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masterghandalf · 2 years

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Embers by Vathara: A Too-Long Review

Embers is one of the most famous – perhaps the most famous – fanfics in the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom. It’s also one of the most controversial, prone to creating very strong, very polarized opinions among its readers. The fic’s fans call it an incredible piece of worldbuilding that turns aspects of the original show on its head and enriches others with a darker, more morally complex plotline and sophisticated themes. Detractors call it blatant Fire Nation propaganda that worships at Zuko’s feet and demonizes everyone who ever slightly disagreed with him. The fact that both sides of the debate can get very… heated, to put it mildly, only furthers the controversy. At the risk of igniting old flame wars (pun very much intended😉) I thought I’d step in and offer my own thoughts on things. In brief, I think there’s a lot of positive things to be said about Embers, and I can see why it has the fandom it does… but at the same time, for a number of I reasons, some major, some nitpicky, I personally cannot bring myself to embrace it. Let’s take a look behind the cut to talk about why!

What is Embers?

First off… what’s this about, anyway? Embers is an Avatar: The Last Airbender AU fic, diverging from canon early in Book Two, written by Vathara (a rather famous fanfic writer active in multiple fandoms, and IIRC has also published original fiction under her own name) from 2009-2014. Its basic premise involves Zuko, while on the run with Iroh in the Earth Kingdom, rediscovering, based on things his mother had taught him, a lost firebending technique- fire-healing. From there it snowballs massively as Zuko gets caught up in spirit shenanigans, becomes a yaoren (two-element bender) who can also bend water, wrestles with his own legacy, and ultimately explores finds himself caught up in an ancient struggle involving spirits and dragons with more at stake than anyone has realized. The story begins in a one-shot, “Theft Absolute,” and then continues in Embers proper, and it is long – 91 chapters (not counting “Theft Absolute”) and more than 700,000 words even discounting author notes, making it longer than the entirety of The Lord of the Rings (even if you include The Hobbit too), longer than freaking War and Peace, and roughly comparable to all three volumes of Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy together. Woof. In other words, there’s a lot to dig into here. Though the fic itself (at least the FF.net version) does not internally divide itself in any way other than chapters, its TVTropes page splits it up into twelve discrete story arcs, which I may bring up occasionally for ease of reference. Anyway, the sheer size and complexity of the fic means there’s a lot to discuss, so with the basic intro out of the way, let’s get to it.

What’s Good About Embers?

Before we begin, I’d like to say that while my ultimate feelings about the fic are largely negative, I can absolutely see why it got popular and why its fandom has generally been so devoted to it (and since I will be talking about a lot of negative things, I did want to go ahead and put this part first, to make it clear that I do have aspects I like, and the things I don’t like should be understood in that context). For one, it’s very long, very detailed, and as of 2014 it’s complete. As a fic writer myself who has written some very long fics (none this long, though!) I have an inkling of how difficult a feat this is to pull off and can absolutely salute Vathara for the achievement. As for the writing itself, I wouldn’t call Vathara a great wordsmith, but she is, generally speaking, a solid one, with prose that feels professional-novel-quality; considering what a lot of fic (especially from a fandom that skews young, particularly at the time of the show’s original airing and the time Embers got started) is like, that’s yet another breath of fresh air. While I have some issues with the plot itself (more on that later) it nonetheless has a clear plot, one with lots of moving parts, and pulls it together generally well. In short, as a literary achievement Embers is already head-and-shoulders above a lot of fic, and not a few published novels. It also uses a lot of tropes and plot points that have a lot of appeal in the fandom. Zuko is the hero! Multi-element benders who aren’t the Avatar! Fire healing! Zuko is the reincarnation of an important historical figure! Aang’s Fire Nation friend Kuzon is an important historical figure! Ty Lee is a secret airbender! Koh the Face-Stealer is the big bad and was all along! Spirit stuff! Dragons! Any of these are things the Avatar fandom tends to eat up; Embers has all of them. At the same time, it also avoids a lot of the common pitfalls; in particular, it mostly doesn’t focus on issues of romance at all and thus neatly sidesteps the fandom’s infamous shipping wars, which is both rare and a relief, especially for a Zuko-centric story. It also has a lot of worldbuilding of Vathara’s own devising that’s extremely complex and detailed; said worldbuilding is controversial, and I can say I’m one it doesn’t really work for (again, more on that later) but there clearly was a lot of effort put into it, Vathara did her homework, and if you do like it, it’s one of the fic’s major selling points. She also includes a number of OCs from various walks of life that offer different perspectives and flesh things out more. And, of course, deconstruction fics that seek to problematize the canon and/or offer darker, more “mature” takes on the source material are always going to have a following in any fandom. Regardless of what you think, it makes you think (as the fact that I felt compelled to write this review, something I don’t normally do, should attest… I certainly wouldn’t put this level of thought and effort into a fic I just thought was bad). In short, I can absolutely respect Embers as a piece of writing and as a rare achievement in fandom, and I can also see a lot of reasons why it has the appeal it does for people.

