#farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

ROYAL ASSASSIN ABRIDGED: PART TWO

My friend Razz wants to understand my shitposting about Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, but they don’t want to actually have to read the books, so I’m summarizing it for them (and you)! (Check out all the other entries in the Farseer Trilogy Abridged series at the masterpost. Also if you think I’m funny you can send me a ko-fi from there.)

EDIT: added some strikethroughs where they were supposed to go and put something funny where I had just left the reminder to write something funny. Last Time on Dragon Book Z (rip Toriyama sensei), Fitz finally made it home from the mountains. He’d seen via Skill-o-Vision that Molly had been viked by Vikings, and he was desperate to see if she’d flagged herself ‘safe’ from Being Raided on Facebook…

The next day, Fitz is minding his own business being told by Cook Sara that he looks like shit when he spontaneously decides to climb sixty four flights of stairs. Considering that his tiny teenaged body is still 89% poison by volume and he just got home from the worst road trip of his life (so far!), by the time he gets to the top he's facedown on the floor, pushing himself along by his toes.

  “Hello, Lil Accident,” Verity says, putting down his binoculars. “Wow, you look like shit.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Fitz mumbles to the floor. ”You look a lot less skeletal than when I last saw you.“

  ”Thanks! I had sex.“

  Fitz tries to get up and fails. ”I didn't even know you'd be up here.”

  “Aha, but you see, I Skilled you here, and you didn't even know it. In fact I've been balls-deep in your brain for a week with you none the wiser, because this is a thing I can do with the Skill.“

  Fitz spits out a mouthful of dust. ”Wow, when do I get to learn that kind of thing?“

  ”Never,“ Verity smiles, turning back to the window. ”Come look at my ships.“

  Dragging himself up to the windowsill, Fitz peeks out. “Neat! We'll be able to defend ourselves against the Vikings with these for sure!“

  ”Yes,” Verity growls. “And I can't wait to continue the cycle of violence by going all the way to the Viking home planet and viking them back!“

  Somewhere downstairs, the Fool rubs his temples, sighing loudly.

  ”Anyway, now that I've forced you to climb all the way up here, let's go back down so I can get something to eat.” Verity picks Fitz up by the scruff of his neck. “I want to hear all about your little trip to the Big Onion.“

  They head down to Verity's man cave, and after watching 'ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE ENDING EXPLAINED— WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO AUGUST,' Verity reads the comments, most of which point out that Regal should have totally died in a fire for plotting to kill his own brother and murdering a bunch of the wedding party.

  Fitz looks at the hay bale in the corner, where the Fool is updating his Linkedin. ”Listen, I have a way bigger part in this book than the last one,“ the Fool says without looking up. ”I'm not gonna have time to re-explain who everybody is to you whenever you want. I've got a big death scene coming up.“

  ”You're going to die?!“ Fitz cries.

  ”Someone is,“ the Fool murmurs.

  ”You're probably wondering why I haven't punished Regal for any of the stuff he did last book,“ Verity says, steepling his fingers. ”And the truth is, I'm not going to, because he'll just throw a temper tantrum about it and I don't want to deal with that.“

  ”What if he tries to kill one of us again?“

  ”Pff, don't worry about it, Lil Accident.“ Verity waves him off. ”You can take tomorrow off to go look for your dead girlfriend.“

  Fitz stands up. ”Thanks Prince Verity, I'm gonna go have a seizure before bed.“

  But as soon as he steps out of the room, Lacey jumpscares him and drags him off to go see Lady Patience, who is laying in a pile of her current hyperfixations. ”You missed the wedding,” she says accusingly.

  ”Sorry, Mrs. My Dead Dad's Wife,“ Fitz sighs. ”Regal tried to, uh, do whatever the opposite of poisoning me and trying to drown me is, and now whenever I get excited I fall over.“ He accepts a glass of wine from Lacey, then dumps it over his head. “I've gotta move on to the next plot point now.”

  Fitz is staggering up the stairs, leaving a wet smear of Rosé after him, when a Servant Girl comes to take his arm. “Here, sir,” she says sweetly. “Let me help you weave drunkenly back to your chambers. Wouldn't want you falling down the stairs and breaking your stupid lying neck.”

  “Thanks, mysterious servant girl. You can drop me off at the corner, I’ll walk from here.”

  But instead of letting him have a seizure in peace, the Servant Girl punches him in the gut and kicks him in the nads, because she's Molly!

  “Holy shit, you're alive!” Fitz sobs. “Oh man, I had a vision that you got viked, it was awful—”

  Molly kicks him in the nads again. “I did get viked, and afterwards I came here looking for you to ask you to loan me some cash, or get married to me. My dumb ass went around to all the servants going 'hey, have you seen the scribe's apprentice, he looks just like FitzChivalry Farseer,' and someone filmed me and made a TikTok titled 'tfw you find out your boyfriend is really The Bastard.'”

  “Oh,” Fitz cringes.

  “Yeah 'oh,'” Molly says. “It has sixteen million views and hashtag Cat-Fitzed is trending on Twitter.”

  “It's called X now,” Fitz squeaks. “What about the older, hotter guy I saw you walking off with?“

  ”That was my cousin,“ Molly snarls. ”Do you think I'd date someone with an earring?“

  “Gosh, it's a good thing I don't wear one of those,” Fitz says, polishing his collar.

  ”Anyway, you're gross and I hate you,“ Molly declares. ”Do not, under any circumstances, continue to attempt to woo me. Goodbye.”

  Despite Fitz's best efforts, he continues to have a seizure any time he tries to do anything except have a seizure. Even into the next day, he's still ragdolling like a character in a seventy dollar video game on release day. The Fool appears briefly to catch a glimpse of Fitz in his underwear, but before they can do any real flirting, Lacey and Patience show up again.

  “Listen, Prince Dumbass,” Patience says, “you fucked up bigtime letting Molly think she was in your league. She came here thinking you'd grown up in a double-wide same as her, drinking off-brand kool aid and saving butter containers to use as tupperware. When people found out you lied to her, they started calling her a hump-and-dump.”

  “But we never even humped,” Fitz objects.

  “And it's a good thing, too, because as royalty you're only allowed to hump at the King's pleasure. Princes are not allowed to run around sticking their dick in whoever they want, that's how we ended up with you. You'd just make a bunch more Fitzes, and we don't have enough paid extras anymore to traumatize *all* of those kids.”

  “We could drown them,” Lacey suggests, working on a cross-stitch that says 'GALS BEING PALS.'

  ”They wouldn't be Fitzes if me and miss Molly got married,“ Fitz says. ”I'll just go and do that real quick.“

  Patience whacks him in the head with a rolled up newspaper. ”No! You're going to marry whoever the King tells you to marry, and no one else. We learned our lesson with Chivalry: we can never, ever allow you to have any control over your life whatsoever, and that includes caring about anyone other than whoever is wearing a crown that day. Besides, didn't you already sign a contract to do whatever King Shrewd told you to do without question forever?”

  “I was nine, I don't really feel like that was binding—”

  Patience grabs Fitz by the front of his shirt and jerks him forward. “Do not,” she says, “have sex with Molly. Do NOT have sex with Molly. DO NOT HAVE SEX WITH MOLLY.”

  “No promises,” Fitz shrugs. “Hey, do you have a backstory other than being the ADHD widow of my deadbeat dad?”

  Patience runs away crying. As soon as she's gone, Chade shows up. “Hey,” he says gently. “Don't cry. Kettricken's dad roped her into a political marriage and now she's miserable and lonely. That can happen for you, too.”

  “This sucks,” Fitz moans.

  “Remember not to have sex with Molly,“ Chade says as he crawls back into his wall-hole.

  ”Whatever. I'm going down into town to find my soulmate.”

  Fitz, wearing his slouchiest beanie, his blackest hoodie, and his unhappiest expression of teenaged angst, stomps down the road into Buckkeep town, hands shoved in his pockets. “Stupid Farseers,” he mutters. ”Always hasslin' me and tellin' me what to do. What do they know? Man, nobody understands what it's like to be me.“

  *Oh, you you think you got it bad, little bitch boy?*

  The entire fandom erupts into cheers and applause as the character in possession of the single teaspoon of sense in the entire series arrives.

  Fitz looks up, snarling, and locks eyes with a wolf trapped in a cage labeled 'ESSENTIAL NPC'. The angry little ball of fluff is just one of many wares sold by a dude in a full body fursuit. “Good morrow, emo child,” Fursuit says, oozing greasily forward. “I see you eyeballing that young cub. You know, an animal like that could really be useful if, say, you were a royal Bastard with Doctor Doolittle magic who was sent out to fight zombies a lot.“

  ”I'll trade you a pack of gum for him,“ Fitz offers.

  ”He's worth way more than that,“ Fursuit says. ”I went through all the trouble of building a rocketship for his wolf-mother and wolf-siblings so they could return to their home planet.“

  *I'll kick your ass! I'll kick everyone's ass! I'll kick my own ass!!*

  *'Shut up, I'm negotiating!'*

  ”A pack of gum AND this cool rock I found,“ Fitz bargains expertly, then kicks Fursuit in the shin, grabs the wolf, and runs off.

  Fitz carries Wolfcub back up to Buckkeep, looking forward to the 'wrestling with a wild animal to show dominance' scene, but then realizes that the cub is too weak and tiny to put up a good fight. What was even the point of having a pet wolf if he couldn't have a badass fight with it and then stand shirtless against the sunrise? Also, Fitz has already had two canines in his life bond to him and then have to return to their home planets, and he's kind of tired of that happening.

  *'My apartment has a no pets policy, so you're gonna have to stay in the tool shed,'* he tells Wolfcub. *'Don't wit-bond to me.'*

  Then, with nothing better to do, he leaves to go do the thing Patience and Chade explicitly told him not to: Have Sex With Molly.  ”The fuck is wrong with you lately?“ Burrich asks, some days later while he and Fitz are hanging out at the bar.

  Fitz sighs. ”I keep trying to have sex with Molly, but things are always getting in the way of my dick," he says mournfully.

  ”Mm. Been there,“ Burrich mutters, pulling down his sleeve to cover up his 'PATIENCE CHIVALRY BITTERNESS AND BURRICH 4 EVER' tattoo. ”Which one is Molly?“

  ”The hot one that kicks people in the nuts.“

  ”Oh, yeah. Half my age. I like that in a girl,“ Burrich says, and everybody decides to just go with it. ”Here's my advice to you: give up and move on. Get your post-rejection glow up, and your girl will go off to marry someone else.“

  ”That sounds like it sucks,“ Fitz says doubtfully. “When do I finally get to have sex with her?”

  Burrich grins. “That's the neat thing! You don't.”

  The next morning, Fitz gets out of bed, takes a big, cleansing breath, then puts his earbuds in and turns on his Montage Song.

  “Time for that glow up,” he says really loudly because he can't hear himself over the music.

  'Cause baby you're a firework

Fitz wrapping measuring tape around his bicep and frowning;

come on and show 'em what you're worth

running laps around the castle with Wolfcub chasing after him;

make 'em go oh! oh! Oh!

standing on one foot like in Karate Kid while Pat Morita decomposes nearby;

as you you shoot across the sky-ay-ay

Burrich taking away his AXE body spray and shoving him into the shower;

baby you're a firework!

carb-loading at the local Fantasy Pizzeria;

come on and let your colors burst

lifting weights while Wolfcub tries to bite him;

make 'em go oh! oh! Oh!

measuring his bicep again, and nodding in satisfaction.

you're gonna leave 'em all in awe, awe, awe

  “I'm bored,” Kettricken sighs as she and Fitz hang out with Kettricken's entourage. “I wish Verity would get me pregnant.“

  ”How can you be bored with fifty people constantly offering to play with you?“ Fitz says. ”Also, ew.“

  ”I could be back home fighting bears and lifting sacks over my head,” Kettricken whines, “but I'm stuck here in Lamesville with these boring losers and my husband is constantly off doing Skill stuff instead of having sex with me. Lady Modesty is constantly suggesting we watch the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice,” she adds, disgusted.

