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nikakistos · 3 years

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The mindset of Eren Yeager: The reason he rumbled the World

The topic I will be analyzing this time is Eren Yeager’s decisions and motivations in the final arc of the series. Many words have been said about our main protagonist, especially after his appearance in the final chapter, which made many question him and his actions. Given the dialogue between him and Armin it is not really hard to understand why. Isayama’s word choices have confused many fans. So, here I am. Trying to explain to the best of my ability what was going through Eren’s mind. Of course, I might be wrong. There have been many interpretations of the character after all, not to mention that Isayama will be releasing a character book the next month, which might explain things better. But, seeing as I will be in the army at the time, I figured I should write this now and compare my view to Isayama’s later on.

To begin with, we have to answer a very important question. What was Eren wish and what kind of life did he want to live? This question can easily be answered just by looking at Mikasa and Armin, Eren’s two most beloved people. These two represent what Eren wants out of life. Armin is responsible for Eren’s desire to be free. The outside world for Eren is freedom. Mikasa on the other hand represents Eren’s desire to be loved. She is his home to return to. You see, these two desires perfectly correspond with the visions Eren shared with his two friends in the paths. He used the paths to see with Armin all the places from Armin’s book that they imagined back when they were kids and he used the paths to live with Mikasa the life they never had the chance to live in the real world. Eren himself says he doesn’t want to die. He wants to live with Mikasa and everyone else. This is the kind of life he wants.

But he couldn’t. And it wasn’t because of some supernatural force that guided his own actions and prohibited him from making another decision. No. It was because of his personality and the circumstances he found himself in. After Eren saw the future his attitude changed. He was by far more silent and sad than usual. He saw himself committing mass-genocide. He also learnt that the world was not what he imagined it to be. Eren wanted the world to be just like Armin’s book described. Empty of humans, but full of beautiful places. However, between himself and his dream stood enemies. Countless people who had never seen them, all wishing them dead. The outside world had betrayed his expectations. For him, all these people that stood between him and his dream were just like the walls in Paradis. An obstacle. This is why, despite knowing that the Rumbling went against the justice he was supposedly fighting for, he decided to complete it. Deep down, he hated this world and he wanted to burn it down. This is in part due to his idea of freedom. For Eren, freedom is living your life the way you want it to, without ever taking orders from anyone. Doing whatever you want. This is why he was surprised by Levi’s follower attitude towards Erwin. With all his strength, he expected Levi to be the freest person in the legion. A world that continued to chain him down and disappoint him was something Eren could not tolerate. And when he got the power, he just wanted to erase it. He was free to do so. It is no coincidence that the panel of his father saying to him “you are free” appears at the same time that Eren reveals his desire to destroy the world. This burning desire of his to erase the world contradicts his view on people being special because they were born in it. If this world makes people special just because they were born in it, then why the fuck would you completely destroy it Eren? Well, that’s exactly the point. Eren’s though process is entirely irrational. That’s true for all humans to a degree. Our deepest and darkest desires are irrational. The part of Eren that wanted to bring the Apocalypse, just because the world wasn’t like he wanted it to be is exactly that. Eren had to choose between what was just and what made him feel free. He chose the latter.

Moving on to the more rational side of his motivations for doing the Rumbling. That is the safety of his friends and his island. Eren genuinely cared for all of his friends. Mikasa and Armin were special, but he also cared for Historia, Jean, Connie, Sasha etc. He even cared for fucking Floch. And, obviously he cared for the island that he was raised in. He couldn’t just let the world annihilate them. This is like, the core of his ideology. If you fight, you might survive. If you just roll over, then you get fucked. Eren is not the type to get fucked. However, this did not mean that Eren wouldn’t opt for a different solution if a better option presented itself. After all, he did appear in the speech given by the Organization that protected the rights of the Eldians. The first problem here is that when Eren saw the memories of the future he had just 8 years left to live. Zeke had 5. Eren was displeased with this lack of time. The second problem was that he was stuck with a hilariously incompetent leadership. The leadership of Paradis failed spectacularly in finding a good solution and wasted half of Eren’s remaining lifespan. At the rate the Survey Corps were progressing, Zeke would have died and without him they wouldn’t be able to use the Founding Titan at all. Additionally, none of the solutions they tried to find were exactly great. The 50 Y.P. required the sacrifice of Historia and her line, without ensuring with 100% certainty the eternal existence of Eldia. Since Eren cared about Historia and the island, he couldn’t accept such a proposal. The rest of the Survey Corps felt the same way. Hizuru on the other hand didn’t help them at all and Hange’s plan to approach the Organization that wanted to protect the rights of the Eldians failed spectacularly. Eren was left out of options.

