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antishurtugal_reborn2022-06-24 12:50 pm
ignoresandra) wrote in antishurtugal_reborn2022-06-24 12:50 pm
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Eldritch Heart Commentary 2: Everyone is barefoot
The Eldritch Heart Sporking
Chapter Two: Dancing Stones
Preliminary: The name of the chapter is an obvious reference to the most benign manifestation of Kitlyn’s magic. If that’s the best material you have to name your chapter after, maybe you don’t have enough material for a chapter.
This chapter is our first time really seeing the world through Kitlyn’s eyes. Like Oona’s first chapter, we’re introduced to the basics of her magic and given a summary of her current conflicts and issues in Talomir’s castle. The difference is that while Oona comes across as an entitled young woman who doesn’t understand “no”, I just want to hug Kitlyn.
We also get our first instance of Cox writing children and goddess is it something. Maybe I just don’t like little kids, but some of my least favorite scenes in this book are the ones that involve small children.
Our first glimpse of Kitlyn’s mind comes as she is still tired from what she’s done yesterday. She is dragging an overfilled basket of dirty laundry to where the castle staff do the laundry, which is outside. I don’t know enough about historical castles to know how accurate this is but I have hygiene concerns.
Kitlyn only relaxes when she physically steps on “warm, wet stone slick with moss”. How does she know that the stone is warm? Is she also barefoot? Anyway, she just drops her basket as soon as she steps on the stone. How can she drop it? Wasn’t she dragging it? We get a description of the stone fire pit around the cauldron the servants wash the royals’ clothing in.
Kitlyn thinks about how Oona can sometimes generate three outfits of laundry a day and, um. This isn’t making me think better of Oona, Cox. Even for a princess, I’d expect one a day (Her day dresses) and one every three to four days (Her shift or nightdress) barring accident or special occasion. Is she deliberately changing outfits halfway through the day because it’s an excuse to steal a few minutes with Kitlyn? Wouldn’t surprise me.
Power Difference: 6
Kitlyn thinks about what she’s wearing - a tan tunic that’s “closed at the neck with a length of cord” which sounds like a safety concern to me. Shouldn’t that kind of outfit be closed with a belt? And breeches of a darker shade of brown. So she’s basically dressed like a Tan soldier from the 3DO Army Men games. Anyway, she wears the same tunic every day, and has worn the same style of tunic since she was twelve. That was apparently the last time she wore a dress.
She thinks about transitioning from being a child tagging along with Oona to being a member of the serving staff, and being mistaken for a boy because of her clothes and shoulder-length hair until she “filled out”. This tells us a fair bit about Lucernia as a culture. Namely, that there’s a relatively strict divide between masculine and feminine and so forth. Also, did we really need to know that Kitlyn presumably has very noticeable breasts, Cox?
Titted Down the Stairs: 4
Kitlyn thinks about how Advisor Beredwyn has always shown a strong, “grandfatherly”, fondness for her and tends to look after her. But not enough fondness to just adopt her and end this farce. Apparently her initial workload was laughably light because Beredwyn decided what her workload was but over time the senior servants added everything they could and now her workload is ridiculous.
She thinks about how she misses wearing dresses, because we can’t have a woman who presents her gender in a butch way in this story but she doesn’t think real work can be done in dresses. I’m not sure whether to point this to Cox for not knowing what a working dress is or to Kitlyn for internalized misogyny. I suppose it depends on how much faith you have in the author.
EDIT: As MasterGhandalf pointed out in the comments, a servant in a royal castle - particularly a servant with an important role such as "Handmaiden to the Princess" should have a standardized livery she's compelled to wear.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 5
Part of what’s leading her to this conclusion is that a guard named Lorne is teaching Oona & Kitlyn to handle a sword. Huh. So I was wrong. They don’t have three weeks experience, they have slightly more than that. Kitlyn thinks people can’t fight in dresses and at this point I have to point at Cox for not understanding much about swordplay. I’ve had this conversation with a friend of mine who used to fence a lot, and their conclusion was that whether you can fight in a dress depends more on the dress than anything else which tracks with my experience ballroom dancing in dresses. If I can pull off two 180 degree turns in opposite directions in a 3-second window in a dress there’s no reason someone who knows the way of the sword can’t stab someone in the same dress. Someone who was used to wearing dresses during physical activity would clearly know this.
Titted Down the Stairs: 5
King Talomir apparently wanted Oona taught to handle a sword - you know, like she doesn’t carry and thus couldn’t help her in an emergency - to help protect her from assassins and Oona insisted Kitlyn participate. King Talomir reasoned this was a good idea because of how frequently Kitlyn was in Oona’s presence. Advisor Fauhurst thought Kitlyn shouldn’t be learning such things, and I have no clear idea why.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 6
Kitlyn branches off from this thought to lament how infrequently she sees Oona, and from that to think about how scared she is about the war and for Oona’s safety. Kitlyn thinks about how she’s often called to dust the war room, and while she’s there she’s overheard all kinds of frightening things about the war while the men discuss things as if she isn’t there.
