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supercantaloupe · 3 years

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okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

#sasha reviews #sasha speaks #the unsleeping city #unsleeping city #long post #dimension 20 #gd i stayed up way too late to write this #tuc #the unsleeping city chapter 2 #the unsleeping city 2 #tuc2 #antisemitism

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squidbatts · 4 years

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i’m gonna run this nothing town

“That’s how I know I'm making the right choice. Cal, will you be my aide-de-camp?” A smile spreads across Calroy's face, sharp like the water-steel dagger he keeps tucked in his boot. “Amethar,” He says, voice sweet as the sugar beneath their feet, “It would be my honor.”

or: four snapshots of calroy and amethar, after the war

((this requires some explanation. this exists in an au where calroy and amethar (eventually) get married, calroy hates amethar but is also in love with him (and doesn’t know he’s in love with him), and calroy is still actively working against the rocks. it’s.... involved. inspired entirely by the enablers in the d20 server of color and @kindlespark‘s wonderful calroy art. please enjoy!))

{ao3}

When the War is over, when all the dust has settled, Calroy still stands.

He stands beside Amethar, the new King of Candia and the Sugarlands; Amethar, the War buddy that considered Calroy his closest friend; Amethar, the arrogant, spoiled, ungrateful boy that cared more about playing soldier than his place in the Kingdom; His Majesty King Amethar of House Rocks, the Unfallen.

He stands there, and Amethar, in mourning clothes even at his own coronation, clears his throat.

“Cal,” Amethar starts, voice a whisper and brows furrowed, “You know I- I can't do this. I was never supposed to be the one to do this, I don't know anything about politics and I didn't pay attention in my etiquette classes and I never remember any of those fancy titles. I don't even know how to read, you know that.”

Calroy, who once had to trade hard labor and quick favors for his lessons, makes himself nod understandingly. “So you've told me, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, come on, don't call me that,” Amethar says quickly, waving a hand like his title is an annoying bug that he can shoo away. Calroy feels so sick with envy and anger that he worries for a moment that he'll pass out. “I'm not just outlining my flaws for my own health, alright, I wanted to ask you… I mean, you're the best guy I know, and I trust you to watch my back, and you're great at talking us out of scrapes, and my advisors told me that I should choose someone, and-”

“Keep talking like that and I'll die of boredom before you can ask me anything,” Calroy interrupts, tone balanced on the line between joking and rude.

Amethar smiles, a clever little thing that looks much more at home on his face than his earlier wide-eyed nervousness, and his shoulders relax from where they'd begun to climb towards his ears.

“That’s how I know I'm making the right choice. Cal, will you be my aide-de-camp?”

A smile spreads across Calroy's face, sharp like the water-steel dagger he keeps tucked in his boot. “Amethar,” He says, voice sweet as the sugar beneath their feet, “It would be my honor.��

Her name is Caramelinda Merengue and she hates Amethar. She doesn't say as much, because she's whip-smart and understands that would be an insult that even Amethar couldn't miss, but Calroy can tell. He reads it in the line of her brow and the tilt of her lips, in the way her hands tighten on her dress under the table and the way her cheek dimples when she bites it to keep herself from speaking.

Calroy rather likes her.

Her father is in talks with Amethar about marriage and Amethar is deeply miserable about it, as he makes clear to Calroy each evening when they drink together. Caramelinda is miserable about it too, though she's more graceful about it and never even brings up the fact that her set engagement to the late Archmage Lazuli of House Rocks had been one of love and not simple allyship; no, Calroy had to use his spies to find out that one because Caramelinda was too loyal to her duty and her father to complain where she could be heard. This is, technically, exactly the type of thing Amethar brought him in for, even ignoring that he has his own reasons for not wanting Caramelinda and Amethar to get married; marriage means heirs and Calroy doesn't need any Rocks brats running around and complicating his plans.