The biggest turn off for him though was the revelation of Zeke’s real plan. When Yelena learnt that the SC would visit Marley she approached Eren and told him all about Zeke’s euthanasia and how to contact him. From this point on, Eren really had no other option left to save Paradis. If the meeting with the Eldian Rights Organization were to fail then he would have no choice but using Zeke’s blood, especially given his brother’s limited lifespan. He would never get another chance to visit Marley, nor was it certain that Zeke and he would manage to make contact. Worst case scenario, Zeke dies before meeting Eren, Colt gets the Beast, the Global Alliance attacks Paradis and they get fucked. Or, the SC somehow manage to find a serum to turn Historia into a dumb Titan, have Mikasa and Levi alongside Eren restrain her and use the Rumbling anyway, while also having sacrificed Historia.

Things might have been different if Eren had actually decided to talk about the future he saw. Knowing what would happen if they didn’t try hard enough, might have made the Corps work harder. Of course, Eren just couldn’t predict the outcome of such a decision, so he decided to stay quiet, since, as established above, deep down he wanted to destroy the world.

Eren’s decision in the end came down to this: either he destroys the world or he says “fuck all” and elopes with Mikasa. He loved her enough to abandon everything and live his last few years peacefully with her. His dream about the outside world, Armin, Historia, Paradis, he was ready to turn his back to all of them just so he could selfishly survive with Mikasa. However, both he and Mikasa are incredibly shy people who can’t quite express their feelings easily. So, instead of telling her that he was in love with her, he left it all to her. To top it all off, he framed the question in such a way, that gave her the chance to pick an easy answer, without risking rejection. Then they got interrupted and the rest is history. He said fuck it and accepted his fate.

Attack on Titan’s world does operate under a fixed timeline. Destiny exists. Ever since Ymir became a titan up to Mikasa killing Eren was predetermined. They were meant to happen, exactly as they happened. However, the reason for that is not entirely supernatural. It is just that the personalities of each and every major character led to the result we saw. It is entirely because Eren cared about his friends and because he dreamt of freedom that he chose to rumble the world. It is his and Mikasa’s shyness that robbed them of a future together. Ymir had nothing to do with all that. It wasn’t Ymir who made the Santa Titan dumb enough to not bite Eren properly, nor was she the one who made the Azumabito clan greedy as hell or the Marleyans imperialists.

Eren knew what he would do and this of course played a major role in his decisions. But nobody forced him to do it. And, more than anything, he also knew why. Deep down, he knew. Eren decided Rumble the world, because he wanted his friends and island to be safe and because he hated the world. Eren accepted his fate, because he was left with no choice that he liked, time was running out and because Mikasa didn’t give him the right answer. The result? 80% of humanity dead, some of his friends dead, the ones who survived are mostly well, with Mikasa being the saddest one. The world is slowly marching to war, with the Yeagerists having regrouped and Armin and the co are trying to prevent this. The island’s survival is by no means guaranteed.

Was it all for nothing? I don’t think so. Eren saved Paradis for some time, giving the chance to Armin to save humanity. After all, he did tell him so himself. Eren believed that with the Rumbling leaving the world in the state we saw, Armin would be able to find a solution. The series seems to imply that this is what will eventually happen.

In the end, Eren acted just like himself. Just like he told Falco. His reasons are not that complicated. He kept moving forward, because he was seeing something beyond this hell. We know now what that something was. His actions make total sense. It is just that his deep desire to end the world is rooted in his own childish view of freedom and of the world. In a story about children who need to become adults, Eren remained a child. His two friends on the other hand didn’t. Armin accepted his role as the Commander of the Survey Corps and despite the world not being what he wanted it to be, still fought to protect it from the person he once wished to explore this earth with. Mikasa accepted her role as a guardian of humanity and not Eren’s, like she believed herself to be, and despite wanting to share her life with Eren, she killed him. Eren saved Mikasa and Armin. This is his legacy. A world without titans.

#Eren Mikasa Armin #Eren Jaeger #Mikasa Ackerman #armin arlert #hajime isayama #attack on titan manga #manga #chapter 139 #attack on titan final chapter #aot meta #snk meta #character analysis

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mediaeval-muse · 4 years

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Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Revelations (Ubisoft, 2011)

Genres: action-adventure, third person, open world

Premise: Ezio Auditore travels to Constantinople to unlock the secret of Altaïr's vault in Masyaf, battling Templars who also want the vault’s contents. In the present day, Desmond Miles is trapped in the Animus and must find a "synch nexus", a key memory that links him with Altaïr and Ezio, to reintegrate his splintered subconscious and awaken from his coma.