  Fitz slaps her. “Your job here isn't to be butch! This castle has been a fucking sausage party for years, and the best person to Girlboss it up is you. That means making moodboards, drinking iced coffees, doing each other's nails and YES, watching the objectively worse version of Pride and Prejudice! Look at Lady Hopeful, she's unironically singing along to 'I Knew You Were Trouble'! Now suck it up, buttercup, and go watch the part where Mr. Darcy confesses his love to Elizabeth!”

  “Yes sir,” Kettricken mumbles.

  “Bastard, first name The?“ a messenger says as he clips through the wall. ”King Shrewd finally wants to see you.“

  Fitz stands up, brushes himself off, and heads up to Grandpa's house...

#rote #royal assassin #ra abridged #fitzchivalry farseer #farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

Assassin’s Apprentice Abridged: Part One

EDIT: Tumblr randomly swallowed like 500 words in the middle of this, so I've added that back in.

I am finally embarking on my long-threatened project to summarize all of the Farseer Trilogy for my friend Razz so they can understand my shitposts about it but don’t actually have to read it. I started with this post about the cast of characters in the first book.

This is being broken up into sections because the trilogy and AA in particular (as well as Royal Assassin... whew, that one’s gonna be hard) is so insanely long and complex.

And now, Ladies and Gentlequeers, AA Abridged: Part One.

We open on the narrator musing both about writing a history of the Six Duchies (but being unable to because every time he tries it turns into a salty rant about everything bad that's ever happened to him) and also about how very old and decrepit he is. He is hunched over his writing desk, his fingers gnarled and knuckly, literally crumbling away like a Thanos-snapped MCU character as he sorrowfully attempts to make some record of the long and storied life he's lived before he lapses into the sweet void of death.

Fitz is 35.

"I bet you're wondering how I got here," Fitz writes. "It all began when I was born. Neither of my parents bothered to show up."

Actually, the curtain opens on Fitz as a six year old, being hauled up to the front doors of a fort by a cranky older man. "Surely you must have memories of your childhood before six," someone in the audience asks, but Fitz replies "No, I definitely don't, I never did and I'm tired of you asking me that." It never really becomes super important what he was doing before he was six, unless you count the time where he was traveling from the King-In-Waiting's ballsack to the sweet hot vagina of Some Lady He Never Spoke To Again.

Fitz is scooped up and brought inside the fort, and presented to Prince Verity. You'd think Verity would be at least a little upset that his older brother has muddied the line of succession with his long-ago nut, but Verity acts as if Fitz's existence is the funniest thing he's ever seen. "Yep, looks just like him," Verity confirms, then instructs a soldier to bring Fitz to Burrich.

That's right, the cranky old man hammers on the front door, waits for someone to open it, says "this is Prince Chivalry's kid and I'm tired of dealing with him," and then walks off. Despite this, Fitz never develops any abandonment issues and only has healthy and honest relationships with people for the rest of his life.

"Those are all the memories I have of that fort," Fitz writes, "except for that one night that Prince Verity, Burrich, and Prince Regal stood and looked in on me in the stall and Regal complained that I was muddying the line of succession."

Burrich does not think this situation is as funny as Verity did.

But he's honest and loyal, so he sighs and says "C'mon, Lil Accident, I'll find a place for you to sleep." That place is in a horse stall with Vixen, the hound dog, and Nosy, her pup. Burrich looks down at all of them, mutters "Patience is gonna have a fucking aneurysm" and then walks off.

After a couple of weeks, Burrich puts Lil Accident on a horse behind him and they ride away from Moonseye and towards Buckkeep. During this time, offstage, Fitz's father Chivalry gets word of his appearance and does the only sensible and logical thing, which is to ollie out the window while flipping everyone off and yelling "GOOD LUCK FIGURING THIS ONE OUT, LOSERS!" He abdicates and retires to a farm with his weirdo wife, which pisses off basically everyone.

Burrich and Fitz arrive at Buckkeep, the capital of the Six Duchies, a tall castle on a hill overlooking the ocean. Burrich is the stablemaster, in charge of all the critters large and small at the keep. He'd also been Chivalry's right hand man until he'd jumped in front of a boar to keep it from killing the Prince and fucked up his leg. Burrich comes home to Buckkeep with a bad leg and a six year old bastard to find that his bestie has just fucking peaced out without saying anything to him. He's kind of having a bad day. He hands Fitz off to stableboy Cobb, who leads him and pup Nosy to the kitchens to get something to eat.

Cobb sits FItz-and-Nosy just outside the kitchens and goes inside for delicious pie. A burly man walks by Fitz, does a double-take, then points and yells, "Hey everyone! It's Chivalry's Bastard!"

Fitz shrinks down.

"I heard you don't even have a name!" Burly man hollers, then gets right up in Fitz's face. "Is that true, tiny and defenseless six year old boy that I'm accosting? You don't have a name?"

Fitz yells "NOOOOOO" and, like a tiny, dirty Jedi master, force-shoves the man onto his ass. The crowd, assuming that the dude was just a coward who couldn't handle being yelled at by a toddler, has a laugh and carries on with their tasks. Fitz gets up and he and Nosy run away and spend all day hiding in a hole.

Burrich does eventually find him, and with a hearty "what the fuck you can't just burrow underneath the shed, get out of there," returns him to the stables, where his new home is Burrich's little bachelor pad above the stalls. In the days and weeks that follow, Fitz wakes up, eats breakfast, and immediately escapes the keep to go down to the town and run around with a bunch of street kids.

Fitz doesn't say much but he's game for anything and he has a dog, so he's accepted into the gang as "Newboy." He and his new friends generally just run around making trouble, stealing food, and bothering people. One of the notables in the bunch is Molly Nosebleed, called that because she always looks like someone just got done beating the shit out of her. Wholesome!

One sunny day, Fitz, Molly and Nosy are on the rocks near the beach looking for sheel to eat. I have no idea what sheel is and neither does Google. Then Molly's dad shows up to hit her with a stick to teach her a lesson about having a drunk, violent dad.

Alarmed, Fitz force-shoves Molly's dad into the sand. Molly immediately freaks out and struggles to get dad back on his feet to stagger back to their candle-making shop (or chandlery if you're feeling fancy). Fitz is confused at the intricacies of abusive relationships, but relieved that no one yet knows that he has force-shoving powers.

Aside from his brief encounter with childhood trauma, everything is going great for Fitz. Then one day, while he and his fellow urchins (and Nosy) are running from a dude whose sausages they just stole, Fitz runs right the fuck into Burrich.

"You get your butt right back up to the castle, young man," Burrich says, dragging Fitz along by his ear. "And if I EVER find out you've been down in town hanging out with someone again, I will personally have sex with them a bunch of times," he added foreshadowingly.

"I don't have to do what you say," Fitz barks.

"Bark," says Nosy.

Burrich's eyes narrow. "How many fingers am I holding up?" he asks.

"I don't really know numbers," says Fitz.

"Bark," says Nosy.

"Nosy says that's three," Fitz translates.

"Alrighty then, no more puppy for you, the puppy is going to live on a farm upstate," Burrich says. He drags the puppy outside.

Presumably something cool happens to it.

So now instead of slumming around Buckkeep Town, Fitz spends his days following Burrich around and being taught how to manage horses and dogs but not birds because birds apparently hate bastards. Fitz is careful not to let Burrich see him being friendly with any animals.

One day, Fitz is sitting underneath a table in the Great Hall, being friendly with a bunch of puppies. It's the morning after a party and there's plenty of leftover food to be had, and he's happily stuffing pies down his shirt and sharing pieces with the pups. Then he hears footsteps and who should show up but KING SHREWD!

Shrewd is technically Fitz's grandfather but has never really spoken to him. He's walking along with Prince Regal (*crowd boos*) and the king's new fool, a weirdo albino child who's just cartwheeling along behind them.

Fitz goes "hmm, time to bounce" and crawls out from under the table. Shrewd stops to look at him. "Ah, the Little Accident," he says. "If you leave weapons laying around, someone will eventually pick them up and stab you with them."

"What?" says Regal.

"What?" says Fitz.

"I am not going to leave you laying around for someone else to kill me with," Shrewd says. "Lil Accident, take this pin. I am going to to feed you, train you, house you and clothe you. If anyone's got shit to say about it, show them this pin. It means you belong to me."

"...Okay, sure," Fitz shrugs. He puts the pin into the collar of his shirt. Shrewd nods magnanimously and walks on. Regal flips him off. The Fool cartwheels out the door as they leave.

That night, Fitz goes home to Burrich's bachelor pad, but Burrich turns him right back around. "You done gone and did it now," he says. "King Shrewd noticed you and now you're gonna have to go live inside the castle like a fancy lad. Go on."

"But despite my fear and resentment of you, I see you as a protector and father figure," Fitz says.

"Oh little boy who blew up my life, I love and resent you too," Burrich assures him. "If you get lonely, you can come back down here and I'll murder another puppy for you."

Fitz trudges up to the castle. He has a room of his own. There's a fucking weird tapestry on the wall of the ancient King Wisdom consorting with... what is that thing? Slenderman? It's creepy.

Weeks go by. Fitz is kept busy with new lessons in reading and writing and 'rithmetic, as well as swordery. Once in a very long while, he makes the trip back down to the town to visit his buddies, but those trips become fewer and farther between.

It's the middle of the night.

Fitz wakes up to a draft and a light in his face. There's an old man at the foot of his bed, holding up a lantern. "Come with me," the old man says.

"Oh," Fitz yawns, getting out of bed. "It's the call to adventure."

The old man leads Fitz to a doorway in the wall that hadn't been there before. This is where the draft was coming from-- a steep staircase leading up between walls. Old man leads Fitz up a maze of passageways and then finally to a huge hidden room with all the amenities a crazy old wall-man could want, like a fireplace and comfy chairs and a big bed and a library and a science lab.

Also, the old looks like he took a hot frying pan to the face. Like he really looks like hell.

"Wrow," Fitz says.

"Wrow indeed, boy," the old man agrees. "My name is Chade. I bet I look familiar to you. Well it's because I'm King Shrewd's brother and I blah blah blah I have a weasel named Slink. Next you're going to ask what the fuck happened to my face. I can tell everything you're thinking, because I'm a master spy and assassin and-- now this part you should take to heart-- I am always right about everything. Never doubt me."

"Okay," Fitz says.

"Good. That out of the way, let's train you to kill people."

#rote #robin hobb #farseer trilogy #fitzchivalry farseer #aa abridged #farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

Assassin’s Apprentice Abridged: Part Two

Read Part One (My friend Razz wants to understand my Farseer Trilogy shitposts but doesn’t want to have to actually read the books, so I decided to summarize them. This turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be! Here’s part two of ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE: ABRIDGED!) When we last left our hero, Fitz was a little baby following an old man into a hole in the wall.

"Gosh, Chade," Fitz says, after a wholesome montage of him learning how to steal things and poison people, "I love hanging out with you. It sure is neato to have a friend. I get to do all sorts of pranks around the castle, and once in a while the King even calls me to his rooms to remind me I'm a tool of the Crown!"

"You know what would be really funny?" Chade asks, eyes alight with glee.

Jump cut to Fitz's Twilight-esque depressive episode. He lays in bed for days, staring at the wall, refusing to get up. Burrich comes up to his rooms to ask Fitz what the fuck is going on with him and assumes he's dying.