But in the end, the story doesn’t work for me. Some of the reasons why are obvious; some are more subtle; some are more nitpicky issues of personal taste. But I’d like to take a while to discuss why, despite everything I do think there is to like or appreciate about the fic, it rubs me the wrong way. First off, I think it’s best before anything else to discuss the lion-turtle in the room.

Is Embers Fire Nation Apologism?

This is perhaps the most common accusation levelled at the fic by its detractors; that Vathara loves the Fire Nation, presents them as being in the right and the war as justified and everyone who opposes them as being evil. In fact, Embers’s tropes page used to (it’s since been removed) compare the fic directly to The Last Ringbearer, an (in)famous LotR fic (actually a published novel in Russian, its original language, but a free fanfic in English) that flipped the tale’s original morality, presenting the elves and wizards as evil, Gondor and Rohan as their dupes, and Mordor and Umbar as innocent victims of bigoted imperialism. The fic’s fans, meanwhile, says that this is a surface-level reading that completely misses the story’s nuances and ignores its actual messages. So, what’s my take? Is Embers pro-Fire Nation apologism? My answer is… no. And also, yes. Let me explain.

First off, the fic’s reputation as Fire Nation apologism has undeniably been exaggerated by its hatedom. It presents the Hundred-Year War as being wrong. The genocide of the Air Nomads was wrong. Characters like Ozai and Azula (and, posthumously, Sozin and Zhao) who were villainous in canon remain villainous in Embers. Stopping the War and overthrowing Ozai remains a goal of all sympathetic characters in the story. That Last Ringbearer comparison is, I think, unfair (and, honestly, regardless of my issues with Embers, I think it’s a superior work to Last Ringbearer in every way… but that’s beyond the scope of this review). Vathara does not try to paint Hundred Year War-era Fire Nation as being in the right or “the real good guys.”

But. But.

Embers doesn’t try to paint the Fire Nation under Ozai as heroic, true enough. What Embers does do, however, is prioritize Fire Nation POVs and Fire Nation concerns. You might argue that this is a natural side-effect of the fic’s POV centering on Zuko, but I think it goes beyond that. Cultural clash is a major theme in the fic, and this is where a lot of Vathara’s worldbuilding goes is in exploring the worldviews and practices of the four nations in much more depth than the show does (more on that in the next section). But practically any time a Fire Nation character gets into an argument with a person from another nation, the Fire Nation character’s POV gets prioritized and they’re the one the narrative wants us to side with. Characters are frequently lambasted for not understanding the Fire Nation and Fire Nation values, and if they don’t that’s their fault, but the reverse is almost never true, with almost any conflict presenting the Fire Nation character as being in the right. The Fire Nation are literally descended from dragons, it’s eventually revealed (all Fire Nationals seem to have a little dragon ancestry; a few have a lot of it); none of the other nations have anything like this going on. Fire is consistently treated as a “special” element unlike any of the others, and firebenders get to do things like keep volcanoes from erupting to protect everyone else in the world and no other nation has anything comparable going on; we also get a lot of info on how unique the Fire Nation ecology is and the specialized management it requires. The war is mostly understood through the lens of how it affects the Fire Nation, with a lot more time given to how it’s warped Fire Nation culture than the harm they’ve done to the rest of the world (indeed, a big deal is made at various points about how once the Fire Nation conquers territory, they view it as just another part of the Fire Nation and its people as their people, to be treated as such, and those who don’t follow that ideal are presented as aberrations, which is… not how empires actually work). And so on.

