Forged By Fire Sporking Part Six

[pangolin20]

theepistler wrote in antishurtugal, 2017-11-01 09:26:00

MOOD: miserable
MUSIC: Grace Potter - Something That I Want

Forged By Fire Sporking: Part Six

Happy Halloween, everybody! ...is what I would be saying if I was one of the people who celebrates Halloween, which I'm not. I have lost my voice and currently wish I was dead. Here is some more sporkage to spread the suffering around.

WARNING: Trigger warning, contains rape of a minor, also nudity of a minor. How I long for the day when I didn't have to open my sporkings with a disclaimer this utterly appalling. :(

Part Six: How Not to Steal a Dragon

The next chapter opens with yet another meaningless and honestly quite silly metaphor, as Zarq sneaks around “silent as starlight”. Because starlight is known for not making a lot of noise, I guess? She wanders around lost for a while, and eventually finds her way to the “messenger byre” where the winged dragons are kept. I guess these ones don’t have their venom sacs, since it’s never been suggested she do the hanky-panky with them.

Cue some more really dumb “poetic” description:

A vast black shoal of cloud was swallowing the moon at one end and disgorging stars at the other, and the sky growled like a great, uneasy dog.

So there’s a cloud which is also a dog busy growling while eating the moon and shitting out stars. Gotcha. Fun fact – I believe this is the first time the author has ever used the word “dog”. Before now all dogs have been referred to as “curs”.

Zarq is all scared and imagining she sees Inquisitors about to swoop down on her, Dementor-style. But there’s nobody around so she steals a set of reins and a knife, sneaks into the “cottage” (they have cottages now?) where the stable hands live, where she assaults a thirteen year old kid, ties him up, and holds him at knifepoint. The other stable hand, who is of course a big gross man, is still asleep and – oh, for fuck’s sake. The kid is nude and Zarq sees welts on his backside and bite marks on his back, along with blood coming out of his crack and a smell of “semen and excrement”. Yep, she’s just attacked and tied up a rape victim.

*massages forehead*

As if that wasn’t enough, Zarq continues to pile it on by expositing to the reader that the kid is so ready to give up and submit to her because he’s used to submitting because he’s, like, a rape victim and stuff.

…The cigarette lighter I keep on my desk has suddenly begun to look very attractive.

Moving on, Zarq finds out the kid’s name is Ryn and tells him they’re both going to fly out of there together. But she still has to deal with the rapist guy in case he wakes up. Rather than just tie him up and gag him while he’s snoring, she grabs a “brass candlestick” and prepares to bash him over the head with it.

Wait, they have candlesticks now? In a stable? Does the author not know that open flames in a stable are pretty much the worst idea ever, right up there with smoking at a petrol station? Come on – we’ve all read Black Beauty, and we all remember the tragic scene where the stable burns to the ground because some jackass decided to light up his pipe.

Of course you remember that scene! Two innocent horses died and Black Beauty barely made it out of there alive thanks to the bravery of James Howard the stable hand! Does nobody read the classics any more?

Humph.

Anyway, so Zarq hesitates because she doesn’t like the idea of attacking Colonel Mustard- uh, the rapist guy – while he’s asleep. She reflects that she has “reason enough to do it” because of “the marks on Ryn’s body”, adding that she doesn’t like the idea of striking a sleeping man regardless and she hopes this says “something good about me.”

No it doesn’t. This is contrived, manipulative, and easily one of the most distasteful things the author’s pulled on us so far. Sure the dragonsex was nasty, but at least that’s not something that happens in real life to real people!

The, um, moral quandary ends when the guy starts to wake up and Zarq hits him anyway and knocks him out. She then ties him to his hammock so he won’t be able to get out of it “when” he wakes up. Yeah, because bashing people over the head hard enough to knock them unconscious never leaves them too dead or brain-damaged to get out of bed afterwards. (Oh, and the guy’s apparently drunk as well. Evil Guys – Now With 60% More Stereotype! Seriously, at least half the Evil Guys in this trilogy are also drunks for some reason). While she’s doing this she considers cutting the guy’s dick off, but decides against it because that would be “too messy”. Because hitting him while he was asleep wasn’t okay, but mutilating him after you’ve bashed his head in with a candlestick is just fine and dandy except for the inconvenient blood. I just love how quickly she goes from Morally Superior Hero to coldly calculating psycho. Literally the flip of a switch.

With that out of the way, Zarq takes Ryn the Rape Victim out into the “byre” (a name that immediately makes me picture cows, can’t imagine why) and untethers one of the dragons. Turns out they keep them restrained with “nose barbells”. In other words, exactly what they do with cows.

So now the dragons are cows? Well they’re living in a byre and sporting nose rings, so what else are you gonna call it? Do they give milk as well?