Fitz can't tell him that Chade asked him to steal from the King and he refused, because everything about Chade is a secret. Burrich doesn't know that Chade told Fitz that if he wasn't game to yoink something from Shrewd's chambers, that he could get the fuck out and never come back.

"Watch this, Shrewd! You can actually pinpoint the second when Fitz's heart rips in half!"

(Burrich tries to cure Fitz's ailment by introducing him to alcoholism. He's like ten.)

Sitting in his room alone and drunk, Fitz starts wailing. He cries and cries until Chade finally comes back down through the secret wall-door to hug him. "Me and Shrewd wanted to see if you were really loyal," he says. "So we traumatized you. We really wanted to introduce you to depression, alcohol, and abject betrayal at a young age and this was the quickest way to do it."

"I want my mommy," Fitz sobs.

"There, there," Chade says, drugging him and leaving.

Later, Fitz is summoned to speak to King Shrewd again, who explains that it was all his idea to give Fitz borderline personality disorder and absolutely does not apologize for it. Fitz takes a knife from the breakfast table in Shrewd's room, brings it back to Chade, and stabs it into the mantle above the fireplace.

I like to think that every time Fitz throws himself into needless danger for the next ten books, Chade looks up at that knife and goes "lol. lmao."

--

"Hey Lil Accident," says Head Scribemaster, "you're pretty good at writing. You wanna be my apprentice?"

"Gosh. I'd get to go places and do things," Fitz marvels. "And almost none of them would involve poisoning people!"

Chade Mission-Impossible drops from the ceiling and hangs above Fitz for long enough to tell him that no, he can't be a scribe's apprentice, for one thing he's already learning to be an assassin, and for another Fitz is kind of an important political tool, being a bastard of a Prince, and someone would definitely murder him.

"Sorry," Fitz tells the Scribemaster, "my uncle said no."

"But you can go down into town and buy some stuff for me, since you've been good," Chade says, reeling back up into the rafters.

Fitz jumps to his feet. "Oh, boy, social interaction! I haven't seen my hoodlum friends in a year! And you know who ELSE I haven't seen in a long time? MY MOM!"

He strides happily past a sad woman in the street wearing an anime mom side ponytail, completely ignoring her in favor of his old friend Molly Nosebleed, who goes by Molly Chandler now that her dad has stopped punching her in the face.

"You're the only girl I know, besides that hysterical woman over there screaming that I'm her son," Fitz says. "I think I have a crush on you."

"Neat," Molly giggles.

Lovestruck Fitz gathers his groceries and heads back up the road to the keep. Princes Verity and Regal ride by, carrying a banner that says "CHIVALRY'S DEAD. THE PRINCE, NOT THE CONCEPT. I MEAN THE CONCEPT IS ALSO DEAD, BUT THE MAIN POINT OF THIS MESSAGE IS THAT PRINCE CHIVALRY FARSEER HAS FALLEN FROM HIS HORSE AND"

Burrich shaves his head. And his beard. And his eyebrows. And his dog's hair. And Fitz's hair too, for good measure. Fitz, rubbing his new buzzcut, says "God, if you loved him so much, maybe you should have married him," and Burrich flings himself into the sea.

"We should be careful," Chade says, later. "Because Chivalry was probably murdered. Anyway, you're going on a road trip. tl;dr one of the dukes isn't properly manning the watchtowers that keep vikings from viking the coast, and Prince Verity has to go deal with it, and you're going with him."

"What's a teal deer?" Fitz asks.

Wandering around outside the castle later, Fitz runs into Shrewd's Fool with a capital F, the albino freak-child that cartwheels around in the King's wake all day.

"Oh no," Fitz says. "Are you lost, little freak child?"

"fjdaklfdafds," says the Fool.

"Come on little fella, I'm not gonna hurt you," Fitz smiles.

"FDAJKFDLALSDFAS," the Fool repeats, louder.

"Do you need an adult?"

The Fool steps up to Fitz, grabs him by the shirt, yanks him down to eye level, and says, "Fitz Fixes a Feist's Fits. Fat Suffices, you fucking beautiful dumbass."

Fitz stares at him.

"I thought you were too dumb to know how words worked," he says finally.

The Fool flips him off and cartwheels away.

"...Weird," Fitz mutters. "Whatever, time to go to NEATBAY! I hope I get to kill somebody!" On the way to Neatbay (in a riding party consisting of Prince Verity and like half the staff of Buckkeep), Fitz pals around with stableboy Hands, and meets Mysterious Old Person Lady Thyme, who is a person that sucks in every way possible.

Hands whispers to Fitz that everyone in Buck knows that Lady Thyme sucks and avoids her. Lady Thyme shrieks that you whippersnappers better not be liking yourselves up there!

Fitz and co. finally arrive in Neatbay. It's a walled city like the place in Attack on Titan, with concentric fortifications like an obstacle course that Vikings have never been able to Vike all the way past (this will not be important again until the next book). It's ruled by Lord Kelvar and his trophy wife and if Kelvar doesn't get off his ass and start manning the watchtowers Fitz might have to poison him to death.

They have dinner. Fitz hates rich people. He eyeballs everybody at the table.

That night before bed, Verity calls Fitz into his room. "What's going on with Lord What's His Face?" He asks the boy.

Fitz explains a very complex situation about how Lord Kelvar is clearly trying to impress his Young Hotness Wife with lots of jewels and shit and his Young Hotness Wife is trying to impress everyone else with her jewels and shit and meanwhile all those jewels and shit could be going to pay to man the watchtowers and the roads, and Kelvar has to take some pride in doing it or else he'll become embittered and...

"I'm going to tell Lord Kelvar to stop being a puss and man the watchtowers," Verity says, and turns over to go to sleep.

Fitz facepalms.

Late in the night, Fitz wakes up starving and ninja-sneaks down to the kitchens to grab a midnight snack. While he's there, a woman comes in with a little doggie wrapped in a blanket.

"My poor little doggie is dying," she sobs. "This type of dog is a small hunting dog called a 'feist,' by the way."

"Hack," says the dog.

"I think your dog is choking on something," Fitz observes, whipping out his stethoscope. "Yeah, there's definitely something jammed down there. Let's get it out. Hold your dog steady."

Fitz finds a long hook, slathers it in butter, and wiggles it down the dog's throat while the dog yowls and pees and scratches the Mysterious Blanket Woman. It takes a minute, but eventually he manages to dislodge a chicken bone from doggie's gullet and they all sit back, panting, while LeVar Burton comes onto the screen and lectures the audience about never letting your pets eat poultry or fish bones and the importance of limiting table scraps and keeping them on a healthy diet. Thanks LeVar!

"You saved my doggie's life," Blanket Woman says, and pulls back her blanket to reveal that she is actually Lord Kelvar's Young Hotness Wife! "I shall repay you in any way you wish."

"I'm thirteen," Fitz says.

"Any way you wish," the woman repeats.

Fitz scratches his head. "Oh! Tell your idiot husband to man the fucking watchtowers before you get Vikinged to death. I mean," he amends, "I had a prophetic vision that a strong and graceful trophy wife spread out her arms to protect the laaand wooooo~"

Then he goes back to bed.

...And is woken up YET AGAIN by a servant telling him that Lady Thyme is demanding his presence down in town.

Oh. Joy.

Fitz gets dressed, saddles up Sooty the horse, rides to the inn that Lady Thyme is staying at, knocks on the door. "I heard you're calling for me," he sighs. "Are you dying or something? Please say you're dying."

Chade opens the door. "Fooled you, boy," he cackles. "I am Lady Thyme! And we have to go to Forge right now."

"You made me empty out a pot full of your shit every single morning for five days," Fitz says.

"Get on your horse," Chade orders, and they're off.

"You know, I've never actually seen you outdoors before," Fitz says as they gallop down the coast. "It's-- are you snorting coke right now?"

Chade sneezes, wiping his nose. "Stay in school."

They ride hell-for-leather for Forge, a little town known for two things: iron exports and being raided by Vikings. They manage to get there twelve hours after the nick of time because Chade had to return some VHS tapes, and find little more than a completely burned-down village and some zombies.

"Chade, are those slow zombies like in Dawn of the Dead, or fast zombies like in the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake?" Fitz asks, watching the zombies shambling around and fighting over pieces of rotten bread and pairs of pants.

"Run," Chade advises, and they do.

On the road out, they pass a bunch of non-zombie survivors moving all their slightly singed possessions to another town. Nobody wants to stay in a town infested with zombies, which the people of the kingdom start calling Forged people, or just Forged, because one of the rules of zombie movies is that none of the characters can say "zombies."

Over the course of the next few months, more and more people are kidnapped by Vikings and Forged, but no one can agree exactly what should be done about it.

And then one night, Fitz is picking his nose alone at a table in the kitchens when another mysterious woman approaches him…

#rote #assassin's apprentice #Fitzchivalry Farseer #robin hobb #aa abridged #farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE ABRIDGED: PART FOUR

My friend Razz wants to understand my shitposting about the Farseer Trilogy, but doesn’t want to have to read the books, so I’m summarizing it for them!

 EDIT: Halfway through Jhaampe I start calling “The Big Turnip” the “Big Onion” instead and I can’t be arsed to fix it.

Read Previous Entries!

 Alright Bastards and Old Bloods, this is it: the final entry and JUMBO-LENGTH conclusion to Assassin’s Apprentice Abridged!

 - Excerpt from Chade Fallstar's private writings, Grune 28th, 1497:

Dear Diary, the other day we caught a little zombie-Forged girl and I've been keeping her in a jar with a stick and a leaf. If I shake the jar, she talks. She knows who she is and who her family is, and she also knows a lot of swear words. I gave her some bread when she wasn't hungry and she said "shove it up your ugly ass." I tried to teach her a trick and she bit me. I decided to send her to live on a farm upstate along with Chivalry and Prince Regal's mom.

 Love, Chadey.

 While Chade has been playing Jane Goodall with Forged people, Fitz has been very busy being an alcoholic. One evening, Chade calls Fitz up into his wall-hole and says "It's time for you to stop being a drunk and for the readers to remember who Prince Verity is."

 "Why is there a hay bale in the corner of your--"

 "Prince Verity is Chivalry's younger brother and currently King-in-Waiting for the throne," the Fool says, lounging underneath the hay bale. "That makes Prince Regal next in line after Verity. Just so you know."

 "Right," Chade nods. "Fitz, your job from now on is to hang out with Verity in his Fortress of Solitude and do whatever he wants you to do."

 "I'm fourteen," Fitz says.

 "Don't argue with me, boy, I've got a wedding to plan. By the way, did you ever figure out who tried to kill Burrich?"

 Fitz shrugs. "I figured somebody tried to kill him because he's Burrich."

 "Ah yes, the age-old solution of 'things just happen, what the hell," Chade rolls his eyes. "Well, go on, shoo. Go bother Verity."

 Sighing, Fitz climbs thirty-nine flights of stairs to where Verity is sitting in his empty tower room and staring out the window. "Breakfast, your highness," Fitz announces.

 "Ew," Verity moans.

 "There's also a cup of tea with enough caffeine in it to kill some sort of very big gray trumpet animal," Fitz offers.

 "Yeah, okay, I'll take that."

 "So, uh," Fitz says, standing there awkwardly as Verity drinks an amount of stimulant that should make his heart explode, "watcha doin up here?"

 "Defending the kingdom."

 Fitz looks out the window at the ocean. He looks back at Verity. "Like... with a gun?"

 Verity smiles softly. "Oh, you're stupid. I like that in a person I'm going to use as a tool for the rest of my life."

 "I like you, too," Fitz says, tail wagging.

