#mama thames

[noughticalcrossings]

Mama Thames

Inktober day 19. Plump

She sat enthroned on the finest of the executive armchairs. Her hair was braided and threaded with black cotton and tipped with gold, so that it stood above her brow like a crown.

[amuseoffyre]

Every time I see Wunmi Mosaku, I am reminded how much she is Mama Thames in my head.

She has such range, going from intense to tender to sensuous to ruthless. Plus I would give my left foot to have a plus-size and actual Nigerian-British actor playing her. She’s perfect and no, you can’t change my mind.

[kristybluebird]

Some Rivers of London

[sixth-light]

7, Lady Ty, Mama Thames, Father Thames

(ask meme! as a refresher)

7: go to a wedding with, go to a party with, go to a museum with

You would think I’d go to the museum with Father Thames, BUT I strongly suspect he would be deliberately mysterious about things and hence very annoying, so in fact I would go with Ty, who couldn’t stop herself telling me when she knows things. She’d probably know more about the artefacts’ provenance than their history but that’s just as interesting, frankly. 

I would go to the wedding with Mama Thames, because she would make it a great wedding and also, I feel, be a good outfit-judging partner. 

Which leaves: partying with Father Thames. Canon suggests he does a good party, so that works! I feel like people gravitating to him would mean I would not lack for conversation even if I didn’t know anybody.  

[buffintruder]

I love Peter Grant as much as anyone does, and Starlingale is a fun dynamic, but this fandom is missing out on some great story ideas centering around the women in these books, including:

-Beverley’s college friends slowly coming to the realization that their classmate is not quite human

-Olivia McAllister-Thames being the daughter of a river goddess (I want to know how this works so badly. Does she inherit any magic???), chilling with her girlfriend, and interacting with her super powerful mom, grandmother, and aunts

-the interactions Molly has with people on twitter, especially those who already know her as the silent and intimidating person she is in real life

-people have already talked about this one, but I’d love to see Peter’s mom and Mama Thames hanging out

-a role reversal au where the female Newtonian tradition wasn’t forced to separate as much from the Folly, and Caroline and her mom are the last official wizards (though Nightingale is probably still alive and unofficially teaching Peter somewhere out there) and Sahra is the new police apprentice

-a fun school-based mystery that Abigail solves, leaving all of her classmates in awe of her, even if they didn’t quite understand all that happened

-au where Peter was the one who left to get coffee in the first book so that Lesley was the one to meet the ghost

-one of those outsider pov fics that take place during canon from the perspective of Stephanopoulos’s wife

(I didn’t make this post so that other people would write these ideas, but if anybody does, I will love you forever)

[hong-ara]

Mama Thames

[birdylion]

Some time ago I pointed my friend to Rivers of London and they listened to the first audio book (in a translated and sadly abridged version - they didn't even include Peter's "conceived by the Force through midichlorians" joke and that's really easy to translate. And. Well, beside the point now).

They liked well enough and thought it was fun, but they brought up one point that was new to me. I hadn't previously thought about it:

They said that the Rivers' (esp. Mama and Father Thames') gender and characteristics were a bit too traditional for their taste:

The rough and coarse guys and the cunning and charismatic women.

They said this was a bit too much playing with gender clichés for their taste and I was surprised because usually between the two of us I'm more aware of stuff like that and I didn't think about it ... In the moment, I didn't have a reply and we left it at that.

So my question:

What do you guys think? Is this an impression you had, and if so, how do you think it relates to the story? If not then why not?

My guess here would be that their other characteristics - the generational conflict, the race aspect - are so much heavier. Also, it's quite a specific cliché, at least for me not a prototypical example of gender clichés.

[fabledshadow]

OK but Nakia being on a wardog assignment in London, England and meeting Mama Thames and her daughters...