIND OUT. XDDD In addition to everything he says in Turn Coat about vampires and the inherent evilness thereof, Ebenezar is like ... the anti-Thomas. They'd annihilate each other on contact! But they're both almost fanatically loyal and protective of family. The cognitive dissonance is going to be AWESOME. (And I must say the idea of Ebenezar going all protective-grandfather over BOTH his grandsons is kind of awesome too; goodness knows Thomas could use someone else in his corner who's not evil and/or crazy.)
Except I'm not precisely sure how they're going to find out, since the only person who knows both of their secrets is, well. Dead.
Think I'll go take a shower and try to get my NaNo plot to shuffle into something that makes sense.
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/300269.html with
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I'm *so* hooked on this series right now. :D It's the same feeling that I get from some of the more plot-complex manga and comics -- there is obviously a plan behind it, and the serial format really drags out the anticipation! And there are SO many dangling plot threads to muse over. That's another thing about reading the books again, actually -- it reminded me how many characters and mysteries are raised without being resolved. Nicodemus is still out there. So is the skinwalker (I'd forgotten it wasn't killed). And there are a ton of unresolved questions; the one that's currently puzzling me is if there's a reason why Justine's last name has never been revealed, and if she's going to turn out to be related to one of the other characters.
The suspense is killing meeeeee~!
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"They're actually happier now than they've been in ever. But it's all happening behind the scenes and nobody can see because Thomas has to have his bad ass vampire face on whenever he's in public. But when they are alone together, nothing else going on, they're like totally cute. Justine wears like these grownup version of footie pajamas so that she can snuggle up next to him on the couch and watch TV without actually burning him. They don't have like a normal relationship or anything like one, but they've kinda adjusted, they're fairly happy. You don't go around letting the other vampires go "Oh how cute." I'll have to get to that one of these days, Harry doesn't see that."
FOOTIE PAJAMAS OMG. ♥ ♥ ♥
I think one of the things I love about reading the books and short stories is that Butcher is so obviously his characters' biggest fan. He loves them, and he loves thinking about what they're getting up to between books and what's going on in the parts of the world that Harry doesn't see.
... mmmm, although this gets back to your Type A/Type B fandom thing, because obviously Butcher's idea of Thomas's life between Turn Coat and Changes is ... he's pretty happy, actually, or at least content with the status quo. And what I just wrote this afternoon is way more fucked up than that, which is a weird sort of cognitive dissonance -- I have to do a little mental push to get my conflicting headcanon to line up with actual (Word of God) canon. This may end up being a series that I can't write fanfic for, except maybe a little missing scene here and there, because it's so obvious that Butcher thinks about what's going on in those unusued corners of canon and takes the time to flesh them out.
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I don't remember having strong feelings on Thomas/Justine one way or the other before, but on the re-read, I'm finding them utterly and completely adorable. I think the fact that they're so low-key and background, and that they've been an established couple since their first appearance, is helping a lot with that. Plus they happen to hit two of my favorite couple-trope buttons (I have a big thing for sweet girl + tough guy who is totally gone for her, and I also have a big thing for slightly messed-up and nontraditional couples, and they hit both of those!).
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It is interesting that Butcher* doesn't see Thomas as completely angsty right now - I remember when reading Changes that I was surprised that he seemed better adjusted and less outright darkside than expected. Still think he could use some fixing, but...
(*okay, is it just me or does calling the author "Butcher" seem a little...I know it's just his name, but without the "Jim" it looks so, erm, psychopath-ish? ^^;)
Yeah, that's the main reason I can't write for books, because they have the single mind behind them who knows the Truth, and it feels kind of like...stepping on toes? Like it's too crowded. I think the only reason I can fic for manga is because of the anime adaptions, give me some wriggle room, and I still run into trouble. But yeah, Dresden is pretty Type A for me (unless the whole series plunges into Darkness, in which case I will totally go to fic instead. See also Anne Rice ^^;)
--In unrelated news but apropos to one of your comments below, zomg watch Pushing Daisies. One of the best shows of the decade, absolutely the only thing wrong with it is that it was canceled before its time! (...okay, that may be slightly hyperbolic. But only slightly - I think for what it is it is about as close to perfect as a work could be. Perhaps not to everyone's tastes, but still, marvelous!)
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*nods* Oh, believe me, I know exactly what you mean with the toe-stepping feeling. I can't write fic AT ALL for authors that I know personally (like ever, at all, nada) -- well, the exception is if we've discussed it beforehand and what I'm writing is canonically plausible, but in that case, it's really more of a collaboration. ^^;; But in general, yeah ... the lines are blurry for me, but I know that I wouldn't sit down and write a big epic story in Butcher's universe, and I feel weird enough about the amount of fic I've already been writing for it, even though he's said he's okay with fic as long as the disclaimer is on there.
I was thinking about that after "Changes", actually, because had it been a TV show or a movie that ended that way? Oh, I'd be writing a big long epic "everyone rescues Harry from purgatory" (or whatever) story IMMEDIATELY. But I didn't even have the desire to do so. Butcher's writing the next book. (And, er, yeah, I see what you mean about the name... Can we call him JB instead? ^^;) And I really don't want to read one either. I want more canon. I want to know what REALLY happens. Well, for certain values of "real", obviously ...
