Let's Read Fitzpatrick's War (The Only Steampunk with Rights)

Kadmus · May 18, 2024

DragonCobolt said:
To be fair, I actually know Yeats, ACTION POET, thanks to Hyperion.

...wait, no that was Keats...

There are too many poets, please remove 90% of them.

I literally nearly included a (not to be confused with Keats) line in the post.

(You're definitely not the only one who gets the two mixed up, I do too.)

Coyote Niff · May 19, 2024

DragonCobolt said:
And there we have it: When we say avoiding the mistakes of the past, in our modern era, I feel like most of us are talking about moral errors. Repeating crimes and injustices that we've seen before, that are clearly awful in hindsight and distance - to look upon the inquisition and the holocaust and the genocide of natives, and to go, "Oh!" and see those patterns again when they happen in our day to day life. That's...that's what we're all about, right? It should be, anyway.

...the Yukon see it specifically as a tactical and strategic thing. They study history to win wars.

So, at the end of the day...even their humanity courses are nakedly about force, violence, conquest, imperialism.

So it's a history class run by all the annoying ROTC-wannabe guys from my ethics and history classes with the "Ben Shap-hero" tin buttons on their packs. Got it. :sad:

DragonCobolt said:
And finally, we come to the most involved questioning scene. Bruce's!

And because Judson is a good author who is smart and crafty, Bruce's questioning is about the twentieth and twenty first century. I.E the exact time period we want to know most about!

Which, notedly, is SPECIFICALLY the easiest possible course. HMMM! What...wildly good fortune! I guess Manheim just likes Bruce! Still, we get a quick summation of why it's easy: Almost nothing of written record survives because of a combination of records of the time being largely electronic and we are now steampunk, but also, worryingly, because "the so called Histories of that era were perfected by sthe strange ideologies of the day, sir. Those that still exist are on the proscribed list...they were so deeply influenced by the writer's twisted worldview [they] had to be destroyed."

The only surviving works are: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, Yeats, O'Connor, Evelyn Waugh, H.L Mencken, and a single novel called Pictures from an Institution by Randall Jarrell.

And the only official history by the Yukons of this time period is...VOMITING OUT THE PAST by Agnes Sternwill.

Also, uh, the unofficial name of the Age of Electricity?

The Age of Shit. And the culture of the time? The Culture of Shit.

This is starting to sound very...Fourth-Generation Warfare.

DragonCobolt said:
So, we get the rundown

In 2018, a movement is founded called the New Agrarians who would then grow to become the Yukon. This always struck me as an oddly innocent place for the Yukon to start from in my youth but as I grew up, I learned that apparently "small farmer" is up there with twitter CEO for sheer concentration of Hitler particles. By 2040, they had large numbers of communities scattered across the world and were filling an economic niche in the world. Then in 2047 a man named Dr. Jessup in Perdue University built the first Personal Pulse Weapon or PPWs: A long ranged EMP gun that can suppress electronics at range. He then immediately began selling them on the open market.

This, as you can imagine, immediately started fucking everything up!

By 2060, the Yukons (named thus by a comedian saying "they're so rural they might as well be from the Yukon") had become a primary agricultural provider. Since they didn't use electricity as much as possible, they shifted to steampunk to avoid the PPWs being used by roving bands of brigands, rouge elements of the government, private citizens, and so on. The Yukon also began to provide infrastructure support for the failing American government thanks to the Timmermen, a secret organization of engineers and scientist founded by...wouldn't you know it, Dr. Jessup! From Perdue University!

(There have been references to the Timmermen before, specifically that several students believe that Dr. Murrey is one of them, hmm.)

The Yukons and the Timmermen start growing biomass for fuel to run their steampunks, and we get some neat technical descriptions of how their steampunk technology works and, this is where Judson has his cake and eats it: A lot of Fitzpatrick's War is really about how this steampunk stuff works, and how neat it is - but it's contrasted with the society that builds it. Keep that in mind.

These Yukon communities stay in contact because the Timmermen launch hundreds of satellites (how is left vague, but the Yukon still have access to electricity, even if they don't use it in their main settlements. One can presume they secured launch sights, possibly even operating them for the failing US government.) These satellites are called the Blinking Stars: Using directed ultraviolet light, they communicate using dots and dashes visible on ammonia treated paper strips in specialized domes that the Yukon build. They also have optical sensors and detectors that pick up movement of enemy troops and artificial electrical fields and, thanks to the PPWs and their initial toehold in space, the Timmermen have kept everyone out of the orbital theater since the 2080s.

So, you may note, that this steampunk society that disdains the electrical age as the "Age of Shit" has a VAST AN EXTREMELY POWERFUL ORBITAL SURVELIANCE AND COMMUNICATION NETWORK THAT RUNS ENTIRELY ON ELECTRICAL COMPUTERS.

So, in 2050 to 2060, the Yukons and a massive international crimegang called the Yellowjackets (they have a wasp theme, I like it) teamed up to take down the Brain Lords, who are figures modern Yukons don't really understand. They just go, "Uh, they used computers somehow to control people, we don't know." I choose to believe this was a dark alliance between desperate foes to finally bring down Elon Musk and his cryogenically preserved head. But afterwards, relationships soured. The Yellowjackets...they keep calling them a gang, and referring to their criminal evilness, but since the Yellowjackets included all the non-white people, it's not exactly clear HOW evil they actually are...at first.

By 2074, things had gone truly to hell. With the social structure disintegrating, a figure known as Bartholomew Iz (whom Yukons later named the fucking Anti-Christ) took control of America by decapitating the President on live TV and declaring himself President. There was an undeclared war between Iz and Yukon as civilization continued to swirl down the drain.

Then, on October 1st, 2081, Iz launched nuclear weapons on the Yukon.

And on October 2nd, 2081, the Timmermen turned on the Storm Machines.

With that, the Storm Times came. The Yukons stormed Washington DC, butchered the Senate, impaled Iz, and watched as the world burned around them. Without electricity, the already tottering civilization of the world collapsed. Viral pandemics had been raging without check through the world and hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people died.

Reading this, a question comes to my mind.

Hey.

Uh...

What the fuck did you think would happen if the President of the United States - however he came to power - learned you were building a DOOMSDAY DEVICE IN ORBIT. You will note, the Timmermen did not begin building the Storm Machines on October 2nd. They did not design them on October 2nd. They didn't go, "Oh shit, Iz is invading, quick, lets do something about it." The power struggle didn't go nuclear until for a full seven years after Iz took over.

Seven years is a long time.

Long enough to build Storm Machines?

Long enough to launch them?

Long enough for the last vestiges of non-Yukon power to notice they're about to destroy the world?

Lots to think about.

My God! It's not just the Draka!! ITS THE WILLIAM S LIND DRAKA!! SOUND THE KLAXON! READY THE CONTAINMENT TEAMS!!!! RETROCULTURE BREACH! RETROCULTURE BREACH!!

DragonCobolt said:
Bruce, feeling put on the spot, does what anyone raised in Ameri- I mean The Yukon Confederacy would do: He squirms ("well, the viral pandemics killed most people!"), he equivocates ("well, any white, Christian who accepts our system we did take in as refugees!"), he engages in bothsidesism ("Iz killed millions every day in death camps!")

Finally, Dr. Murrey pins him down: Bruce admits it he...regrets what the early Yukon did.

He doesn't want to be descended from mass murdering genocidal maniacs who wanted to carve out a frontier to support some bullshit Jacksonian idyllic homesteading lifestyle. He wants to be descended from heroes.

Big mood, huh.

"Regret," Dr. Murrey says. "We can work with regret."

This is actually a really effective passage on how wingless reactionary ideology incorporates and defuses critiques of itself—"that was such a long time ago, and of course we regret it, but we can't change what happened!" We can work with regret, indeed.

DragonCobolt said:
"We're all Fitz's men now!" Davis says, quite cheerfully because, like Rainbow Dash, Davis only cares about two things: Flying and women.

and much like Rainbow Dash according to my entirely tertiary knowledge of anything pony-based (that is to say, hearing people talk about it in high school and various fanarts in transfem-sapphic spaces online), Davis is also a woman. She'll probably never figure this out, but as with Maria in @Geckonator 's Draka thread, I've latched onto my "pre-realization queer character who is trapped in Hell as a blithe but unusual soldier of Empire" and shall not be removed from her.

DragonCobolt · May 19, 2024

Our chapter begins with Bruce arriving at Mason's college room to watch a film with the rest of the Basileis - and by contrast, we are given an actual rundown of each of their special quirks. We already know that Davis is Rainbow Dash (brave, good pilot), that Hood is the best general, that Pularski is the expert bodyguard and assassin, but now we get O'Brian (gifted with a photographic memory), Shelley (talented journalist and political negotiator) and Lord Valette (expert diplomat.)

Now, if I was going to conquer the world, I'd want a genius general to do the conquering, a brilliant engineer for the logistics, a journo to handle the PR, a diplomat for managing the senate, and...I dunno, I'd find something for O'Brian to do. Then you have a guy like Pularksi around incase any of them, say, get ideas.

But what of Mason?

Bruce's Narration said:
Mason's only obvious talent, if it can be called that, was his highly developed propensity ofr lusting after carnal pleasures. At lust Mason was a champion. The closet in his room was crammed with pornographic materials ... He also owned strange devices manufactured in southeast Asia a gentleman should not know of, let alone own ... Insipid, slow to learn and outrageously overweight for a military school cadet, Mason was rumored to have other habits I care not to put to paper.

This, um, encomium is added to by Professor Von Buren stating that if half of what Mason writes in his redacted autobiography are even remotely true, he should have been executed before reaching military age (I.E, 16.)

This kind of character is not exceptionally unusual in fascist regimes: Power, privilege and utter unaccountability lets you get away with crimes - even if they're crimes that the entirety of the society supposedly exists to squash. It's kind of...interesting...to me that, like, Von Buren entirely believes that Mason did all these horrible things and was this awful person - he doesn't try and refute these accusations, like he does whenever Bruce makes commentary about other horrible things. It's just kind of accepted that, yeah, sure, the sons of some lords are awful pieces of shit, but what can you do?

Interesting, huh?

Very Victorian, I think.