He approaches the Duke of Meringue with a soft smile and an open ear. He asks leading questions about the Duke's land, his crops, his wife. Caramelinda is his only child, the last of his line, and even despite subtracting the land and livestock included in her dowry, the bride price Lazuli had promised is… exorbitant. More than enough for the Duke to live comfortably for the rest of his days and more than the daughter of a fairly minor noble merited, in Calroy’s opinion.

Love, He scoffs mentally, can make fools out of even the brightest of mages.

“You know, he doesn’t actually want you to marry his daughter,” Calroy confides to Amethar that evening.

“It seems like he wants me to marry her,” Amethar responds petulantly. The syrupy scent of his cologne fills Calroy’s nose as Amethar leans closer to fill his goblet with butterscotch schnapps and Calroy has to resist the urge to either sneeze or take a deep breath in. “My advisors want me to marry her too. They said keeping Lazuli’s promise will show that we still respect our allegiances in Candia.”

A part of Calroy is almost impressed that Amethar remembered all that well enough to be able to parrot it to Calroy; the rest of him is too busy being annoyed at Amethar’s advisors to care. Amethar’s advisors are a bunch of rich elders who have been pressuring the Kings of Candia for the past fifty years and who have no problem publicly calling Calroy an upstart.

Calroy does not like Amethar’s advisors.

“Don’t you trust me?” Calroy asks, making a show out of pouting. Amethar’s eyes flicker down, just for a second, before he settles that earnest gaze back on Calroy’s eyes. There was a time, during the War, when Calroy had gotten tired of Amethar trying to be subtle about checking out his ass and staring at his mouth, when Amethar had let Calroy push him against a tree just outside of camp, when Calroy had bit Amethar’s lip hard enough to make him bleed and then blamed it on inexperience, when Amethar had cupped a hand over Calroy’s cheek and-

Well.

Calroy mentally shakes himself. None of that matters right now. The War was the War, but this is now.

“‘Course I do, more than anyone in the world,” Amethar answers, soft and genuine enough to make Calroy’s skin crawl.

“Then trust me on this. He wants land and gold, and his quickest route to those things right now is making you keep up Lazuli’s part of the bargain. If we can offer him an easier way to get what he wants-”

“Then I don’t have to marry Caramelinda!”

Calroy makes a noise like a champion’s bell and clinks his cup against Amethar’s. “Then you don’t have to marry Caramelinda.”

Amethar is smiling so widely that he spills more than he swallows when he tries to knock his drink back. “You’re the best, Cal, really.”

Calroy grins back, but when he says “And don’t you forget it,” his voice comes out a touch too demanding.

Whatever.

It’s not like Amethar will notice anyway.

Amethar is looking for something. Calroy doesn't know what it is, which is weird enough on its own and would normally make him dismiss the idea, but Amethar's been spending too much time personally visiting the Dairy Islands for someone without a vested interest in what he could find there.

While Calroy appreciates the space he’s been given to pull at the strings that move Candia, the absence of the King has had the side-effort of making the other nobles bolder with their power grabs, more openly distasteful about Calroy's power. If Calroy has to hear another minor baron say Amethar's reliance on Calroy is unbecoming or gossip about how Calroy is a leeching social climber, he's going to do something he regrets, like run them through with his saber.

None of these people know that it's Calroy that keeps their precious liquor and food flowing, that he writes the trade proposals and organizes the council meetings. None of these people have ever had damp soil from a newly weeded field caked so deep under their fingernails that it takes fives washes for the water to run clear, they've never had so much blood dried into the creases of their hands that their palms were dyed red. Everything Calroy has, everything he is, has been fought for, and he refuses to let some snobby nobles or a flighty King ruin this for him.

He starts with increasing the number of meetings Amethar has to attend. As the Royal Aide-De-Camp, Calroy has almost complete control of Amethar’s schedule and, while it’s typically more advantageous for Calroy to go to these meetings alone and gently shift the popular opinion, Amethar’s stubborn blunt force works just as well when aimed right.

