AJ > Recent Status Updates

| 'I knew you the moment I saw you,' I reminded him.
He smiled warmly. 'Just as I knew you, and would know you when first I met you a dozen lives hence. But few others do. [...] Fitz, Fitz. They never even saw me in the first place. They saw only a jester and a freak. I deliberately took no name when first I arrived here. [...] You made it a name. The Fool. And you saw me.' |

I'm just. . . okay. 😭🫠❤️

| He turned his head as he spoke to me. The openness of that golden gaze combined with the bond between us, gold and silver twining. I recognized and rejected a truth I did not want to know. |

What is that truth, Fitz? What is it? You know he never once pushed it onto you, respected you, yet still you end up being so fucking cruel & homophobic towards him when you can no longer ignore & dismiss his feelings. Coward.

| 'Meaning?' I pressed him, though it was perfectly clear.
'You should leave off sniffing the carcass of your old life, my brother. You may enjoy unending pain. I do not. There is no shame in walking away from
bones, Changer.' He finally turned his head to stare at me. 'Nor is there any special wisdom in injuring oneself over and over. What is your loyalty to that pain? To abandon it will not lessen you.' |

Royal Assassin:
'I dreamed about you. While I was gone.'
He gave me a dubious look. 'Did you? How touching. I can't say I dreamed of you.'
'I've missed you,' I said and enjoyed the brief flash of surprise on the Fool's face.
'How droll. Does that explain why you've been playing the fool so much yourself?'

Fool's Errand:
'I dreamed of you once,' I said suddenly. I had not been planning to say the words.

🧐

| Something turned over in my heart.
I could find no words, nor breath to utter them. I opened my mouth, then helplessly spread wide my arms. At the gesture that said all I had no words for, an answering look lit his face. In one step, I caught him up as the wolf gamboled about us like a puppy.
'Oh, Fool,' I choked. 'It cannot be you, yet it is. And I do not care how.'
He flung his arms around my neck. |

I'M FINE

| 'A love that wends its way in and out of all your years. That faithful heart has been absent for a time, but it is soon to return. [...] I know you are a lonely man. That won't always be so. Your one true love is stitched in and out and through your life. Love will return to you. Don't doubt that.' |

And then his best friend who he hasn't seen in 15 years is suddenly on his doorstep. Yes, love returns to him.

A less than 400 hundred paged horror novel means I am not at all going to get a relatively neutral ending, but I actually need at least a thousand more pages of Sen and Lee. I am incredibly attached to them.

🎶i'm coming home, i'm coming home. tell the world i'm coming home.🎶

I'm so excited to do my reread of this series; out of all 16 books, it's my favorite. It's been over two years since I read it, and I am so looking forward to following Fitz and the Fool through this (heartbreaking, devastating, catastrophic, occasionally fun and sweet but mainly agony-filled) chapter of their lives again. 🥰

| As for the Fool [...] acclaimed as a hero and a great warrior. I am sure that is why he fled. No one is quite sure where the Fool went or what became of him. Perhaps, somewhere there is a toymaker who makes puppets that are a delight and a marvel. I hope he wears an earring of silver and blue. The fingerprints he left on my wrist have faded to a dusky grey.
I think I will always miss him. |

it's fine, i'm fine

| From Nighteyes. 'Oh. Are you all right?'
'FitzChivalry. Are you all right?' There was concern in Verity's voice. But it could not completely mask the triumph there as well.
'Of course not,' I told them both. 'Of course not.' I walked away. |

Just. . . fuck. Fuck. Fitz's body has never once actually belonged to Fitz. It is just a thing to be used as the throne sees fit, no matter what it costs him. Fuck.

|'What are you carving?’
‘Charging bucks,’ Amber replied diffidently. She sheathed her tools abruptly.|

Sometimes I catch myself wondering if Fitz truly deserves this kind of devotion from Beloved. But dual rereading this with the main series... Fitz has his problems, god knows there are times where anyone else would've walked away, but the truth is that Fitz loves Beloved just as much as Beloved loves him.

Somehow within the two years since I last read this book, I forgot how realistic it is and how many bad memories it brings up, the way everyone refuses to believe Althea that Kennit brutally raped her; not even the being who knows her to her bones, not her close friend who is also a woman, not her nephew - only Kennit's "partner" believes her, and even then Etta fucking /attacks/ Althea rather than killing Kennit.