The summary of this information is that Evermoor has 2 to 3 soldiers for each one of Lucernia’s - so there’s an extremely significant numerical advantage. Early on, Evermoor fared poorly because their conventional arms & armor aren’t as technologically advanced and they didn’t know how to counter full plate armor but they’ve corrected for this weakness. Around 40% of Evermoor’s warriors have magic, and ~0.33% of Lucernia’s soldiers have magic.
So Evermoor has an overpowering numerical advantage, an overpowering maneuver advantage, has figured out how to compensate for their technological disadvantage, and an absolute esoteric advantage. At this point there are only two legitimate ways Evermoor could be losing the war: If Lucernia has an absolute espionage advantage or an absolute logistical advantage. Anything else must be complete incompetence on Evermoor’s side.
The Captain Needa Cadet School: 5
Evermoor’s current strategy is to send small raiding parties across the Churning Deep to do stuff in Lucernia and get out before Lucernia’s large garrisons can react, which makes absolutely no sense considering Evermoor’s overpowering numerical advantage.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 7
Also, good looking out for your military secrets, King Talomir. Weren’t you so worried about spies?
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 8
Kitlyn uses her hand to see if the water is hot enough. Umm. Doesn’t water have to be boiling to do laundry without soap? So she could just look and see if there’s bubbles?
Whipping Girl: 3
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 9
Kitlyn starts in on her work and immediately thinks about the “nine straight hours” she spent scrubbing floors yesterday and how sore she is all over. Holy crap Kitlyn. Are you eating? How are you alive if this is your normal workload?
Whipping Girl: 4
Even though she’s in pain, she forces herself to smile and wave at the kitchen maids and stable master as they pass her. It seems the servants who work outside the castle proper usually treat her okay and she wants to be sociable. It’s the servants inside - maids and the like - who get “catty”. Kitlyn’s thought, not mine. She thinks that’s fine because she prefers being outside anyway because her experience of being inside is being on her hands and knees with a brush scrubbing floors.
Whipping Girl: 5
A while later she’s sweating from the “steaming” water. See? You didn’t have to touch it! Kitlyn takes a moment to enjoy a cool breeze because she’s about half done with the laundry. Four men dressed to the nines leave the castle following Rorick the gamekeeper. Kitlyn offers a pleasant greeting and “May Lucen bless your hunt” which sounds like a pretty decent thing to say in setting. The gamekeeper smiles at her, the noblemen give her a disdainful glance and keep going.
No, none of those nobles or the gamekeeper are important.
Whose Plot is it anyway?: 3
Kitlyn keeps a pleasant expression on her face and thinks about how letting them see how much it hurts to be thought of as less than human is letting them win and how Oona has never cared about the fact Kitlyn has nothing of her own. She cries into the laundry water until she’s too angry to cry. Kitlyn’s blessed, I just cry harder when I get angry.
She’s halfway through wishing the noblemen fall off their horses when - sigh - a child arrives in the scene. The head cook’s son is named Pim. He’s eight. He runs out to her from the kitchen and “almost falls” as his “bare feet” slip on the mossy stones. I. What is it with this author and people not wearing shoes? Is this a class thing? Pim offers Kitlyn a “tart” from the kitchen which is awfully kind of him I suppose. Pim’s real purpose for this visit is to beg Kitlyn to show him her magic again and that’s kind of his main role as a character - an excuse for the audience to see Kitlyn do something with her power.
Kitlyn tries to beg off because she has so much to do, but Pim just says “aww” and three seconds later she agrees to do it. So I guess she really wanted to? Kitlyn puts her hand on the ground to use her magic, and immediately hears a “chorus of a hundred whispering voices” in her mind. She calls a dozen or so grape-sized stones to her hand. Pim’s amazed just by Kitlyn making rocks roll toward her, but Kitlyn’s not done. The stones, each aglow in green light, first orbit her hands, then she decides what she wants to do with them and her magic responds to what she wants by making the stones form a “man” shape and a dragon shape. The two circle each other, but rather than have them fight Kitlyn has the man climb on the dragon’s back and the two fly off through the air. Is this a reference to Eragon & Saphira? It certainly feels like they’re made of rocks animated by an external force.
The Force is With Me: 2
Also, this is rootcaller magic Kitlyn is using. It's completely unknown in Lucernia outside of Kitlyn.
