Last time, everyone hates Giddy.

This time, Pandaman! He comes to see one of the fights.

Naturally, Katsa’s all bent out of shape over this but can’t really articulate it.

He never sought out his lady killer unless there was something he wanted.

Katsa, or the book, keeps using this term, and it’s already annoying me. It’d be one thing if this was just him addressing her, because yes, he does seem like the sort of guy to address her as “my Lady Killer” either as part of his general dickery or because he thought it was incredibly clever. But no, she’s the one insisting on it every time, she’s the one putting all the emphasis on how she’s a killer BUT ALSO a lady, how freakish. It reminds me a little of FMA’s Ed responding to any comment that had the slightest to do with size with a screaming rant about how dare they say he’s so small a flea has to squint to see him!!!!! Only a lot more annoying, given the subject matter.

You know what else this partly reminds me of? This short story I read maybe last year or so, that was nominated for some award and everyone was bitching about how god, all the stories on the list sucked, couldn’t they find anything decent? And indeed, everyone was right. The story was about a world where reproduction is tightly controlled and people live in these weird family unit/corporations that have to apply for the right to have a kid based on how good a job they do, and the main character is the kid of someone who broke the law and had her without permission, causing that entire family/corporation to be disbanded (but apparently they don’t have abortions) so she’s super serious about following every bit of the rules. Like, they’re supposed to catch only so much fish because sustainability (although apparently if you go over you can just dump some of your catch overboard before you get into dock? That’s not really helping…) and if you have more than your allotment when you’re weighed in you get penalized, so she deliberately goes under, but the guy doing the weighing tends to insist she’s gone over, and she’s always “Well I sure deserve that for being the baby of evil,” and so on, endlessly whining about how horrible horrible horrible she is and deserves every bit of community hatred. And then one day one of the other people in her group says or convinces her to say that she’s going to go get a second opinion from one of the other people because they’re sure their catch isn’t actually over and maybe his scale is just wrong, and it comes out that they’re way under and everyone in the community condemns the guy for fucking with her and goes on about how she’s so awesome and why didn’t she say anything before?! So the central conflict of the story is just the heroine being a wangsty fuck about something no one else cares about.

Similarly, there’s little sign anyone but Katsa gives a fuck she’s a female murderer, or even that she’s a murderer provided she avoids being an accidental one. What little societal shunning she gets seems to be over her having a grace, period, and frankly she seems far better off than any of the other gracelings we’ve met save Metaleyes, who’s a king’s son and may also come from a society that’s more friendly to gracelings generally. Compare Katsa to that poor mindreading girl who Katsa was picturing mutilating for her rude insistence on existing. Although she will not shut up about how friendless and hated she is, most of the people she meets think she’s awesome, and she’s currently in a love triangle. And the most anyone’s done to try to make her fit into society’s accepted gender roles is a) try to teach her sewing but stop when she loses interest and b)make her wear dresses when she has to dress up. When she wanted to learn how to fight, she had nothing but support from those around her, and from her descriptions of other gracelings, the one woman who has a grace for numbers is employed to do numbers even though no other woman is, because graces supersede everything else.

The problem is all in Katsa’s head. Only unlike the other story, she manages to be an irritating little sexist while doing so and won’t shut up about how no woman ever would feel like this if they were normal.

Anyway, back to our “plot”. They’re doing a drill to try to pin each other. Katsa can get loose effortlessly, but she can’t manage to pin him back because he’s too strong. After a couple tries she figures out how to wrench his arm so that trying to push loose is incredibly painful, and Metaleyes gives up and says she’s won.

Then Pandaman’s all lol Katsa fighting, and Katsa is barely restrained RAGEY HATE, and Metaleyes is just why yes she sure is awesome isn’t she? and then the king is all bored now anyway Katsa see me later so I can tell you to maim/kill somebody kthxbye.

He goes. Katsa seethes. Metaleyes asks okay so what next?

WE FIGHT!!!!!!!

Metaleyes considers this and realizes that it’s probably best not to be a punching bag for Katsa’s misplaced aggression. He lolnopes her and says they can do that tomorrow, he’s calling it a day while his arms are still in their sockets.

She stalked up to him, close, so that no one else could hear. “What’s the matter, Po? Do you fear me?”
“Yes, I fear you, as I should when you’re angry. I won’t fight you when you’re angry. Nor should you fight me when I’m angry. That’s not the purpose of these practices.”
And when he told her she was angry, she realized it was true. And just as quickly, her anger fizzled into despair. Randa would send her on another strong-arm mission. He would send her to hurt some poor petty criminal, some fool who deserved to keep his fingers even if he was dishonorable. He would send her, and she must go, for the power sat with him.

Well, lamentable wording, more how do you emotions from Katsa, a continued failure to realize that cheating on taxes or cutting down forest is actually serious business and an even more annoying failure to realize regicide is totally an option, but hey, at least Katsa’s totally on top in this relationship! Thank you, not-Peeta. Feel free to follow this up with further unresentful statements regarding how much she can kick your ass.

Later Katsa’s sulking over dinner while Metaleyes is telling her that omg she has to go to his country sometime so he can show his brothers their fights and how awesome she is!

She wasn’t listening. She was picturing the arms she’d broken for her uncle. The arms, bent the wrong way at the elbow, bone splinters sticking through the skin.

How about all the arms you broke for your special torturer friend Oll? Or does he prefer to hurt people in ways that aren’t so obvious?

Also hey, if that bothers you maybe learn to break arms a bit more neatly. Jesus, Katsa, I’d think you’d get tired of causing your own problems.

“Your uncle has quite an effect on you,” he said. “You haven’t been yourself since he walked into the practice room.”
“Or maybe I have been myself, and the other times I’m not myself”
“What do you mean?”
“My uncle thinks me savage. He thinks me a killer. Well, isn’t he right? Didn’t I become savage when he entered the room?