Platform Played On: PC (Windows)

Rating: 3/5 stars

***Full review under the cut.***

I am evaluating this game based on four key aspects: story, characters, gameplay, and visuals. I will not be evaluating the multiplayer mode because I don’t like playing video games with other people.

Content Warnings: violence, blood

Story: The main premise of Revelations’ story is that, following the end of Brotherhood, Desmond has fallen into a coma. The stress of being controlled by Juno has splintered his subconscious, so in an effort to save his life, Rebecca Crane and a mysterious figure have placed him back in the Animus. In order to repair his mind and escape, Desmond must “play out” the remainder of Ezio’s memories, so he follows his ancestor as he travels to Masyaf in search of Altaïr's vault, which requires five “keys” to open. These keys have been hidden around Constantinople, and Ezio must race against the Templars during the political conflict between Şehzade Ahmet and Selim I.

Desmond’s plot follows a somewhat natural progression. Though I missed his interactions with the Assassin team, it makes sense that his next big adventure would involve being trapped in the Animus and learning more from Subject 16. I liked that gameplay in Ezio’s world unlocked some puzzles in Desmond’s world (even though he’s trapped in the Animus, he inhabits a little island where he can be himself) and that these puzzles told us more about Desmond’s past. I did not think, however, that Desmond’s past was related in a compelling way. Most of it is told to us through Desmond monologuing as the player completes puzzles that are somewhat reminiscent of Portal. I thought Desmond’s past could have been done better, perhaps by having flashback scenes like how Altair’s past is related.

Ezio’s plot felt like it was lacking, and I think the reason is that the past 3 games have focused on finding and controlling the Apple/Piece of Eden, whereas this game is about opening a vault/library. Ezio’s story also lacks a strong antagonist to tie things together; instead of battling the Borgias, Ezio is competing with general “Templars,” and even though there are some prominent Templar figures, none of them had “stage presence” like Cesare Borgia did. Though I liked the political backdrop, I think Ezio himself was ill-suited for it. It sort of feels like the creators wanted to extend Ezio’s story rather than start something new with a protagonist who was more connected to the setting, and though recovering Altair’s library is a fun goal, I think the story should have revolved around someone who grew up in the region.

I did like that we got to delve a little deeper into Altair’s past and learn more about him. Unless you play the portable Assassin’s Creed games, you don’t get to learn much about what happened to Altair in ACII and Brotherhood, so it was nice to see some exploration of his life in a game that was centered on uncovering his work.

Characters: Ezio, our protagonist and player-controlled character, is a little older in this game, and while he’s still likable, he’s much more serious and down-to-business. I’m a bit torn as to whether his demeanor fits the setting of the game - on the one hand, I loved that the European character wasn’t presented as someone who comes to the Middle East and takes charge. Ezio definitely has much to learn, and his skills are seen as having value without being superior. On the other, I do wish the protagonist had been someone who lived in the area - I got the feeling that Ezio was made the protagonist because of his popularity rather than his suitability for the setting, and while I appreciate that Revelations closed out his arc, I don’t really think it was needed.

The major supporting character in this game is Yusuf Tazim, leader of the Turkish Assassin Order. He shows Ezio around and provides much-needed instructions and lore, and he’s incredibly charismatic and personable. Ezio also encounters historical figures such as Manuel Palaiologos and the future Suleiman the Magnificent, which were fun treats for history enthusiasts, but not extremely commanding personalities. Instead of courtesans appearing throughout the city, there are Romani people seen hanging about, and though I liked that they were included and talked about their oppression, I do think their visual design and function during gameplay were somewhat stereotypical.

Ezio furthermore gets a real love interest in this game in the form of Sofia Sartor, an Italian traveler and book collector who helps him locate the keys. I thought the interactions with her were sweet, but she was a kind of damsel in distress and she didn’t have much personality other than liking books for a large part of the game.

Desmond, for his part, doesn’t get a lot to do, despite this game being about reconstructing his psyche and digging into his past. I liked that we learned more about him, but I do wish the stakes of being trapped in the Animus were higher.