I think I feel less toe-steppy about universes that are closed, where the author has moved on. Actually, I was reading Vivian Vande Velde's website before requesting her book to make sure she's okay with it, and what she says on there is that she never writes sequels to her books because "you're already imagining what happens next, and I don't want to take that away from you" (or words to that effect). Or dead authors, obviously, are never going to be coming back and writing more. :D But yeah, something like Dresden Files, where the series is not only actively going on but the author is actively exploring the nooks and crannies of canon, and openly talks about what's going on with the characters between the pages ... the more I read on his website, the less interested I am in exploring it secondhand, via other people's brains (or my own), and the more I want to see what HE does with it.
It is interesting that Butcher* doesn't see Thomas as completely angsty right now - I remember when reading Changes that I was surprised that he seemed better adjusted and less outright darkside than expected. Still think he could use some fixing, but...
*nods* I think, actually, getting JB's take on it made a lot of things about Thomas's current situation click into place for me. One thing that JB (okay, calling him that feels too intimately familiar ... AAAUGH.) says on his website in a number of places is that we're just getting Harry's take on things, and not everything that Harry believes or is told is entirely accurate. It wasn't mentioned specifically in relation to the Thomas situation, but thinking about it ... a lot of the conflict between Thomas and Harry right now is due to Harry's refusal to bend his morality where vampires and vampire feeding is concerned. The thing is, I can totally see where Harry is coming from, because what they do is monstrous -- but he's also not willing to concede the point that Thomas is happier and less conflicted when he's not having to fight his Hunger all the time. From Thomas's point of view, he was very badly hurt and his vampire family took him back, fixed him up, and gave him a place and a life where he doesn't have to pretend to be something he's not all the time. And it's what he lived with for a good 10 or 15 years before he met Harry, after he came into his demon powers -- he might accept on a conscious level that what the White Court does is wrong, but as far as what he's used to ... this is "normal" for him. He might hate it about himself (and probably still does), but Harry doesn't really have a better solution to offer, just the same amount of self-loathing, plus he's starving all the time.
Anyway, I do think Thomas is kind of fucked in the head at the moment. But I don't think he'd be particularly unwilling to see Harry if he didn't KNOW that Harry was going to take every opportunity to "convert" him again.
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I think that Harry was better able to deal with having a vampire friend than a vampire brother. And they were friends; that's an interesting thing about re-reading the books, seeing how much they liked each other from the beginning, even before Harry knew about the relationship. But Thomas was still living a vampire lifestyle at that point, still dividing his loyalties between the White Court and helping Harry. And I think Harry is now having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that Thomas, once again, has other responsibilities and other people in his life than Harry. It's not clear-cut, of course, because Thomas has always been much more conflicted about the Hunger than his sisters. Harry saw his soul -- it's not a happy place in there. But he wasn't any less conflicted and miserable when he was living as a human, and I don't think Harry really recognized that. Or, if he did recognize it, he saw it as a valid trade-off, because that's the way Harry's morality runs. Harry would consider it perfectly acceptable to be miserable himself in order to save other people -- that's kind of how he rolls. (Oh, Harry.) But Thomas isn't really that way; he's fiercely loyal to the people he loves (and I do think he still loves Justine and Harry as much as he ever did), and he's not at all unwilling to be part of a heroic rescue mission or even to do it on his own because it's the right thing (like saving all the women from the serial killer, in whichever book that was). But he's not a heroic martyr the way Harry is -- or, at least, it's not something that he defaults to, the way Harry does.
... which puts an interesting spin on my speculations earlier, because I can now see Thomas becoming the Winter Knight much more easily than I can see him becoming a Knight of the Cross. I'm not really sure he's Knight material. Of course, neither was Sanya, on the surface, so one never knows ...
There is still plenty to fix with Thomas -- mostly, I want to see him get back what he had with Harry, because the two of them being so distant with each other is hurting me. And I want to find out a little more about what's going on in his head, because he is clearly conflicted, but I'm starting to wonder if Harry's solution -- to go back to "sipping" souls again -- is really one that would work for him at all; it's starting to look like a failed experiment, and he can't feed off Justine anymore, so as long as he's having to feed the Hunger, he doesn't have very many options.
Oh, there's an interesting tidbit on the official website about the protective effect of love on mortals vs. White Court vamps. (And this goes back to what Harry knows/is told vs. how things actually work -- Butcher actually says in that section that what Harry knows isn't necessarily the whole story.) According to Butcher -- yes, I'm back to calling him Butcher again XD -- sex isn't necessary, "but it helps". It has to be equally reciprocated love, self-sacrificing love, but not necessarily romantic love. Someone asked if parent-child love counts, and he said no, it doesn't, because there is no way that a parent's love for their children or vice versa can ever be equal and reciprocal in the way that is required for it to work.
Never said anything about siblings, though ...
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I had a moment of OMG!.. that's going to have major repercussions when the big reveal of Harry and Thomas' conenction happened. When the even bigger reveal of Harry and Ebenezar's actual connection happened it was like..."oooooooh, messy, messy...". It will certainly get *interesting* before it doesn't:D.
