BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER 36
Oct. 1st, 2017 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratWell, we lost Rocket too :C His kidneys were failing and I had to have him put to sleep. Amethyst also passed away due to old age. Amethyst I'm fine with, she lived a full life and wasn't in pain, but I'm really upset about Rocket. I started this year with eight rats, and now I'm down to three. I've been keeping rats for around 15 years and I have just NEVER had an epidemic like this, man :C
Anyway, here is a very short spork. I'm sorry, there just really was not much to work with and I didn't want to do the work of line-by-line quoting DX
BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER 36
When Quinn returns, Jasmine has a three year old son with blond hair and blue eyes named Jerome. He is thankfully described as “Anglo-African” rather than “mulatto” or something like that, which I was bracing myself for given that Jasmine was described as a quadroon. Quinn is too stupid to realize Jerome is his and Jasmine has to tell him. When he tries to smooch with Jasmine again, she pushes him away, telling him there's been enough of that as he well knows. Also Jerome's middle name is Tarquin and Quinn finds him to be "verbally very far advanced" cuz everyone related to Quinn is smart.
When Quinn tells Aunt Queen---despite Jasmine wanting him not to---Aunt Queen is delighted and has a toast. I'm surprised by this. I know that Rice would never ever have the gall or the understanding of complexity to dare make a good guy character be racist, but...I dunno, I feel like, if not her race, Aunt Queen would at least have a problem with her class? I mean really, Quinn, the help? Not that rich men haven't always done that, but it's never been something that the women in their family were typically pleased about. And if she's not upset with Quinn---which admittedly, I could see, she doesn't seem like she could ever blame Quinn for anything EXCEPT being rude to a guest---what about Jasmine? A grown woman who is at least in her thirties, sleeping with a teenager whom she practically raised/knew since his infancy? I'd be appalled and furious at that for sure if I were AQ. Especially given how she infantilizes Quinn. But, hey, god forbid there's conflict, god forbid any of the “good” guys ever have a problem with each other, everything is fine!
Quinn gives Terry Sue all the twenties he has on him so Tommy can stay a Blackwood Manor. Terry Sue has a new baby, and Quinn sure to note that the previous baby was not fathered by Pops as he suspected, less we forget Terry Sue is a slut. Brittany is now a “slender and beautiful” teenager.
Mona too sick to see Quinn, even to email or phone him. Quinn asks Michael if he can send flowers, Michael says yes but be sure to put Ophelia Immortal on the card. I am surprised that Mona shared this intimate nickname with anyone else, especially adult guardian. It seems like a very un-teenage thing to do. But judging these two by anything close to normal teenage standards is admittedly futile. Also, while Ophelia Immortal was her name with Quinn specifically, she clearly does press the “Ophelia” nickname on everyone in general, given that Dr. Winn Mayfair calls her that too, so she probably gushed about it to Michael and Rowan MY BOYFRIEND CALLS ME OPHELIA IMMORTAL! Note I'm not judging her on that, despite the fact it sounds like I am; she's a teenage girl being a teenage girl, and I doubt she has any friends her own age around to gush to about these things. God, I just got so sad for her typing this.
Goblin does not show up, but Quinn dreams of him after passing out drunk on AQ's bed from all the champagne. He dreams that Goblin is suffering and unable to reform, to become solid, but he can't without Quinn. The dream then turns to Rebecca, and they dance together. Rebecca tells him she can't take her vengeance on him because he's been too good. I dislike this, but that's just because I dislike Quinn; it utter fairness, he has done everything he could for Rebecca, finding her remains and getting her a proper burial on family ground and trying to make everyone he could aware of what happened to her. So I can see the reasons for her decision.
Quinn wakes up to find Aunt Queen beside him in her white negligee, reading The Old Curiosity Shop,and they have a short but weird conversation about it. She tells Quinn that "Dickens is a madman". Quinn agrees and says that the "darkness" around Little Nell just keeps getting "wilder and wilder". She snuggles up to him, I'm still weirded out by this. Luckily he then decides that since it is almost dark he must go to the Hermitage and check on "my Petrine masterpiece!"
AQ says he can't go into the swamp at this hour---yeah, wasn't avoiding the swamp, especially at night, something agreed upon earlier?---and Quinn's reasoning is...is that both Mona and Goblin are lost to him, though he does not lament the loss of Goblin "but I must go out there and claim what I've done."
...wait, what? What's he done? And what does that have to do with Goblin and Mona? Like at first I thought he was saying that without Mona he has nothing to live for anyway so why not risk it, but then it got to the "claim what I've done" but and I just don't know?