Gameplay: Revelations uses almost all of the same mechanics as Brotherhood. There are armor and weapon upgrades, treasure stashes, upgrades to the city of Constantinople (which stimulates the economy and earns the player more money), etc. Art merchants are replaced with book merchants, so instead of buying paintings, players can purchase codices, but functionally, they were the same. Similarly, instead of freeing areas from Borgia influence, players liberate “Templar dens” and turn them into “Assassin dens,” and while they’re thematically different from the Borgia towers, they’re functionally the same. Players complete assassination missions in which you kill the captain of the guard responsible for overseeing the Templar den, but instead of blowing it up, you trick your enemy by signaling Templar retreat, allowing the Assassins to move in and take over the area. You can also recruit assassins and make use of thieves, mercenaries, and courtesans much the same way as in Brotherhood, though courtesans are replaced by Romani people. There was a moment in Sequence 2 when Ezio had to defend the Assassin safehouse from a Templar attack, and gameplay involved placing barricades, commanders, archers, riflemen, and cannon fire. while balancing morale and damage. I kind of liked the strategy involved and it could have been an interesting mechanic for the rest of the Templar dens/Assassin safehouses, but alas, this moment only occurred the one time unless you’re not paying attention to your infamy meter (which was easy to take care of).

The major weapon upgrade in this game is the introduction of the hook blade and various types of bombs. Bombs ranged from simple noisemakers, to stink bombs, mild explosives, smoke screens, and other useful ranged attacks, while the hook blade enabled faster climbing as well as traveling along zip lines. These weapons were fun, but because so much of the other gameplay was the same as in Brotherhood, they felt like cosmetic patches to an otherwise repetitive gameplay experience.

Visuals: As always, I adored the look of the historical setting. The artists and developers beautifully rendered Constantinople, and I loved seeing more rich colors and details on the buildings and clothing of NPCs than when playing as Altair in the first Assassin’s Creed. I also really loved the look of Ezio’s armor, which forwent the classic white and red palette and opted for a more somber grey. The grey blended with the surroundings a bit better, in my opinion.

What really threw me off was that the facial models for some of the returning characters were altered. Both Ezio’s and Desmond’s face shapes are a little different from how they appear in Brotherhood, and though I do not doubt the change was in service to testing out advancements in graphics, I couldn’t quite shake the uncanny valley vibe.

Animations were up and down; upon starting this game, I encountered a horrible glitch that made the screen flicker and movement impossible, but luckily, I was able to fix it easily using instructions from other players who had the bug. There were some really satisfying combat animations, including finishing moves that upped the level of Ezio’s epic skills, but sometimes they lagged or a bug would make them not connect to an opponent. While not the end of the world, it was noticeable and sometimes took me out of the immersion experience.

Final Verdict: Despite repeating much of the gameplay from Brotherhood and unnecessarily extending Ezio’s story, Revelations presents a beautiful atmosphere and fun adventure to unlock some much-desired background to Altair’s narrative.

#video game review

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

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These moths really weren't necessary

by Sören Heim

Monday, 04 April 2016

Trying to get a hold of the "New Weird" Movement, Sören Heim started with a modern classic.~

Some early passages of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station I'd like to have read out loud to me by Dylan Thomas' powerful bardic voice. There are poetic, even melodic moments in this book, with just the right amount of dissonance to match the fantastic-dystopic setting of New Crobuzon, loosely modeled on the cityscape of modern London. I was directed towards Miéville by fans in the aftermath of my criticism of fantasy authors mistaking being "dark" and morally ambiguous for literary merit in itself, when I asked about writers who don't either try to imitate Tolkien or outrightly criticize the genre's tropes, but tell a story for its own sake. And one can tell from the better parts of Perdido that Miéville is trying to do something special here, as it seems he is always trying, which is why Matt Hilliard wrote this about him:

"I’ll say this for the book: it might have failed with me, but it was an ambitious failure. Better to fail through overreaching than from insufficient aspirations. I don’t recommend this one but I’ll be eagerly awaiting Miéville’s next novel."

So as a type of "industrial novel", and maybe as a verbose painting of a metropolis,

Perdido Street Station

certainly has its appeal and some of its better moments remind me (mind, I don't say something like that easily) of established classics in the genre like Dos Passo's

Manhattan Transfer

, Döblin's

Berlin Alexanderplatz

, Belyj's

Peterburg

or the much too rarely read

Riverroad

by Mwangi.

Shakespeare with bugs, bad pun intended

So much for the light. There is a lot of mediocrity and some darkness, too.