I’m Kind Of A Big Deal: 2
Kitlyn explains to Pim what being an orphan is, because Pim apparently has never asked Kitlyn about her parents before. Kitlyn thinks about how she’d prefer it if her parents were dead than if they abandoned her, but she doesn’t wish death on them specifically.
Kitlyn then tells Pim her backstory, or rather the backstory Beredwyn told her. Kitlyn doesn’t remember it herself. Beredwyn claims that Kitlyn wandered on to the grounds at the age of 3, found the Princess, and started playing with her because she didn’t understand who the Princess was. When they figured out she had no family, King Talomir decided to let Kitlyn stay but apparently without adopting her or arranging for her to be adopted or otherwise formally declared a ward of the castle of some kind.
There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense about that story, and it doesn’t make sense that it hasn’t been comprehensively challenged before this point.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 10
Pim starts helping Kitlyn with the laundry as they’re talking. What a polite young fellow. The two of them agree that King Talomir is very kind. I call bullshit on that. King Talomir doesn’t even assign guards to protect Oona despite the assassination risk, and the poor girl is terrified out of her wits. If I admit evidence from later in the timeline, King Talomir’s case gets worse but we’ll get to that when we get to it. Kitlyn sends Pim off back to his father.
That interaction may seem kind of painless, but I omitted all of Pim’s dialogue. Cox has this thing he does when he writes children where they slur their speech to…I guess represent how young they are? On a critical read, the questions Pim asks are simple but sensible, and Kitlyn simplifies her explanations when speaking to Pim but doesn’t treat him like a fool. I may just dislike children in general. Huh.
Advisor Fauhurst apparently decided to creep up on Kitlyn from behind, because his introduction in the scene is to shout something at her that’s basically a curse and Kitlyn jumps & almost shrieks because of how startled she is.
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 1
Fauhurst proceeds to yell at Kitlyn because she hasn’t finished ALL the laundry by noon and tells her she has the royal linens to do yet, and also needs to clean the hall. Kitlyn reminds Fauhurst she did the hall yesterday, and Fauhurst berates her for doing a bad job and tells her to do it again. He’s unnecessarily cruel and sarcastic as well “Did you use a brush and soap or merely a rag and wishful thinking?”
Whipping Girl: 6
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 2
Kitlyn says she’ll go do it, and Fauhurst tells her “There’s no room here for a layabout.” He then quietly tells her that her plan failed and she doesn’t get to laze her days away with the princess. Kitlyn quite reasonably objects that she wasn’t able to plan something that elaborate when she was three. Fauhurst ignores this objection, says that Beredwyn’s been soft on her and she’s “expected to do as much work as anyone else here”. Kitlyn meekly acquiesces, and Fauhurst struts off back to the castle.
Whipping Girl: 7
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 3
We learn that doing the laundry here involves just Kitlyn not only dragging the basket out, heating the water, and kneading it to get the dirt out of each piece in turn but also her dragging the basket of wet clothes over somewhere else to put them on a drying line. By herself. I’m pretty sure doing an entire castle’s laundry was a group job historically. So Fauhurst is already lying to her - Kitlyn is expected to do more than others are. She rushes through completing all this and considers causing a rock to trip Fauhurst but decides not to do that.
Whipping Girl: 8
We’re told that Kitlyn’s feet are bare as she runs through the great hall (To the disdain of a bunch of servants and guards - wait, since when does King Talomir have his guards DO anything?) to get to her next task. Kitlyn reaches Oona’s door, because now she’s doing the Princess’ linens. She thinks about how she wants to see Oona but doesn’t want to feel patronized, though she has enough emotional intelligence to think that the reason she’d feel patronized is because Fauhurst just yelled at her.
Whipping Girl: 9
Also, what is it with this author and people who are barefoot?
She cries a little because she and Oona see each other so infrequently these days, and mourns the fact that her tasks at the castle have separated her from her one friend. She thinks that she could have been happy doing menial labor if she got to spend time with Oona afterwards, but Fauhurst blocks out time in his day to be an asshole to her even though he absolutely does have better things to do.
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 4
Kitlyn thinks that Beredwyn would probably help her if she asked, but that complaining “would let Fauhurst win” and set her up for Fauhurst to behave worse. This is the narrative explicitly telling us that any action by the royals short of dismissing Fauhurst makes Kitlyn’s situation worse. Kitlyn also seems to have a weird complex about needing to confront problems herself even though she absolutely does need help right now.
So Oona’s public embarrassment of Elspeth last night? Not gonna make things better for Kitlyn.
Power Difference: 7
Fauhurst apparently was waiting outside of Oona’s chambers for Kitlyn to finish collecting the linens, because she takes too long for his liking and he orders her to hurry up. I just cannot with this man.