Zarq puts a bridle and saddle on the dragon (no, it’s not explained how she knows how to do this), then nabs a second dragon and saddles that one up too. She grabs all the rest of them, and gets the lot of them tethered together like a camel train. Apparently she thinks this will work because dragons like walking in lines randomly… it’s never been mentioned before, and only pops up now when it’s convenient to the plot. They really are just coming off as winged horses now. Or possibly cows. The dragons are excited by the prospect of getting to fly, as their “ear slits dilate[d]” eagerly. Wait, is that even how ear slits work? Whatever an ear slit even is?

Finally Zarq negotiates with Ryn the Rape Victim, who says he’ll have to ride the lead dragon and Zarq can take the one behind him. She agrees to this, but decides to threaten him anyway, saying that if he tries anything on she’ll throw her knife at him and get him right in the ribs. Privately she acknowledges that there’s no way she could actually do that because the knife is curved, but the kid buys it anyway.

But she could totally bag him with a proper throwing knife. Because she knows all about knife-throwing, I’m sure.

The two of them mount up, and apparently dragons respond to verbal commands as Zarq tells hers to fold her wings and lift up a leg so Zarq can use it as a step. Once she’s on the dragon she asks Ryn the Rape Victim how she’s supposed to get the thing to take off, and he responds by staring at her “as if I were yolkbrained”.

I haven’t mentioned it before, but calling someone “yolkbrained” is pretty much everybody’s go-to insult in this trilogy. I’ve pretty much tuned it out by now.

After some blah-blah about how they’re going to take off, they manage to get airborne. Ryn is still naked, by the way, and Zarq helpfully describes him as looking like “a freshly wittled arrow lying slender and bare”.

Pardon me while I shudder violently for several minutes.

They fly for Savga’s village, where they come in for a landing. Unfortunately they take it too fast and the whole lot of them crash. Zarq’s dragon breaks a leg and gets her nose ring torn right out, and we get a nasty graphic description of torn cartilage and bone fragments and such. All the other dragons have had their noses ripped up too.

Nice work, Zarq. Your latest brilliant scheme just severely injured a bunch of poor innocent dragons.

Ryn helps her get them all restrained by “bolting” their wings to their saddles, and Zarq runs off for the village. And – oh no – Savga comes rushing out to meet her. Fuck off, kid! No, I don’t want to see a sickly sweet reuni- ugh, too late.

Zarq tells the villagers she’s stolen all the Clutch’s messenger dragons and needs help getting them to the “myazedo in the hills”. I have no idea what a myazedo is, but basically this means she wants to give them to the rebels. Savga immediately asks if this means Zarq is taking her to her mother, and when Zarq reluctantly says yes the kid starts hugging her leg “adorably”. Gag.

As Zarq enters the village proper she’s confronted by none other than the dragonmaster. (No, he still doesn’t have a name. Maybe I should call him Lance). Typically, he’s in a foul mood. He explains that he went looking for her after Gen told him where he’d left her and “the puling kitten” (any relation to a mewling quim?). But by the time he got there they were both gone. Zarq tells him he’s gotta help her get the dragons to the rebels, and he’s rightly pissed when he finds out she’s managed to injure them all. Someone else adds that the “Wet” is coming, hence the brewing storm, but Zarq continues to argue with the dragonmaster. She throws it in his face that she’s the one who “procure[d]” the dragons, and he snaps back that she stole them. Zarq says nu-uh, they’re her dragons and you “can’t steal what you own”, and is he coming or not.

Naturally the answer is yes.

And naturally Zarq’s plan will end in disaster. I mean, come on. Flying six injured dragons right into a huge thunderstorm? That couldn’t possibly be a really bad idea.

37 comments

snarkbotanya
November 1 2017, 10:52:18
"A vast black shoal of cloud was swallowing the moon at one end and disgorging stars at the other, and the sky growled like a great, uneasy dog."

Well... I never thought I'd see a sky-description worse than Meyer's "glowering sky." (Picture credit to Das Mervin.)

I think it's angry at being upstaged.

Yep, she’s just attacked and tied up a rape victim.

FUCK YOU, ZARQ. FUCK YOU.

Does nobody read the classics any more?

Unfortunately, few people do. *sadface*

snarkbotanya
November 2 2017, 20:00:10
Also, sorry that I'm late on this, but since this part was so fucking awful, you get double, no, triple kitties:



Anonymous
November 1 2017, 14:34:08
lol Of course you don't celebrate Halloween.
Why even bring that up?


theepistler
November 1 2017, 15:11:12
Well despite the fact that I live in Australia a lot of people here *are* starting to celebrate it. We even get trick or treaters on my street now. The supermarkets and the media are trying really hard to get Australians to celebrate the holiday, and they're succeeding. Just not with me.