 "I'm using the Skill to confuse the Vikings so they won't raid our shit and turn our people into zombies," Verity explains. "I'd ask Galen's Skill students to help but they're pretty useless. Hey, didn't Galen teach YOU how to Skill?"

 "Oh, he tried but I'm bad at it, it's because I'm a basta-- HHHHGGGHHGHGHHGHHHHHH KEPPET.EXE HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM AND NEEDS TO GHHHGH TROJAN DETECTED TAKE ACTION TO PREVENT GHHGGHHHH HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA CLICK HERE TO CHAT GHHGHGGGHHHHHH"

 "Huh," Verity says after thoroughly mentally assaulting Fitz without warning or permission. "Looks like someone used the Skill to convince you you were bad at Skilling. That’s just one of the many things the Skill can do that I will reveal to you whenever I feel like it, which will usually be AFTER you need to know.”

 "I think I need an adult," Fitz whimpers from the floor.

 Verity chuckles fondly. "I am an adult. Too bad I don't really have time to teach you to Skill properly. That probably won't come back to bite us. Run along now, stop crying. Oh, and see if Chade can get you to murder that gross noble two counties over."

 A few weeks later, at breakfast, Fitz tries to eat Coco Puffs as quietly as possible while Verity and Shrewd argue.

 "I don't WANT to get married," Verity says for the eighteenth time. "I've gotta keep sitting in the Martyr Tower and keeping Vikings from attacking us!"

 "Well guess what, bucko, I'm your father AND your king and if I say you're getting married then you fucking are!" Shrewd rage-butters a scone. "And I swear to Eda if you pull a Malicious Compliance like your older brother and marry the absolute worst candidate for queen you can find then I'll look the other way when YOU'RE assassinated too!"

 Fitz slowly reaches for the cereal box, eyes wide.

 "It'll be good for morale, Verity," Shrewd goes on. "Everybody'll be like, 'oh, if the Prince is getting married and pumping babies into some foreign woman then being murdered by Vikings really isn't that bad!'"

 "And who did Regal choose for me to be married to?" Verity asks.

 Shrewd looks at the smudged writing on his hand. "The Kraken," he announces.

 "You mean Kettricken?" Verity says. "The mountain princess? I'm like twice her age. And I don't have time to go to the mountains to grab her, Vikings will totally Vike you all while I'm gone!"

 "Well SOMEBODY'S gotta go up there and grab her," Shrewd insists.

 "Figure it out," Verity snaps as he storms out of the room. "And by the way, Fitz has been sitting there eating six bowls of sugar cereal because he has no adult supervision!"

 He slams the door.

 "Hi Grandpa Shrewd," Fitz says into the silence.

 "Hello, Lil Accident. Just so you know, Kettricken is only second in line to the mountain throne. First is her brother Rurisk, who took an arrow to the chest a couple years back and now is about to die from Being Poisoned to Get Him Out of the Way."

 "Yes Grandpa Shrewd.”

 Chade Spidermans down from the ceiling. "You're sending him and not me? Why?"

 "Plot reasons," Shrewd says, taking the cereal box away from Fitz.

 "Oh boy," Fitz says, jumping up. "I'm gonna go tell my friend the Fool!"

 The Fool's not in his room, but a bunch of other cool stuff is: every Lego set from 1973 onward, a bunch of those neon-colored ponchos from the 90's, Sudoku puzzles completed in ballpoint pen, and A BABY????

 Oh wait, that's a doll. Looks like a baby though. Weird.

 Next Fitz goes to visit Patience. Patience is sifting through an old jewelry box; she sits Fitz down so she can hold different things up to him and see how they look.

 "Hmm. No, too subtle... this one's too gaudy. Ah, yes, this one." Patience pulls out a black collar with the word DADDY on it in gold letters. "Yes, this is perfect. Put it on, Fitz."

 It's eventually decided that since Verity can't go to the mountains, Regal is going to be a stand-in at the wedding and then they'll have another wedding later when the Kraken comes down to Buckkeep. Fitz is loading up the horse-van for the journey when the Fool cartwheels up to him.

 "I have something for you," the Fool jingles.

 "I didn't go in your room and touch your doll or accidentally drop your seven thousand five hundred and forty one piece Millenium Falcon Lego set," Fitz blurts.

 "Take this Pepto Bismol," the Fool says, "and don't eat anything weird in the mountains."

 "Don't worry about me, Fool," Fitz laughs. "I'm sure nothing bad'll happen."

 Fitz goes on a road trip. August, Fitz's cousin and current member of the Skill Gang, is going with them to help Verity Skill-connect to the wedding when it's time. Hands the stableboy is also there, which is nice, because they're taking the I-5 to Jhaampe, the mountain capital, and there's not a lot to look at on the way. They travel through a lot of places that Fitz is just going to have to travel through again in two books while being chased by Regal, so all he really notices is that there's a shitton of grass, a bigass lake, and only one set of hot girls who want to give him and hands their first sexual experience (the girls' mom shows up and hits them with a sandal until they go home).

 The wedding party climbs into the foothills of the mountain kingdom, and there waiting for them are... the Vikings?

 Okay, so the group of seafaring raiders that I've been referring to as "The Vikings" are culturally sort of more like Mongol raiders. It's not really a one-to-one comparison but the important point here is that the mountain people are what we in the real world would typically imagine Vikings to be, except that here in the Six Duchies the Vikings are the Vikings and the mountain people only LOOK like Vikings, Fitz is Simba, Regal is Scar and I think the Fool is Horatio.

 Are we clear? Alright moving on.

 Fitz and co. are greeted by a welcoming party of mountain people, who are tall and pale and blond. They're super friendly and cheerful, singing the Songs of Their People and totally confusing Hands, who doesn't speak Mountain. Fitz doesn't speak Mountain either, probably. Maybe.

 They arrive in Jhaampe, where the buildings look like if you cut off the tops of the towers in Red Square or planted a bunch of turnips upside down. A second welcoming party pops up, and when August and his cronies complain that their feet are tired and they don't feel like walking anymore, the mountain peeps carry them into the city on planks. Fitz is extremely embarrassed by this and is trying not to cringe all the way down into his tights.

 To seem less like a lazy dick who makes strangers carry him places for no reason, Fitz strikes up a conversation with one of the old ladies carrying his plank. Her name is Jonqui and she knows a lot about the city, and slows the plank down so she can point out interesting landmarks and gardens.

 "Pull-Out Fail speaks good Mountain," she remarks, grinning. "Maybe he learned as a tadpole?"

 "I'm just super good with languages I probably grew up speaking," Fitz shrugs.

 They arrive at the biggest turnip, which serves as Jhaampe's royal palace. Jonqui escorts Fitz inside and he finds that it's not really a palace, it's more like a tent made out of a tree, with a lot of open space in the middle, and there's not a whole lot of private spaces that he might use to murder their prince.

 Whatever, he'll figure it out.

 "Come, Pull-Out Fail," Jonqui says, herding Fitz to a center stage. "We will watch our Shift Manager present his Shift Manager to be your Shift Manager."

 "Shift Manager?"

 "Yes, that is what we call our royalty. When someone comes to demand to speak to the person in charge, the Shift Manager is the one we have chosen to throw under the bus," Jonqui explains. "It is a very important duty."

 Besides King Eyod, who is an old person, there are two random mountain folk in white dresses. Fitz eyeballs them and wonders where the rest of the royal family is. "The girl one," Jonqui says, elbowing Fitz, "she is my niece."

 "Neat," Fitz yawns, still looking around for someone wearing a crown. "That other guy looks like He-Man."

 "Yes, he is my nephew."

 Gifts are exchanged.

 "This isn't going to be like that one scene in Midsommar, is it?" Fitz asks warily. "You're not going to like, set these people on fire?"

 "This," King Eyod announces, taking He-Man by the shoulder, "is my son, Shift Manager Rurisk, first in line to the throne of the mountain kingdom. And here is Shift Manager Kettricken, who shall marry the Shift Manager of the Six Duchies and become their General Manager, She Who Sets the Schedule."

 There is general oohing and ahhing and applause. Fitz realizes he's been chatting boredly with the King's sister this entire time. Why hadn't Regal sent any kind of message to the wedding party ahead of time to warn them that the mountain people liked to play Undercover Boss? No, Regal had just texted to remind them to bring his Gucci underwear, the dick.

 Jonqui drags Fitz over to meet Kettricken and Rurisk. "Kids, this is Pull-Out Fail Farseer," she says. "Now you go run along and play, and be back when the streetlights come on."

 "Yes, in our language we call him 'The Bastard' because he sucks," August chimes in helpfully. Rurisk glares at him.

 "Pull-Out Fail," Rurisk says. "I knew your father. And I spoke with him, on the day that he'd learned that he'd knocked up one of our people. He was a good man."

 "This joke is getting kind of old," Fitz says. "Listen, my name is Fitzchivalry--"

 "Oh, Fitzchivalry Farseer?" Kettricken brightens. "You poison people, right? Regal told me all about you and how you run around with Lady Thyme murdering people in the Six Duchies. It's so good to finally meet you!"

 "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Fitz replies articulately.

 "Come on," Kettricken says excitedly, "let's go to the herb garden. I heard you like herbs."

 On the way out to the herb garden, Fitz forgets that Kettricken knows he's an assassin and notices she has boobs, because he's fourteen. Together they get enthused about plants and shit, and they take a stroll around the herbs.

 "Taste this one, it's really weird," Kettricken says. "... What's that thudding noise? With a jingle? It sounds like someone's court jester is banging their head against a wall."

 "I hear that a lot," Fitz shrugs. "I usually just ignore it. You said to eat this plant I've never heard of? Mm, spicy!"

 "So," Kettricken asks as she stops a speeding train with one muscular arm, "what's my future husband like? Shift Manager Regal told me that he's really old and nasty and that he just sits in a recliner watching Fox News all day."

 "He's thirty two," Fitz tells her, mentally adding a dick to the big ol' bag that he wishes Regal would eat. "Verity is super nice, and funny, and he has fun hobbies and he likes animals. He's really handsome, too, he has gorgeous black hair and shining eyes and big broad shoulders and a really nice ass--"

 "So Shift Manager Regal lied to me." Kettricken frowns, biting her lip. "Does he lie about a lot of things?"

 "They hang people in my country for having an opinion on that," Fitz says.

 "Regal was six Jagerbombs deep one night and told me all about how you loved sneaking around and killing people," Kettricken confesses. "He said that if you showed up with the wedding party, it meant that you were here to poison my brother to get him out of the way and make me the heir to the mountains."

 "What haha that's weird what a weird thing to say haha," Fitz stammers, foaming at the mouth.

 Rurisk and Jonqui come running down the path to fetch Kettricken, telling her that there's a thing at the thing she has to do, remember that thing? And Fitz smiles and waves bye to them and then walks happily back to his room in the tree-palace and starts frantically digging through his stuff for the Pepto Bismol the Fool gave him.

 Rurisk bursts into the room at five the next morning, waving a bottle of Mountain Bismol. "Pull-Out Fail, are you still alive?!"

 "I wish I wasn't," Fitz moans, face pressed against the rug. "Get away from me with that."

 "He's not dead, no thanks to you," Rurisk says, glaring at Kettricken as she peeks into the doorway wearing footie pajamas. "Go get us some breakfast, and don't fucking poison it!"

 Fitz tries to stand up and faceplants on the bed. "Stop making the floor move."

 "Someone told Kettricken you were here to kill me," Rurisk explains. "I told her not to worry about it, but she thought it'd be a good idea to trick you into eating what we call Fentanyl Flowers and then not tell me about it until fifteen minutes ago."

 Kettricken comes back into the room with donuts and coffee. Rurisk breaks a donut into three pieces, giving each of them a piece. "And if this is poisoned, you've killed us all," he warns.