We also get a short description of the movie player: A big flywheel spins the projector, which has a gas lamp, and there's no sound unless it's running film strip with "soft plastic strips along the sides, impressed with the sound like a phonograph." Bruce grumbles that the sound is always terrible and a footnote admits that while slight improvements in soft plastics have improved the sound, movie projectors are basically unchanged nearly two centuries later.

That stagnation theme again...

Still!

Lets play a game!

I will share a few of the movie clips and we'll see if you can spot what they are!

Clip One said:
At first there were some people wearing togas and laurel wreaths laying atop some chaise lounges at some sort of banquet. The pictures were grainy and in black and white.

"Are they supposed to be Roman?" asked Valette, for once not trying to be ironic."

"They do not appear to be [Romani] ," said Hood.

"They let anyone be an actor in those days," explained Fitz.

Suddenly the "Roman" banqueters leaped from their sofas and did an odd dance in which they flapped their arms like geese.

(Hood did not say Romani.)

Clip Two said:
The scene changed and before us appeared some more dancing men and women, and this group was shown in full color. They were dancing inside of some sort of domed structure. Lights were flashing over their heads; bright, pulsating lights that hurt the eyes if one looked into them for more than a few seconds. The men were wearing trousers that had extraordinarily wide legs yet fit about their hips as tight as women's corsets. The women wore dresses so short they were parodies of dresses...

The camera singled out a particular male dancer, a dark Latin I would guess he was; he wore his hair slicked to his skull...his jaw was thrust forward like a baboon's, and to make himself more absurd he swung his hips and pointed his index finger into the air, an obscene gesture I confess caused everyone in FIts'z room to laugh hysterically.

Sounds like disco!

Clip Three said:
Another change came over the [screen] and there were now two dancers, a man and a woman gesticualting in primate fashion inside a great bowl. One of them would make a peculiar bodily movement, and the other would mimic the motion in response.

"That is the same actor as was in the previous scene," I said. "The one in that was in the white suit."

"Good eye," said Fitz.

The next few clips, I will be summarizing cause they're either from our future (Bruce's past) or because they're really fucking easy. The first future-past clip is from something called the "Yellowjacket Bash Dance" which appears to be an extreme version of a mosh pit. Like, a mosh pit with clubs? I don't think they allow clubs into mosh pits, but I don't know, the closest I've ever gotten to a mosh pit was listening to Our Live Album is Better Than Your Live Album by Reel Big Fish. The next three are all sports: Baseball, basketball, football. The Yukons are not impressed: "Ten move and ten thousand do nothing!" Harrumphs Hood.

See, these sports aren't about work, worship or warfare and, thus, must be OBLITERATED FROM SOCIETY and they're only 2/3rds right (destroy all football, destroy all baseball.)

We also get a short boxing clip and one of my favorite quotes that exemplifies the weird relationship between fascism and the ancient Greeks: "The Greeks did this...then again, the Greeks did a lot of things."

A future-past clip shows a hippodrome on motorcycles with battleaxes to which I say sick, rad, put it on pay-per-view right now, immediately, we must embrace Futurethought and become the Mad Max. We also get this.

Clip Eight said:
Mason sped forward to the image of a muscular white man, naked except for a headband and a pair of skin-tight briefs; he was screaming and shooting an enormous machine gun into the air...

...okay, that one's as easy as baseball isn't it?

This next one is a future-past clip too, but I'm gonna share it cause it's ~interesting~

...well, okay, it STARTS as a future-past clip

Clip Nine said:
He sped forward to the image of a tall man address an audience of tens of thousands in a vast arena. Pillars of light created by searchlights danced around the arena walls and the future of an eagle hundreds of feet tall stood behind the speaker. Half the speaker's face was dyed black and half white. His head was shaven completely bald, and because of the dyes he appeared to be evenly split in half when viewed from the back. Everyone in the room but Mason chuckled because we each recognized the demonic figure who still haunts the textbooks of Yukon school children.

"Tony, Tony, Tony," said Fitz and shook his head. "That's is Bartholomew Iz. Now do you want me to identify the Mona Lisa?"

"Not this one, not this one!" protested Mason. "I didn't go forward far enough!"

He hit the switch again, and we were soon beholding a small man in a soldier's uniform. Beneath his sharp little nose was an abbreviated mmustache. A crowd as big as the one attending Iz in the previous clip was straining to catch his every word. I recognized him immediately as a political figure from the mid-twentieth century.

"Hitler," said Fitz. "Don't tell me you haven't heard of HItler? You're in college, Tony, you really should read the odd book now and then..."

"HItler killed nine and a half million people in concentration camps," said O'Brian. "He started a war that killed another fifty million."

"Once, people made a great commotion over Hitler and his ilk," said Fitz. "After Iz and Rauf, he seems a very small story."

This is one of my favorite SF tropes, started in...I want to say Dune, I think it was Dune? Where you let us, the modern reader, know how bad things are by having a guy go, "Ah, Hitler, yes, how QUAINT!" Still, with this, the movie ends and everyone makes fun of Mason for his shit taste in bad movies and the entire party decides to head to the Lion's Den - a pub that our good Bruce has never been to since he's so damn poor.

Arriving at the Pub, we get the fun fact that, hey wouldn't you know it: Despite being an outwardly chaste and puritanical society, the Lion's Den is a whorehouse. Fitz and Bruce have to stay in the first level (as does Hood, as he's both married and not as much of a hypocrite as everyone else), but the rest of the Basileis had on up to the third floor - as one can indulge one's pleasure in increasing orders of sinfulness going from first to second to third floor. Fitz points out to Bruce that he's born too low to weather blackmail - while Fitz? Fitz is born too high. So, they both settle in for some drinking, darts and games and Bruce learns that this isn't just a whorehouse and tavern: It's run by Travelers.

...one second, checking with my friend.

So, while Traveler isn't as bad as the other slur we've seen, it's still kinda iffy. So, google google and BOOM!

It's a Pavee tavern! And here, the barkeep asks if Bruce can gamble with Miss Charlotte Raft. Now, if you're 14 year old me reading this book for the first time, you have of course, forgotten the introduction where Bruce's future wife and beloved is named in the opening as Charlotte Purity Raft. So, it was a deep surprise to me as a callow youth when Bruce, after being assured she's a very nice and good girl (goes to church every sunday, learns Latin, doesn't work on the third floor), is whisked off to the second story where he's placed in the company of Charlotte with ten silver quid from Fitz (as he doesn't have his own money.)

The following passage is lightly edited for brevity.

Bruce's Narration said:
She had red hair like the other members of her [Pavee] clan; in fact enough of it was on her head for several young women. On the evening of our first encounter she had braided the majority of it in a tightened coil that fit behind the nape of her neck. Her face was as round as that of her stepbrothers, and her nose was wider than an artist would have placed on an idealized figure. Otherwise, her features were well proportioned. Her throat and arms were slender and colored a glowing shade of pink; her hands had were red and bore callouses from hard work, and she had a splash of freckles across her face and neck. In the light of the candle on her table the fine small hairs at the top of her forehead and the loose strands that framed her head burned like tiny threads of gold. Her green eyes did not look up at me as I approached. Because she smiled I sensed she knew I was pleased with her appearance...

"So this is the famous Robert the Bruce," she said and looked up from the solitaire game she was playing. "Please sit and talk to a lonely girl."

"You know my name, too," I said, taking my place in the booth across from her.

She did not answer right away. She finished her game and snapped her fingers when she ran out of plays.

"Robert," she said, and fixed me with her green eyes. "How old are you?"

"Twenty. And you, Miss Raft?"

"Miss Raft?" she said. "Oh I like that. You are a gentleman. You may hold my hand while we converse, Bobby."

Thus, the lovebirds meet and immediately, Charlotte is a breath of fresh air. Cute, flirtatious, and oddly honest, she immediately steals mine and Bruce's heart (even if he doesn't realize it at first.) She wins him some money at roulette, then drags him off to flirt with her more and asks him to marry her. When he tries to say that ladies and gentlemen don't talk to one another this way, she uh, points out that he's the son of a nor'wester forrester. He's not a gentleman, even if he's a knight of the field and gone to the war college and is best friends with all sorts of rich and famous people: Class conscience Yukon society isn't going to let him forget it, and she's not going to let it get in the way of admiring his shoulders.

Bruce is scandalized, but she does playfully get him to finally admit: She has a very cute ass.

(She doesn't use the word ass, she's not that uncouth.)

Bruce's Narration said:
"You are sweet, Bobby, my lovely boy," she said and pinched my hand. "I'm so pleased you turned out to be sweet and handsome and well mannered and shy. You will make me a lovely husband. Once I've properly trained you, of course."

She's so sweet, I love her.

We also learn that she's Catholic!

And...POSSIBLY the author's THINLY DISGUISED FETISH! I wouldn't say this if she was just a vivacious charming redhead with a great sense of humor and a wonderful ass, like, that's not a kink, that's just being cishet. Or human? Honestly? No! ...she also really likes babies. And she likes making babies. Does Judson have a breeding kink? Who knows! I'm going to say yes because of the bit.

Like, it is a bit, to be clear. Draka is overwhelmingly, overbearingly a fetish story, so much so that if it had just been porn I would have enjoyed it vastly more because at least it would be honest. This is more of an amusing eccentricity than something gross and constantly degrading or warping to the characters. Don't let my joke overstate the impact.

Bruce's Narration said:
"The [Romani] are the only people in the world who can steal from the [Pavees]," she said. "We admire them enormously. Look here: You have a very long life line, my darling. You will live almost forever. Oh my!" She exclaimed as she tickled my hand with her fingertip, "look how strong your love line is! This says you will marry a wonderful redheaded woman-"

"You're certain of this?" I asked.

"-or God will strike you dead with a lightning bolt," she said, continuing the reading.

...Charlotte is cute, though. We learn through conversation, too, that Bruce actually has killed zero (0) people in his life. Like in real life warfare, a lot of soldiers simply don't get to blasterate anyone. In fact, he became knighted because he saved some men from an incliner explosive. Good for you Bobby! Of course the only reason this was worthy of knighthood was because of those men, one of them was the son of a Lord, who saw he would get decorated. Hurm.