Perdido Street Station

, among other things, tells the story of Isaac and Lin, him a scientist, her an artist, who both try to achieve something extraordinary in their field: Isaac tries to restore the gift of flight to Yagharek, member of a birdlike species called Garuda, who has been sentenced by his people to losing his wings, because of the incredible crime called "choice-theft in the second degree with utter disrespect". Meanwhile, Lin wants to break out of the collectivist ideal of art of her social background and therefore agrees to work on the likeness of a shady underworld mogul in New Crobuzon. As far as that goes

Perdido

is in the beginning chiefly a

“Künstlerroman”

, since science in Miévilles cosmos looks a lot like our physics, but is really much closer to what in other fantastic novels would be called magic (at least the field of thaumaturgy, which is Isaac's main interest). At the same time, the book tells the story of the unheard-of love between a human (again: Isaac) and a khepri (Lin), who is basically a human-bug chimera. Sounds interesting enough, and could easily carry the whole piece. Shakespeare made a somewhat successful play on a subject-matter maybe less risque, and one is told that a lot of writers followed in his footsteps...

But since Miéville isn't too fond of the whole "show, don't tell" business, he merely states all the possible conflicts that could arise from that love affair in two or three somewhat extended infodumps and then mostly forgets about it. Hardly ever is the reader made to

feel

the social stigma imprinted on the relationship of Lin and Isaac. Same goes for what it means being a "rogue scientist" or an artist desperately struggling with a completely new approach to ones passion. Instead, Miéville actually writes sentences like "She was an Artist, yadayadayada... He was a scientist, yadayadayada", and he does this more often than is good for any halfway decent character portrayal. He is better with his supporting cast though, which makes me wonder whether he maybe just didn't like his protagonist that much, and would also explain why he quickly has Lin taken into captivity by her mobster-artfunder and has her become the center of a substandard damsel-in-distress storyline instead of actually doing something more with her.

Writing - and failing at - three books at once

It is a common criticism of

Perdido Street Station

that China Miéville is too interested in New Crobuzon itself and doesn't care about getting the plot going for most of the first half of the book. To me, that only rings partly true. Actually, maybe there is rather too much going on plot-wise and Miéville's main problem is that he hadn't really decided what kind of book he was going to write. The künstlerroman/love story portion dominating roughly 1/3 of

Perdido

could, as mentioned above, stand quite well for itself. It's no

Portrait of the Artist

, but if it were a little bit more subtly developed it could be quite enjoyable. What does it mean for an artist, coming from a background which frowns upon individual expression, to work for a mobster who would and does kill to make it possible for her to do her job? How is Garuda society really structured besides from being described as somehow "communist"? How does this communism work without tipping over into Soviet-like totalitarianism? Does it only work because the Garuda live a nomadic lifestyle? Or because they are simply psychological so different from human beings? Or does Miéville, who styles himself a communist, know something about how to avoid previous failings of communism, he wishes to share? Also: what makes "choice-theft in the second degree with utter disrespect" a crime too complicated even to

try

to explain it in plain English to Isaac?

Learning more about all this and much more might make for an interesting read, maybe even with some story-wise pointless subplots, which could really help to

experience

the whole New Crobuzon cosmos Miéville goes on and on about without ever really showing what it

means

to live in it.

Demented Mothmonsters. I mean: Moth-Dementors. I mean Nazgul. Whatever

Instead, well... This is where

Perdido Street Station

started to lose me and got me more and more angry. Instead after some three- or four hundred pages Miéville begins to conjure up mind- and soul- sucking mothmonsters, living on the dreams of the inhabitants of New Crobuzon. If that reminds you of Rowling's Dementors or the even more prototypical Nazgul, that is because they are basically like that but much less cool. (Actually, of course, Issac conjures up the moths while investigating flying animals in order to help Yagharek regain his abilities, but since this is the point where the whole book finally falls apart shifting the blame from author to protagonist feels to me rather fishy). Suddenly, it seems as if Miéville had changed his mind completely and decided to write a mystery-thriller/detective story instead of his panoptic of a huge, vibrant city. Writing good mystery is much tougher than one might think, and Miéville is clearly not up to the task. His mystery doesn't take off, there isn't much detecting to do and while

Perdido

thus rapidly slides into

Ghostbusters

trash territory, this doesn't really work either, because a) the book never built up to be that kind of story; and b) the moth-dementors can't be busted by mere human beings anyway. Miéville solves this problem by inventing a poetry-loving spider-ex-machina which weaves and reweaves the fabric of the universe according to purely aesthetic criteria. That is mildly odd and funny. But it is much too late for

Perdido

to succeed as comedy.

When bad things happen to good books

Now, maybe I'm being a little harsh here with Miéville since the novel, as stated, clearly has its moments. But seeing how well it starts out and how completely Miéville manages to ruin

Perdido

not only for me but I think also for most readers who would have loved to experience a well-composed mystery-novel within Miéville's intriguing setting, is really disappointing. More so, since I feel I share at least some visions with the author about what a real masterpiece of speculative fiction could look like. Miéville

trying to achieve something special and he could well be the author who one day will. So when reading

Perdido

I was more than once reminded of a great moment in

Frasier

, when Kate Costas comments on Frasier completely losing track of what he was going to say: "Isn't it sad when bad things happen to good sentences?"