 "Oh my god, that was one time," Kettricken whines.

 "Listen, Pull-Out Fail," Rurisk says earnestly. "My little dinky mountain kingdom needs the space for farmland down on your big prairies. We need cool stuff from the town that the Liveship Traders books take place in. We need a beach for our college students to go to on Spring Break. So I'm willing to give you ethically sourced furs, good lumber for warships, and my hot little sister as trade."

 Fitz pauses with a donut halfway to his mouth. "What do you mean, 'ethically sourced furs'?"

 "We shave bears. It's not important right now. What is important is that you don't have to kill me to get me out of the way, because I'm on YOUR side. Do you get me?"

 "I get you," Fitz nods.

 "Good. Now I'm going the fuck back to bed. Kettricken, don't poison anybody on the way back to your room."

 "If you don't stop I'm gonna tell DAD--"

 Fitz lays back on the bed. He closes his eyes and wonders if communism should be a thing. Then he thinks, no, having a monarchy is definitely a good idea. What could go wrong with having a ruling class of divine-right royalty who are constantly murdering each other for the throne? And surely there's no drawback to having a Prince that's an evil little shit who commits crimes against humanity with no fear of punishment or reprisal.

 Yeah. Kings are the best.

 The next day Rurisk invites Fitz out to the dog kennels. Fitz loves dogs! Then they turn a corner to find a very old hound dog whose jowls, ears, belly and tail are all dragging on the ground as he waddles up to them, and the music swells as Fitz cries "Nosy!!" and kneels down to hug him.

 "That's my loyal old hound dog," Rurisk says. "Burrich the stablemaster sent him to me in a little basket with a bow on it years ago."

 "I had a socially unnacceptable soul-bond with this dog," Fitz explains.

 "Gross," Rurisk smiles. "Anyway, I gotta go do Prince stuff. Smell you later."

 Fitz immediately goes to find Burrich, who is in the Big Turnip presenting a horse to Kettricken as a wedding present. Cob--

 Wait, there's a note here. It says, "Cob is the stable boy that Fitz and Nosy met when they first came to Buckkeep." There's a piece of straw taped to it.

 Cob is there too, and he makes sure to give Fitz the middle finger as he approaches.

 "Burrich, I need to talk to you," Fitz says. "I just found out you didn't kill Nosy when I was little."

 Burrich stops what he's doing and turns slowly to stare at him. "I'm sorry, you thought I killed a puppy? Jesus, no wonder you were so twitchy as a kid."

 "But you didn't kill a puppy," Fitz says. "And we can still be friends."

 "You thought I was a monster who would [BUILD A ROCKET SHIP SO THAT AN ANIMAL COULD RETURN TO ITS HOME PLANET] if I'd found out you'd bonded with it, but you turned around and bonded with another fucking puppy," Burrich growls. "Which I told you is nasty, so no, we can't be friends."

 Fitz drags himself sadly back to the Big Turnip.

 That night, Fitz is getting ready for bed when Regal's servant turns up at his door. "Hey fuckwad, Prince Regal wants to talk to you," he says, and drags Fitz by the wrist up to Regal's royal Regal room.

 Regal is chilling in his chambers doing epic bong rips out of the skull of a dead orphan, like not a dirty street urchin, but specifically an adorable little ragamuffin with soot on their little tophat that flew off comically when Regal took them out from five hundred yards away with a sniper rifle. "What's up, DICKchivalry," he sneers, then high-fives one of his minions.

 "Hi," Fitz says, forcing a smile.

 "Have you gotten around to murdering Prince Rurisk yet?" Regal coughs.

 "Uh."

 "Uh," Regal says mockingly. "God, you're stupid. Isn't he stupid, minion who has no business hearing any of this?"

 "Absolutely idiotic, my Prince."

 "Prince Rurisk said he's on our side," Fitz says, "and that he wants us to have the lumber we need and his sister and everything. I figured maybe it'd be better to like, not kill him."

 "Alright, since you're too dumb to plan an assassination, I'll figure it out for you," Regal says as his minion loads another bowl. "I want him graveyard dead before the wedding so he doesn't stand next to me and make me look short. Now fuck off."

 Fitz fucks off with many a backward glance, wondering what the fuck he's supposed to do now. There's no signal in the mountains so he can't send a message to Chade or King Shrewd to tell him that Rurisk is cool actually, and even though Regal sucks, like, REALLY sucks, he IS a Prince and Fitz is a tool of the Crown so he does technically have to follow orders.

 What the fuck is Regal's problem? Fitz thinks while brushing his teeth the next morning. Why did he tell Kettricken that I'm an assassin? Why does he want Rurisk dead so bad when Ru-Dawg is on our side? Gosh, I wish I could talk to Chade or Verity or Grandpa Shrewd or literally anyone, but they're so far away, and--

 Oh right, the Skill.

 "AUGUST," Fitz pants, sneakers squeaking as he skids to a halt in front of his cousin. "I've been looking everywhere for you. Look: do you see this silver pin, with the ruby in it? King Shrewd gave this to me when I was nine and sitting under a table eating leftover pies. The Fool and Regal were there too, and there were some puppies, and King Shrewd knelt down and gave me the pin and told me that if I ever needed to talk to him, I could just show this pin at his door and he'd let me talk to him, no matter what, and there's something really important going on so I need you to send a Skill message to him right now."

 August looks at him for a minute. "No," he says finally, and turns to leave.

 Fitz grabs his sleeve. "August you HAVE to let me talk to Shrewd, there are LIVES at stake!"

 "Okay fine, jeez," August says, shaking him off. "I'll get Shrewd on the line."

 "Great! Great. Okay. Tell him, uh." Fitz takes a deep breath. "Tell him Prince Rurisk is doing great and I don't think we should kill hi-- uhhhhhhhhh, I mean GIVE him the PRESENT that we were going to POISON him with."

 "You're such a fucking spaz," August mutters, closing his eyes to make a Skill Call. Then he shrugs. "It went straight to voicemail."

 "Redial," Fitz says desperately.

 "No, I've got important cousin shit to do, including telling Regal that you just tried to get me to dial long distance to talk to the King." August walks across the palace to talk to Regal, but the Prince is high as fuck and doesn't care.

 Fitz leans against the wall and makes a thinky face. "Maybe I could kill Regal," he says for what will be the first of several hundred times. "Eh, probably not worth it."

 That night, Regal's minion gives Fitz a little secret packet of horrible deadly poison. "Regal gave me this to give to you to give to Prince Rurisk," he says. "Put it in his drink and make it look like an accident."

 "Did King Shrewd send me here as some kind of complicated political maneuver where I would kill Rurisk and then be publicly hanged for murder so no one would find out that we killed Rurisk for political gain?" Fitz asks.

 "Take the fucking accident powder," the minion snaps.

 Fitz walks through the Big Onion to Kettricken's door, where he knocks and tells her that he's going to kill her brother. Then he goes to Rurisk's room, with Kettricken following behind. He sits down at Rurisk's table and dumps the accident powder into a glass of wine while Rurisk watches. Then they both drink from a different glass.

 "Kind of sucks that Shift Manager Regal told everyone you're an assassin, Pull-Out Fail," Rurisk says. "You wanna hang out here in the mountain kingdom so you don't end up at the bottom of a lake with your feet encased in concrete?"

 "Maybe," Fitz says. "I think somebody's supposed to catch me in the act of killing you just now, will you let them in?"

 Cob bursts in the door. "Caught you red handed poisoning the Prin-- OH FUCK KETTRICKEN YOU DIDN'T DRINK THAT WINE DID YOU??"

 "No, why?"

 Rurisk falls over dead.

 "Wait, why is he dead, we both drank from the same gl-- wow, I do NOT feel so great," Fitz says, foaming at the mouth again.

 Cob grabs him. "I sent Smithy to space," he grins.

 "Yeah, well I have a poisoned knife," Fitz replies, stabbing him with it.

 "Sweet mountain Jesus, someone stop him, he's killing everyone!" Kettricken yells, then realizes she's holding a heavy metal object and beans Fitz in the head with it.

 Fitz wakes up in the stables outside the Big Onion with Regal already monologuing over him. "I wanted you dead because you and Lady Thyme poisoned my mother!"

 "Queen Desire, Shrewd's second queen who died at some point in this book but Fitz literally cared so little that he didn't even mention it," says a nearby hay bale.

 "Thank you, hay bale," Regal says. "You thought I didn't know you poisoned her, but I DID know! I also know that you were using Burrich to Skill, but as soon as I had Cob stab him you were forced to stop. I knew ALL of these things!"

 "Glag," Fitz says, concussed. Then he closes his eyes, and suddenly he can Skill.

 "Hi, Prince Regal," Galen the Skillmaster says. "Are you ready for me to Skill-Kill Prince Verity during the wedding so you can marry Kettricken and be King-in-Waiting?"

 "Ugh, but she looks like a Soviet Union propaganda poster," Regal moans.

 "Suck it up," Galen says, hitting 'end call.'

 Fitz is still laying on his face in the stables. Nosy noses in and ambles over to drool on him, then bites through the ropes Fitz is tied up with. Burrich shows up next.

 "You have the Wit," Fitz tries to say, but he's still suffering poison damage and the 'hit in the head' debuff, so it comes out as "Glaggaglah."

 "I'm in the closet," Burrich says. "Did King Shrewd turn you into a baby assassin?"

 "Glag," Fitz confirms sadly.

 Burrich looks back at him, then does a double-take. "Where the fuck did you get that collar that says 'DADDY' on it?" he demands.

 "Patience glave it to me."

 "I cannot fucking believe this," Burrich mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose. "That's the collar that I gave to your dad."

 Fitz looks at him.

 "You gave it to Prince Chivalry when he found out about me," Fitz says. "That's why it says 'DADDY,' because that's when he found out he was a father."

 "Sure, we'll go with that," Burrich says queerly.

 Jonqui, King Eyod's sister, clips through the wall while T-posing. "Come back to the Big Onion," she says. "Kettricken has forgiven you for poisoning her brother. Which I know you didn't do."

 They drag Fitz back to his rooms at the Big Onion. While Fitz is trying to remember how to drink water, August shows up at the door. "Verity called," he says boredly. "He said, uh, be loyal to who's loyal to you, or something. Also all of Regal's servants died mysteriously and he wants you to go to the hot springs to help him bathe."

 "I do not want to see Regal naked," Fi tz protests, but goes anyway.

 Regal's sitting in a hot tub drinking an evil martini when Fitz and Burrich arrive. "Ah, there you are," Regal says. "Hulking Manservant, bang Burrich over the head."

 Burrich goes down. Fitz yells timber. Regal drags Fitz over to another hot tub, ignoring the sign that says 'WARNING: DO NOT USE THIS HOT TUB IF YOU HAVE BEEN RECENTLY BETRAYED BY YOUR EVIL UNCLE' and throws him in.

 "And that's that," Regal says happily, dusting off his hands, and leaves.

 Fitz, flailing around in the water being hot tubbed to death, can suddenly Skill (again). This is great! He Skills joyously. Skilling is rad! I'm gonna call everyone! Hey Verity! VERITY! ... Verity?

 "Dearly Beloved..."

 The Fool looks up from his Adult Coloring Book. "Hm?"

 "We are gathered here today to join these two second bananas in holy matrimony. Do you, Prince Verity..."

 Verity! Fitz Skill-yells. Look out!! Skillmaster Galen is standing behind you about to pull a Skill Dracula on you and suck out all your, uh, Skill! That's a thing that can happen apparently!