Anonymous
November 1 2017, 16:12:07
That's actually pretty cool! I'm trying to imagine how you would start Halloween in a place that's never had it. Creepy decorations, dressing up, kids going out at night begging for candy... It's a pretty weird concept if you're not used to it. I'd be interested to see how well it catches on.


theepistler
November 1 2017, 16:21:35
Well when I was a kid most of the shows we watched on TV were produced in America, and we learned about Halloween through that, though we didn't really know what it meant and nobody really celebrated it. Once upon a time you couldn't really get any Halloween decorations and the like - it was considered an "American holiday", and most people didn't really know what it was supposed to be about. In fact when some kids tried Trick or Treating at my childhood home when I was a teenager (they weren't even wearing costumes), my dad told them to get lost because "we don't celebrate Halloween in this country".

But in the last decade or so, that's changed. Now every October the shops start stocking Halloween decorations and carving pumpkins with instructions, and more and more businesses are having Halloween-themed sales and other promotions. The local club this year had a Halloween Karaoke night! More and more kids are getting into Trick or Treating, and more people are decorating their houses. In fact I myself started putting up a few things, if only because I like creepy stuff. Slowly but surely it's catching on. Some people don't like it, because they feel like we're being pushed into adopting a new holiday just so there's an excuse to make us buy more stuff, but it's happening anyway. And hey, people are having fun, so why not?


thegharialguy
November 1 2017, 23:17:52
That's funny because it's actually an Irish pagan holiday originally (and as it's been established, Australia is probably more Irish than American).


theepistler
November 2 2017, 09:25:59
But pretty much every outside culture comes to us by way of American TV. This is what happens when a particular country has such a powerful strangehold on mass entertainment.


thegharialguy
November 2 2017, 10:51:03
Well the anon said it best, capitalist greed is American culture.

Anonymous
November 3 2017, 02:27:22
Of course, because greed is a distinctly American trait, which other cultures are incapable of exhibiting, yes?


thegharialguy
November 3 2017, 06:02:55
Your putting words in my mouth there. Never said it was exclusive. In fact the whole conversation is about how other countries are following suit.


theepistler
November 3 2017, 09:52:37
Nobody's saying that, anon. Quite frankly it's a trait just about every culture has. It's human nature. It's merely that because America is so damn powerful and controls so much money, it has something of an upper hand on the rest of us.


spylobster
November 3 2017, 07:42:02 Edited: November 3 2017, 07:43:15
Halloween's also a pretty big deal in Canada, too. I can't ever remember a time in my life when people weren't stocking up on candy and dressing in costumes once late October came around.


bewdtamer19
November 1 2017, 16:21:02
Why aren't you interested in celebrating Halloween?


theepistleer
November 1 2017, 16:25:28 Edited: November 1 2017, 16:26:37
See my reply below to get the gist of it. But further to that comment, I'm inclined to resist adopting the holiday because I was brought up being told it wasn't Australian and "only Americans celebrate Halloween". It's actually a very common attitude here, but some people are slowly changing their minds. I've softened up in recent years and have started putting up Halloween decorations just for fun. Last year I even made my first Jack o' Lantern, and that was fun too. Haven't given sweets to any Trick or Treaters yet, but it's honestly never come up because my front door doesn't open onto the street. Which causes all sorts of problems when I order a pizza, I can tell you.


bewdtamer19
November 1 2017, 16:33:08
Yeah, I see your point. I just feel that there's nothing wrong with learning or doing something new. For me, it always feels awesome to learn something new about other cultures. And who knows? You could wound up gaining a greater appreciation for something you may have taken for granted.


theepistler
November 1 2017, 16:36:52
Oh, of course not! I'm always up for trying something new.
The real reason people are being stubborn about it is because it's being aggressively pushed on us by big corporations who are using it as a way to sell us more stuff, so it feels more like a cynical exercise in capitalistic greed than an opportunity for cultural enrichment, y'know?


Anonymous
November 1 2017, 16:40:08
Capitalistic greed is American culture :P


theepistler
November 1 2017, 16:42:25
LOL! Okay, not gonna argue with you there!


bewdtamer19
November 1 2017, 16:46:47
Heh, you got a point there.


bewdtamer19
November 1 2017, 16:40:20
Oh, ok. I see your point now.


torylltales
November 2 2017, 01:01:22
This. The big duopoly supermarkets have been pushing Halloween with almost desperate fervour this year especially. "Make sure you stock up on overpriced sugar-gel for a tradition that hardly anyone participates in!"

