The Rat-Catcher’s Daughter, K.J. Charles
This short story features something just alluded to in Any Old Diamonds (which is in my review backlog, oops): the backstory of Stan Kamarzyn and Christiana Morrow. Christiana is trans, working as a female impersonator, and Stan admires her from afar — until he hears that she’s being threatened by a certain would-be crime lord who wants to ruin her to make an example. He’s the fence for the notorious pair of thieves, the Lilywhite Boys, and it turns out they’re more than willing to roll in and help him out. He’s family, after all.
It’s a delight to see Jerry and Temp from this perspective. Someone on Twitter mentioned that Alec (from Any Old Diamonds) is like one of those people with a big angry dog on a leash going around telling everyone ‘he’s a softie, really’, only Jerry is the dog and Jerry is not a softie. He’ll do anything for the people who belong to him, but if you’re not, get out of his way.
The defenestration scene is pretty fucking epic.
They stole the stage a little bit for me, because I so recently read Any Old Diamonds — but Stan and Christiana are adorable too. I love the time they take over their relationship, the pitfalls they avoid, the fact that they end up communicating… their squishes on each other are adorable, and the “wait, you too?!” moment when they each reveal that they’re asexual is just the best. I have a couple of quibbles about the way it’s presented (I worried that there would be a sudden “But It’s Different With You” moment, due to Stan seeming to feel some degree of attraction to Christiana which allegedly he’s never felt before), but mostly it’s very sweet.
It’s more difficult to comment on how the trans aspect is handled. Christiana has a degree of freedom given the circle she frequents, but the time period is restrictive. There is some misgendering, all by non-sympathetic characters, and definite transphobia (same). There are also threats of sexual violence… again. All appropriate to the scenario as presented, really, but it’s not comfortable to read and worth avoiding if you think it will be upsetting to you. Christiana herself is positively portrayed, and Stan has a serious conversation with her at one point about how she prefers him to see her, which is nice.
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