Yes. And it's true for books, too.

Finally, whatever exactly Miéville was trying to do with

Perdido

, his late revelation that Yagharek in Garuda society has actually raped a woman (that is the aforementioned "choice theft in the second degree", a crime impossible to translate from Garuda to English), is clearly not the way to achieve it.

It might be well-intended

, showing us how somebody we deeply invest in and care for might not be worth the effort, and how being on quests with somebody and having lived through a lot doesn't mean necessarily one has to stand up for this person. Miéville even does make his point half-way convincingly, by having Isaac turn away from Yagharek.

It still feels cheap

, since Miéville pulls "rape" out of thin air in the end, just in order to make a point. It is more for effect really, and Miéville opts out of discussing the implications much too easily by having the novel end immediately afterwards. Also: what's so difficult to explain about this "choice-theft in the second degree with utter disrespect"? Victim Kar’uchai has no trouble saying something along the lines of "you would call it rape". Maybe this is also meant to show how bad of a person Yagharek really is, concealing his crime before. But to me, it just doesn't add up convincingly.Themes:

Fantasy Rape Watch

Books

Sci-fi / Fantasy

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James D

at 21:46 on 2016-04-04Agreed on basically all points. The "rape revelation" could have worked if it had appeared around halfway through the Kuenstlerroman version - in the actual book Isaac goes from denial to acceptance to "fuck it, I'm outta here" in the span of about a page.

In reality, how many people would immediately, unquestioningly believe a stranger's claim that their friend raped her, without evidence other than her say-so? Besides which, Isaac is financially obligated to Yagharek, who has invested lots of his own money (gained by fighting in dangerous gladiatorial bouts) in the cure. That money was spent, Isaac can't give him a refund, and besides that it's money that maintains Isaac's standard of living - would he just immediately give that up without question? And is permanent maiming even a just punishment for rape? These are legitimate questions that Isaac could easily have spent half of a much better novel considering, and probably would have, given that we see Isaac is the type of guy loathe to give up his status and comfortable life to go against the grain, i.e. his unwillingness to "go public" with his relationship with Lin for fear of jeopardizing his cushy academic position. There are SO MANY FACTORS that are set up which would cause Isaac to be highly skeptical of the victim's (totally legitimate) claims, and instead he just immediately believes her based on...well, I guess she seems trustworthy.

Instead rape, which Mieville apparently considers a serious crime, is just an offhand afterthought in the coda to the main plot.

Oh and I forgot if you mentioned the fridging of Lin but that was super lame too. I think most people agree on these criticisms, it just depends on how much they drag down your overall reading experience. In mine (and apparently yours), the answer is quite a bit.

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Ichneumon

at 04:50 on 2016-04-05I've been meaning to read this for a while, but from previous discussions and reading about the book, I thought part of the point of obscuring the wording was a way of framing just how differently the Garuda view their society from humans in that world. Everything is framed as a matter of choice, and to deprive another person of that freedom in an especially disrespectful manner is an abomination to them; thus, sexual violence is described in terms of denying a person their freedom to choose and refusing to honour a choice made by another. While not *entirely* alien, it's certainly unusual. It also comes up in at least one of his other Bas-Lag novels.

I wonder if one notices more hints in that direction on a second read. Having read some of Miéville's other work, particularly short fiction, it wouldn't surprise me if he dropped subtle hints that reward a second or third look. None of this changes that it might be a poorly structured book or unpleasantly rushed at the end, but it's worth considering.

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Arthur B

at 07:22 on 2016-04-05@JamesD:

There are SO MANY FACTORS that are set up which would cause Isaac to be highly skeptical of the victim's (totally legitimate) claims, and instead he just immediately believes her based on...well, I guess she seems trustworthy.

It's been a good long time since I read the book, but I seem to remember that Isaac's life is comprehensively wrecked by the end. Which I guess makes it easy to walk away from Yagharek, because none of the factors which could potentially have prompted him to disbelieve and stick around apply any more.

@Ichneumon:

From what I remember of the book, a reread would be more an issue of noticing all the bits which Mieville spills a bunch of ink on but which don't appreciably increase our understanding of the world or characters or advance the plot.