 I am actually Queen Desire's bastard son and Prince Regal's half brother! Galen Skills evilly. I'm pretty sure there's no member of the Farseer reign that HASN'T either sired or given birth to a bastard! Like seriously, as a family we legit just cannot keep our pants on. ANYWAY! I have been conspiring to kill Verity and put Regal on the thro-- oh okay apparently you can just straight kill someone with the Skill too, who knew.

 Galen collapses, Skill-dead.

 AUGUST, Verity Skill-megaphones into August the Skill-cousin's ear. PUT THE KRAKEN ON THE LINE SO I CAN TELL HER IT WASN'T ME WHO PLOTTED TO KILL PRINCE RURISK. AND ALSO THAT I RESPECT HER AS A PERSON AND WILL GREET HER WHEN SHE ARRIVES AT BUCKKEEP WITH A FIRM HANDSHAKE AND A MANLY NOD.

 August's head explodes.

 ~epilogue~

 Fitz and Burrich are later found in a wet, unconscious pile in the steams. Fitz has puncture marks in his wrist from where Nosy pulled him out of his hot tub tomb before climbing into his rocketship and flying back to his home planet.

 Though neither of them are dead, Burrich has conveniently forgotten that Fitz is a baby assassin, and Fitz probably can't be a baby assassin anymore because he has about thirty seizures a day due to being poisoned and then poisoned again and then blugeoned and kicked and drowned all in the space of like thirty minutes.

 They spend a long time recovering in Jhaampe, even after Kettricken and Regal (remember him? he's still alive) go down to Buckkeep. Burrich tells Fitz that they're friends again and that he'll go wherever Fitz goes because he's wearing the 'DADDY' collar. Fitz says, "Because you... view me as a parental figure? I guess?"

 Burrich replies, "Sure. We'll go with that." NEXT TIME, ON DRAGON BOOK Z: Fitz has his Hot Girl Summer, immediately followed by his Shit’s Wack Winter, in ROYAL ASSASSIN ABRIDGED! 

#rote #assassin's apprentice #farseer trilogy #fitzchivalry farseer #robin hobb #aa abridged #farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

Assassin’s Apprentice Abridged: Part Three

Part One Part Two (My friend Razz wants to understand my shitposts about the Farseer Trilogy, but doesn’t want to have to read the books, so I’m summarizing the trilogy for them starting with Assassin’s Apprentice!) When we last left Fitzy-Fitz, he was being stared at by a mysterious woman in the kitchens... - There's a woman staring at Fitz so hard that he can feel his clothes smoking. "This lady is creepy," he thinks as he puts a bucket on her head to keep her from seeing him steal 39 wheels of cheese. "Hello," says FItz.

"O_O" says the woman.

"...alright then," says Fitz, and leaves.

A few weeks later, while staggering drunkenly through a garden that features "seven varieties of thyme," which is five more varieties than I knew existed (regular thyme and hammer thyme), Fitz sees the woman again.

"Are you drunk?" she demands.

"Ayyyyyy lmao," Fitz replies, giving her double finger guns before stumbling back to the stables and falling asleep in a pile of horse manure.

Soon after that, Burrich comes back from the Probably Gay Stablemasters Convention (Ponycon 2023) and sees a very old horse in his stables. "Hey, I know that horse," he says. "Oh. Oh shit. Lady Patience is here."

The Fool's head pops out of a nearby hay bale. "The Lady Patience is Prince Chivalry's widow," he reminds us helpfully, then ducks back down.

"Oh good," Fitz mutters. "I have made a GREAT impression on her so far."

"It's fine, she's fucking weird anyway," Burrich says. "Go take a shower. You smell like teenaged boy."

But before Fitz can douse himself in Axe body spray, Patience accosts him in the hallway. "Do you know how to sing, play an instrument, speak French, write poetry, dance, or subjugate  minorities?" she asks.

"No," Fitz says, "that's for royalty."

"Surely you've been instructed to watch  Game of Thrones," Patience presses.

"No."

"Merlin?"

"Nah."

"The Princess Bride?" Patience asks desperately.

"Again," Fitz sighs, "I'm a bastard."

"I will be," Patience snarls, "RIGHT BACK."

Fitz takes a shower.

When he gets out, Chade is there. "Boy, m'boy!" he cries. "They're going to teach you the Skill!"

"I already know how to kill," Fitz protests.

"No, boy, SKILL. The innate Farseer royal magic that enables you to..." Chade checks his notes. "Well, by the end of the series it's easier to list the things the Skill CAN'T do-- but in this first trilogy it's mostly a Professor X type psychic ability that lets you telepathically talk to people in italics."

"Oh. Neat."

"Patience heard that you weren't getting a Prince's education and threw a bitch fit," Chade beams. "You'll start your Skill lessons next month. In the meantime you have to go and spend time with Patience so she can teach you Prince things."

"Like what it's like when doves cry?" Fitz asks.

"Stop dating yourself with old as fuck references," Chade snaps, and shoos him off.

Early the next morning Fitz reports to Patience's room, which is full of all her most recent ADHD hyperfixations, Lacy the servingwoman, and a dog with some puppies. "Hello!" Patience says. "I've decided to name you Tom. Here's a puppy."

Fitz loves the puppy and, with the Fool's random help, names him Smithy. He loves Smithy so much that he makes some macaroni art of him and brings it proudly back to Patience.

Patience hugs him, screams, then runs into her room and slams the door.

"She gets like that," Lacy explains, not looking up from her knitting.

Fitz has a great couple of weeks spending time with Smithy, Patience, and Molly, who he still has a giant crush on. Burrich notices that he hasn't yelled at Fitz for being witted in a while and calls him up to his apartment."Listen, Lil Accident," Burrich says, "Galen, the Skillmaster, loved your father and absolutely hates you."

"So, a Severus Snape situation," Fitz says.

"Yes. But he is not going to secretly keep you safe. If he finds out you talk to animals he's going to kill you. And I'll let him do it, because I don't want you to talk to animals either."

"Okay," says Fitz, who is right at this moment talking to his dog Smithy.

"Chade and I are not allowed to talk to you while you're being trained in Skilling. So no matter what awful thing Galen does to you, you just have to take it. Be careful, Lil Accident."

"Whatever," Fitz scoffs. "How bad can it be?"

"There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class," Galen says imperiously as he strides onto the tower top where he's holding Skill lessons. "I am going to teach you THE SKILL, which is super badass and sick and so amazing. Only the most favorite-- er, most talented students will be able to learn it. You! What's your name?"

"Fitz," Fitz replies.

"One thousand points from Gryffindor! Now everyone strip naked and start doing push-ups until I tell you you can stop!"

Fitz is still doing pushups a few weeks later when Galen walks up and kicks him in the ribs. "You've been stealing food when I explicitly ordered you to do a juice cleanse!"

"That food was for my dog--"

"Silence! Get out of my sight and don't let me catch you cheating on your diet again!"

That night, the Fool comes to Fitz's room with a bowl of dog food. "I'll feed and walk your dog for you," he says, "but I'm not putting a bag on my hand and picking up his business. That's YOUR business. Also, you should stop going to Skill lessons. You might die."

"I'm not gonna die, it's fine," Fitz says, drinking his juice.

Despite all odds, Fitz does sort of start to learn the Skill. In fact he gets pretty good at the basics, much to Galen's disgust. Then Galen tells the class that he's going to touch each of them with a little bit of true Skill, to show them how awesome it is."But don't lean into it," Galen warns, "or your mind will get sucked out of your body Byford Dolphin style."

He touches Fitz with the Skill.

"Stop leaning into it!" Galen snaps, repeatedly punching Fitz in the face.

"Ow! I'm not, I swear!"

"You totally are, you're the absolute worst and you don't deserve to know how to Skill!"

"I'm the absolute worst and I don't deserve to know how to Skill," Fitz says, without any prompting from anyone.

"You're bad at the Skill, you'll always be bad at the Skill, and you should kill yourself!"

"I'm bad at the Skill, I'll always be bad at the Skill, and I should kill myself," Fitz decides, all on his own.

"Class dismissed," Galen says, dusting off his hands. "Everyone spit on Fitz on the way out."

Having independently decided to unalive himself, Fitz slowly crawls to the edge of the very high tower and prepares to launch himself off of it into the sweet embrace of death, which he totally deserves because he's a bastard and no one likes him. But then Smithy reaches for him through their Wit-bond and says "Nooooo don't kill yourself you're so hott haha."

With the power of love from, honestly, the greatest dog of all time, Fitz decides not to commit breathn't.

When he next wakes up, he's in bed, and Burrich is sitting next to him. "I wrapped you in bandages," Burrich says soothingly. "Go back to sleep."

Fitz spends the next few weeks slowly recovering from being curbstomped by Galen. He sweeps out the stables, feeds horses, endures angry glares from Burrich because he had a secret wit-bond puppy, and thinks all about how he's bad at the Skill and will always be bad at the Skill.

"Alright, Lil Accident," Burrich says after a while, "it's time to go back to your Skill lessons."

"But I've missed too many classes," Fitz protests.

"There haven't been any classes. Go back to your lessons."

"Why not?"

"Haven't you heard?" The Fool says, popping out of a hay bale again. "Burrich beat the absolute shit out of Galen at the Witness Stones. He said, 'Gods, if I win this very one-sided fight, then Galen sucks,' and then just jumped up and down on that skinny motherfucker until he stopped moving." "Oh," Fitz says dumbly. The Fool retreats into the hay once more.

Later, on a beach date, Molly says, "Have you heard Prince Verity is going to get married?"

"Since when?" Fitz boggles.

"Oh, I know all the hot goss," Molly laughs. "Yeah, he agreed to get political-married to some foreign lady, but he's got no time to go looking for one, so Prince Regal is going to find one for him."

"Huh," Fitz says, then, "Miss Molly, I sure think you're just the swellest girl I ever did meet."

"How swell?" Molly asks.

But before Fitz can say "really really swell, the bee's knees," Smithy comes charging up to them to tell Fitz it's time to go back to the castle and start his Skill lessons again.

Fitz goes to the tower-top classroom along with the other students, all of whom pretty much hate him for being bad at the Skill and because his adopted dad beat up their teacher. Galen limps in. "I have an announcement," he says. "First of all, Jaydee mixed up the order of events just now: Fitz's first lesson back took place before he found out that Verity was going to be married. Second, Molly is hanging out with a handsome sailor named Jade. And thirdly, your training is almost complete. I will send you all on one final test-- even you, bastard that I hate and that I hope dies-- and then present you as a Skill Coterie to the King on Fantasy Easter."

"Murmur, murmur," all the students murmur.

"I'm going to send each of you to a faraway place," Galen goes on. "And then I will Skill a message of how to come home."

"That sounds fun, I bet nothing bad'll happen to me," Fitz says.

Galen smiles. "Do you think I don't know that you and Burrich are fucking? Because I do. And you won't be able to use him for Skill strength on this test."

"I don't understand any of the words that just came out of your mouth," Fitz smiles back.

(There's an aside here about Fitz undergoing his Man Ceremony, a strange and ancient Bar mitzvah where dudes in masks come to his room in the dead of night and bestow upon him a new Man Name. The Man Ceremony is literally never mentioned ever again in the entire series, but Fitz's Man Name is-- Changer.)

Fitz is blindfolded, put in his Test Carriage, and taken to the faraway place where he'll wait for his Skill message. The Test Carriage pulls to the side of the road, throws Fitz out, then screeches off. Fitz stands up and takes off his blindfold. Hey, this place looks kind of famil-- oh, it's Forge, where all the zombies live.

Neat.

Fitz sits down to prepare himself to receive his Skill message.Then he falls asleep.

Burrich is being attacked! Someone pushes him down the stairs! Smithy comes to the rescue, biting the attacker's leg!! But then--

["I MUST GO, MY PLANET NEEDS ME," SMITHY SAID AS HE SHOT INTO THE SKY. "I AM A GOOD DOG AND I HAVE EARNED MY TIME CHASING SPACE SQUIRRELS ON MY HOMEWORLD. FAREWELL!]