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 5
Whipping Girl: 10
Fauhurst tells her he’s changed his mind about the floor and she needs to clear the garden walk of seedpods instead. Kitlyn almost tells him that’s probably the groundskeeper’s job, but she thinks better of it because she’s afraid of him. She’s especially afraid because his tone has softened and she’s worried Beredwyn said something to him that Kitlyn will later regret.
Whipping Girl: 11
Kitlyn thinks about how she’s wound up doing the jobs of at least four different servants when her formal position - Oona’s handmaiden - is to follow the princess around to attend to needs as they arise. Instead she’s a half dozen different kinds of maid, a groundskeeper, and a stable girl. She thinks about how the only time she sees Oona is the evening meal and maybe a quarter hour after, and that results in both of them being treated with derision. I must say that given the character Oona has showed thus far I do not believe someone with an instinct to keep their job would treat her with derision to her face unless it was well known that princesses of Lucernia have no power unless their father gives it to them. So either Lucernia has a misogynistic legal system and culture or there’s a plothole. I harp on this point. It’ll become apparent why when the Great Lucernian Retcon happens.
Whose Plot is it anyway?: 4
Kitlyn thinks about where most of her work comes from, and even though Fauhurst has been this evening’s Snidely Whiplash most of it really comes from Elspeth. So...Oona’s basically taunted Elspeth, and Elspeth’s only target was Kitlyn. This isn’t going to go well if the story respects its own canon. I don’t actually buy this, by the way. It’s supposedly Elspeth doing most of this and she is very hatable, but Fauhurst is the one we see doing disney villain shit.
In the interest of fairness, I will now introduce Crabs in a Bucket for when Elspeth acts like a cartoon villainess. She & Fauhurst can compare high scores at the end of the book.
For complaining directly to King Talomir about a servant girl she doesn't like, Elspeth starts with one point.
Crabs in a Bucket: 1
Fauhurst apparently devotes every second of his day that isn’t directly doing some task for Beredwyn or King Talomir to hounding Kitlyn. This man has no life. Kitlyn devoutly wishes she could send Elspeth & Fauhurst into Tenebrea’s embrace. Tenebrea is the goddess of death, so she’s wishing she can kill Elspeth & Fauhurst.
Kitlyn feels that these days Beredwyn is also trying to distance Oona & Kitlyn - he is - and Kitlyn figures that Beredwyn probably thinks Kitlyn is a distraction Oona doesn’t need - that’s not the reason. Kitlyn cries, AGAIN. That’s the third time this chapter, so I will introduce a new count.
Ladies Cry, right? for whenever Kitlyn or Oona cries.
Ladies Cry, right?: 3
Kitlyn thinks about how she and Oona used to love the garden and find it peaceful, and wonders if Fauhurst is being merciful. She heads off to the Garden after finishing washing and wringing out Oona’s linens.
Afterword: I feel like Elspeth & Fauhurst should change roles in this chapter if we’re meant to see Elspeth as the primary source of Kitlyn’s insane workload. If Elspeth is meant to be this kind of complete bitch, our first look at her really really should have come from Kitlyn. Fauhurst is also very much a one dimensional character - he hates Kitlyn because she’s too low status to work in the castle, and he’s wrong about everything. Pim’s scene is a decent way to introduce us to Kitlyn’s magic and let us hear her reflect on her life in her own words.
All in all, this is a much stronger chapter than “Handmaiden” and I think there’s a good argument that this should have been the opening chapter. Kitlyn’s a lot closer to an everywoman the audience can immediately identify with - we’ve all had a boss who didn’t appreciate us and treated us like shit, though hopefully not to the extent Fauhurst treats Kitlyn.
Our counts stand thus:
The Captain Needa Cadet School: 5
Swamp Elves: 0
Whose Plot is it anyway?: 4
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 10
Whipping Girl: 11
Whipping Girl Redux: 5
Apollo’s Oracle: 0
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 5
Crabs in a Bucket: 1
Titted Down the Stairs: 5
Ladies Cry, right?: 3
The Force is With Me: 2
Sugar & Steel: 0
Flog The Point Into You: 0
Power Difference: 7
I’m Kind Of A Big Deal: 2
Table of Contents
Note: Minor edits were made for grammar, two counts of "Whose Plot is it anyway?" properly called out.
Chapter Two: Dancing Stones
Preliminary: The name of the chapter is an obvious reference to the most benign manifestation of Kitlyn’s magic. If that’s the best material you have to name your chapter after, maybe you don’t have enough material for a chapter.
This chapter is our first time really seeing the world through Kitlyn’s eyes. Like Oona’s first chapter, we’re introduced to the basics of her magic and given a summary of her current conflicts and issues in Talomir’s castle. The difference is that while Oona comes across as an entitled young woman who doesn’t understand “no”, I just want to hug Kitlyn.