But...uh oh! Charlotte has an ulterior motive! She's honest about marriage, being in love with Robert, and wanting babies, but she did want him to meet someone...and so, she drags Bruce over to a shadowy table and we find ourselves once more in the presence of none other than Dr. Murrey, the Timmerman chieftan, tutor of Fitzpatrick the Younger, and guy who shadowed Bruce's rigged finales. Professor Von Buren leaps in to declare the following as pure and absolute fabrication, there's a zero percent chance that anyone in the Timmerman, let alone a highly ranked one, let ALONE someone as famous as Dr. Murrey, hang out with a Irish Pavee.

Dr. Murrey and Bruce square off - here, Charlotte learns that Fitz fixed the exams but she forgives Bruce - look how guilty he looks!

"He prefers to call guilt regret," Dr. Murrey says.

"I love him anyway," Charlotte declares and we must stan, I suppose. Dr. Murrey disabuses Bruce of the notion that the marriage idea was his - apparently, Charlotte fell in love with Bruce at first sight. Dr. Murrey grudgingly admits that, despite being a Catholic heretic (he's a staunched member of the United Yukon Church, thank you very much) she's passably decent for a wife and might make Bruce happy, he supposes. Charlotte declares him very wise and sagacious.

Then Dr. Murrey begins with the meat and potatoes of this conversation. He takes out a disk and asks Bruce to identify it and Bruce immediately does: It's a pellet from one of the Yukon's unguided cluster munitions. Canister rockets hold thousands of them, which explode outwards, cover about a square mile of cubic airspace, then the incendiaries go off using advanced future napalm that burns for a solid five minutes on concrete. Jesus fucking Christ.

Bruce is entirely unimpressed. He points out that this technology is old and it's why the Yukon utterly dominate any air war they're in: Their planes are guided by the Blinking Stars, figure the rough distance and speed of the enemy, then saturate the airspace they're flying into with overlapping cluster munitions. Because steampunk airplanes are basically nothing but boilers and fuel lines and pressurized pipes and cloth, a single pellet landing in them spells doom - either fast or slow. These can also be used on ground targets, in a very similar way. They don't have "precision munitions" without electricity and so they don't even fucking try and limit the collateral damage.

After all.

They're only shooting Chinese.

Bruce's Narration said:
"Bracuse we alone have the Blinking Star system," I said. "Our enemies are strategically and tactically blind. We, on the other hand, always know ehre they are. They have no rapid communications. Without a guidance system or magnetic compass, they have a hard time of it merely flying long distances. I understand the Chinese have tried launching satelites. You Timmermen have orbiting weapons platforms that can shoot their projecitles donw."

"So rumor has it," said Murrey, and gave the same sly smile he had directed towards me in the oral exams.

I like that the book keeps on hammering this point home: The Chinese aren't stupid. They're not backwards. It's just that they're in an extremely unfortunately strategic, technological and tactical position. They have a massive population, so their government is mostly focused on feeding them without modern technology beyond steampunk bullshit. And despite this, despite not having computers or telecommunications, they still manage to launch space satellites. It's just fucking hard to get a satellite in orbit if Mr. McGee and his bumfuck hick railgun keeps shooting your rockets down.

Dr. Murrey asks if the Yukon can conquer the world.

Defeat it, Bruce says. Yes, easily. Conquer it? No. There are 30 million Yukon and 4 billion of everyone else.

Dr. Murrey says: "Well, tough shit, Fitz is gonna do it. Each of you is gonna fill the role that Mr. Cobolt outlined earlier, what a smart fellow he is. And handsome too." (This is a direct quote from the book, trust me) - and when Bruce scoffs and says that they're all barely twenty, and not out of college, Dr. Murrey goes, "pff, Alexander the Great wasn't much older when he conquered a lot of the world, and Fitz wants to be Alexander the Great, it's his whole theme."

Bruce is like, "...okay, why is that a problem? You also hate the Chinese, right?"

Bruce's Narration said:
"We in the Timmermen are Yukons and enjoy a good war as much as the rest of the Confederacy," said Murrey, reverting to the condescending tones he had used in the examining room. "The Yukon people are bad at poetry, worse at painting and other plastic arts. We don't even write particularly good Histories, though God knows we spend oceans of ink trying. We are the Shakespeare's and the Rembrandts of warfare. We bedazzle the entire world with our mastery in that field of endeavor. No, the Timmermen aren't against war. War is what we Timmermen exist for. I might add, war is why the Yukon produce top drawer engineers such as yourself. We are opposed to the war young Lord Fitzpatrick intends to fight. We have reasons you cannot yet understand."

Bruce, being twenty or so, is like, "Pff, you're just a big old coward, Fitz is big smart and he's gonna take over the world" and Dr. Murrey is like, "Hmm, sure, we'll keep in touch, be aware I'm secretly manipulating events behind the scenes, ta ta." (Well, okay, he's more indirect than that, but...it's pretty clear he's up to something.) And off Dr. Murrey goes.

Bruce and Charlotte have one last scene, where she gives him her marching orders: Send her letters every week (because he loves her) and keep these photographs she's going to send him in his wallet at all times (because he loves her) and dream of her when he sleeps. Also, one kiss please. They kiss, and it's very cute since Bruce doesn't know how and she teaches him a little.

They head out and come back to the dorms, where Fitz asks Bruce how he liked the Lion's Den. Bruce, still shellshocked goes, "Oh, uh...it was nice...yeah..."

He's in looooooooooooooooooooooove.

FOOTNOTE TIME

FOOTNOTE 5: Bruce compares footballers to "Not-Men", and we learn that Not-Men are some kind of genetically engineered super soldiers the Chinese made during the Pacific War. Again! The Chinese are no dopes - also, this is the Yukon name for them and we have no idea how they're actually treated in China. They could be disposable clones, they could be respected members of society, who the fuck knows.

FOOTNOTE 6: Did you really think Professor Von Buren would miss the introduction of the Lion's Den as an excuse to be racist towards Irish people and Pavees in specific? Well, he doesn't!

FOOTNOTE 7: a fun bit of ambiguity for our professor - monetary change and upheaval in the Shay regime mean that he's not actually sure how much ten quid goes for, but he consorted Charles Epitome Furbasus A History of Coinage and determines that Bruce's money could buy two pairs of men's shoes or a lady's luncheon dress.

FOOTNOTE 11: Charlotte doesn't just say she's Catholic, she says she's a member of an 'old faith' and Professor Von Buren explains she's Roman Catholic. Catholics, Jews, Evengelics and other religious minorities didn't have freedom to practice their faiths openly...yet. Interesting!

FOOTNOTE 12: The Pope lives in Sao Paolo because Rome "fell" to the Muslims in 2095. I note, they do repeatedly refer to Europe being "conquered" by Muslims but, um...remember...Europe was ravaged by fucking plagues throughout the 21st century and then the Storm Machines hit (a solid ten years before the "Fall" of Rome.) It seems more likely to me that Muslim people just...moved there and...live there, like normal people do, because that's a normal thing humans do.

FOOTNOTE 15: Professor Von Buren is super offended by Bruce claiming Dr. Murrey might DARE to suggest that people who write books called "Vomiting out the Past" might be bad at writing histories and are only really good at killing a lot of people.

Coming Up Next: Pulaski's Fishing Trip and the Highest Paid Sex Worker in the Confederacy

DragonCobolt · May 19, 2024

Coyote Niff said:
My God! It's not just the Draka!! ITS THE WILLIAM S LIND DRAKA!! SOUND THE KLAXON! READY THE CONTAINMENT TEAMS!!!! RETROCULTURE BREACH! RETROCULTURE BREACH!!

I had to google who that was and he sounds...fucking awful, lol

bookwyrm · May 19, 2024

There's a lot of remarkably similar beats to the overall structure of the Yukon Confederacy in Victoria, just with the thin veil of being Yankee green mountain boys and the second coming of the patriots as their origin point, and replacing all the imperial Britishisms and sinister implications and good writing with unironic primitivist fascism and Christian nationalism jerking off to the "Christian Marine Corps" nuking cities and burning dissidents at the stake in order to crush the globohomo woke and the orcs and to bring in the glorious Rectroculture future of criminalizing all technology made after than the 1940s and of bringing worthy suffering to reforge white America as strong subsidence farmers in tight communities (the ones still left alive, anyways).

Oh, and Victoria is also the authorial showpiece of their special next generation war-winning formula of operating purely as light infantry Rambo dudes

Frumple · May 19, 2024

The casual mention of executions for folks under 16 really does just kind of fit the vibe, doesn't it?

ScottishMongol · May 19, 2024

DragonCobolt said:
FOOTNOTE 5: Bruce compares footballers to "Not-Men", and we learn that Not-Men are some kind of genetically engineered super soldiers the Chinese made during the Pacific War. Again! The Chinese are no dopes - also, this is the Yukon name for them and we have no idea how they're actually treated in China. They could be disposable clones, they could be respected members of society, who the fuck knows.

DragonCobolt said:
FOOTNOTE 12: The Pope lives in Sao Paolo because Rome "fell" to the Muslims in 2095. I note, they do repeatedly refer to Europe being "conquered" by Muslims but, um...remember...Europe was ravaged by fucking plagues throughout the 21st century and then the Storm Machines hit (a solid ten years before the "Fall" of Rome.) It seems more likely to me that Muslim people just...moved there and...live there, like normal people do, because that's a normal thing humans do.

These are valid interpretations given the way the novel seems fully aware of what it's doing, but in a vacuum...it doesn't look great. I'm actually planning on checking this book out myself now so I'm looking forward to seeing if we find out more or if this is just like. Some shallow use of bad milfi tropes.

DragonCobolt said:
I had to google who that was and he sounds...fucking awful, lol

Oh, you don't know about Victoria? The short version: it's the paleocon Turner Diaries, with "Retroculture" advocating for the elimination of all technology invented after 1960, written by a reactionary idiot (perhaps I'm repeating myself).

bookwyrm said:
There's a lot of remarkably similar beats to the overall structure of the Yukon Confederacy in Victoria, just with the thin veil of being Yankee green mountain boys and the second coming of the patriots as their origin point, and replacing all the imperial Britishisms and sinister implications and good writing with unironic primitivist fascism and Christian nationalism jerking off to the "Christian Marine Corps" nuking cities and burning dissidents at the stake in order to crush the globohomo woke and the orcs and to bring in the glorious Rectroculture future of criminalizing all technology made after than the 1940s and of bringing worthy suffering to reforge white America as strong subsidence farmers in tight communities (the ones still left alive, anyways).