Fitz bolts upright. He's got to get home to help Burrich! Smithy's fine, he flew away before anyone could hurt him. But Burrich! He starts on the road home. Fuck the Skill message, he probably couldn't hear it anyway because he's bad at the Skill and always will be. But he's NOT bad at helping Burrich and writing a letter to Smithy who, again, went back to his home planet and is safe and sound.

He fights his way back through groups of zombies at Forge (and sees Vikings still hanging out in the ruins of the town) and hurries back toward Buckkeep.

Burrich is still alive, convalescing in the hospital with a wicked bump on the head. "I'm not dead," Fitz tells him. "I came back to help you."

"Smithy went back to his home planet," Burrich says.

"I know. He contacted me via our awesome wit-bond to say he was fine and nothing bad had happened to him."

"I can't believe you were talking to your dog instead of listening for your Skill message!"

"I wasn't going to hear a Skill message," Fitz explains. "I'm bad at the Skill. But I'm good at talking to animals."

"That's gross," Burrich says. "Never talk to me, ever again."

"This is the worst day of my life," Fitz moans.

"It's the worst day of your life SO FAR," The Fool clarifies from his hay bale.

#rote #robin hobb #farseer trilogy #fitzchivalry farseer #assassin's apprentice #aa abridged #if you don't already know what Byford Dolphin refers to you probably shouldn't look it up #please enjoy all the references in this one that out me as an old person #farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE ABRIDGED: CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE EXPLAINING REALM OF THE ELDERLINGS TO RAZZ PROJECT SO THEY DON’T HAVE TO READ THE BOOKS BUT THEY CAN STILL ENJOY MY SHITPOSTING ABOUT IT

PART ONE: ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE PART ONE-A: CAST OF CHARACTERS THE FARSEERS (The royal family of the Six Duchies, every member of this clan is a hot mess. I will also be including Farseers-by-marriage in this category). Nameless/Fitz/Fitzchivalry: The POV character, King-in-Waiting Chivalry’s bastard whose name is literally “Chivarly’s Bastard.” Prince Chivalry: Fitz’s father who never has an on-screen appearance. He was first in line to the throne but abdicates when Fitz shows up. Prince Verity: Chiv’s younger brother, the Nice Uncle who becomes the new King-in-Waiting. Honest as his name and good at sports. Prince Regal: Chivalry and Verity’s younger half-brother, the Mean Uncle. Vain and power hungry and has like negative three redeeming qualities. King Shrewd: Current king, kind of getting on in years but not yet totally decrepit. He’s an ends-justify-the-means guy but not in an evil way. Chade: King Shrewd’s older half-brother on the wrong side of the sheets. An assassin. Lives in the walls. Has a weasel. August: Fourth? In line for the throne, he’s someone’s cousin, I forget whose, but he can do the Skill, so he’s here. Queen Constance: Chivalry and Verity’s mom. Shrewd’s arranged-marriage wife. Dead. Queen Desire: Regal’s mom. Shrewd’s midlife crisis trophy wife. Suffers from what we will discreetly call “substance abuse disorder.” Is a Mythic Bitch. Patience: Chivalry’s wife. Has ADHD. Can’t have children. Weird, but nice. (Kettricken is grouped with Rurisk so he doesn’t get lonely). CASTLE AND STABLE FOLK (and Molly) Burrich: Fitz’s pseudo-father and keeper. Stablemaster of Buckkeep, former right hand man to Chivalry. Was an adventurer like you until he took a pig to the knee. Cobb: Burrich’s apprentice. That’s kind of it, but he’s worth mentioning. Hands: A stablehand and Fitz’s friend. Likes redheads. Claims to have fucked a million women. Hasn’t. Lacy: Patience’s serving woman and bestie. Makes lace, nods indulgently and will stab you. The Fool: Albino freak-child who serves as King Shrewd’s jester. People are kind of afraid of him. Sometimes appears to yell word-salad at Fitz or walk his dog for him. Galen: Potions, er, Skill-master. Walks around the keep sneering at people. Supposed to teach people how to Skill, but isn’t good at it. Skill Students: Will not become important until next book. Molly Nosebleed: A pugnacious street girl who lives in Buckkeep Town. Fitz hangs out with her when he can. MOUNTAIN FOLK Rurisk: Prince of the Mountain Kingdom. Took an arrow to the chest and kept on truckin’. Used to be friends with Chivalry, is a pretty stand up guy. Hope nothing happens to him. Kettricken: Rurisk’s younger sister, betrothed to Verity (and later married) late in the book. Picture Gwendolyn Christie. Now give her a sword and a sense of duty that’ll blow you into next Tuesday. Jonqui: Kettricken’s aunt. No nonsense. Thinks Fitz is cute. PETS Nosy: Hound dog puppy. Bonded to Fitz. Smithy: I think Smithy’s like a French Bulldog or something? Fitz calls him a “terrier” but he’s not a ratting breed, he’s kind of muscly... anyway, bonded to Fitz. Sooty: Fitz’s horse. Best mare, perfect cinnamon roll and can do no wrong. Vixen: Burrich’s dog and Nosy’s mother. Good dog. Slink: A weasel belonging to Chade. MAGICS (I know magic is not a character, but they do have to be explained somewhere) The Wit: The ability to “bond” with certain animals and speak with them, as well as sense life force and to do a kind of mental shove at people. You tend to act a little like the animal you’ve bonded to. Witted people are considered gross and animalistic and are run out of town or put to death. The Skill: Telepathy. Considered the “birthright” of the Farseers. Most people can sense it at least a little, but it takes inborn talent and a lot of careful training to do anything useful with it. Skilling apparently feels awesome but if you give in to the temptation to fully open yourself to it you can get sucked out of your own  brain.

#rote #assassin's apprentice #spoilers #aa abridged #farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

Farseer Trilogy Abridged Update

Hey all, I know you guys have been waiting on me to get started on Royal Assassin Abridged, and I promise I’ve been working on it but a couple of things have come up that have kept me from writing, and I thought you all deserved an explanation.

So uh, yeah...

#rote #farseer trilogy abridged #listen. listen #listen #no listen #listen though

[cyberphuck]

"Fool," Shitz says. "You can see the future, right?"

"This is a weird time to reveal that particular nugget of information, but sure. Let's see… ah, yes. I see a bard who can't fucking read the room trying to find a rhyme for 'dismembered child.' That is not something Jaydee made up, it's a real line from the book."

"Thank you, Fool, that's extremely fucked up," Shitz says. "Oh wait, who's this on the video call… It's Molly! Oh SHIT, it's Molly and Vikings are going to vike her!"

But Molly wasn't called Molly Nosebleed as a kid because she's a trembling little violet. A Viking tries to vike her and she stabs him to death, whirls around and shouts "WHO WANTS SOME, MOTHERFUCKERS?!"

Then a house falls on her.

#rote #farseer trilogy abridged

[cyberphuck]

ROYAL ASSASSIN ABRIDGED: PART ONE My friend Razz wants to understand my shitposting about Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, but they don’t want to actually have to read the books, so I’m summarizing it for them (and you)! When we last left Fitzy-Fitz, it was a really fucking long time ago, sorry, I stopped going to church and learned to chainsmoke (and this book is LONG, I mean it’s LOOOOOOONG, so I kept avoiding getting started on Abridging it, lmao). You can brush up on the frankly insane amount of different characters here at the Royal Assassin Cast of Characters post, or find the links to the rest of the Farseer Trilogy Abridged series here at this link here.

- Fitz awakens one fine October morning in a bed at Jhaampe hospital, where he's been recovering from being poisoned and poisoned and bludgeoned and kicked and drowned. At first he was having eighty seizures a day, but now that it's down to only twenty-five seizures a day, he and Burrich figure it's high time for the two of them to skedaddle before they get snowed in.

  Then, exactly like that scene in Attack on Titan where Eren reaches for a spoon and accidentally turns into a Titan, Fitz drops a spoon and accidentally turns into a seizure. It's a lot less cool. He wakes up hours later back in the same damn hospital bed with Jonqui the King's Sister and now healer sitting beside him.

  "This sucks," he whines.

  "Time heals all wounds, Pull-Out Fail," Jonqui says sagely.

  "Shut the fuck up. I'm fifteen and obviously know a lot more than you about healing, and I've decided I'm never going to get better."

  Burrich strides healthily into the room with a swanky new skunk stripe in his hair where his skull was recently cracked open. "What-ho, Lil Accident, are you ready to go back to Buckkeep?"

  "No. Everybody's gonna make fun of me. You go back without me."

  "So long as you wear that collar," Burrich says solemnly, "I must follow you."

  Fitz touches the black collar with the word DADDY on it in gold letters. "The way you followed my father?"

  "Yes."

  "Was it like, a sex thing?"

  Burrich, who has enough hidden piercings to set off a metal detector at twenty paces, asks, "Are we going back to Buckkeep or what? I'm getting kind of bored sitting here watching you do the Harlem Shake."

  "Also, I heard that Molly's candle shop was foreclosed on and she had to go live with relatives in a town that's about to be raided by Vikings," The Fool says from under the bed.

  "Gosh, I wish I could talk to King Shrewd or the Fool or find out what's happening to Molly," Fitz sighs, then sits up as the room fills with the wavy lines and harp glissando of a dream sequence.

  "Wake up, King Shrewd," the Fool says. He's sitting on a chair, not under the bed or in a hay bale for once, and Fitz finds it extremely disturbing.

  "Fool? What are you doing here?"

  "Oh, King Shrewd and not Fitz, I have to be here because you're sick and old," the Fool fools. "Here, let me fluff your pillows and feed you soup."

  "This is so weird," Shrewd-Fitz says. "I feel like... oh, the Skill line is ringing. What? Vikings are viking Siltbay so late in the fall?"

  "You know, it's creepy when you talk to yourself like that," the Fool mutters.

  But Shitz (Shrewd-Fitz) is already on a Skill video call, watching the Red-Ship Raiders pulling up onto the coast. Vikings run through the town, viking everything in sight. The raiders are wading through blood up to their knees, people are running around headless and on fire, it's awful. The raiders aren't even stealing anything-- they're just wrecking stuff, which anyone who's been to a Raiders game can attest to (go Cowboys).

  "Fool," Shitz says. "You can see the future, right?"

  "This is a weird time to reveal that particular nugget of information, but sure. Let's see... ah, yes. I see a bard who can't fucking read the room trying to find a rhyme for 'dismembered child.' That is not something Jaydee made up, it's a real line from the book."

  "Thank you, Fool, that's extremely fucked up," Shitz says. "Oh wait, who's this on the video call... It's Molly! Oh SHIT, it's Molly and Vikings are going to vike her!"

  But Molly wasn't called Molly Nosebleed as a kid because she's a trembling little violet. A Viking tries to vike her and she stabs him to death, whirls around and shouts "WHO WANTS SOME, MOTHERFUCKERS?!"

  Then a house falls on her.

  "Oh god, oh fuck," Shitz says, panicking. "Fool, use your future vision and tell me if Molly's okay!"

  "A bunch of women died in a bunch of horrible ways," the Fool says. "Do you want me to list them?"

  "No," Shitz says, and so the Fool doesn't spend two pages describing the graphic sexual assault, murder, and maiming of a bunch of townsfolk. Shitz sits back in his bed. "Run off and let Verity know Siltbay is being viked."

  Ever loyal, the Fool cartwheels down the stairs. Then Shitz sighs and says, "Man, being old sucks."

  "Yes it does, so quit your fucking whining about your little seizures and come home," Shrewd says, and ends the Skill call.

