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“It’s fine.” Alice smiled, worried about his feelings even though he hadn’t worried about hers. “Everybody say ‘cheese!’”
Rae tossed her ponytail, and tossed the phone into a trash can overflowing with half-eaten hot dogs. Being nice was nice. Being nasty got shit done.
Reading a book was like meeting someone for the first time. You don’t know if you will love them or hate them enough to learn every detail, or skim the surface never to know their depths.
Under the eerie skies of Eyam, monsters roamed, some in human form. Rae loved monsters and monstrous deeds. She hated books which were like dismal manuals instructing you of the only moral way to behave. Hope without tragedy was hollow. In the strange, fascinating world of these books, with its glorious horror of a hero, pain meant something.
The idea of deserving someone was wrong-headed. You couldn’t win women on points. Alice must be thinking of video games.
Alice made a face. “The thing with the iron shoes was creepy! If a creep is the true love, what does that teach girls?” What thing with the iron shoes? Rae decided it wasn’t important.
In real life, people let you go. That was why people longed for the love from stories, love that felt more real than real love.
Hope without tragedy was hollow. So was tragedy without hope.
Alice launched to her feet like a furious rocket, spitting sparks as she rose. “You don’t even realize why the scene when the Flower of Life and Death blooms is my favourite!”
Is truth stone, or is it water? If enough people walk through a world in their imaginations, a path forms.
What’s reality, except something that really affects us? If enough people believe in something, doesn’t it become real?”
“What gives a story meaning?” the woman pursued. “What gives your life meaning?” Nothing. That was the insulting truth of death.
That was the true reason she loved the Emperor. Finding a favourite character was discovering a soul made of words that spoke to your own. He never held back and he never gave up. He was her rage unleashed. She didn’t love the Emperor despite his sins, she loved him for his sins.
In a story, you were allowed to be wracked by feelings too terrible for reality to hold. If Rae showed how furious she felt, she would lose the few people she had left.
“Why are you doing this?” Rae demanded. There was a serious note in the woman’s voice. “For love.”
At the bottom were peasants, who grew food and carried away garbage. Society would collapse without them, so they were treated horribly.
Only special people were saved. The rest had to fight their own way through.
Men didn’t enjoy being insulted. Emer knew this, as she insulted them often.
Possibly one always told the truth and one always told a lie.
People acted as if a first sexual experience must be saved, then spent at the precise right time. Virginity as stocks and shares, precious then abruptly worthless.
Oh no, whatever you do, don’t accuse me of being cool and sexy!
In her experience when people hurt you, you got hurt. They got away with it. Revenge was a fantasy as beautiful as true love.
Seriously, you will be powerful A.F.” The king’s brow wrinkled. “A.F.?” “As foretold,” Rae intoned hastily.
The climax of the first book was too complicated to explain right now. Best save it for a surprise.
Art opens a door into someone else’s imagination and lets us walk through. Art is the dreamed-of escape.
Marius found this mildly interesting, until the Cobra flinched.
The bargain between them was a filthy one, but Marius kept faith. He had no intention of letting anybody touch the Cobra.
A note of command rang through Marius’s body, as if his bones were bells. “Stop.”
The thanks was mockery. Marius had no choice but to obey.
The Cobra saw this boy, and anticipated disaster.
Now Rae made the toast her bitch. As she munched, she schemed.
“That’s not what I’m asking. Where did you live, before you walked into the story?” The wicked Marquis of Popenjoy dropped his voice even lower. “I’m a New York City boy myself.” Rae got up and shut the door.
I KNEW IT!!!
“I’ve never met anybody else like us. I’ve only heard of one.”
Sometimes women writers got discussed as if they ran a fictional vampire dating agency, while clearly men writing green bare-breasted tree women burned with pure literary inspiration.
“You and I have a whole villain song together in the musical.”
Instead he chose to be overly invested in fictional characters’ feelings. Media was meant to be consumed, not consume you.
Before, Rae saw the blackmailing situation through the Last Hope’s eyes. It was uncomfortable to consider how much heroism was based on point of view. Like Rae, the Cobra needed the flower. He was fighting for his life.
Rae tried to turn the question aside with a laugh. “Don’t be the fan who requires a secret password to let people inside the gates of loving a story. Let people enjoy things.”
Relationships with no mistakes and no obstacles had no bite. Reading them was like consuming soggy salad for every meal and calling that healthy eating.
Pain is the place where we’re alone. We wish we weren’t. But we always are.
What choice did he ever have, thanks to the Cobra?
I think the pov chapters are real people who came before. I think last hope guy was shook by a change in the story.
a man of supernatural strength and fury who appeared from nowhere to single-handedly butcher an army.
A girl on Rae’s cheerleading team said Rae shouldn’t be so angry, as if anger was a sin and not a consequence of mistreatment.
Everyone wanted to be on the side of the winners. If it was the victim’s fault, nobody had to defend her. Nobody had to fear horror could happen to them. It was more convenient if the victim deserved her fate.
Everyone lived in their own reality, and could never invite anybody else in. Ultimately each person was alone, the only real person in a vast desert of a universe, always longing and never able to find someone to believe in.
Once upon a time she’d selected the Emperor as her favourite character, but she’d never imagined being one of the many people he discarded on his way to the top. In stories, the main characters only thought about themselves. All the other characters thought about them, too.
Power is when you make other people believe in your story.”
Rae remembered turning twenty, spending the day in the grip of furious, uncontrollable tears. She’d raged because so many heroes were teenagers, even in books meant for adults. It felt like the age of magic was over for her, and all there was left to do was die.
They were halfway through the tale of Lord Ross and beauteous Lady Rachel, who Lord Ross suspected of infidelity to their lovers’ vows. Emer assumed Lord Ross would soon have Lady Rachel’s head chopped off in accordance with the laws of the land.
The last light drained from Key’s eyes. His gaze, still fixed on her, turned black as a cave with nobody inside.
I AM SO MAD AT THIS.