For a while, that is.

He can tell when Amethar starts to get jittery as he has less and less opportunity to sneak himself off to another country; the man all but whines about having to actually do his blood-granted duty, and Calroy makes himself grit his teeth in an approximation of a smile and then lets himself grip just a bit too tightly onto Amethar’s arm as he leads him to his next appointment.

He likes to think that he responds with more restraint than Amethar deserves.

It’s not until Amethar actually skips a meeting, like he’s a child sneaking out of his lessons, and doesn’t come back to the Castle for three days that Calroy decides this has to come to a stop. He stands outside Amethar’s rooms and puts all his energy into channeling the visage of a kind and concerned best friend. He takes a deep breath to center himself, puts a hand on the doorknob, and enters without announcing himself.

“Hey, you can’t- Oh, it’s just you,” Amethar says from where he’s making a pathetic attempt to cover the blown-up map of the Dairy Islands, brush still dripping with ink from where he’s been apparently marking the map. He relaxes when he sees Cal, even as Cal tenses.

This doesn’t look like a silly flight of fancy for Calroy to prod Amethar out of pursuing, it doesn’t look like the thrill-seeking work of a boy who misses the adventure of War. This looks calculated, particular. This, Calroy thinks, looks like a nightmare.

“What’s all this, then?” Calroy asks, gesturing.

Amethar runs a hand over his locs and laughs nervously. “It’s nothing. Just a little project of mine.”

Calroy wants to sigh, to yell, to demand that Amethar explain, but he knows that Amethar moves easiest when he thinks he's not being made to do so. He allows himself to furrow his eyebrows a bit more, hunch his posture a bit; make himself look confused and small like something hurt and sad, like someone who needs Amethar’s protection. It takes only twenty seconds under Calroy’s pitiful stare before Amethar folds.

“Okay, fine, but you have to promise to not get mad.”

“When have I ever been mad at you?” Calroy asks, question rhetorical not because he’s never been angry at Amethar but because Amethar would’ve never realized he had been. “I’m just worried. All this galavanting around, avoiding your duties, it’s not like you.”

It is like him, Calroy and Amethar both know it, and Amethar slumps at the lie. Calroy can almost see the cracks appear in his defenses. “Alright. You can’t tell anyone, but I… I have a wife.”

“You have a what.” Calroy says. It’s not a question but it should be because surely Calroy’s misheard. Surely Amethar Rocks is not telling Calroy that he has some secret little milkmaid in the Islands.

“A wife. Her name is Catherine, Catherine Ghee, and I was going to marry her the right way after the War and bring her in as my queen, but then I got moved from the Islands and she stopped answering my letters, and then my sisters-” Amethar cuts himself off, clearing his throat thickly. “Anyway, I forgot about it in the shuffle of everything else. And then there was the whole Caramelinda thing, you know.”

“I know,” Calroy confirms. Bribing enough the duke to make him rescind his acceptance of Lazuli’s -- Amethar’s -- marriage proposal had been his job, after all.

“Yeah! It reminded me. And I thought I’d go find her, it’s the right thing to do and I mean, I think I really loved her, Cal. I think she might’ve been it for me.”

Calroy’s jaw works hard enough that he feels the joint pop. Calroy closes his eyes in the face of Amethar’s enthusiasm, just to give himself a second to process. This would’ve been useful to know when you were almost married off to someone else, Calroy thinks but doesn’t say. What do you mean you got married and then just forgot about her? What part of that screams ‘she’s the love of my life’ to you? Calroy thinks but doesn’t ask.

“So, have you had any luck?” Calroy asks when he trusts himself to speak without screaming. Amethar’s face drops immediately.

“No. I found her parents back in her village but they say they haven’t seen her in almost a year, so I’ve just been traveling around. I hope- well. You know what I hope.”

Calroy hums. He does.