  The next morning, Fitz-Fitz packs up his stuff and heads out with Burrich and Hands to make the long boring trip back to Buckkeep.

The return to Buckkeep sucks especially hard because they have to take the 99 instead of the I-5 like last time, and Fitz is getting carsick. Along the way they keep having to stay in incredibly sketch Super 8s, which wouldn't be that bad (free soap and free weird smells!) but Burrich and Hands overhear someone standing out in the hallway talking loudly on their phone about how much King Shrewd fucking sucks.

  "Yeah he keeps raising taxes to 'defend our country' or whatever but Vikings are still viking the beach towns as much as they want," had said the Buckboi in the hallway. "You know who rules, though, Prince Regal!"

  "What towns did Buckboi say were viked?" Fitz asks.

  "A town no one cares about," Hands answers solemnly, "and the one where Molly had a house fall on her."

  After that incident, Burrich decides that they're gonna make the rest of the trip using surface streets and driving through people's yards. "If Regal finds out you're out here, he'll send someone to kill you," Burrich explains. "Verity's definitely not gonna protect you."

  "Is that because he consistently sees me as a tool first and a family member and human being second?"

  "Look," Hands interrupts. "I see Buckkeep-shaped lights in the distance." They ride up to the gates, which are guarded by a kid who was born a thousand years too early to be the squeaky-voiced teen working at the drive-thru. “Halt,” he squeaks. “Who the fuck are you?“

  Burrich scoffs. ”Who the fuck are YOU?“

  ”I asked you first!“

  ”I asked you sec—“

  ”All right, all right, who's holding up the line?“ The last book had a rich and exhausting cast of random extras murmuring in the background, but this one used all of their budget on talking CGI wolves, so they had to fire most of them and give almost all of their lines to Blade, The Guard Captain. His job is to appear at important moments and say things like 'hear, hear!' and 'how big WAS she?' “Holy shit, it's Burrich! Twitter said you and Chivalry's Post Nut Regret were dead!”

  “It's called X now,” Fitz says, emerging dramatically from the shadows.

  “Oh.” Blade says, while four of the other guards die of secondhand embarrassment. “H-hi, Chivalry's Pos... I mean... Fitz. You uh. Did you have a nice trip? Hey, you... did something with your hair, it looks... it looks good!”

  “Prince Regal was going around telling everyone I was dead, wasn't he,” Fitz says flatly.

  “Sometimes I can still hear his voice,“ Regal sighs from somewhere in the castle.

  ”What? No. What?? No! What?! No!“ Blade laughs as six more guards thud to the ground. ”No, of course not! It was just, you know, like, you know. YOU know. You know. I didn't really believe you were dead, I did retweet the link Regal posted but I commented with 'big if true,' so it wasn't really...”

  Fitz smiles. “Ho ho ho, Captain, don't worry your sweet little tits about it. Everyone falls victim to misinformation from time to time, and I accept the apology I assume you were about to provide me. Do carry about your business.”

  Halfway up to the stables, Burrich pulls Fitz aside. “Listen, Lil Accident, we're not at Grandma's house anymore,” he hisses. “You can't talk to people like you matter or Regal's gonna get his panties in a knot about it.”

  “And then he'll choke me,” Fitz agrees.

  “What?”

  “With his knotted up panties.“

  ”I'm also still alive,“ Hands offers after a long silence. ”Fitz, you're too weak and pathetic to wax your own horse, let me do it.“

  ”But...“

  ”Come on, Fitz, let Hands, my new favorite child, take care of the important work.“ Burrich takes Fitz's arm. ”Now go on up to the castle, that collar is making everybody question their sexuality.“

  ”What's a sexuality?“ Fitz asks, just before he's shoved into the castle, screen door banging behind him.

  Inside, Fitz looks around and notices that the place looks cleaner than it had before he'd left on the world's worst road trip. All the beer cans and ash trays have been cleaned up, someone's taken down the band posters and put up tasteful watercolors of succulents, and the 'NICE COCK' that had been scrawled above the toilet has been replaced with 'live laugh love.'

  ”Wrow,“ muses Fitz as he passes a sign on Verity's door that reads 'IF THE WARSHIP'S A-ROCKIN', DON'T COME A-KNOCKIN'. ”I'm kinda gonna miss the crusty sock smell. Good thing my room still reeks like teenaged boy.“

#rote #robin hobb #fitzchivalry farseer #ra abridged #this one's a little rough but I promise I'll warm up

[cyberphuck]

ROYAL ASSASSIN ABRIDGED: PRELUDE

My friend Razz wants to understand my shitposting about the Farseer Trilogy, but doesn't want to actually have to read the books, so I'm summarizing them for them (and you)!

 Read previous entries

 LAST TIME, ON DRAGON BOOK Z: Fitz is a bastard who knows telepathy and talks to animals. He's taught to be an assassin, then goes up to the mountains on a mission and completely fails at it. His uncle tries to kill him. His OTHER uncle gets married.

 CAST OF CHARACTERS (holy shit there are so many characters in this book)

 THE FARSEERS

Six Duchies royal family, of which several members are now dead. This will include Farseers-by-Marriage (Dead or head-exploded characters will have their own category).

 FitzChivalry Farseer: The POV character, Prince Chivalry's bastard. Loyal as a K-Pop stan who still has a BTS McNugget meal preserved in their freezer. He possesses both the Skill (Professor X telepathy) and the Wit (Dr. Doolittle animal chats).

 Prince Verity: Currently King-in-Waiting, a lifelong second-in-command who was suddenly thrust into a leadership role when his older brother fucked off to be assassinated. Recently married, super strong in the Skill, does not ask for consent before mind-molesting Fitz.

 Queen Kettricken: Recently married to Verity, she came all the way from the Mountain Kingdom to clean up Buckkeep and be miserable because she's used to doing Crossfit in the snow and now she has to sit and pretend to laugh at other people's jokes.

 Prince Regal: The sneaky, moustache-twirling evil younger half brother of Verity. He killed like four people at Verity's wedding and tried to murder Fitz with a hot tub, and they just sort of let him get away with it.

 King Shrewd: The current king, currently pretty old and afflicted with some kind of wasting disease. Fitz is technically bound to him by a pact he made as a child, but they both kind of ignore that most of the time.

 Chade: King Shrewd’s older half-brother on the wrong side of the sheets. An assassin. Lives in the walls. Has a weasel. Came out of the wall into Fitz's room and taught him how to be an assassin. Sort of a father figure, but the kind that yells at you to hold the flashlight steady while he works on the car.

 Patience: Chivalry’s widow. Helicopter-parents Fitz whenever he comes within fifteen feet of her. The ADHD champion of the Six ooh is that a book on rare ferns?

 NOBLES

 Duke Brawndy: Duke of Ripplekeep, a pretty stand-up dude. Father to Celerity and member of the Fitz Fan Club.

 Lady Celerity: Has a big ol' fourteen-year-old crush on handsome, virile Fitz. She's pretty okay for someone who was named after a vegetable you put peanut butter on.

 Duke Kelvar: Remember him? He finally manned his fucking watchtowers at Neatbay. Fitz fanclub member. Husband to Lady Grace, his young hotness wife whose dog Fitz pulled a fish bone out of.

 CASTLE AND STABLE FOLK

 Burrich: Fitz's primary father figure, the kind that takes you to football games and Hooters to try to flush the Gay out of you. Stablemaster of Buckkeep, and also has the Wit. Used to be heterosexual life partners with Prince Chivalry. Took several blows to the head last book and seems to be okay.

 Hands: Fitz's stablehand friend. He's been relegated to background character.

 Lacy: Patience’s serving woman and bestie. Makes lace, nods indulgently and will stab you.

 The Fool: Albino freak-teenager with a special interest in cryptids and making up rhymes about farting. King Shrewd's jester.

 Justin: Part of the Skill Coterie. Hangs out with Serene most of the time, card-carrying member of the Fitz Sucks and Smells Bad club.

 Serene: The only female member of the Skill Coterie. Treasurer of the Fitz Sucks and Smells Bad club.

 Carrod: Local fop and member of the Skill Coterie. In this book he mostly sneers at Fitz and says cringe things while everyone else is trying to work.

 Burl: Part of the Skill Coterie... is Burl even in this book? I can't remember. Less dumb than you think he is.

 Will: Part of the Skill Coterie. Hangs out in shadows and stares fixedly at people.

 Molly Chandler: A candlemaker and servant who wants to go back to being a candlemaker. Girlboss. Fitz would buy her bathwater.

 Rosemary: Kettricken's page. She's just a little girl. So cute. What's she doing? Oh, she's coloring. Aww.

 Wallace: King Shrewd's servant and sometimes healer. One time the Fool calls him Wall's-ass.

 Bolt: A guardsman who shows up at the end of the book to punch Fitz repeatedly in the face. I only mention him here because he shows up in the next book as well.

 Blade: An older guardsman, Fitz fanclub member.

 ANIMALS:

 Cub/Nighteyes: A wolf soul-bonded to Fitz. Talks in italics. Possesses the single braincell out of everyone in the entire series.

 Sooty: Fitz’s horse. Best mare, perfect cinnamon roll and can do no wrong.

 Vixen: Burrich’s dog. Good dog.

 Slink: A weasel belonging to Chade.

 OTHER NOTABLES:

 The Red Ship Raiders: Mongolian Vikings who have been Viking their merry way up and down the coast, burninating villages and kidnapping people to be Forged.

 Forged people: Zombies. It's a tiny bit more complicated than that, but you don't find that out for another like, six books, so: they're zombies.

 Lady Thyme: A horrible old woman who is really Chade in disguise. The Elderlings: Who are they? What are they? No one knows. 

 DEAD PEOPLE:

 Chivalry: Dead from probably assassination.

 Queen Desire: Regal's mom, dead from drug use but Regal THINKS it was assassination.

 Rurisk: Dead from poisoning by Regal.

 Cobb: Dead from stab by Fitz.

 Galen: Dead from Skill-explosion by Verity.

 August: Okay he's not DEAD, but Verity Skill-megaphoned him and he went to live on a farm upstate.

 Smithy: Went back to his home planet after Cobb hugged him and told him he was a good boy.

 Nosy: Went back to his home planet after saving Fitz from dying in a hot tub.

 MAGICS (I know magic is not a character, but they do have to be explained somewhere)

 The Wit: The ability to “bond” with certain animals and speak with them, as well as sense life force and to do a kind of mental shove at people. You tend to act a little like the animal you’ve bonded to. Witted people are considered gross and animalistic and are run out of town or put to death.

 The Skill: Telepathy. Considered the “birthright” of the Farseers. Most people can sense it at least a little, but it takes inborn talent and a lot of careful training to do anything useful with it. Skilling apparently feels awesome but if you give in to the temptation to fully open yourself to it you can get sucked out of your own brain.

 NEXT TIME: Part one of Royal Assassin Abridged!

#rote #Fitzchivalry Farseer #robin hobb #ra abridged

[cyberphuck]

My name is Jack Daniels Mizutani and I have only ever been committed to two things in my life: 1. the bit, and 2. the psych ward. I will draw stuff for money and don't have many limits on what stuff or how much money. I draw a lot of things that look like they're stickers but aren't because stickers are really expensive to print. About:

I have lived many years and many places and in not one of them have I ever given a single fuck about anything. I'm super cool and hip and edgy and everyone likes me. I have a steady union job at the depression factory where I make jokes about how fucked up that one time was. Jesus Christ. Haha. LINKS Patreon Ko-Fi Farseer Trilogy Abridged Masterpost Art Tag AO3 (it's mostly Final Fantasy Tactics sorry) Wishlist???

#pinned post #artists on tumblr