He changes clothes, gets a flashlight, knife, and pistol, and thinks how he has no fear of "him" meaning Petronia which frankly is dumb as fuck, because he knows now how fast and strong Petronia is and that Goblin was the only defense he had against her. He figures they'll have a "decent conversation" and if they'll have a "bargain" since Quinn is the one who did all the renovations "not he."
What. A . Dumb. Fuck.
He passes by Rebecca's grave on the way, and he hears her ponder, "Not your life. Whose life, then?" and he feels a sense of foreboding. I'm gonna spoil this for y'all, Rebecca doesn't even kill anybody and the life Quinn ends up giving to her isn't anybody he loves or cares about it. Because Quinn's life being spared due to his goodness only for that result in the loss of a loved one isn't something Rice would actually put her protagonist through. Unlike the shit Louis went through in Interview, Rice has very much, in my opinion, passed into LKH territory of not wanting her imaginary friends (whom she treats as such in her own words even more than LKH does) to have anything bad happen to them or suffer in any real way.
He thinks about how Mona is so sick and how she wanted to see the Hermitage and how all he can do for her is pray. He plans to go to Mayfair Medical when he gets back from the Hermitage (don't you mean IF you get back, Quinn?) and try to get a peep into her suite.
He gets to the Hermitage, which now has white marble stairs and beds of flowers and many arches like a "small Coptic church."
Petronia is waiting there for Quinn in the doorway, wearing male attire and "his" hair "full and loose", neither beckoning nor forbidding his approach.
"How was I to know that this was the last day of my mortal life? How was I to know that all these random little things which I have described to you would mark the end of my history--that Jerome's father, Tommy's nephew, Aunt Queen's Little Boy, Jasmine's Little Boss, and Mona's Noble Abelard was about to die?"
I feel like this would be more effective if the reader DIDN'T know that Quinn becomes a vampire. Also, his listing his human connections would be effective, in showing what he gives up in becoming a vampire, except...he doesn't. We see at the beginning of the book that he retains these connections, and probably will for at least a few more years til his lack of aging starts to be too apparent. And even then he doesn't lose Mona---spoiler, she becomes a vampire at the end too. So like...this could be effective, except that, again, we meet Quinn when he's already a vampire and telling this to Lestat, and we also meet Aunt Queen for the first time with Quinn as a vampire, so...yeah. We know he actually doesn't lose his life except in the technical sense, nor does he lose any of these people in the book either (okay, I think Aunt Queen dies, but)
But at least maybe we're finally gonna get some action next chapter!
Anyway, here is a very short spork. I'm sorry, there just really was not much to work with and I didn't want to do the work of line-by-line quoting DX
BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER 36
When Quinn returns, Jasmine has a three year old son with blond hair and blue eyes named Jerome. He is thankfully described as “Anglo-African” rather than “mulatto” or something like that, which I was bracing myself for given that Jasmine was described as a quadroon. Quinn is too stupid to realize Jerome is his and Jasmine has to tell him. When he tries to smooch with Jasmine again, she pushes him away, telling him there's been enough of that as he well knows. Also Jerome's middle name is Tarquin and Quinn finds him to be "verbally very far advanced" cuz everyone related to Quinn is smart.
When Quinn tells Aunt Queen---despite Jasmine wanting him not to---Aunt Queen is delighted and has a toast. I'm surprised by this. I know that Rice would never ever have the gall or the understanding of complexity to dare make a good guy character be racist, but...I dunno, I feel like, if not her race, Aunt Queen would at least have a problem with her class? I mean really, Quinn, the help? Not that rich men haven't always done that, but it's never been something that the women in their family were typically pleased about. And if she's not upset with Quinn---which admittedly, I could see, she doesn't seem like she could ever blame Quinn for anything EXCEPT being rude to a guest---what about Jasmine? A grown woman who is at least in her thirties, sleeping with a teenager whom she practically raised/knew since his infancy? I'd be appalled and furious at that for sure if I were AQ. Especially given how she infantilizes Quinn. But, hey, god forbid there's conflict, god forbid any of the “good” guys ever have a problem with each other, everything is fine!
Quinn gives Terry Sue all the twenties he has on him so Tommy can stay a Blackwood Manor. Terry Sue has a new baby, and Quinn sure to note that the previous baby was not fathered by Pops as he suspected, less we forget Terry Sue is a slut. Brittany is now a “slender and beautiful” teenager.