Oh, and Victoria is also the authorial showpiece of their special next generation war-winning formula of operating purely as light infantry Rambo dudes

Yeah now that you mention it the techno-primitivist fascism is very Retroculture, it feels like they share a sort of conceptual closet space, although they're doing very different things with the premise.

DragonCobolt · May 19, 2024

ScottishMongol said:
Yeah now that you mention it the techno-primitivist fascism is very Retroculture, it feels like they share a sort of conceptual closet space, although they're doing very different things with the premise.

I have a firm belief Fitzpatrick's War is specifically targeted at those assholes, like a rod from god.

Kadmus · May 19, 2024

So far this book doesn't seem to have the sheer glee about the atrocities that Victoria does, not by a long shot; Lind wanted you to know he was masturbating while writing about a woman being burned alive for the crime of being a woman who was also a priest. I haven't got that impression from the excerpts posted here.

(There's a Let's Read of Victoria over on SB for anyone who wants to inflict psychic damage on themselves second-hand.)

Coyote Niff · May 19, 2024

DragonCobolt said:
[Charlotte's] so sweet, I love her.

We also learn that she's Catholic!

And...POSSIBLY the author's THINLY DISGUISED FETISH! I wouldn't say this if she was just a vivacious charming redhead with a great sense of humor and a wonderful ass, like, that's not a kink, that's just being cishet. Or human? ...Charlotte is cute, though.

I am neither cis nor het and I would fight a duel to touch the cuff of her sleeve. But that's just my crippling "sapphic women in proper Victorian clothing subverting the mores of the period" problem talking, probably.

DragonCobolt said:
It's a pellet from one of the Yukon's unguided cluster munitions. Canister rockets hold thousands of them, which explode outwards, cover about a square mile of cubic airspace, then the incendiaries go off using advanced future napalm that burns for a solid five minutes on concrete. Jesus fucking Christ.

Bruce is entirely unimpressed. He points out that this technology is old and it's why the Yukon utterly dominate any air war they're in: Their planes are guided by the Blinking Stars, figure the rough distance and speed of the enemy, then saturate the airspace they're flying into with overlapping cluster munitions. Because steampunk airplanes are basically nothing but boilers and fuel lines and pressurized pipes and cloth, a single pellet landing in them spells doom - either fast or slow. These can also be used on ground targets, in a very similar way. They don't have "precision munitions" without electricity and so they don't even fucking try and limit the collateral damage.

After all.

They're only shooting Chinese.

This whole passage is fascinating because it reflects the actual attitude of colonial military supremacy *specifically* in England and the British Empire during the Victorian period. If you look back, you see "funny" little rhymes like "whatever happened we have got, the Maxim Gun, and they have Not." and the common use of expanding/frangible bullets against "inhuman" or "fanatic" opponents until their ban at the first Hague convention. As long as the enemy is "inhuman", you have not only the right but the responsibility to use your technical know-how to put them back in their "place" beneath you as cruelly as possible.

DragonCobolt said:
They kiss, and it's very cute since Bruce doesn't know how and she teaches him a little.

This is cute. I would actually die if it happened to me.

Coyote Niff · May 19, 2024

ScottishMongol said:
Yeah now that you mention it the techno-primitivist fascism is very Retroculture, it feels like they share a sort of conceptual closet space, although they're doing very different things with the premise.

Hi Scottish!!

I apologize to all concerned for bringing up the Beast from the Northeast, but Judson's nightmare's specific invocations of an "Age of Shit" was just so on-point to Lind's rants about the need for a New Prussian Monarchy and endless waves of racist invective that I had to point it out. I agree with @Kadmus though that our author is on the side of the angels-he's done his best in these first three chapters to lay out the brutality of this hyper-nostalgic, stagnant society and how it uses the cruelest methods possible to maintain hegemony.

DragonCobolt said:
I have a firm belief Fitzpatrick's War is specifically targeted at those assholes, like a rod from god.

Absolutely it is. I am rooting for whatever poor doomed bastards are trying to resist this hell world. Hopefully we hear about them at some point and they are cool as fuck.

Now, back to my "transfem Davis" apocrypha post....(for legal reasons this is a joke.)

DragonCobolt · May 19, 2024

Coyote Niff said:
I am neither cis nor het and I would fight a duel to touch the cuff of her sleeve. But that's just my crippling "sapphic women in proper Victorian clothing subverting the mores of the period" problem talking, probably.

There are a lot of footnotes where Professor Von Buren is like, "Harrumph, a proper Yukon wife would NEVER!"

Ben Who Devours · May 19, 2024

I don't know the author, but the general assumption should be to assume they do not share the values of their fictional state unless there's an extremely good reason to think otherwise. Writing horror doesn't make you morally icky IRL.

DragonCobolt · May 19, 2024

Ben Who Devours said:
I don't know the author, but the general assumption should be to assume they do not share the values of their fictional state unless there's an extremely good reason to think otherwise. Writing horror doesn't make you morally icky IRL.

I mean, that's why I made this thread! Because Judson doesn't agree with the Yukon Confederacy's theocratic, authoritarian attitudes and uses the book to talk about real world issues - in contrast with books that others have brought up like Victoria or Marching Through Georgia.

DragonCobolt · May 20, 2024

Wow, dragon, why are you making two updates today?

I like attention and I like reading and I like talking! I'm very annoying!

Chapter Four begins with some skimming forward of time - with the midterms over and everyone in the Basileis assured of passing thanks to Fitz's machinations, Bruce finds college life getting strangely easy. He barely has to try and passes his classes, and he doesn't have to do the morning PT - looking down on other cadets beating each other black and blue from his comfy, comfy dorm. He thinks to himself that this is just natural and just: Some men are born to be comfy in bed, and some men are born to batter eachother with sticks. It all seems right and just to him! At age 90, he recognizes how foolish and short sighted and arrogant this perspective.

As a twentysomething cishet dude in a society built to tell him how special and cool he is, he's not even worried!

Wow, what a hellish dystopia. Good thing this isn't applicable to our society!

Then something...happens.

A tiny argument over something so trivial that Bruce barely remembers it happens between O'Brian, he of the future logistics corps (I told you i'd find something for him to do!) and Stein-

Wait, shit, I forgot say what Stein's special talent was in the prior update! Fuck! Right, okay, here's why: Bruce doesn't mention he has one. I went back and checked! Then I went and checked and, I shit you not, Dr. Murrey, when he was outlining Fitz's plans to the disbelieving Bruce, says that Stein's future role in world conquest is...being second in command to Hood. Man, imagine being the one of KINGS OF MEN that a future fascist dictator hand picked to help him conquer the world and you're second fiddle to the most famous guy in the group. That must suck.

Anyway! Stein refuses to share his notes with O'Brian.

O'Brian gets annoyed at this.

And then Jean Valette, the prettiest of the Basileis, notices that the two biggest nerds in the friend groups are annoyed and starts egging them on because he thinks its funny. This apparently goes on for months and culminates with...

Bruce's Narration said:
I remember we were eating curried ham and Vallate could not resist using something as harmless as our food as a spur to arouse the two combatants.

"I believe Gwen has given Banker a double serving," said Jean.

"A great waste," said O'Brian. "Jews cannot eat pork."

Stein exploded from his chair. He threw his plate at O'Brian and demanded satisfaction. The entire dining hall of cadets stopped eating to watch the scene unfold.

"Holy Jesus Christ knows i am as good a Christian as any man here!" screamed Stein. "Meet me on the field of honor, or admit you are a damned liar"!

"Tomorrow morning at six, beyond the river, opposite the parade grounds!" said O'Brian, also standing upright. "I will take your Jew hands on it!"

Fitz does not take this well. He frogmarches all three out, then when they come back, O'Brian (while visibly crying) apologizes to Stein, then Stein accepts the apology. Vallette, then, is forced to apologize too and it's...super awkward. You really feel for Bruce because, I too, have been in a friend group where two people explode at one another and you're there like, "...um..."

Though, my friend groups never included rabid antisemetism! So, that was a bit better, actually.

Afterword, Hood - the only adult in the group - takes Bruce aside to confide in him: O'Brian and Stein aren't actually going to forgive one another over this, and Valette is the exact kind of venal, self centered, shallow spoiled dipshit who would take being forced to apologize for something as harmless as goading two friends into becoming blood enemies over literally nothing as being its own deadly insult. After all, it ruined his fun.

What charming people!

So, Hood's like, "So, Bobby, be warned: Valette will one day seek to assassinate Fitz and take the throne over this. You are going to need to be on watch for...Bobby, are you listening to me?"

Bruce: 😍😍🥰🥰🥰💞💞💕💕🥰🥰🥰😍😍

Hood: "...Bobby?"

Bruce: "I wasn't thinking about a redheaded girl with a great ass! What!?"

...no, seriously, the narration goes

The Actual Book said:
"...you must keep your ears open, Robert. Should Valette attempt to draw you into some plot, you must not keep that information to yourself."

I pretended for my old friend's sake to be as concerned about the situation as Hood was. In reality, I had another issue that troubled me more than Valette's injured pride. True to her word, Charlotte Raft left a letter behind the park wall for me every Thursday morning...

See, ah, right, a political detail I might not have quite made clear: Dr. Murrey is a known member of the Timmermen and, thus, not under Fitz direct control. While ostensibly allied, the Timmermen represent a threat (or blind spot) for Fitz and his future regime. Thus, if Fitz was to learn that Bruce, his prize engineer, was falling head over heels in love with a girl who worked for the Timmermen, he'd be quite upset. Thus, Bruce and she are being sneaky.

Well, she's being sneaky. She sends him "silly compositions" that "began with a recapitulation of everything she had done that week and ended with a peroration concerning her undying love for me." She sends not one but TWO photographs: One of her dressed as a Greek muse looking very chaste and adorable.

...the other is her in a two piece bikini on the beach.

Bruce never had a chance, man.