'Weaker? I think not.' Nighteyes considered. 'Not weaker, my brother. But different. Fashioned more like a Wit-bond than a Skill-joining.'
He looked up at the Fool. After a time, the Fool frowned to himself and looked down at Nighteyes.
'You see,' said the wolf. 'He senses me. Not clearly, but he does. Hello, Fool. My ears itch.'
Outside the tent, the Fool reached down to scratch the wolf's ears.

THIS IS PACK BITCH

| I sought for him, I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. [...] like the motes that dance before one's eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon's reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power [...] I understood and marveled at all that he was. |

What if I just started crying and never stopped?

Oh, okay, so knowing what's about to happen does not lessen the dread at all - cool.👌I think it's even worse on the reread than it was the first time I'd read it; Paragon and Kennit's reunion, Amber in the hull begging Paragon to let her live, she can't die yet, not here, Althea, Malta, and Wintrow all being so close but not able to see each other, the horror Althea is about to have inflicted on her... fuck.

| I lifted her hand and softly kissed the fingers that had been broken on my account. 'I do not confuse what was done to you with who you are,' I offered. 'When I look at you, I see Starling Birdsong the minstrel.' |

Moments like this, I am so overwhelmingly grateful that Fitz was written by a woman that I could cry. A man's fantasy hero would never treat a friend like this, would never be so openly gentle.

It makes me so fucking sad and sick to my stomach that Paragon automatically equates consensual sex to pain and terror and blood and shame. Fuck you, Igrot, for taking two young boys' innocence and forever changing the way they view sex, even decades on. It is not at all an excuse for Kennit raping Althea later in this series, because he deserves to die for that just as much as Igrot, but - fuck, this shit sucks.

Be it Fitz in Kelsingra or Malta in Frengong, the scenes in which they're walking through the ruins of a fallen Elderling city will always be some of my favorite to read. Having them alone in a cold, empty, lifeless city while the ghosts of its past memories and inhabitants go about their their daily lives, being forced to bare witness to its fall and the Elderlings' demise. . . So haunting and beautiful.

I will never be over Reyn being on his knees before Malta, begging and sobbing. Exactly where men belong. 🥰❤️

| I wondered if he left behind more than I knew. |

The last time Fitz can claim true innocence over Beloved's sexuality before it's quite literally: "How was I meant to know he's in love with me? We've only kissed three times & we've shared moments that I myself describe as more intimate than & going far beyond sex. He's the only person in the world who truly knows me. Also, he's breathtakingly beautiful." Sir...

It's hilarious and heartwarming how Amber can be doing the most mundane of tasks - like just tying knots right now - and thousands of us are fawning at her fucking feet.

"You can have me," I told him quietly. "[...] You can have my death, if that is what it takes. More than that, you can have my life, Chade. But not my child's. Not my daughter's."

Oh, I'm sick, I'm so fucking sick to my stomach. 😭 Rereading this series might actually hurt worse than how badly it did on my first read - and, jesus christ, is that saying something. 🫠💔

"He could protect this boy as he had not been protected himself. He had the power to stave off the destructive forces that had once torn his own life apart."

Honestly, this just makes me so sad. Hobb creates fantastic, multifaceted characters, but her treatment of people - specifically men - who are victims of rape and CSA leaves a lot to be desired. Why did Kennit's care for Wintrow suddenly need to pivot to lust?

imagine being 14 years old, forced to go to the priesthood and then brought back against your will when you finally found a home there, sold into slavery by your own father and then kidnapped by a pirate, already had to cut off your own crushed finger and then having to cut off said pirate's decaying and rotten leg. . . ah, wintrow, my sweet boy. 🥲

There's something to be said about how during this reread, I'm still having so much fun (and am in so much misery) with all of the character development and the reveals and first meetings, even knowing what it all leads to. Kennit is, hands down, one of Hobb's best villains of the entire series and, despite all that he does and how vile he is by the end, I adore his character so much. Also: Wintrow, my baby. <3

Any cuteness between Althea and Brashen earlier in the series is ruined by the fact of how it plays out; one of the first things we learn about Althea is that she refuses to be tied to a man and a child and will not compromise and be a co-captain aboard her own ship. . . And then she's co-captaining Paragon with Brashen and they've got a son. 🤢💔 There's no way in hell the dick is that good.

Such a lovely detail that so many characters describe animals as too dumb to know that they're being sent to the slaughter. . . and then there's Fitz who can barely handle being near a pin of pigs because of their fear and despair and ends up stabbing a man to death with at least 6 gut wounds in broad daylight in front of his young daughter and his older daughter's husband. My lovely little bloodthirsty man. <3