This book would be vastly improved if that was actually a question we wanted to learn the answer to, instead of Katsa wangsting because she doesn’t realize how awesome she is.

Metaleyes tells she he thinks she’s awesome, and also, has it occurred to her that she’s a superhuman killer and her uncle can’t actually make her do stuff, what with her being able to kill him blindfolded with both her hands chained behind her back and then probably beat up a dragon on her way out? Metaleyes continues to be a ridiculously supportive love interest.

But he’s the king, says Katsa like a moron who doesn’t understand that kingship is just a way of prettying up being the guy with the biggest stick.

“But you do have choice. He’s not the one who makes you savage. You make yourself savage, when you bend yourself to his will.”

Katsa decides to contradict him with the brilliant argument of punching him in the face, which I actually appreciate in that it’s rare you’ll see a character doing something that really does support their viewpoint that they’re a dickhead instead of secretly showing how nice they are.

At the last second Katsa realized he’s not going to fight back and tries to pull her punch, so he only gets smacked into the floor, and she rushes over to see if she broke his jaw but she didn’t and he’s surprised about that and she says she tried to stop and D: D: D:

She reached up to the table and dipped her hands into the water pitcher. She scooped blocks of ice

They’re drinking water with ice cubes in it. God, the author isn’t even trying to pretend this is the past any longer.

She wants to know why he didn’t fight back, and Metaleyes explains that you shouldn’t solve arguments with your friends by fighting. That doesn’t actually seem to answer the question of why he didn’t even try to block her blow, but clearly Metaleyes has decided that the way to Katsa’s heart is being a pushover. Seems to be working.

Katsa is so sorry because omg friends! And no that means she is the worstest friend ever! But it’s okay because Metaleyes understands!

“I’ll never do it again,” she said. “I swear to it.”
He caught her eyes then, and held them. “I know you won’t. Katsa. Wildcat. Don’t blame yourself. You expected me to fight back. You wouldn’t have struck me otherwise.”

This lets Katsa level up to THREE YEAR OLD EMOTIONAL COMPETENCY! She gains a new ability: UNDERSTAND YOU HATE YOUR FUCKING UNCLE ALREADY and says that it’s her uncle she’s mad about. Metaleyes, in his most impressive display of self-control yet, does not respond with, “No shit, Sherlock.” Instead, he asks her what she thinks would happen if she refused the king. I’m figuring dungeons/murder/hurting those she cares about?

She didn’t know, really. She only imagined him sneering at her, his words crackling with contempt. “If
I don’t do what he says, he’ll become angry. When he becomes angry, I’ll become angry. And then I’ll want to kill him.”
“Hmm.” He worked his mouth back and forth. “You’re afraid of your own anger.”

What’s irritating about this is that Katsa doesn’t actually have a temper problem – she tried to punch Metaleyes because she’s doing the raised by wolves thing of not getting that punching him isn’t appropriate, the only example of her actually flipping out for no reason so far has been that poor mindreader girl and she didn’t identify that as a temper thing. Nor does Katsa really have reason to view herself as having a temper problem. She didn’t kill the first guy because temper, she killed him because she wanted to get him to stop with the badtouch and didn’t realize doing so would leave him dead.

Now, it’s certainly possible for a character to be socialized to think she has an anger problem when she doesn’t. If this book actually did have people mistreating Katsa because being a lady and a killer is considered a contradiction, and teaching her any sort of fighting back is wrong – which isn’t that far off how people look down on girls in our society for displaying any signs of aggression, so it doesn’t even require the author be particularly historical about this – then you could have her viewing her normal emotions as a sign she’s broken in the head and not safe to be around, that she should never want to use her abilities at all and only do so on command.

But no one seems to be doing that. We’ve only seen one bit of Pandaman being a dick and saying Katsa’s bloodthirsty, and no one in the court’s actually tried to curb her violence beyond wanting her to not accidentally kill people.

She tells him to go see Ragamuffin to make sure he’s really okay, and did she mention she’s so sorry? Metaleyes continues to say it’s fine.

She shook her head, disbelieving his kindness. “You Lienid are so odd; your reactions are never what mine would be. You, so calm, when I’ve hurt you so badly. Your father’s sister, so strange in her grief

Wait what, says Metaleyes.

She explains the whole hiding in her room not eating business, and Metaleyes boggles.

“Po, what is it?”
He shook his head. “It’s not how I would’ve expected Ashen to behave,” he said. “But it’s no matter. I must find Raffin, or Bann.”
She watched his face then. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

So that’s a yes on not telling her something and a possible yes on the queen’s sadness being faked.

He wants to know how long she’ll be gone doing whatever it is the king wants, then says that he’ll need to talk to her as soon as she gets back. She wants to know why he can’t talk now, and he says he needs to think first.

Why were his eyes so uneasy? Why was he looking at the table and the floor, but never into her face? It was concern, for his father’s sister. It was worry for the people he cared about. For that was his way, this Lienid. His friendship was true.
He looked at her then. The smallest of smiles flickered across his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t feel too kindly toward me, Katsa. Neither of us is blameless as a friend.”
He left her then, to find Raffin. She stood and stared at the place where he’d just been. And tried to shake off the eerie sense that he had just answered something she’d thought, rather than something she’d said.

But he did do just that. Honestly, Katsa, between your inability to figure out your own emotions and how terribly obvious you seem to be about it, I’d expect most of your conversations to go like this, since if people waited around for you to figure out how to say things they’d die of old age.

Also I swear the writing is getting worse each chapter. I’d say it’s going downhill, but let’s face it, it started at the bottom of the hill. Since then, it’s been shoveling.