But I desperately want to know the story of how possiblefuture!Johannes got turned into a woman and apparently decided she was fine with it.
Important questions that must be answered
1. HOW?
2. Why?
3. When on earth did Cabal become comfortable with being called ‘darling’?
4. When on earth did Cabal start USING the word ‘darling’?
5. When on earth did Cabal learn to FLIRT?Important things we now know
1. Cabal is so vain that he will admit (at least to own mind) that he fancies himself. Or is that herself?In fact I’m pretty sure that’s the only time we’ve ever seen Cabal actually describe himself as finding someone attractive.
#the ultimate trash ship? #johannes/his ego #IT’S NO LIE
I buy it more than him and that dead lady in a box he’s supposedly doing EVERYTHING for. What bullshit is that. Gimme my aro ace villain protagonist please.
He reads so ace to me it’s like Howard sat me down in an interview and took notes on how to fail-date your way toward discovering your orientation.
I might have devoured the first book so fast that I missed stuff, but are we SURE that Basement Lady is actually a romantic interest? I mean, I’m pretty sure he’d do the same for Horst…
I read him as ace through the whole first book, then WHAM, that last chapter it’s like “ALL FOR A LAAAAADDDYYY THAT HE LOOOOOOOVES” like wtf is that bullshit. He’s ace, Mr. Howard, he’s probably aro ace. WTF is that bullshit with his Lost Lenore archetype. Johannes Cabal is many things but he is NOT Mr. Freeze for fuck’s sake.
Mr. Freeze. Oh god, it’s true.
(When Johannes Cabal suddenly decides to build a freeze ray, we know we need to worry and probably check that Mr Howard has not been usurperd by Mr. Schumacher)
Now, see I’ve had this conversion with a few people regarding Cabal’s romantic inclination, and I know I lot of pepole love this character for his ace/aro tendancies. And a lot of people find the bit with lady in the fridge comes out of no where. But really if you go back and read it carefully, it is all there, but burried pretty deep, because Cabal has burried it burried it pretty deep. its his closest guarded secret, that he manages to hide from the devil and even Nyarlathotep. It’s his greatest, probably only weakness. And yes, it is following the gothic lost Lenore archetype, but i think that’s kind of great, because Howard is weaving together all his favourite bits of gothic horror and lovecraftian scifi into something new. Without Her, Cabal would probably be just another Herbert West wanna be. But with Her he suddenly developes a lot of a very interesting layers and “what if’s”? So I for one, love Her as part of the story and history, and She is very much one of reasons I continue to follow the series.
However, I am 100% for the ‘lets not turn this into some hetro normative romance novel’, and I am very confident it wont turn out that way. It’s not what Howard does.
Also, the thought i keep coming back to is this : “so what if once upon a time Johannes was a happy hetrosexual in love with a girl. Stuff happened. Now he’s a necromancer with a mind only for science and getting shit done and being a bit of a bastard along the way. What happens when achieves his goal? Do we really believe he’ll go back to being that same happy hetrosexual in love with that same girl?” Nooooo……. I dont think he will…..
Well, he could also be asexual and pretty damn aromantic, but she could have been this one exception to the aromantic lean. I’ve had an exception. It didn’t go anywhere (is that fortunate or unfortunate, I still don’t know), but to me I still see him as completely ace and generally aromantic. I think it was more of them starting off as friends and “holy shit she has a brain and talks to me and likes books and science and shit” and then he kind of fell for her. That’s how I read it, anyway. And it may not have even been wholly romantic, but if he gets along with her and has never experienced actual romantic love he may have thought it was himself, and then you add societal pressures of love and getting married and it ends up having to be that way.
But I do also agree that I doubt even exceptions are a thing anymore. He’s forced himself away from emotions which will (maybe, depending on how the plot goes) cause mega problems eventually.
I do agree that he seems so ace, and I have half a mind to tweet Howard asking about it- but I am a shy person when it comes to my favorite author and cannot bring myself to.
Yeah, basically! He does have a couple of exceptions. He admits that he’s attracted to lady!Cabal From The Possible Future. And he blushes(!) when Horst teases him about the “delightful Miss Smith.” I really do read him as demi…something. What’s consistent (if that’s a word that applies to all of two or three cases) is that his intellectual interest always comes first. Then again, he finds individuals just generally worthy of continued existence so seldom that the sheer lack of contempt generates its own kind of tension.
None of which is to say, of course, that he’d ever actually act on anything, regardless. Cheap distractions, emotionally compromising. Plus, it would make Horst insufferable.
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