felt like a little rivers of london fanart, so here’s abigail hanging out with some friends allies members of the public who are willing to assist the police with their inquiries provided they’re given cheese puffs friends.

Peter Grant, ft. me, having fun with my new pens

some girls

— Ben Aaronovitch, The Hanging Tree

Lesley May in The Hanging Tree

I’ve seen some posts suggesting that Lesley was undercover or vigilante. This got long so I’m just posting instead of reblogging/responding. Neither Lesley as undercover agent nor Lesley as vigilante make much sense to me. Partly TBH because I think it would be dramatically unsatisfying at this point in the story, which is cheating as an argument. But from within the universe, here’s my list of What Could Be Going On With Lesley:

1. Lesley as undercover agent: who would she report to? Nightingale is the capstone of magical cases. So either she’s reporting to Nightingale, which really doesn’t fit, or she’s reporting to… Seawoll? Some other legit British government person who knows enough about all this to arrange it? And whoever’s in charge of her thought it was safer to keep Peter (and Nightingale, if he’s not the one handling her) in the dark than to inform them? It’s horribly dangerous for Peter (and Nightingale) to not be aware of her secret agent status, given that Lesley and Peter are positioned to come into direct conflict. I guess if BA really wanted to do this he could probably find a way, but I don’t see it.

(more below the line)

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Rivers of London dreamcast: Jacob Anderson as Peter Grant

what if magic was real but it was treated the way music is now with different genres and like “oh youre still into conjuring? thats cool I guess. recently ive been getting into third-wave post-necromancy, it’s some pretty heavy stuff”

“what do you mean you’ve never learned FIREBALL, it’s a CLASSIC” “idk I’m not really into evocations.” “how can you not be into ANY evocations?” “well, it’s kind of dad magic, isn’t it?”

“i like a bit of everything except hedge wizardry and urban arcana”

@wearemage

All of this is pure perfection.

“The kids this days are all into blood magic. No one throws a good old lightning anymore…”

Divination was ahead of its time.

books read 2k17. rivers of london & moon over soho by ben aaronovitch

Rivers of London Cover. Illustrated by Mack Chater Copyright Titan Comics 2017.

The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch

Peter Grant, The Hanging Tree, by Ben Aaronovitch (via burntcopper)

Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London (via inlittlestars)

“You may alight whenever you feel ready”

Peter, Sahra and Caroline hiding from an ethically challenged magician

i lent my sister my copy of the hanging tree and she just texted me, “in lesley may’s case the saying doesn’t go ‘come to the dark side, we have cookies’ but rather, ‘come to the dark side, we have faces.’“

So I’ve started rereading Rivers of London and was really surprised by Seawoll’s first conversation with Nightingale. He warns Nightingale to stay out of his investigation and says: “I don’t care who you’re currently fucking” - like that’s a thing? Which is really weird because we don’t hear anything about Nightingale’s sex life in the whole series and he’s definitely not the type to use sex to get what he wants. So why are there such ugly rumors at the MET about him? Is it just Seawoll who can’t stand the sight of him? Is it the way Nightingale dresses? Is it some homophobic bullshit? I don’t remember the topic being brought up again, but maybe I forgot about it.

My theory is that there’s some past case that went badly wrong - maybe from Nightingale’s perspective it went only slightly wrong but from Seawoll’s perspective it was a total, utter desaster - and Seawoll’s just very, ahem, down to earth in his language, so I don’t think there’s more to it, it’s just a nasty remark. Nightingale as a rule doesn’t show any reaction to insults, so Seawoll just goes for a general insult, even though he tries to make it sting. I’d disregard the homophobia angle because according to one earlyish Q&A, BA reacted somewhat surprised that the tiny fandom reads Nightingale as gay, so if Nightingale was (at that point at least) not supposed to be gay it’s probably not supposed to be a homophobic insult. (Though I don’t know if there even are enough women higher up in the Met for a male DCI to sleep with to get advantages). Also, we know Seawoll is not led by prejudice in choosing his valkyries, despite often doing a convincing Gene Hunt impression. Plus, Seawoll values professionalism above all, and Nightingale doesn’t care much for Met professionalism - not even consciously, it’s just something that passed him by (which is why when Peter manages to get Nightingale to work more according to the Met’s current principles, Seawoll becomes a lot less hostile towards Nightingale). So I tend to interpret this remark as Seawoll being hostile as  fuck, either on general principles or due to past bad experiences (or most likely both).

It always semed to me like the offensive, non-work-appropriate sort of thing a modernised Gene Hunt would say. And in the first book that’s basically what Seawoll is. I have heard it said occasionally in real life, it’s not an Aaronovitch coinage. It means “I don’t care what influnce you’ve got with the people who are boss of me” and the few times I have heard it used seriously (or in that plausibly denible semi serious way that means the speaker will tell you it’s just a joke and you don’t have a sense of humor if you call them on it) it’s been used by men againt women, as a sexist response to feeling disempwered by a level of expertise or authority a woman has compared with them. (Sexualusing achievemement to belittle it, cassic trope of sexism). I haven’t heard it for years because that sort of comment is pretty obviously covered by workplace sexual harassment rules these days. So Seawoll using it on Nightingale is really interesting, especially given what we later learn is his excellent track record mentoring a diverse group of talented women. Regendering the insult does give it a homophobic overtone, I think (and while that potentially just makes it a an insult intended to be extra galling to a straight guy, it certainly contributed to my reading of Nightingale as intended to be gay). In the specific context there are also class warfare overtones, though. It’s a way of belittling the power of Nightingale’s poshness, the influnce he undeniably has because he “knows the right people”. (Nudge nudge wink wink *knows* the right people, know what I mean?) .

Yeah, that’s why that remark struck me as particularly weird, because in the later books Seawoll is shown to be mostly professional and civil towards Nightingale and Peter - but @ilkesallydonovan has a good point, I think, with Peter’s influence on Nightingale regarding proper Met procedure. That probably explains at least part of their more civil interactions in the following books.

I’ve also been thinking that a lot of people in the Met simply don’t know about magic and the agreement and don’t understand Nightingale’s special status - before Peter came along, he probably just got involved with cases at seemingly random and only the higher-ups knew why he got away with much less scrutiny than usual. So maybe that’s how ugly rumors got started about how he “knows” the right people to get away with it. 

I’m certainly overthinking this, but I just got a homophobic vibe from this exchange (as @kasabi-stuff explained) and that doesn’t sit well with me, considering Seawoll’s behavior in the later books. But of course it’s the first book and the characters changed a lot in the course of the series.

(As a side note, I think it’s so funny that BA was surprised about a queer reading of Nightingale - everyone I know who’s read the books (or even just the first one) interpreted him as gay, which just shows that the author isn’t necessarily the expert on their own book.)

The Abandoned/Ghost station project captures those mysterious stations throughout London which are long closed and disused. Many remain fairly intact and some even feature time capsule-like qualities, such as WWII propaganda posters hanging from the platform walls.

See them bigger here - www.penneydesign.com