Many, many Dairy Islanders were lost in the War, a larger percentage than any other country. It’s very possible that Amethar’s Catherine Ghee is dead by now. Still, if she’s not…

“You should’ve asked me for help in the first place,” Calroy chides, playfully hitting Amethar’s chest. He lets his hand linger, feeling Amethar’s warmth and the strong pulse of his heartbeat through his doublet. “You have people to do things like this. I mean, really Amethar, I completely understand you and usually I’d be all for this -- hell, I’d join you! -- but when you’re gone so often, it worries the Kingdom.”

“It does?”

Calroy hums mournfully, tucking his hands behind his back and turning away from Amethar to study the map. “The War is over and the Concord is formed, but things are still getting back to normal. If your citizens notice their King, the venerated Amethar the Unfallen, leaving them so regularly, what will they think?”

Calroy doesn’t have to look at how Amethar’s face spasms at the title, but he watches out of the corner of his eye anyway. He knows the flinch intimately, has watched it and caused it enough that it’s burned into his memory; the way it starts with Amethar’s eyes slipping shut, how his jawline shakes, how he twitches as though he’s been slapped. Sometimes, Calroy wishes he could chant it just to see the reaction over and over again. Amethar the Unfallen, Amethar the Last of House Rocks, Amethar the Unprepared.

“The people will really get upset?” Amethar asks. His voice sounds smaller, less sure. Calroy makes sure his smile is more concern than smug delight before he turns around.

“It’s very possible,” Calroy answers, “But there’s no need to worry about it. Now that I know what’s going on, I can get the people whose job this should be on it. We’ll find your girl, Amethar.”

Amethar brightens, falling into step with Calroy and allowing himself to be guided from his rooms. “What would I do without you, Cal?”

Calroy is already mentally scripting how he'll tell Amethar that I've gotten some news back from the Islands and, well... your wife… they just couldn’t find anything. I'm so sorry, Amethar, I know the War has taken so much from us all, but no news is good news, right? regardless of what his search-and-destroy party finds. He bumps his shoulder against Amethar's, supportive and affectionate. “Let's hope you never have to find out.”

It has been… a very long night.

It began with a furious letter from the Duke of Meringue, accusing Amethar of defiling and kidnapping his daughter, of breaking his word, of trying to undermine him. Calroy, who reads all of Amethar’s mail, throws the letter into the fire before taking the Amethar his daily stack of relevant but not too important mail. The day only turns to chaos as the evening falls, when an unannounced carriage pulls up to the gates, holding none other than the Lady Caramelinda Merengue. Before anyone can react, Caramelinda shoves a letter at Amethar’s chest, furious and red-eyed from crying.

“I’m pregnant,” She said, with a voice that carried across the courtyards of Castle Candy like a song even as she bowed low and proper, “It is your sister’s. I have come to ask to be quartered by House Rocks, on behalf of my unborn child, your kin.”

Amethar embraced the women, gleefully accepting her words without a lick of proof, while the entirety of the assembled court gossiped and Calroy picked up the letter. It was from Lazuli, of course, and it explained what had happened in the most confusing and circuitous way possible, of course. all will make sense in time, Lazuli said, trust your feelings, Lazuli said, all is as i foresaw, probably, and if it is not then it is close enough that it does not matter, Lazuli said. It all seemed to fit perfectly, arriving just in time, and Calroy could barely stop his fist from tightening and crushing the letter. After all, if he remembered Lazuli, there was probably a letter in lemon ink waiting just for him on the back, just like there had been on so many of the missives she sent to Amethar and Rococoa on the front lines.

Calroy, now, sitting on a part of the Castle wall far from the celebration for Amethar’s new sister-in-law and incoming nibling, lets his eyes slide closed for a moment. If there's one Rocks sister he hated, it was Lazuli, who used her powers of divination for busybodying and mocking instead of something as simple as saving her own life. There's nothing Calroy hates more than a waste of potential.