But the biggest issue… Kyoshi. Embershas a really weird take on Kyoshi and her role in the Fire Nation’s history that hangs over the entire fic, and not in a good way. See, in Embers-verse the Fire Nation in Kyoshi’s time was a bunch of independent islands ruled by feudal lords (who fought each other all the time but apparently never tried to take more territory than they could control or unify the islands because they knew they couldn’t hold it, because that’s clearly how aggressive warlords think *rolls eyes*). But the Earth Kingdom was attacked by Fire Nation pirates, and none of the local “Great Names” could stop them because hey, the pirates weren’t their subjects. So Kyoshi committed genocide on half the Fire Nation and forced the survivors to swear allegiance to the Fire Lord, and in Embers if you swear loyalty to a firebender, you can’t break it without dying or nearly dying (more on that when we get to the worldbuilding). So, yeah, the political structure of the Fire Nation is presented as being an unnatural imposition and it’s all the Avatar’s fault, with the war being a direct consequence of this. Yeesh. This backstory ends up pervading the Fire Nation’s characterization, providing justification for why no firebender will ever trust the Avatar and why they’re convinced the other nations want to wipe them out and will if the war turns against them or if they try to make peace. It doesn’t justify the war… but it is used to present the imperialist conquerors as victims themselves, doing something they’d never have done if an outside force hadn’t mauled them and rearranged their political system first (all that pent up aggression they used to work out fighting each other had to go somewhere, apparently…). And that… really makes me uncomfortable, not least because of how it takes the onus for starting the conflict off the Fire Nation and puts it on someone else (not the only way the fic does this, as Ozai ends up overshadowed by the real villains too) while also creating a scenario where it feels like the world revolves around the Fire Nation and the Fire Nation’s issues, with the rest of the world as supporting players. In short, while it doesn’t try to justify the Fire Nation’s actions in the present, it goes to great length to make sure those actions are understandable and Fire Nation voices and Fire Nation concerns are prioritized by the narrative while those of other nations are generally marginalized.

It gets especially obvious when you see the treatment Vathara gives the other nations. So, let’s take a look at the fic’s worldbuilding in general.

The Worldbuilding of Embers

One of the most talked about aspects of Embers is its worldbuilding; Vathara takes what’s established in canon and adds a lot of detail and complexity to it. Like most aspects of the fic, however, said worldbuilding can be very controversial; fans love how detailed it is and how it reframes their understanding of canon, while critics tend to think it doesn’t fit well with what canon establishes about the world. Personally, I tend to fall into “the worldbuilding is really interesting and compelling, but I’d like it a lot better if it was an original setting rather than trying to shoehorn it into the Avatar world,” but there are a few cases where I do think it has very profound issues of its own. So, let’s dig into it, shall we?

Bending: I’m going to address Vathara’s take on bending first, because it influences almost everything else she does with the setting. Bending in Embers works quite differently from how it does in canon. Most obviously, not only does every element have its own sub-school of healing (instead of just water), but every element has mind control powers of a different sort. Yes, really. I’ll discuss each of them in turn as I get to each nation specifically, but in general for a fic that prides itself on realistic consequences for actions and well-researched worldbuilding it's a rather... striking choice to throw in “but literal mind control” as an explanation for peoples’ actions. Also, benders (and non-benders, to a lesser degree) are often depicted as being under their element’s direct influence much more obviously than in canon, to the extent that it’s treated as genuinely surprising when someone does something opposed to their element’s philosophy; despite the work Vathara does to flesh out her various cultures, this ends up making them feel rather “planet of hats-y” at times. Ultimately, I kind of like Vathara’s bending as a magic system, creepy stuff and all, but I do think she adds so many elemental bells and whistles to things that the basic idea of magical elemental martial arts gets kind of muddled.

The Fire Nation (and dragons): I’m going to start with the Fire Nation, because it’s clearly Vathara’s favorite culture and the one where the dragon’s share of the worldbuilding goes to. And, okay, I’m a bit torn. Because on the one hand, Vathara’s Fire Nation is genuinely interesting. On the other hand, it ends up diverging significantly from the show’s Fire Nation, to a level beyond what I think Vathara intended or realized; for another, I think there’s some very problematic aspects of this society that go uninterrogated because Vathara is too busy squeeing over how awesome they are. I’m also including dragons in this section because they’re intimately (in some cases very intimately) tied with the Fire Nation, and because Vathara clearly really likes them and changes them significantly from canon.