We also get our first instance of Cox writing children and goddess is it something. Maybe I just don’t like little kids, but some of my least favorite scenes in this book are the ones that involve small children.
Our first glimpse of Kitlyn’s mind comes as she is still tired from what she’s done yesterday. She is dragging an overfilled basket of dirty laundry to where the castle staff do the laundry, which is outside. I don’t know enough about historical castles to know how accurate this is but I have hygiene concerns.
Kitlyn only relaxes when she physically steps on “warm, wet stone slick with moss”. How does she know that the stone is warm? Is she also barefoot? Anyway, she just drops her basket as soon as she steps on the stone. How can she drop it? Wasn’t she dragging it? We get a description of the stone fire pit around the cauldron the servants wash the royals’ clothing in.
Kitlyn thinks about how Oona can sometimes generate three outfits of laundry a day and, um. This isn’t making me think better of Oona, Cox. Even for a princess, I’d expect one a day (Her day dresses) and one every three to four days (Her shift or nightdress) barring accident or special occasion. Is she deliberately changing outfits halfway through the day because it’s an excuse to steal a few minutes with Kitlyn? Wouldn’t surprise me.
Power Difference: 6
Kitlyn thinks about what she’s wearing - a tan tunic that’s “closed at the neck with a length of cord” which sounds like a safety concern to me. Shouldn’t that kind of outfit be closed with a belt? And breeches of a darker shade of brown. So she’s basically dressed like a Tan soldier from the 3DO Army Men games. Anyway, she wears the same tunic every day, and has worn the same style of tunic since she was twelve. That was apparently the last time she wore a dress.
She thinks about transitioning from being a child tagging along with Oona to being a member of the serving staff, and being mistaken for a boy because of her clothes and shoulder-length hair until she “filled out”. This tells us a fair bit about Lucernia as a culture. Namely, that there’s a relatively strict divide between masculine and feminine and so forth. Also, did we really need to know that Kitlyn presumably has very noticeable breasts, Cox?
Titted Down the Stairs: 4
Kitlyn thinks about how Advisor Beredwyn has always shown a strong, “grandfatherly”, fondness for her and tends to look after her. But not enough fondness to just adopt her and end this farce. Apparently her initial workload was laughably light because Beredwyn decided what her workload was but over time the senior servants added everything they could and now her workload is ridiculous.
She thinks about how she misses wearing dresses, because we can’t have a woman who presents her gender in a butch way in this story but she doesn’t think real work can be done in dresses. I’m not sure whether to point this to Cox for not knowing what a working dress is or to Kitlyn for internalized misogyny. I suppose it depends on how much faith you have in the author.
EDIT: As MasterGhandalf pointed out in the comments, a servant in a royal castle - particularly a servant with an important role such as "Handmaiden to the Princess" should have a standardized livery she's compelled to wear.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 5
Part of what’s leading her to this conclusion is that a guard named Lorne is teaching Oona & Kitlyn to handle a sword. Huh. So I was wrong. They don’t have three weeks experience, they have slightly more than that. Kitlyn thinks people can’t fight in dresses and at this point I have to point at Cox for not understanding much about swordplay. I’ve had this conversation with a friend of mine who used to fence a lot, and their conclusion was that whether you can fight in a dress depends more on the dress than anything else which tracks with my experience ballroom dancing in dresses. If I can pull off two 180 degree turns in opposite directions in a 3-second window in a dress there’s no reason someone who knows the way of the sword can’t stab someone in the same dress. Someone who was used to wearing dresses during physical activity would clearly know this.
Titted Down the Stairs: 5
King Talomir apparently wanted Oona taught to handle a sword - you know, like she doesn’t carry and thus couldn’t help her in an emergency - to help protect her from assassins and Oona insisted Kitlyn participate. King Talomir reasoned this was a good idea because of how frequently Kitlyn was in Oona’s presence. Advisor Fauhurst thought Kitlyn shouldn’t be learning such things, and I have no clear idea why.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 6
Kitlyn branches off from this thought to lament how infrequently she sees Oona, and from that to think about how scared she is about the war and for Oona’s safety. Kitlyn thinks about how she’s often called to dust the war room, and while she’s there she’s overheard all kinds of frightening things about the war while the men discuss things as if she isn’t there.
The summary of this information is that Evermoor has 2 to 3 soldiers for each one of Lucernia’s - so there’s an extremely significant numerical advantage. Early on, Evermoor fared poorly because their conventional arms & armor aren’t as technologically advanced and they didn’t know how to counter full plate armor but they’ve corrected for this weakness. Around 40% of Evermoor’s warriors have magic, and ~0.33% of Lucernia’s soldiers have magic.