Speaking of which, I should probably check this. He holds the letter carefully over his lamp, watching as the heat darkens the lemon ink until he can clearly read Lazuli’s final secret message.

congratulations. or maybe not congratulations, if it didn’t happen in this time, The letter reads, you might never get this letter, or you might get it too late, or it might not matter to you, or you might get it and assume it means something else. it is of no concern to me. congratulations, if they apply.

Calroy presses a hand to his temple, frustrated. This, right here, is why he liked Lazuli the least. He's meditating on that when he hears the footsteps and jolts, his hand is almost around his secret dagger before he recognizes the gait, the sound of the slight drag of expensive shoes and the sure thud of his steps. Calroy forces himself to relax as Amethar swings himself onto the wall beside Calroy, close enough that he can feel the other's warmth.

“What a day. Just like Laz to drop something like that in a letter,” He starts without prompting, “When I was a kid and snuck out, she was almost always waiting right outside the gate for me like she’d used her divination just to scare me shitless. She loved that kind of stuff. Guess she wanted one last gotcha, huh?”

Amethar swings his legs restlessly as he gazes out over his Kingdom, lost expression making him look more like the youth of his story than the Ruler of the Sugarlands. Calroy reaches over and pats Amethar’s knee. “It’s not your fault.”

He says it both because Amethar wants to hear it and because it’s true; with all the forces invested in the downfall of the less impressionable Rocks siblings, it would’ve been impossible for Amethar to stop it.

Amethar’s eyes clear as he nods, and then he reaches down and takes Calroy’s hand in his own. “You always know exactly what to say.”

“You make it easy,” Calroy says, half a joke. Amethar snorts, and then he pulls their joined hands up and presses a candyfloss-soft kiss to Calroy’s knuckles

It happens so quickly that Calroy can’t anticipate it or stay his reactions; the shock that he feels, the flush rising to his cheeks and the speeding of his heart, is all 100% real. Amethar looks up at Calroy through his lashes and smiles at whatever expression he finds, slow and small. When he lowers his lips back down to Calroy’s hand, this time a proper kiss right at the curve of his wrist, Calroy is more ready.

He goes for flattered but nervous, allowing some of his real tension to make a laugh come out jerky and unsure. He widens his eyes and looks away even as he continues to let Amethar hold his hand. “Your Majesty-”

“Please,” Amethar murmurs, and when Calroy turns his head he’s looking back at Calroy with warm, expectant eyes, “Not from you, Cal. Never from you.”

“Amethar,” Calroy concedes, and is rewarded with a brilliant grin, “I don’t- I didn’t think-”

“I didn’t think of it either,” Amethar says, picking up Calroy’s purposefully fumbled sentence with perfect timing. “But it just makes sense. We’ve been through so much together and I wouldn’t be able to run anything around here without you; you’re my partner in all but ceremony at this point anyway. And Laz’s letter said to trust my heart.”

“And your heart says-”

“Yes. Yes, this is what my heart wants, Cal. What about you? Will you give me, give this, a chance?”

Calroy gives himself exactly two seconds. Any longer and Amethar will get anxious, any shorter and Calroy will seem desperate. In those two seconds, Calroy starts to reorganize his gameplan for the next five years and makes a mental note to write a letter to Ceresia to personally inform them of this development. He takes a deep breath in, lets it out, and smiles like the crescent moon above them.

“I'm so lucky,” Calroy says, entangling their fingers, “To have had a man like you beside me all this time. I would be luckier to keep him at my side.”

“Not as lucky as I’ll be,” Amethar says, looking like he’s barely holding himself back from doing something decidedly improper. He settles for pressing another kiss to Calroy’s hand and Calroy, sitting atop the parapet of a castle that will be his much sooner than planned, looks out to the sparkling stars. Not as lucky as you indeed, he thinks, but still, when he squeezes Amethar’s hand, their hearts beat as one.

#a crown of candy #crown of candy #calroy cruller #amethar rocks #acoc #one shot #prince consort calroy

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