For instance, I seem to remember a bit where the mayor summons a demon to try to deal with the moth problem and they have this long conversation which amounts to absolutely nothing which wouldn't have been accomplished by a one-sentence aside that the mayor had sought infernal help which was refused. Likewise, the one other bit I remember strongly (there's great swathes of eminently forgettable stuff in there) is the

Dungeons & Dragons

parody when he mentions the parties of wandering adventurers who try to take down the moth, which also outstays its welcome.

To that extent I disagree that Mieville isn't into "show, don't tell" - the real problem is that he just tells us stuff that could have been more interesting if he showed it and shows us stuff which he should perhaps just told us about and moved on.

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James D

at 10:13 on 2016-04-05

You're right, Isaac had lost his girlfriend and was on the run, which would've made it easier. It's not that it's completely unbelievable that Isaac would do what he did, it's that Mieville chose the least interesting, least dramatic way to handle what could've been a really interesting character dilemma - and a much, much more interesting conflict than "we gotta kill some monsters."

And yeah there are all sorts of throwaway parts of the book which are neat for worldbuilding I guess but completely without plot significance - there was also the part where the Handlers fight the slake-moths and get their asses beat with no results. I suppose he's trying to show how the establishment of Bas-Lag is trying their best to beat the moths and failing, but these are long, drawn-out sequences that don't involve main characters, have no real stakes, and don't move the plot forward.

I think a while back we were discussing this (with valse de la lune IIRC?) and you said Mieville should just take these cool worldbuilding ideas that clutter up his novels and sell them as flashcards.

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http://arilou-skiff.livejournal.com/

at 10:57 on 2016-04-05Mieville has always felt weird in that he's half literati and half pulp, and seems to really enjoy both parts.

RE: Believing victim, IIRC Yagharek was pretty insistent that yes, he had committed a crime (though not disclosing was it was) and yes, it was a bad one. It's just that until he was directly confronted with the possibility of *what* that crime was, Isaac could feign ignorance about what it might imply to have committed a crime.

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Arthur B

at 11:28 on 2016-04-05

That's it.

To give Mieville his due, one thing I did quite like about that arc - or at least, the way I remember it - was how Isaac basically tossed aside any consideration of what Yagharek's crime might have been (and now that you remind me, I do vaguely remember Yagharek regularly being like "No, seriously, I did a really bad thing"), partly because of precisely the sort of issues James outlines with it not really being in Isaac's interests to question the point too deeply, partly down to Isaac blithely assuming "Oh, it's some cultural thing, Garuda are so ~exotic~ and ~inscrutable~ so I probably wouldn't understand it anyway."

So perhaps the handling of it is a bit more nuanced than we're giving China credit for, since it does involve Isaac assuming a stance of self-serving ignorance until he is confronted with the cold, hard, undeniable facts.

Doesn't change the fact that it feels like a cheap shot from out of left field when you read it though - or the fact that it comes slightly too late for the moment to really have the resonance it deserves.

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Sören Heim

at 12:35 on 2016-04-05

Yes, that's a more accurate way of putting it. I seem to have completely repressed the Mayor & Demon part of the book.

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Arthur B

at 12:42 on 2016-04-05On the point about Mieville apparently not liking Isaac at all - I think the rape revelation kind of lends a bit of credence to that. Think about it: not only has Isaac's life been thoroughly, absolutely, comprehensively trashed, but right at the end he finds out that all this trouble happened because he decided to help someone who, now that he knows exactly what they have done, he doesn't even want to know anymore.

Not only has Isaac destroyed himself, but he's destroyed himself for no reason. The dude never gets a break; had the book gone on for five more pages I wouldn't have been surprised if Mieville had himself manifest in front of Isaac, kick him square in the balls, and take a piss on him as he lay twitching in agony on the floor.

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Sören Heim

at 15:05 on 2016-04-05Since I haven't read any of his others I can only judge from this book, but does it have to be about liking Isaac, or couldn't it just be that Mieville wants to paint a rather bleak picture of life in general (or life under capitalism at least, which would fit with his political persuasion). None of the more idealistic characters seem to have a lot turning out well for them.

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Arthur B

at 16:23 on 2016-04-05He does have a tendency towards downer endings and plot arcs that tend to project characters into dustbins. Though some of the downer endings show a bit more... kindness? compassion?... for the protagonists in question. (I'm thinking in particular of the end of

The Iron Council

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James D

at 21:42 on 2016-04-05The funny thing is, of the novels I've read, I like Isaac by far the most out of any of Mieville's protagonists. He's clearly not perfect, but his failings are understandable and he's generally likeable. I mean his greatest problem is that he has trouble doing the right thing when it means great personal inconvenience and possibly hardship - something everyone struggles with.