To start with, let’s look at the political system. I’m honestly not sure Vathara realizes this because she doesn’t really discuss in in her author notes, but she somehow ends up giving the Fire Nation an entirely different form of government than they had in canon. The canon Fire Nation is clearly a centralized absolute monarchy; everything we see seems to be run by a centralized bureaucracy, its military force is a centralized, professional military, and the chain of command for both culminates in the Fire Lord, who has absolute legal, military and (implicitly) religious authority over everyone. Vathara’s Fire Nation is still a monarchy, but instead of a top-down absolute monarchy it's a bottom-up feudal monarchy where, instead of one centralized country, it’s made up of a bunch of local fiefdoms where people are loyal first and foremost to whoever their local “Great Name” is, that person has authority over the domain and then in turn swears loyalty to the Fire Lord. Needless to say, this is a completely different form of government and would produce a completely different social and especially military structure from the one we see in the show. Indeed, in the fic said social structure is greatly explored and becomes plot-critical, but it doesn’t really jive with other aspects ported over from the show’s version (such as why Embers’s Fire Nation still has a centralized professional military instead of each domain providing their own troops separately when called on, as would be the case in an actual feudal system). Unfortunately, I think a lot of the detail also comes at the expense of the other nations, with a lot of aspects of Vathara’s Fire Nation being held up as unusually awesome in-universe, whether explicitly or implicitly. Most obviously, Great Names (which, considering the Fire Nation’s Japanese influences, is a pretty clear equivalent of historical daimyo) and their heirs are awesome and Vathara really, really wants to make sure we know that. The fic makes it clear that to be a Great Name you have to be a badass, and you have to hold yourself to certain standards of behavior (even a Great Name as tyrannical as Ozai seems to have to have some standards at least where his subjects – ie, the Caldera specifically in his case – are concerned) and have to keep all the volcanoes in their territory under control so everyone should be grateful to them, and have their special court language based on Sanskrit that only they speak, and if you’re a real Great Name everyone will respect you and think you’re wonderful because you’re just. That. Awesome. Even Earth Kingdom characters are impressed when realizing that Zuko (or "Lee”) is probably a Great Name’s son and think that must make him a badass! It gets a little wearying after a while, to be honest, especially since the other nations have nothing comparable (titled Earth Kingdom nobles don’t get nearly as much focus, with a few exceptions, and the Water Tribes and Air Nomads obviously have completely different systems). At the same time, the Fire Nation is also apparently the only country that regularly fields female soldiers (this one does have some basis in canon – they certainly seem to have more of them, at the very least) and also the only country where a commoner can become a high-ranking officer, even though the sorts of feudal societies Vathara’s Fire Nation is modeled on tend to not have much room for social mobility, to put it mildly (military aristocrats are an elitist bunch, as a rule, and tend to guard their prerogatives jealously!).