So Evermoor has an overpowering numerical advantage, an overpowering maneuver advantage, has figured out how to compensate for their technological disadvantage, and an absolute esoteric advantage. At this point there are only two legitimate ways Evermoor could be losing the war: If Lucernia has an absolute espionage advantage or an absolute logistical advantage. Anything else must be complete incompetence on Evermoor’s side.
The Captain Needa Cadet School: 5
Evermoor’s current strategy is to send small raiding parties across the Churning Deep to do stuff in Lucernia and get out before Lucernia’s large garrisons can react, which makes absolutely no sense considering Evermoor’s overpowering numerical advantage.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 7
Also, good looking out for your military secrets, King Talomir. Weren’t you so worried about spies?
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 8
Kitlyn uses her hand to see if the water is hot enough. Umm. Doesn’t water have to be boiling to do laundry without soap? So she could just look and see if there’s bubbles?
Whipping Girl: 3
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 9
Kitlyn starts in on her work and immediately thinks about the “nine straight hours” she spent scrubbing floors yesterday and how sore she is all over. Holy crap Kitlyn. Are you eating? How are you alive if this is your normal workload?
Whipping Girl: 4
Even though she’s in pain, she forces herself to smile and wave at the kitchen maids and stable master as they pass her. It seems the servants who work outside the castle proper usually treat her okay and she wants to be sociable. It’s the servants inside - maids and the like - who get “catty”. Kitlyn’s thought, not mine. She thinks that’s fine because she prefers being outside anyway because her experience of being inside is being on her hands and knees with a brush scrubbing floors.
Whipping Girl: 5
A while later she’s sweating from the “steaming” water. See? You didn’t have to touch it! Kitlyn takes a moment to enjoy a cool breeze because she’s about half done with the laundry. Four men dressed to the nines leave the castle following Rorick the gamekeeper. Kitlyn offers a pleasant greeting and “May Lucen bless your hunt” which sounds like a pretty decent thing to say in setting. The gamekeeper smiles at her, the noblemen give her a disdainful glance and keep going.
No, none of those nobles or the gamekeeper are important.
Whose Plot is it anyway?: 3
Kitlyn keeps a pleasant expression on her face and thinks about how letting them see how much it hurts to be thought of as less than human is letting them win and how Oona has never cared about the fact Kitlyn has nothing of her own. She cries into the laundry water until she’s too angry to cry. Kitlyn’s blessed, I just cry harder when I get angry.
She’s halfway through wishing the noblemen fall off their horses when - sigh - a child arrives in the scene. The head cook’s son is named Pim. He’s eight. He runs out to her from the kitchen and “almost falls” as his “bare feet” slip on the mossy stones. I. What is it with this author and people not wearing shoes? Is this a class thing? Pim offers Kitlyn a “tart” from the kitchen which is awfully kind of him I suppose. Pim’s real purpose for this visit is to beg Kitlyn to show him her magic again and that’s kind of his main role as a character - an excuse for the audience to see Kitlyn do something with her power.
Kitlyn tries to beg off because she has so much to do, but Pim just says “aww” and three seconds later she agrees to do it. So I guess she really wanted to? Kitlyn puts her hand on the ground to use her magic, and immediately hears a “chorus of a hundred whispering voices” in her mind. She calls a dozen or so grape-sized stones to her hand. Pim’s amazed just by Kitlyn making rocks roll toward her, but Kitlyn’s not done. The stones, each aglow in green light, first orbit her hands, then she decides what she wants to do with them and her magic responds to what she wants by making the stones form a “man” shape and a dragon shape. The two circle each other, but rather than have them fight Kitlyn has the man climb on the dragon’s back and the two fly off through the air. Is this a reference to Eragon & Saphira? It certainly feels like they’re made of rocks animated by an external force.
The Force is With Me: 2
Also, this is rootcaller magic Kitlyn is using. It's completely unknown in Lucernia outside of Kitlyn.
I’m Kind Of A Big Deal: 2
Kitlyn explains to Pim what being an orphan is, because Pim apparently has never asked Kitlyn about her parents before. Kitlyn thinks about how she’d prefer it if her parents were dead than if they abandoned her, but she doesn’t wish death on them specifically.
Kitlyn then tells Pim her backstory, or rather the backstory Beredwyn told her. Kitlyn doesn’t remember it herself. Beredwyn claims that Kitlyn wandered on to the grounds at the age of 3, found the Princess, and started playing with her because she didn’t understand who the Princess was. When they figured out she had no family, King Talomir decided to let Kitlyn stay but apparently without adopting her or arranging for her to be adopted or otherwise formally declared a ward of the castle of some kind.
There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense about that story, and it doesn’t make sense that it hasn’t been comprehensively challenged before this point.