After two weeks, he whips up this. (Since it's recreated perfectly in the autobiography, I'm pretty sure Charlotte kept it for her entire life and whipped it out the instant Bruce mentioned he was writing the book.)

Bruce's Letter said:
Dear Miss Raft

I am, though I know it wrong of me, moved by your attentions. You are, Miss Raft, a handsome and intelligent young woman, and you would, I expect, make someone a fine wife. Allow me to say I do not regret having made your acquaintance.

But you must realize the danger into which you are placing the both of us. Please, please, I beg you on my knees, please do not write me any more letters. If F. discovers us, I cannot tell you what might happen. Please stop this.

-Robert

Romantic!

Anyway, she sends this back.

Charlotte's Letter said:
My dearest Bobby, my precious Darling

So you think I am handsome and intelligent! I knew when we met you had immediately fallen hopelessly in love with me. Upon some extensive reflection, I find I am starting to have reciprocal feelings for you. Therefor, I accept your proposal of marriage. I know we will be happy together.

Yet, my sweet poppet, I detect some slight reticence in your feelings for me. I notice I wrote twice (that is two times, if you are having trouble counting, my sweet engineer) before you wrote me back. Can you imagine the heartache your failure to write me caused me that first week? Then in your recent letter to me there was some nonsense about breaking off our correspondence altogether. This reluctance on your part makes me so angry I could do anything, such as run naked through your campus with your name written in lipstick all over my body. (That would be worse for you than getting caught writing to me, would it not? If you think I lack the courage to perform such a stunt, I suggest you start planning what you will say to the Cadets' Board of Inquiry.) I think it would be better if you wrote me every Thursday, and that you please write no more foolish things to me.

Yours forever, your fiancée
Charlotte

P.S: I have left home and am living in a flat in Chesterton. Our mutual friend M. has secured me a job in a bookbinding shop. In the evenings I am attending Mrs. Haggerty's Finishing School, where I am learning to drink tea as though it tasted good and how to keep my skirts over my undergarments on a windy day. I am becoming such a lady you could stick me with a needle and I would not say "Goddamn."

Bruce gives up trying and instead sends letters. Then letters and flowers. And every night, he prays to God that she might tire of him - then takes out her photographs and prays she will not. He thanks God and Charlotte's infinite patience that she never tired of him. To be fair, Bruce, it's not just her patience, I think she just really has fun playing with you. Like a cat. It's more fun when you blush, you see.

This dangerous situation is worrying Bruce when Fitz shows up the week before Easter and asks Bruce for a favor. You see, Fitz's father, Lord Coronet Fitzpatrick (Cory to his friends) is going to arrive and he...fucking hates Buck Pulaski, Fitz's bodyguard. So, Fitz would like Bruce to take Buck out fishing on the river. Buck likes angling for catfish. Bruce is like, "Sure! Okay!" which is what he does for basically everything Fitz asks him for like 99% of the book, much to the world's sorrow.

He and Buck head out on a little puttery motorboat (it has a tiny steam engine) and Buck is very quiet. Bruce, being nervous, starts chattering away and we learn, AT LAST!

WHERE! WE! ARE!

Centralia City is built on the ruins of Kansas City, Missouri.

Why the FUCK is that not in KANSAS!?

"Well, it's on the border of Kansas-"

Then it should be called BOARDER OF KANSAS CITY, THEN!

We learn some fun things about Buck. He's a big, gentle guy with animals (in contrast to how deadly he is with people.) He likes animals, he loves the natural world, he doesn't fish to eat - he takes the hook out and tosses them back, then worries that it hurts them. Bruce, uh, lies to him: "Science has proven that they do not feel the hook." Bruce, actually, lies to Buck a lot in this passage. Buck admits that he's never going to marry because he was "with one girl" and she "said he'd never make a good husband", so Bruce goes, "oh my grandfather said to be with one woman proves nothing" - then in narration, reveals that his grandfather was churchie as hell and never even would have thought to mention sex to him ever.

They also discuss things like "why are other countries bigger than the Yukon Confederacy?" - Bruce cites the fact that third children are taxed and their birth control pills and the fact feudal inheritance is a fucking bitch. They talk about how Buck hopes to see tigers in India, and to row along the Ganges.

They also talk about how Fitz, his mother, the other members of the Basileis, they're all...kind of fucked up. Buck says they have a "darkness" in them and that they're going to burn the whole world down.

Bruce is like, "...so anyway, did you know we're in the ruins of an old city?"

They get out and poke around the ruins - finding some old English signs. We recognize them easily: An advertisement for a psychologist, a used car salesmen, but they're mystifying to the Yukons. "The language hasn't changed, but we have." It's a quiet, solemn moment - reflecting on how much has been lost and destroyed between the 21st century and now. They find the ruins of a church and Buck takes a long time to pray. He's deeply devout, and afterwards, he confesses to Bruce that he knows about Charlotte...but he lied to Fitz about it. Told him that Bruce was as pure and quiet as a church mouse.

So, Buck sets up a way for Bruce to send letters safely - but he says that the flower shops are being watched.

That's how paranoid Fitz is about his "kings of men."

In the end of this very sweet character bonding moment, Buck does ask Bruce if, once this is all over, he could maybe live at Bruce's family farm and take care of chickens, marry a spinster aunt if she'll take him. Bruce is like, "...sure thing buddy... 🥹 sure thing..."

Bruce returns to campus and runs into the Lord Consul's bodyguard - an elite unit called the Blue Jackets: Marines who owe fealty specifically to Lord Fitzpatrick's family. We get some interactions with two of em, where it becomes very clear that they can't stand Lord Coronet Fitzpatrick, but they love his son, Fitz. They adore him. Like he's some kind of charismatic demagogue or something!

Then out comes Lord Coronet Fitzpatrick.

Bruce's Narration said:
Out the dormitory's front door came a collection of beribboned and gold-lated senior staff members straight from a Lazy Willy novel. In the middle of the throng strolled the most gilded and perfumed of them still. The Consul carried a swagger stick, wore riding jodhpurs and glistening knee-high boots, and had a waxed mustached that turned up at the ends like miniature cow horns. He could have passed for Colonel Plant himself. As soon as he reached the walkway, he at once fixed upon me.

"Ah ha!" he said to the sergeant. "I see you've caught an assassin, Donaldson! Shoot the scoundrel first thing tomorrow! Let him spend the night sweating it out!"

...what the fuck is a...jodhpur...

Oooooh he's wearing cavalry pants!

Fitz managed to convince his father that Bruce is not an assassin, nor a lackwit, layabout, jackanape, or any number of old timey insults. Once Lord Coronet learns that Bruce was basically keeping Buck out of the way, he goes, "Why can't that filthy Slav keep HIMSELF out of the way!" because, once again, white supremacy is fucking stupid. Like, it's really insane to me how whiteness will create a white ethnostate, then start subdividing white people even more, just...totally waspbrain behavior.

The last person to emerge from the house is a beautiful blond girl. Bruce gives her a bow, assuming she's Lord Coronet Fitzpatrick's niece or something and...everyone laughs. The entire entorage leaves and Bruce, nonplussed, asks Fitz, uh...what was up with that?

"That was Meg Sweeny," says Fitz. "My father's favorite whore."

Professor Von Buren quickly hops in to say that this is absurd, impossible, ridiculous. YES, Lord Coronet Fitzpatrick DID keep a stable of young, beautiful women around him at all times BUT! It was only to ensure they were properly educated! Remembering how the good Professor didn't even try and pretend that it was odd for O'Brian, Stein, Shellay and Valette to go whoring at the Lion's Den, I think that the Yukons of the 26th century basically put all the sin onto the people around the Fitzpatrick's family, so as to then keep them as the perfect heroes to look up to and be in awe of.

Still, this chapter was relatively light in worldbuilding and plot - beyond the subplot between O'Brian, Stein and Valette which is going to come to a very, very, very slow boil. But what it did have was lots of remarkably good character interactions.

In a dystopian novel like this (especially one that, warning, is going to end on a real fucking downer), you need moments of levity and light to prevent it from being too one note, and for underlining the tragedy. Buck is a kind and gentle man, a truly gentle man. He just happens to be preternaturally good at murdering people - trained that way from age 14 by a society that sneers at him for daring to be the slightly wrong version of white. Charlotte is vivacious and hilarious and strong willed - and yet, her obvious intellect and drive are being yoked to learning how to sip tea politely and avoid cussing. Fortunately, both Buck and Charlotte will get more chances to push back against their society...even as Bruce, sadly, continues to be ensnared by it.

But that's the thing, isn't it.

That's what makes dystopias so bad - and why I find Warhammer 40,000 so compelling, as an aside.

What amazing people, they could be, if only the world would let them...

FOOTNOTE TIME

FOOTNOTE 2: One of Stein's insults towards O'Brian is that he's Catholic and here, we learn the O'Brian family converted four generations ago. If it's the 2400s now, that'd be approximately in the 2280s, a solid two centuries after the storm times. Maybe the Yukon Confederacy was less stringent back in the day and has been getting worse? Or, alternatively, maybe a roman catholic family got really rich and famous and had to convert to attain nobility.

FOOTNOTE 3: Hey wait here in this footnote, Professor Von Buren says that Stein's grandfather converted to Christianity when he became a Lord. Now, if I know my Jewish inheritance right, that means that by Jewish law, Stein isn't Jewish - because Judaism passes matrilineally. Right? ...it doesn't fucking matter for the Yukons because, like, they're antisemetic assholes. But it's interesting to think about. Also, it may not be true either way, since we don't actually know how serious that conversion was. Plenty of Jews practiced in secret after converting, and good for them!

FOOTNOTE 4: It's actually illegal to try and fight a duel, so you know Stein and O'Brian were pissed.

FOOTNOTE 5: Apparently Charlotte's second photo is similar to that as seen in The Railwayman's Gazette, a mucky mag that Professor Van Buren is SUPER clear to say, VERY EMPHATICALLY, that he hasn't read, not even once, despite citing exact titles of articles written in several of the issues.

FOOTNOTE 8: So, one of the character scenes between Buck and Bruce are talking about Jonah and the whale and how Fitz conceptualizes that as being about consciousness (???) and Jonah entering into a new way of thought (????) that Professor Van Buren declares as being "quasi-Hidnu tripe" that Bruce invented. Well, if Bruce invented it, he should have explained it better, because neither he NOR Buck knew what the fuck Fitz was talking about. And honestly, neither do I.