I have to say though there are quite definately a couple of ways that the cat can be let out of the bag, the most obvious being the usual trope of "two enemies working together to solve the problem" aproach and the inevitable "why are you doing this?" conversation between Ebenezar and Thomas.
Or there will be the two people who should be enemies fighting side by side, and old Ebenezar has an actual *looks* at Thomas and notices his genetics. A lot of people don't notice because they aren't looking so can't "see". I often wondered why people didn't notice th esimilarities between the two when they are together, I have put it down to Thomas's vamp glamour and Harry's general air of unkempt street bum:D:D:D:D
But yes in general I think it is getting to the point where one or the other will "give the game away" to the other who will then put the pieces together.
It is quite an interesting little plot hook.
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I often wondered why people didn't notice th esimilarities between the two when they are together, I have put it down to Thomas's vamp glamour and Harry's general air of unkempt street bum:D:D:D:D
I really don't think they're supposed to look that much alike, not so much that it's visible to someone who doesn't know about the relationship. Some siblings do, and some don't; I look so different from my sister, for example, that people usually don't realize we're related. And, yeah, the fact that Thomas has the glamour thing and Harry usually looks like something the cat dragged in ... I'm guessing it obscurs whatever resemblance is there to begin with. :D
But yes in general I think it is getting to the point where one or the other will "give the game away" to the other who will then put the pieces together.
I just don't see them guessing by chance, though. Perhaps Ebenezar might manage to put it together if he goes looking for where Margaret went during those missing years, but he's had a lot of years to do that, and he very definitely does not know in Turn Coat -- he's surprised and disappointed when Harry chooses to try to save Thomas from the skinwalker rather than helping the White Council, and he lectures Harry about vampires being evil and that Thomas isn't any different from the rest. (Unless, come to think of it, one reason why he's so obstinate about vampires' unchanging nature is because Margaret believed otherwise and he knows that a vampire killed her ... but, no, under those circumstances he'd almost HAVE to know it was Lord Raith and hence Thomas's parentage should not be a surprise to him.)
Since Harry does know the truth, I think the most likely thing is for Harry to tell one or the other of them ... assuming that Harry manages to get back into a state where he can tell anyone anything. :D I think I could more easily see him telling Thomas than Ebenezar, but there's always the possibility that Thomas will manage to get himself in hot water with the Council and Harry will need to tell Ebenezar in order to gain an ally in saving his vampire "friend". Oh, the possibilities are endlessly delightful. :D
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This could perhaps be also my minds eye on the situation. It has been my personal observation through knowing several sets of siblings who have the same mother but different fathers that there is consistantly a similarity around the eyes, nose, mouth build which marks tehm out to me as, if not brothers and sister then cousins.. so I could be transposing that experience into the books.
When I say "give the game away" I mean through general commentary. all it would take is Ebenezar to get chatting about the pentagram necklace he wears, or if he uses a less specific searching spell (e.g. Show me my grand son's where abouts...) or even if he uses the link between his own blood and Harrys' to try and find Harry, which will inevitably link him to Thomas. So there are a number of ways that the cat can be released..
But I am with you that Harry is more likely to tell Thomas who his grandfather is than tell "Blackstaff of the white council" who his grandson is.. but you never know, there is always room for a meal at MacNally's and a "family discussion".
I was and still am, seriously in awe of Margaret's abilities though. It apears that she was abole to carry and give birth to Thomas completely off the radar of every major magical power known, (i have often wondered if this is where her association with the sidhe started). I mean so far it apears that the majority of the White Council have no idea (although I suspect that Watcher and Injun Joe may have an inkling... ) And to keep the Vampire courts from knowing is truely impressive indeed. The vamp courts deal in secrets and political intregue the same way we deal in weapons, to not have this as "common knowledge" must have been epically hard to do.
This is why i seriously enjoy JB's writing, he puts miles and miles of political intregue into a book that is half the size of Game of Thrones :D.
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Ohhh ... actually, you have a really good point here! Especially about the necklace, which I hadn't even thought about, but if Ebenezar ever saw that, it would definitely start him down the right track. Or, yeah, the blood thing. Good points. :)
I'm curious to know if there's going to be a funeral for Harry, and if so, there are all KINDS of interesting things that could happen with all of these people who have known him in various areas of his life but never actually met each other.
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(Anonymous) 2010-11-18 10:54 pm (UTC)(link)Yah!... old Ebenezar knows his child was a bad girl but doesn't fully understand her full power.. Harry and Thomas have one hell of a pedigree..
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and OMG, you have not even BEGUN to discover the realms of h/c that this series has to offer yet. :DDDD
Okay, now that makes my fannish heart beat faster! *g* I finished Storm Front yesterday night and I have to confess I was a tiny little bit miffed that we didn't get any Dresden-Murphy scene at the end - after all those trust-issues and near-dying I really would have liked to read something heartwarming or funny or whatever at the end (it would have done a world of good for my shredded nerves, lol). It's probably more realistic this way, but I don't have to like realistic. ;-)