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 10
Pim starts helping Kitlyn with the laundry as they’re talking. What a polite young fellow. The two of them agree that King Talomir is very kind. I call bullshit on that. King Talomir doesn’t even assign guards to protect Oona despite the assassination risk, and the poor girl is terrified out of her wits. If I admit evidence from later in the timeline, King Talomir’s case gets worse but we’ll get to that when we get to it. Kitlyn sends Pim off back to his father.
That interaction may seem kind of painless, but I omitted all of Pim’s dialogue. Cox has this thing he does when he writes children where they slur their speech to…I guess represent how young they are? On a critical read, the questions Pim asks are simple but sensible, and Kitlyn simplifies her explanations when speaking to Pim but doesn’t treat him like a fool. I may just dislike children in general. Huh.
Advisor Fauhurst apparently decided to creep up on Kitlyn from behind, because his introduction in the scene is to shout something at her that’s basically a curse and Kitlyn jumps & almost shrieks because of how startled she is.
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 1
Fauhurst proceeds to yell at Kitlyn because she hasn’t finished ALL the laundry by noon and tells her she has the royal linens to do yet, and also needs to clean the hall. Kitlyn reminds Fauhurst she did the hall yesterday, and Fauhurst berates her for doing a bad job and tells her to do it again. He’s unnecessarily cruel and sarcastic as well “Did you use a brush and soap or merely a rag and wishful thinking?”
Whipping Girl: 6
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 2
Kitlyn says she’ll go do it, and Fauhurst tells her “There’s no room here for a layabout.” He then quietly tells her that her plan failed and she doesn’t get to laze her days away with the princess. Kitlyn quite reasonably objects that she wasn’t able to plan something that elaborate when she was three. Fauhurst ignores this objection, says that Beredwyn’s been soft on her and she’s “expected to do as much work as anyone else here”. Kitlyn meekly acquiesces, and Fauhurst struts off back to the castle.
Whipping Girl: 7
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 3
We learn that doing the laundry here involves just Kitlyn not only dragging the basket out, heating the water, and kneading it to get the dirt out of each piece in turn but also her dragging the basket of wet clothes over somewhere else to put them on a drying line. By herself. I’m pretty sure doing an entire castle’s laundry was a group job historically. So Fauhurst is already lying to her - Kitlyn is expected to do more than others are. She rushes through completing all this and considers causing a rock to trip Fauhurst but decides not to do that.
Whipping Girl: 8
We’re told that Kitlyn’s feet are bare as she runs through the great hall (To the disdain of a bunch of servants and guards - wait, since when does King Talomir have his guards DO anything?) to get to her next task. Kitlyn reaches Oona’s door, because now she’s doing the Princess’ linens. She thinks about how she wants to see Oona but doesn’t want to feel patronized, though she has enough emotional intelligence to think that the reason she’d feel patronized is because Fauhurst just yelled at her.
Whipping Girl: 9
Also, what is it with this author and people who are barefoot?
She cries a little because she and Oona see each other so infrequently these days, and mourns the fact that her tasks at the castle have separated her from her one friend. She thinks that she could have been happy doing menial labor if she got to spend time with Oona afterwards, but Fauhurst blocks out time in his day to be an asshole to her even though he absolutely does have better things to do.
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 4
Kitlyn thinks that Beredwyn would probably help her if she asked, but that complaining “would let Fauhurst win” and set her up for Fauhurst to behave worse. This is the narrative explicitly telling us that any action by the royals short of dismissing Fauhurst makes Kitlyn’s situation worse. Kitlyn also seems to have a weird complex about needing to confront problems herself even though she absolutely does need help right now.
So Oona’s public embarrassment of Elspeth last night? Not gonna make things better for Kitlyn.
Power Difference: 7
Fauhurst apparently was waiting outside of Oona’s chambers for Kitlyn to finish collecting the linens, because she takes too long for his liking and he orders her to hurry up. I just cannot with this man.
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 5
Whipping Girl: 10
Fauhurst tells her he’s changed his mind about the floor and she needs to clear the garden walk of seedpods instead. Kitlyn almost tells him that’s probably the groundskeeper’s job, but she thinks better of it because she’s afraid of him. She’s especially afraid because his tone has softened and she’s worried Beredwyn said something to him that Kitlyn will later regret.
Whipping Girl: 11
Kitlyn thinks about how she’s wound up doing the jobs of at least four different servants when her formal position - Oona’s handmaiden - is to follow the princess around to attend to needs as they arise. Instead she’s a half dozen different kinds of maid, a groundskeeper, and a stable girl. She thinks about how the only time she sees Oona is the evening meal and maybe a quarter hour after, and that results in both of them being treated with derision. I must say that given the character Oona has showed thus far I do not believe someone with an instinct to keep their job would treat her with derision to her face unless it was well known that princesses of Lucernia have no power unless their father gives it to them. So either Lucernia has a misogynistic legal system and culture or there’s a plothole. I harp on this point. It’ll become apparent why when the Great Lucernian Retcon happens.