Mona too sick to see Quinn, even to email or phone him. Quinn asks Michael if he can send flowers, Michael says yes but be sure to put Ophelia Immortal on the card. I am surprised that Mona shared this intimate nickname with anyone else, especially adult guardian. It seems like a very un-teenage thing to do. But judging these two by anything close to normal teenage standards is admittedly futile. Also, while Ophelia Immortal was her name with Quinn specifically, she clearly does press the “Ophelia” nickname on everyone in general, given that Dr. Winn Mayfair calls her that too, so she probably gushed about it to Michael and Rowan MY BOYFRIEND CALLS ME OPHELIA IMMORTAL! Note I'm not judging her on that, despite the fact it sounds like I am; she's a teenage girl being a teenage girl, and I doubt she has any friends her own age around to gush to about these things. God, I just got so sad for her typing this.
Goblin does not show up, but Quinn dreams of him after passing out drunk on AQ's bed from all the champagne. He dreams that Goblin is suffering and unable to reform, to become solid, but he can't without Quinn. The dream then turns to Rebecca, and they dance together. Rebecca tells him she can't take her vengeance on him because he's been too good. I dislike this, but that's just because I dislike Quinn; it utter fairness, he has done everything he could for Rebecca, finding her remains and getting her a proper burial on family ground and trying to make everyone he could aware of what happened to her. So I can see the reasons for her decision.
Quinn wakes up to find Aunt Queen beside him in her white negligee, reading The Old Curiosity Shop,and they have a short but weird conversation about it. She tells Quinn that "Dickens is a madman". Quinn agrees and says that the "darkness" around Little Nell just keeps getting "wilder and wilder". She snuggles up to him, I'm still weirded out by this. Luckily he then decides that since it is almost dark he must go to the Hermitage and check on "my Petrine masterpiece!"
AQ says he can't go into the swamp at this hour---yeah, wasn't avoiding the swamp, especially at night, something agreed upon earlier?---and Quinn's reasoning is...is that both Mona and Goblin are lost to him, though he does not lament the loss of Goblin "but I must go out there and claim what I've done."
...wait, what? What's he done? And what does that have to do with Goblin and Mona? Like at first I thought he was saying that without Mona he has nothing to live for anyway so why not risk it, but then it got to the "claim what I've done" but and I just don't know?
He changes clothes, gets a flashlight, knife, and pistol, and thinks how he has no fear of "him" meaning Petronia which frankly is dumb as fuck, because he knows now how fast and strong Petronia is and that Goblin was the only defense he had against her. He figures they'll have a "decent conversation" and if they'll have a "bargain" since Quinn is the one who did all the renovations "not he."
What. A . Dumb. Fuck.
He passes by Rebecca's grave on the way, and he hears her ponder, "Not your life. Whose life, then?" and he feels a sense of foreboding. I'm gonna spoil this for y'all, Rebecca doesn't even kill anybody and the life Quinn ends up giving to her isn't anybody he loves or cares about it. Because Quinn's life being spared due to his goodness only for that result in the loss of a loved one isn't something Rice would actually put her protagonist through. Unlike the shit Louis went through in Interview, Rice has very much, in my opinion, passed into LKH territory of not wanting her imaginary friends (whom she treats as such in her own words even more than LKH does) to have anything bad happen to them or suffer in any real way.
He thinks about how Mona is so sick and how she wanted to see the Hermitage and how all he can do for her is pray. He plans to go to Mayfair Medical when he gets back from the Hermitage (don't you mean IF you get back, Quinn?) and try to get a peep into her suite.
He gets to the Hermitage, which now has white marble stairs and beds of flowers and many arches like a "small Coptic church."
Petronia is waiting there for Quinn in the doorway, wearing male attire and "his" hair "full and loose", neither beckoning nor forbidding his approach.
"How was I to know that this was the last day of my mortal life? How was I to know that all these random little things which I have described to you would mark the end of my history--that Jerome's father, Tommy's nephew, Aunt Queen's Little Boy, Jasmine's Little Boss, and Mona's Noble Abelard was about to die?"
I feel like this would be more effective if the reader DIDN'T know that Quinn becomes a vampire. Also, his listing his human connections would be effective, in showing what he gives up in becoming a vampire, except...he doesn't. We see at the beginning of the book that he retains these connections, and probably will for at least a few more years til his lack of aging starts to be too apparent. And even then he doesn't lose Mona---spoiler, she becomes a vampire at the end too. So like...this could be effective, except that, again, we meet Quinn when he's already a vampire and telling this to Lestat, and we also meet Aunt Queen for the first time with Quinn as a vampire, so...yeah. We know he actually doesn't lose his life except in the technical sense, nor does he lose any of these people in the book either (okay, I think Aunt Queen dies, but)
But at least maybe we're finally gonna get some action next chapter!