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Ichneumon

at 17:02 on 2016-04-07I think this is part of why I stick with short fiction when it comes to writers like Miéville: The brevity forces a greater degree of focus, the ideas are mostly self-contained, and even the most frustrating characters don't overstay their welcome.

Which is ironic, given that I actually *do* enjoy self-indulgent digressions and "pointless" events should they be appropriately interesting or amusing in their own right. But the problem is, length increases time, and time increases the potential for impatience, particularly in novels; and because of this, novels tend to have an expected progression and degree of efficiency which undercuts the novelist's ability to spread their scope beyond a certain point.

Incidentally, I wouldn't be surprised if the turn-of-the-century "social novel" is one of Miéville's inspirations in how he structures his work. Zola and his kin certainly aligned with his political views, and the idea that every angle of a broader conflict should be explored in depth regardless of whether the individual stories really cohere beyond thematic continuity or just "fitting the whole world in a book" seems appealing to his personality and aesthetics. Likewise, the cadence of his prose has a definite hard realist feel despite the subject matter being moderately to exceedingly fantastical more often than not.

That said, the thrill of the panopticon is in seeing *everything,* and while I do think that eliding certain events is key to giving an impression of how much is going on, your comments give me the impression that more time could have been given to underexplored ideas to balance out the satirical and tangential asides.

But I dunno. I'm not very keen on whaling on books for seemingly deliberate structural choices when I can understand why they're there, even if I don't agree with them. Maybe this just reflects my impatience with how people look at novels. I get that it's somewhat of a necessity to consider them through the lens of narrative efficiency based on the time investment involved, and I do love a gripping, tightly focused read—The Shadow of the Torturer had me hurtling along at lightning speed, and I do rather enjoy a good potboiler or breezy vacation book now and then—but as I said, I also like when stuff gets convoluted and digressive and messy, and if the only point of a scene is to expound upon a theme or show a cool idea or make the world feel richer, then so be it.

However, those scenes are best when they come back to bite you in the end, especially if they seem completely meaningless at first. Incidentally, the work of fiction that immediately comes to mind in this arena is not a book (exactly), but the webcomic Homestuck, which, say what you will about it otherwise, is basically a master class on how to make the average reader think you're just throwing random shit at them and then bring it back with a grisly vengeance when they least expect it. Hussie really goes all the way down the Pynchonian self-reference rabbit hole in ways that are almost sui generis, for better or worse, and assuming that anything is simply fluff is often a mortal mistake.

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Ichneumon

at 17:33 on 2016-04-07P.S. To be quite honest, I don't especially care if he had to shoehorn in the slake-moths or the Weaver, because they are both really fun concepts if nothing else, and stuffing in fun concepts because fuck you, I'm China Miéville seems like a better rationale than, for instance, the publisher-mandated sex scene meme.

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James D

at 02:00 on 2016-04-08The thing is, that's exactly the central problem of the novel - if he wanted to write a "social novel" (something I'd probably really really enjoy if it were set in a crazy fantasy world), then the central "monster hunt" plot was terribly ill-fitting and simplistic and distracting from the genuinely interesting stuff (I found the strike-breaking scene much more interesting than the moth crap). If he wanted to write a "monster hunt" story then all the extraneous social novel stuff only served to slow down what needed to be a fast-paced thrill ride full of derring-do and whatnot. It's just a bad marriage from the ground up.

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Sören Heim

at 13:55 on 2016-04-08

It's just a bad marriage from the ground up.

- Yes. I'd have loved to read some kind of Perdido-Street-Ulysses (if well executed) and I might have liked a faced paced mothhunt ( it wouldn't have to be moths, though). It's not that I want the book to be something it just isn't, but to be at least one of the things it could be instead of trying for a bunch of them and failing at every one. Although the more I read the less I felt that Mievilles worldbuilding would allow for deeper exploration. It is opulent, but it often seems like he just took social problems he wanted to make a point about and constructed a fantastic equivalent, without worrying too much if it fits all together.

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Ichneumon

at 06:47 on 2018-08-08Hmmm.

Looking back on my prior comments after having read

The Scar

and loved it (while acknowledging that it does have its faults and weird aspects), I really do wonder how I’d feel about

Perdido Street Station

. To be frank, I can see many of the issues you have with this novel reflected in that one, and... wasn’t bothered by them at all? Your description does suggest a rougher work, maybe Miéville feeling out the tack he wanted to take with these novels, but there’s a lot there I’m sure you’d take umbrage with that I actually adored. It’s certainly an acquired taste, however, and not exactly subtle thematically speaking.

#Ferretbrain #China Miéville #Perdido Street Station #Soren Heim #Fantasy Rape Watch

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