Whose Plot is it anyway?: 4
Kitlyn thinks about where most of her work comes from, and even though Fauhurst has been this evening’s Snidely Whiplash most of it really comes from Elspeth. So...Oona’s basically taunted Elspeth, and Elspeth’s only target was Kitlyn. This isn’t going to go well if the story respects its own canon. I don’t actually buy this, by the way. It’s supposedly Elspeth doing most of this and she is very hatable, but Fauhurst is the one we see doing disney villain shit.
In the interest of fairness, I will now introduce Crabs in a Bucket for when Elspeth acts like a cartoon villainess. She & Fauhurst can compare high scores at the end of the book.
For complaining directly to King Talomir about a servant girl she doesn't like, Elspeth starts with one point.
Crabs in a Bucket: 1
Fauhurst apparently devotes every second of his day that isn’t directly doing some task for Beredwyn or King Talomir to hounding Kitlyn. This man has no life. Kitlyn devoutly wishes she could send Elspeth & Fauhurst into Tenebrea’s embrace. Tenebrea is the goddess of death, so she’s wishing she can kill Elspeth & Fauhurst.
Kitlyn feels that these days Beredwyn is also trying to distance Oona & Kitlyn - he is - and Kitlyn figures that Beredwyn probably thinks Kitlyn is a distraction Oona doesn’t need - that’s not the reason. Kitlyn cries, AGAIN. That’s the third time this chapter, so I will introduce a new count.
Ladies Cry, right? for whenever Kitlyn or Oona cries.
Ladies Cry, right?: 3
Kitlyn thinks about how she and Oona used to love the garden and find it peaceful, and wonders if Fauhurst is being merciful. She heads off to the Garden after finishing washing and wringing out Oona’s linens.
Afterword: I feel like Elspeth & Fauhurst should change roles in this chapter if we’re meant to see Elspeth as the primary source of Kitlyn’s insane workload. If Elspeth is meant to be this kind of complete bitch, our first look at her really really should have come from Kitlyn. Fauhurst is also very much a one dimensional character - he hates Kitlyn because she’s too low status to work in the castle, and he’s wrong about everything. Pim’s scene is a decent way to introduce us to Kitlyn’s magic and let us hear her reflect on her life in her own words.
All in all, this is a much stronger chapter than “Handmaiden” and I think there’s a good argument that this should have been the opening chapter. Kitlyn’s a lot closer to an everywoman the audience can immediately identify with - we’ve all had a boss who didn’t appreciate us and treated us like shit, though hopefully not to the extent Fauhurst treats Kitlyn.
Our counts stand thus:
The Captain Needa Cadet School: 5
Swamp Elves: 0
Whose Plot is it anyway?: 4
Peppermint Schnapps & Caramel Ice Cream: 10
Whipping Girl: 11
Whipping Girl Redux: 5
Apollo’s Oracle: 0
Damsel, Rope, & a Railway: 5
Crabs in a Bucket: 1
Titted Down the Stairs: 5
Ladies Cry, right?: 3
The Force is With Me: 2
Sugar & Steel: 0
Flog The Point Into You: 0
Power Difference: 7
I’m Kind Of A Big Deal: 2
Table of Contents
Note: Minor edits were made for grammar, two counts of "Whose Plot is it anyway?" properly called out.
no subject
Yeah. Women in the west were, for a significant portion of history, generally not permitted to avoid wearing dresses. Therefore, dresses exist that are functional for heavy physical labor like scrubbing floors or doing laundry or carrying firewood.
I hadn't even considered this point but you're absolutely right.
Holy crap. It even says in the text that some of the guards confuse Kitlyn for one of the orphan poor who's somewhere she shouldn't be until they recognized her face. So I just don't have words. This element of the setting does not make sense. How many servants reported for work but weren't recognized and then were thrown into the dungeons? What is wrong with everyone's brains in this castle? ARGHHH
The dresses I wear for dancing don't have rigid bodices, because I dance a very wide range of kinds of dances and I need the ability to move my arms and twist my torso. A dress designed for dancing cannot limit upper body movement, so such a dress could probably be fought in as well.
Let me know if you find it, I think I might want to screenshot or bookmark it.
no subject
Found it! It's here:
https://twitter.com/melisscaru/status/958710351268405250?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E958710805247217664%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tor.com%2F2018%2F01%2F31%2Fhow-to-fight-in-a-dress-everything-you-need-to-know%2F
It's actually the sleeves, not the bodice (though she talks some about that to) that she says are the biggest problem if they're too tight; I'd misremembered that part.
no subject
There's a reason I favor sleeveless dresses for my stuff.