FOOTNOTE 9: Buck is balding and he says he can't use the anti-balding injections of the day because Fitz doesn't want him to think he's pretty. This footnote is more interesting because it again is about how Yukon society has stagnated: Falacil was the brand named then, but NOW, we have modern brands like HairGrow and Locks Gel and so on. Lots of brand name changes, very little actual alteration in society. Interesting.

FOOTNOTE 11: Lazy Willy is a series about a lazy and cunning private avoiding work while making fun of his nemesis Colonel Pother Edward Plant (Pot Ted Plant, hah!) Lazy Willy and the Colonel's Wife and Lazy Willy Strikes it Rich are the two example titles and honestly, it sounds like literally the only work of culture that the Yukon Confederacy has produced with literally any value what so ever.

COMING UP NEXT: The International Trade and Mr. Z (Played by Benedict Cumberbatch!)

ScottishMongol · May 20, 2024

Oh man, I am not surprised Bruce turned into such a wife guy, I wouldn't stand a chance against Charlotte either.

bookwyrm · May 20, 2024

I absolutely love the realistic toxic effects of a honor culture and the time bomb of future-British boarding school and military academy abuse, Valette is a monster who relentlessly makes everything a 'joke' to needle people with, with that in some part helped by how all his seniors would absolutely do that same shit to him and pass it down, and both O'Brien and Stein are constantly vulnerable thanks to their schrodinger's whiteness. And then, the one clear avenue of maintaining their martial Honor and red-blooded Yukon masculinity is forbidden to prevent the Confederacy's officer corps from murdering itself and because Fitz has need of them, leaving them to then stew in yet more bitter resentment until they can arrange an illegal secret duel.

If it had been Valette dragged into the field of honor or even Bruce, then the technical letter of the law could have been set aside for a properly chaperoned illegal match to the first cut or with both men firing their pistols in the air or something, but now it's very likely that O'Brien or Stein just straight up murder each other.

DragonCobolt · May 20, 2024

bookwyrm said:
If it had been Valette dragged into the field of honor or even Bruce, then the technical letter of the law could have been set aside for a properly chaperoned illegal match to the first cut or with both men firing their pistols in the air or something, but now it's very likely that O'Brien or Stein just straight up murder each other.

What's funny is there are several scenes where Bruce is insulted and even slapped in a way that should have provoked him to a duel, but he never even thinks of doing so.

bookwyrm · May 20, 2024

Bruce being just self-aware enough to not challenge his social superiors in the rest of Fitz's circle?

ScottishMongol · May 20, 2024

I also think this book is much better than the Draka novels at presenting a society that's terrible because it promotes the worst aspects of people and allows terrible people to thrive, and not because it's made up of inherently terrible people. There are still people in the Yukon Confederacy with admirable qualities, guys who enjoy things and have friends and love their wives, they just get pushed through this system of socalization that hammers them into this one shape so they can be used for eternal glorious war. I haven't seen this done well in many other places!

DragonCobolt · May 20, 2024

bookwyrm said:
Bruce being just self-aware enough to not challenge his social superiors in the rest of Fitz's circle?

He knows his wife would be in danger!

Also thinking on it: Bruce is meant to be incredibly handsome, big smart from an engineering perspective, and a moral coward and political weathervane that simply goes with whoever he's standing beside at any time, oh my God HE'S JAYCE ARCANE?!

Coyote Niff · May 20, 2024

DragonCobolt said:
Well, she's being sneaky. She sends him "silly compositions" that "began with a recapitulation of everything she had done that week and ended with a peroration concerning her undying love for me." She sends not one but TWO photographs: One of her dressed as a Greek muse looking very chaste and adorable.

...the other is her in a two piece bikini on the beach.

Bruce never had a chance, man.

Anyway, she sends this back.

Charlotte's Letter said:
My dearest Bobby, my precious Darling

So you think I am handsome and intelligent! I knew when we met you had immediately fallen hopelessly in love with me. Upon some extensive reflection, I find I am starting to have reciprocal feelings for you. Therefor, I accept your proposal of marriage. I know we will be happy together.

Yet, my sweet poppet, I detect some slight reticence in your feelings for me. I notice I wrote twice (that is two times, if you are having trouble counting, my sweet engineer) before you wrote me back. Can you imagine the heartache your failure to write me caused me that first week? Then in your recent letter to me there was some nonsense about breaking off our correspondence altogether. This reluctance on your part makes me so angry I could do anything, such as run naked through your campus with your name written in lipstick all over my body. (That would be worse for you than getting caught writing to me, would it not? If you think I lack the courage to perform such a stunt, I suggest you start planning what you will say to the Cadets' Board of Inquiry.) I think it would be better if you wrote me every Thursday, and that you please write no more foolish things to me.

Yours forever, your fiancée
Charlotte

P.S: I have left home and am living in a flat in Chesterton. Our mutual friend M. has secured me a job in a bookbinding shop. In the evenings I am attending Mrs. Haggerty's Finishing School, where I am learning to drink tea as though it tasted good and how to keep my skirts over my undergarments on a windy day. I am becoming such a lady you could stick me with a needle and I would not say "Goddamn."

Again, this kills the Coyote. I would implode. I would die. I am the Richard Sharpe of trans women. I will go to the firing line against the heaviest ~~British~~ Yukon cannon just to make sure her dress doesn't get muddy.

DragonCobolt said:
We learn some fun things about Buck. He's a big, gentle guy with animals (in contrast to how deadly he is with people.) He likes animals, he loves the natural world, he doesn't fish to eat - he takes the hook out and tosses them back, then worries that it hurts them. Bruce, uh, lies to him: "Science has proven that they do not feel the hook." Bruce, actually, lies to Buck a lot in this passage. Buck admits that he's never going to marry because he was "with one girl" and she "said he'd never make a good husband", so Bruce goes, "oh my grandfather said to be with one woman proves nothing" - then in narration, reveals that his grandfather was churchie as hell and never even would have thought to mention sex to him ever.

They also discuss things like "why are other countries bigger than the Yukon Confederacy?" - Bruce cites the fact that third children are taxed and their birth control pills and the fact feudal inheritance is a fucking bitch. They talk about how Buck hopes to see tigers in India, and to row along the Ganges.

They also talk about how Fitz, his mother, the other members of the Basileis, they're all...kind of fucked up. Buck says they have a "darkness" in them and that they're going to burn the whole world down.

In the end of this very sweet character bonding moment, Buck does ask Bruce if, once this is all over, he could maybe live at Bruce's family farm and take care of chickens, marry a spinster aunt if she'll take him. Bruce is like, "...sure thing buddy... 🥹 sure thing..."

There is nothing that makes me more obsessed with a piece of military fiction than to provide us with The Good Man in the midst of a hellish dystopia. Pre-egg-crack, I wanted to be him, and saw much of myself therein. Post-egg, I want to tell her who she is and that everything's gonna be ok.

DragonCobolt said:
That's what makes dystopias so bad - and why I find Warhammer 40,000 so compelling, as an aside.

What amazing people, they could be, if only the world would let them...

Expertly said. This book has the Good Stuff inside it that makes us want better for those characters.

DragonCobolt · May 20, 2024

Coyote Niff said:
Again, this kills the Coyote. I would implode. I would die. I am the Richard Sharpe of trans women. I will go to the firing line against the heaviest ~~British~~ Yukon cannon just to make sure her dress doesn't get muddy.

I was actually worried that I, being a big romantic sap, would present all this cute romance and everyone would go "this is trite! Bah! Humbug!" So I'm glad other people stan Charlotte.

…man if this was a tv show there's a specific part of Twitter who would *hate* her so much, lol.

Kensai · May 20, 2024

Interesting - the structure of the text is clearly drawn from, among other things, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire - which also has copious footnotes that metatextually reshape the main text, and sometimes overshadow it.

Pale Fire is also Nabokov's greatest work, and indeed one of the great works of 20th century literature. It deserves to be better known, but it's unlikely to ever grow larger in the public consciousness than Lolita.

DragonCobolt · May 20, 2024

Graduation! Our he...our protagonist has graduated from the War College! It's a delightfully realistic ceremony - in that half the commencement speakers don't show up because they have better things to do and it rains all day. Fitz salvages it with a pithy speech: "As inglorious as our beginning is, it shall be equally eclipsed by the glory of our final destination!"

Hmm.

We'll see.

Bruce, as a brand new Captain, is given his first assignment: To the Second Engineering Corps, based in Australia, who are going to be sent to India to build roads and runways. Airbases. I remember talk of airbases...Fitz writes in his order assignments (Hey, wait, why is Fitz, a fellow graduate of equal rank giving a Captain orders? Well, because the Yukon society is actually multiple hierarchies that interlock awkwardly and contradictorily, just like real life!) that Bruce and Hood alone are the only members of the college friend group that hasn't disappointed Fitz in some way. So much for "blood will tell", eh?

He's promised a big promotion if he pulls this off!

Bruce's Narration said:
The notion of sailing across the Pacific to Calcutta on a big four-master bark did not frighten me at the time. The only thing I could think of was those gold bars. (How easily I gave myself to Fitz! Christ would not sell himself for all the world when Satan tempted him in the desert; all Fitz needed to buy my soul were a set of decorations and a few words of praise. Like any young man who has met with some early success, I thought myself worthy of everything I had been given.)

See, a STEMlord can learn! He arrives at port and a genuinely kind of ballsy thing happens: It turns out a majority of this book's travel scenes (kind of a big deal for a steampunk book) are going to be on what is essentially a normal-ass sailing bark. Yes, it has carbon composite hull and it's carrying a hold of biomass fuel and malaria vaccinations, but it's still just a normal sailing ship from the 18th century. This is because, as this chapter reveals, the only international trade that the Yukon do is through the I.T, the international traders. Banned from using the Blinking Stars, steam power, or modern technology, they take a small amount of high value goods from Yukon lands and come back with raw material and imperial decadence. They have crews made up of homosexuals, atheists, foreigners and criminals, who are paid in shares and hope to one day get off ship with enough money to buy a house, but know that they're most likely instead going to fucking die in misery and privation.