The fact that they're pushing it so desperately makes it seem like a cynical ploy to get a rush of sales in the mid-term slump between Eofy and Christmas.

The fact that I'm using the acronym EOFY as a noun is a testament to the cynicism of the market making up fake holidays to get people to spend more money.


minionnumber2
November 3 2017, 08:14:15
Now I'm kind of curious how EOFY and Black Friday stack up in terms of in-store craziness... I haven't even heard the term before.


torylltales
November 3 2017, 09:42:31
From what I've seen, the end of financial year sales don't even come close to Black Friday. Mostly it's big ticket items like cars, mattresses and whitegoods that have the best deals.


vorpal_tongue
November 2 2017, 19:27:39
"only Americans celebrate Halloween".

Horseshit.

It's actually a very common attitude here,

And it's still fucking horseshit. Amercans just... warped it. Perverted it with their malignant avarice, trying to drink their fantasised rivers of gold. They did it with the other Christian Holidays, it's not surprising they'd do it to All Hallow's Eve.

... It wasn't even theirs in the first place.


theepistler
November 2 2017, 20:28:37
*patient* Yes, I know it's not actually true. It's just the attitude I grew up with. "Truth" doesn't come into it. What are you all worked up about anyway?


vorpal_tongue
November 3 2017, 00:37:02
To be fair, I have had a few...

... I'm not gonna lie, I've had a shit few days, and normally, I'd get irked at the perversions of the original meanings of things in the name of capitalism. But no further than that. But after what happened in my life (for lack of a better term) I became a little too irate and unhinged to think properly at the time.

Least it's better release than drinking myself drunk. Again.


bewdtamer19
November 3 2017, 07:43:48
I'm sorry to hear you having a hard time in your life. If it makes you feel any better, things aren't going so well for me, either.


minionnumber2
November 3 2017, 08:16:56
If you need a stranger's ear to vent to, my PMs are always open. Otherwise, hope things start getting better soon.


vorpal_tongue
November 3 2017, 20:15:18
I like you guys.

But things will never get better. Not really. Livable, maybe, but not better.


theepistler
November 3 2017, 20:38:57
:( Maybe you could get some help?


vorpal_tongue
November 4 2017, 19:48:52
I know I should, I've had friends that said to. I just... don't really want to. I have a few external factors feeding into the internal ones, if that makes sense. And even if those external factors didn't exist, I can't exactly escape my thoughts or feelings.


theepistler
November 4 2017, 22:05:48
I know what you mean; last time I was in a bad way I didn't want to get help either. I just wanted to be left the fuck alone.


theepistler
November 3 2017, 09:45:34
This article agrees with you.

Honestly, I've been having a miserable time lately too, which is why my own response was rather snippy. I understand your frustration; seeing your culture be co-opted like that, and especially for money, sucks. Seeing Australian culture being bastardised and sold for filthy lucre pisses me off too. Every time I see one of those shops selling fake Aboriginal artworks and stuffed Koalas made in China I roll my eyes so hard. And they always, always, always do it while blaring an "Australian" song like "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" or some other annoying folk tune no-one's seriously sung here in about a century. Gah.

I wouldn't mind joining you in a few drinks, but I'm just too bloody sick for drinking right now.


thegharialguy
November 1 2017, 23:07:08
Silent as starlight...well she's not wrong...but that still doesn't make her right.


cmdrnemo
November 3 2017, 11:12:16
This book has the most pansy ass fragile cow dragons ever. I thought the dragons of Skyrim were a bit weak. These suckers, the Skyrim dragons would eat them by the dozen.

For the record Zarq. Being unwilling to murder that man in his sleep, only willing to mutilate him. Is the exact opposite of what would say something good about you. Killing him in his sleep wouldn't say much good. Using something that shouldn't exist to do it is merely confusing. But, it would at least indicate a cold pragmatic approach to potentially overwhelming threats.

Imagining the conversation between Zarq and anyone else explaining this chapter.
"I'm going to steal the dragons."
"Aren't those your dragons?"
"Yes. That's why it isn't stealing."
"Truly a cunning plan Baldrick."
"I'm not Baldrick silly. Now, help me hide a brass candlestick in the stable."
"And that's going to help the general effort?"
"I can use it to castrate somebody."
"Okay ouch."
"Then we can fly away under the cover of a storm in the middle of the night."
"I'd respond with sarcasm. But, I don't know if you'd pick up on that."


theepistler
November 3 2017, 21:28:04
I know, right? The dragon in this trilogy are pathetic.

For the record Zarq. Being unwilling to murder that man in his sleep, only willing to mutilate him. Is the exact opposite of what would say something good about you.

Plus cutting his dick off would probably make him bleed out anyway. Not that bleeding out seems to be a thing in this series.