Professor Von Buren, with some chagrin, admits that...Bruce's depiction of the I.T is...essentially correct and remains true to the modern day.

Here, we meet not just the captain of the ship, William Moore (he and the officers are mildly disreputable Yukons, as opposed to the mixed crew of foreigners/incredibly disreputable Yukons) but also Zimmerman.

I like to imagine Zimmerman is played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Not sure why, i just think he'd do the "emotionless, dead eyed sneering fascist" Vibe really well.

So!

Zimmerman (first name never given) is a member of the Special Affairs, a police organization created by the Senate and the Consul to keep an eye on the military. They wear black uniforms, have lightning bolt insignias, bill caps and oh, right, THEY'RE CALLED THE FUCKING S.A. The subtle clues as to the nature of their organization, I hope, is not missed! Zimmerman immediately starts vomiting the entire sailing trip, while Bruce lays out the basics of the I.T I said above.

Though, as a note, Bruce says that the main reason the I.T uses sail rather than steam?

To limit the corrupting influences of foreign countries from Confederate territory. Well, of course, they might replace you at any moment!

Bruce's Narration said:
Other than the gregarious and blunt Captain Moore, I did not make friends among the ship's crew during the first portion of my long voyage. The officers on board had learned to fear everyone, as everyone on the ship hated them. The seamen knew I was too poor to rob, and because I was from the Army and had no authority over them they had no interest in anything I had to say. As soon as I had gained my sea legs and gotten over my illness, I tried to no avail to make myself useful to the crew. The men had allowed the fire fighting equipment on deck to fall into disrepair and had misplaced the extinguisher tanks. I located the missing tanks in the hold and refilled each of them with baking soda. I picked up the phosphorous shells for the two three inch Mitz guns that had been left to slide around the top deck and put them back in their caisson boxes. I had imagined that putting these incendiary shells away and restoring the fire extinguishers to working order would be doing the crew a favor, but the men said the tanks were an annoyance, something to trip over as they hustled about the slippery deck, and they soon stacked them against the midship bridge to get them out of the way.

"You have to understand," Captain Moore told me. "These lads don't care what happens. Not to them or to me. If one hsell explodes, there'll be a jolly fire and maybe someone gets killed. That makes everyone else's share that much larger!"

Man, who knew depriving people of their futures then making the only hope they have of anything at all be dependent on people not surviving would make them drunk, listless depressives. Because we also learn that the I.T sailors drink everything, constantly. Which is a very sailor-y thing to do, including tapping the BIOMASS FUEL with straws and drinking some of that. Good gravy.

Anyway, then Bruce notices Captain Moore setting up a Blinking Star communication system and using it to get information about the upcoming weather. He remarks to a very seasick Zimmerman, "hey, wait, isn't that illegal as shit? ...wait, oh...this ship is owned by Lord Fitzpatrick, isn't it?"

To which Zimmerman says, "...shut up and stop asking questions."

They sail past Hawaii (which they refer to as the Sandwich Isles) and Australia, pausing only to pick up some water and plastic piping for their future construction gig. Then, a sudden storm blows up and the ship is caught in it! The storm is throwing the ship around and rather than reef the sails or do anything, half the crew decides that they'd rather hide in their cabin and get drunk. Morale is high.

Bruce's Narration said:
There were eleven men left on deck; the carpenter and the sailmaker - the two old campaigners that Zimmerman had spoken of - three bare chested Polynesians, four Cape Verde islanders, Captain Moore and myself. The seven dark men scaled the rigging while the two old men and myself worked the winch at the base of the mast to give them enough slack to toss the sail to the deck. I am ashamed to say the foreign chaps were the best men on the ship during that crisis.

The storm goes on and on, with the 11 men on deck spelling one another for important tasks. We learn that the carpenter and the sailmaker are named Charlie and French, and hilariously, the mutineers throw Zimmerman out of the lower decks (where he spends most of his time) because they hate him as much as I do! Then Captain Moore jams Zimmerman into a docked lifeboat, covers him with a tarp, and lets him just sit there and suffer in the rain. To quote: "I'll allow the engineering lad and the darkies into my quarters, but I'll be damned to the fiery eternity before I let some damn S.A spy into my room!"

Mood!

On the third day, the storm breaks. Everyone praises god, and then Captain Moore unlocks the armory, gives Bruce a gun, a Polynesian guy a big fire ax, and Charlie a tear gas grenade. The ax breaks a hole in the door to the lower decks and the tear gas chases the mutineers onto deck, at which point Captain Moore yells at them, kicks them, then goes, "Eh, get back to work."

As he explains to Bruce: If he punishes them hard, they'll just murder him in his sleep. If he hangs them, the new crew will be just as bad. So, might as well get em back to work ASAP and hope they forget about it. Shame they drunk all the rum though. What a well run ship!

Because the lower decks are in a shamble, Bruce takes to sleeping in one of the lifeboats with Charlie and French, where we learn that French had a great-aunt who could speak French, and he brings out "Je Swee Fransais" (according to Bruce.) A footnote tells us that French is a dead language.

Bruce ruminates that he never had to learn a dead language, because engineers only have to speak Greek and Latin, praise god. The two old men are deeply impressed by his illustrated Book of Common Prayer which is signed by none other than Lord Fitzpatrick - who they both admire. Then they show the book to the Cape Verde sailors, who couldn't read the English...but they do see the images and they cross themselves and are pleased to see such a beautiful example of their shared faith.

Bruce's Narration said:
...the Cape Verde Men, who were as Christian as we(16), crossed themselves to show reverence to what they knew was a Holy Text

16: Another one of Bruce's lies; no foreigner, especially darkie foreigners, could be as Christian as the Yukons.

Gonna bring out this one again.

Still, the news gets around the ship fast: Bruce is Fitzpatrick's man. Charlie and French take turns pampering him as best as they can. Captain Moore goes from calling him "engineering boy" to "Sir Robert." Crew beg him for pardons, to intercede on their behalf. Bruce, remember, thinks this is all just normal. At one point, Captain Moore even offers to just straight up kill Zimmerman for him.

"No, Fitz wouldn't like it," Bruce says. "And they'll just send another guy."

"Yeah, but at least I'll have gotten to kill Zimmerman!" Captain Moore says back, which is an extremely good point. Sadly, Zimmerman survives this voyage.

Bruce's Narration said:
I so enjoyed being the focus of their attention I would have looked upon the rest of the journey as almost a pleasure cruise if there had not occurred a striking event that reminded me of who we on the ship were and of the small role we were each performing in the grand drama Fitz was directing. Two and a half days from port, a Blinking Star flashed out a warning to the effect that two pirate steamers from the Andaman Islands were about 18 degrees north and 89 degrees east and were heading in a north-easterly direction towards us. The man keeping watch at the glass dome was alert and quickly relayed the message to Captain Moore, who at once veered his ship to the east and out of the pirate vessel's path. At half past fourteen hundred hours, the Blinking Star had changed its warning: The pirates had also turned more sharply to the easy and were drawing nearer. Twenty minuets later, we heard engines approaching from the northwest. The sound was not the slow, heavy chug chug created by large valves of a steamship engine, and instead was the high frequency humm of a high compression airplane turbine. From over the horizon two aircraft materialized, flying low and straight for us! The men on our deck dove for cover and braced for an explosion. They were amazed when the planes passed directly over us. I saw Yukon Union jacks painted on their fuselages and recognized the long cigar shaped profiles that marked them as P-18s.

So, the planes turn out to also have Fitzpatrick's house seal on the wings, which Bruce sees when they come back from torpedo bombing the pirate ships. Bruce reveals that the Fitzpatrick's have been sneakily amassing a TITANIC fortune by using their privately owned airplanes and aircraft carriers to sink pirates that might threaten I.T ships (that they also own), turning an already rich family into a stupendously rich family.

Absurd, of course. One of Bruce's lies, Professor Von Buren immediately claims. Yes, multiple other admirals have written about it in their memories and Mason mentioned it in his autobiography, but the OFFICIAL histories say Fitzpatrick's family was investigated and 100% cleared of any wrongdoing, so, shut up.

Finally, they arrive in Calcutta and it's a bustling sprawling metropolis. The Indians have every bit of arable land they have available under cultivation and are locked into a vassal state by their dependence on Yukon biomass - without coal and the petroleum deposits long since tapped out, the only fossil fuels available are controlled by the fucking Yukon. Worse, India then (as it is now as far as I can tell) is...like...a continent? And it's full of people who would rather NOT be controlled by a centralized government: Tamil nationalists, Khasis, Jains, Buddhists, Shiks, and other separatist factions are all being funded by the intelligence agencies of other countries. It's an uncomfortable place to be in!

Bruce's Narration said:
Starting with the Mogul War, official Yukon Army units have been helping the Indians defend themselves (and our handsome trade income) during times of crisis. Nonetheless it behooves Yukon soldiers operating there to keep a low profile. We were not outright colonial leaders there, and yet our relationship was one forged between two equals, and the Yukon troops there operated under Yukon law and paid little heed to the Indians.

There is a footnote here, wherein Professor Von Buren is faintly confused: "Bruce seems to have disapproved of this natural state."

Hm yes. Here, we meet Mr. Puri, an Indian official who tries to get Bruce and Zimmerman into native clothes to disguise them - Bruce humors him, Zimmerman is racist to him. "We're Yukons, we don't want any [slur] monkey suits." They also get some topographic maps for the bases they're going to build.

Bruce's Narration said:
"These look like fighter bases to me," I explained to Zimmerman, who was examining the maps with me. "They could support tactical bombers. Under our treaties with the Chinese and Turks, tactical planes are classified as defensive, so the bases are legal. All these security precautions of Fitz aren't really necessary."

Ominous. Still, as you remember, the strategic bomber that the Chinese and the Yukon used, the Florin, was wildly out of date. It's also too large to fit on a tactical field like this. So, I guess these bases are defensive, if you just ignore the fact they're being bankrolled by the richest families in the Confederacy and...like, are getting obvious secret support from the Timmermen, who run the entire Blinking Stars network. Bruce, though, simply puts these worries out of his head and focuses on driving to the Second Engineers.

There, we meet the Aussies and our first Yukon base-culture. The base itself is set up west of Luni. MAP!

And it's just one of a string of bases that's going to cover the entire northern edge of India from the Turks and the Chinese. Now, the commander of the Aussies is Colonel Robin McConnel and he immediately endears himself to me by telling Zimmerman to shut up, hide somewhere out of sight, never darken his door, and if he even thinks of trying to do anything out of line, he'll shoot him, bury him, then claim bandits took him. He needs engineers and hard workers, not trained assassins and spies from the secret police. Zimmerman takes this in stride, but you can tell he's plotting how best get revenge.

THe base is ostensibly a secret project, so the people back in Cumberland (the capital of the Confederacy) hired a few hundred white natives from India to provide "cover" and they turn out to be "Hypees" - descendants of American survivors who were part of some kind of nature cult. Hah. They mostly sit around and smoke weed (hah) and carry religious talismans: Plastic cases that Bruce recognizes as a kind of portable computer machine. Their religious ritual is to bow towards America and press their oreheads to the laptop, so they can ascend spiritually to Cyberspace.

Oh sweet children...if only they knew how good they had it, being free from Twitter.

Though I suppose they might venerate Reddit as heaven, Twitter as hell? Discuss in the comments.

Bruce finds working with the Aussies a bit tricky at first - they're informal, love practical jokes, and are all married with families, so they see him as a big child that they have to teach how to live properlike. Since they actually LIKE him, they play endless pranks on him (swapping sugar and spice, stamping kangaroos on everything, stealing his socks), but since they hate Zimmermen, they leave him alone. And their wives all immediatealy cluster around Bruce to mother/bully him. Every weekday at three o'clock, he's the only guy at camp (since he mostly does drafting and design work and everyone else is out building the shit he's designing), and they descend upon him.

Bruce's Narration said:
"I have a letter from my cousin Lilly," announced Barbara Carter at one such session. "She writes; Dear Babs, your young man sounds promising, please tell me more. Does he snore? Does he smoke?"

"How would our Bobby know if he snores?" asked Kate Manfred. "He isn't awake to hear himself. The Lord knows there's never been anyone in bed with him to inform him upon the matter."

I thought they would never stop laughing at me when she said that.

"Relax, Bobby," Mary McConnell told me. "All that blood rushing to your face, you'll have none left for your heart!"

"Aren't they fun when they're young and ignorant?" commented Joan Van Koch.

"What shall we write to Lilly on behalf of our captain Bobby?" asked Kate. She had a pen and paper at the ready.

"WRite: 'Dearest Lilly, I am overcome with love,'" Narrated Kate Allison. "My life is useless if I cannot taste the full sweetness of your tender passion."

"Please, please, please don't write that Mrs. Manfred," I begged.

Here, we move on to how Bruce learns that the wives help manage the base as much as the officers do - figuring out punishment detail for people who fuck up, when to promote people who do well. Bruce ruminates that when Yukon society is at its best, it is when men and women work together, and the worst elements of his society are where they're apart: The military, the S.A, the I.T. He doesn't extend this to the fucking Senate and the nobility, but he should! But there's...a very important, telling detail.

Bruce's Narration said:
I do not believe this is because women are kinder or more moral than men and exert a constant beneficent power over us, for in some ways they are crueler and less moral than we. The officer's wives I knew in India, to cite the example at hand, referred to the native workers on our base as [slurs] and refused them the extra medicine in our hospital when they came begging for aid...

It's...a sad but true point that white women are often just as complicit (and some, far more so) than white men in white supremacy. When you are in a tenuous and low power position - with only your ability to cajole and convince people who can legally do whatever they want to you - it makes a lot of sense (from a self centered perspective) to try and get what advantage you can out of your relative privilege.

We then hear the Aussie wives goals, long term: marry Lord Fitzpatrick to an Australian lass who can open his eyes to the possibilities that they envisage for their continent. There's a fun bit about how apparently two Consul's ago, a British girl married into the leading family and England is still crowing about it despite it being a "soggy sheep pasture" populated entirely by colonists. (Since the 21st century was real hard on small island nations what with the plague and collapse of technological civilization.)

Bruce's Narration said:
"Look here," said Mary McConnell, taking command of the room as she was wont to do. "Saline eating microbes have taken the salts from the soil of the Western Desert. We have made the entire continent of Australia arable. Similar microbes allow us to turn salt water into fresh. Presto chango, we can irrigate millions and millions of acres of once useless land. An Australian wife would open Lord Fitzpatrick's eyes to the possibilities..."

Another reason why Draka reminded me of this? Big terraforming and infrastructure projects that sound to my layman's ears as...ecologically unsound. Put a pin in it. This is not the last time some big geoengineering idea is going to be dreamed up, sound really good and useful, then crash and burn in the face of complicated, gnarled reality.

Bruce, rankled at the idea that a WOMAN might control a MAN, goes, "Well, you know, you can't dictate who Fitz marries, since, you know, young lovers just find one another despite everything. Or so I hear. Ahem."

Silence.

Then, slowly, Mary McConnell leans in and is like, "...soooooooooooooooooooooooooo BOBBBYYYYYYYYYYYY! Tell us about your GIIIIIIIIIIIRL FRIEND!"

And a new string of harassment begins as Bruce is prodded into bringing Charlotte's letters and photos. The Aussie wives, like me and @Coyote Niff and @ScottishMongol, immediately fall for Charlotte and are delighted by her letters. There is some worries that she's too forward and risqué with her second photo (Bruce does try and hide it but, as Kit Alison says, "there are always a second photograph, Bobby!") but general consensus is that she's perfect for Bruce, he must marry her immediately.

Bruce makes his first mistake.

"But she's Catholic," he says.

And? The wives reveal that, since they're all commoner wives to common soldiers, that Barbara and Kit are both Catholic and Joan Van Koch is Jewish. There are priests and rabbis in the Army, they're just not listed as priests and rabbis. Common soldiers know and don't care. Only a Yukon Lord really cares about religion. And it's not like Bruce really thinks Fitzpatrick is going to make him an actual nobleman. Right?

...right?

Bruce then makes his second mistake. Or, maybe, the best decision he's made in his life thus far.

Bruce's Narration said:
I quickly looked around at the nineteen faces; all of them were watching me intently. On some of them I could read traces of growing anger, and not the playful anger they normally tormented me with but the sharp, genuine article. My lying man have fooled some sailors on the I.T ship, I was not talented enough to deceive the officers' wives.

"Is that so?" said Mary. "Can you look me in the eye while you think of your dear mother and swear to me you do not desire a marriage that will keep you in line for Lordship?"

I made my best effort. I lifted my head and looked directly into Mrs. McConnell's face. When I tried to breathe out the words, I could hear my mother and my aunts and my grandparents and all the elders of my village, whispering in my ear that I was a liar.

"No," I said to the floor.

The wives are furious. Bruce is smacked on the backside of the head, some recoil from him in horror, Joan actually STARTS CRYING and stands to leave - calling him a vile young man. Mary rallies them, and gives Bruce the straight goods: He would not like being a Lord, he is not going to become a Lord, and if his ambition is to ever be happy in his life, he is GOING to get a pen and a paper and he is GOING to write a letter apologizing to Charlotte for everything he's just said, beg her forgiveness, then plead that she marry him. Chastened, he does so.

Three weeks later, Charlotte sends back a letter that she's pretty sure that she'll make a fine wife, and accepts. She also sends a letter marked for the wives eyes only and they immediately head off to read it.

Bruce asks: "Wait, don't I get to read it? you got to read mine?"

What a silly boy!

"Women put us through a tough process," Colonel Robins says to him later. "You have to put up with it. Eventually, they get bored with us."

FOOTNOTE TIME

FOOTNOTE 4: Mitz guns are apparently small cannons that are good but hard to use - so the I.T usually ends up blowing a hole in their own deck with them every time they use them.

FOOTNOTE 12: We are informed that Bruce is technically incorrect to call the sailors mutineers becuase they're not actually in the Navy, which is a fun bit of quibbling legalism that takes up a full paragraph of Von Buren breaking down a difference that genuinely doesn't matter to anyone. It's fun because it's one of those footnotes that, in aggregate, paints such a vivid picture of the exact kind of person Von Buren is, which I really appreciate!

FOOTNOTE 17: the P-18 is a two man propeller driven airplane, usually used in maritime operations. The Pegasus symbol that "Bruce claims to have seen" would mark them as being loyal to the Fitzpatrick family.

FOOTNOTE 19: The MOgul War (2374-2379) was when a central Asian empire formed, declared itself the new Moguls, and invaded India from the northwest. They were destroyed in a single battle by "McClean's Third Army" - Yukon imperial power flexing itself.

FOOTNOTE 22: There's a saying that's used "you wouldn't fool the Slav's president", which Von Buren explains: the slavs have no president.

FOOTNOTE 23: The vehicle that Bruce takes to the aussie camp is a "Ranger", which Von Buren says is basically the same as a Haul Everything or GeePee in modern days. Once again: Sure seems like Yukon society hasn't changed much in the past 150 years.

FOOTNOTE 26: Cyberspace, it seems, was some kind of electronic forum where, get this, THOUSANDS of people can communicate at one time! Wow! Amazing!!

FOOTNOTE 29: here, there is a reference to how Bartholomew Iz, the dictator of America in the 2070s-2080s, killed more than a billion people by spreading Zaier Fever using fake inoculations and I actually do think that Iz IS meant to actually be as villainous as the Yukons depict him (because, as a note, he only takes power a solid 40 years after the Timmermen's founders released EMP weapons on the market and caused American society to start to unravel.) But, like, also, the whole "spreading a virus using fake inoculations" sounds like such a direct parallel to modern conspiracy theories that I would 100% believe that Yukons have mixed up the effect/cause: Iz trying to inoculate a restive, conspiracy riddled population without sufficient infrastructure to get the inoculations to people - thus, leading to billions of dead as the disease spreads out of control. It'd be kinda like if COVID was ten or twenty times worse and all we had were Ben Shapiro clips and 4chan memes to remember what happened from. Food for thought!

COMING UP: Jet Fuel Can't Melt Lord Coronet FItzpatrick

Let's Read Fitzpatrick's War (The Only Steampunk with Rights)

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