Oh, and this is all held together by the Fire Nation’s version of mind control – loyalty. Basically, anyone who swears allegiance to a firebender can’t break it without resulting in severe illness or death, and powerful firebenders can even attract the loyalty of people around them and make them want to serve them, even if said people don’t want to or even know what’s happening (in some cases, like Azula with the Dai Li, even if they’re not Fire Nation!). Every Fire Nation citizen (except exiles) owe loyalty to someone, and again, can’t break it or disobey an order without potentially fatal consequences. And this is where I have my real problem with Vathara’s Fire Nation. This system as a whole is never criticized or problematized. Oh, sure, loyalty to the Fire Lord specifically is a bad thing… because it was imposed from outside by Kyoshi. In the natural state of things, every domain would be independent – but still under the control of their Great Name, still with their own little loyalty pyramid, just without the Fire Lord at the top over everyone. And, indeed, at the end of the fic, the solution to the war is… to dissolve the Fire Lord’s throne and return every domain to self-rule but keeping the Great Name/loyalty system intact. This is uncritically presented as a good thing, because this way the Fire Nation will police itself by means of domains fighting each other (and it’s made clear Fire Nationals always want to fight, and it’s a dreadful imposition to try and make them live peacefully) keeping any one of them from getting too powerful. What’s never addressed is the way this would logically lock a quarter of the world into perpetual conflict with itself, driven by the personal honor of feudal warlords whose people are essentially powerless to disobey them (and again, it’s made clear Fire Nation clans have to have conflict; we’re explicitly told Sozin’s father trying to mediate them all was doomed to failure and drove him to die young, and this was crucial for shaping Sozin’s outlook on life, his resentment of the Avatar, and his desire to redirect his people’s aggression outward). And despite Vathara’s insistence that a proper Great Name doesn’t take more territory than they know they can hold, I’m still not sure what’s stopping a particularly ambitious lord from conquering neighboring domains, forcing their lords to swear loyalty, and eventually building up enough of a powerbase to start the whole mess over again. I don’t think Vathara’s intention was for her Fire Nation to be read this dystopian, but personally, I find it very hard to read it any other way (it doesn’t help that almost all our major Fire Nation POVs are nobility, military, or both; we don’t really get the common person’s take on all this, but I somehow doubt they’re all that enthused). It does remind me a bit of PC Hodgell’s Kencyrath series (enough that I wonder if Vathara’s read it…) where the Kencyr also have a feudal society driven by magically binding loyalty to the ruling class and strict, arcane codes of honorable behavior, except that society is portrayed as deeply, profoundly messed up in ways that Vathara’s Fire Nation isn’t. Also, one last word on the concept of loyalty… it pretty much creates a society where the “I was just following orders!” defense is actually valid (yes, you can disobey orders in Vathara’s Fire Nation, but the consequences are bad enough it’s clear people generally don’t, and Fire Nationals in-fic tend to treat “I had orders” as a justification for most things) and… I really, really hope that was unintentional. Because if not… damn.

In hindsight, this may have sounded harsher than I meant it to. I really do find the concept of Vathara’s Fire Nation interesting, and “decadent empire run by corrupt, backstabbing sorcerer-aristocrats” is one of my favorite setting types, but I really wish she’d taken the very problematic aspects of this society and, well, problematized them instead of going all in on “clans and domains are awesome and Great Names are awesome and everyone wants a good Great Name to pledge loyalty to.” It’s not that Vathara’s Fire Nation doesn’t have problems, but said problems are mostly presented as being imposed from outside (the entire office of the Fire Lord, for one…) and the ideal solution is to essentially revert back to the pre-Kyoshi status quo. It plays into the overall theme, which I’ll get to at the end of the review, that yes, the war is wrong, and Ozai was wrong… but the Fire Nation itself is the real victim here instead of the people they were, you know, trying to conquer, or at least as much of a victim as they are. And, well, I don’t like the implications of that very much (and I’m less sympathetic to this sort of thing than usual this past year, considering certain current events), especially when you consider Vathara’s takes on the other nations.

Before we go on, one last word I’d like to have is on dragons. Vathara clearly likes dragons a lot. I don’t blame her – I went through a big phase of dragon-loving in my teenage years, and they still remain one of my favorite fictional creatures. In a broad sense, I really like Vathara’s take on dragons. Unfortunately, she’s shoehorned them into a setting where they don’t fit, and it makes a mess. Canon’s dragons are “the original firebenders,” fire’s equivalent to sky bison for air or badgermoles for earth. They’re powerful, wise, ancient creatures, sure, but still essentially animals. And I really think Vathara didn’t like that, because her dragons are sapient, nigh-immortal shapeshifters who can and do often interbreed with humans. On its own, none of that’s bad – I like most of those traits in dragons, and there’s mythological basis for most of it. But where Vathara tries to jam them into the place of canon’s dragons is where it gets awkward. In particular, she seems to have an axe to grind with canon’s take on dragons, at several points actively mocking how dragons are often considered animals by humans, people who don’t realize dragons are sapient, or how they are regarded as no more than sky bison (which in canon I’d say is no insult at all, but, well, I don’t think Vathara likes sky bison very much). That “can breed with humans” bit becomes particularly important, because it turns out all Fire Nation people are descended from dragons. Most of them very distantly, of course, but some much more closely, including (of course) Zuko. And we get treated to a lot of exposition on how this directly influences Fire Nation people’s psychology and culture and makes them different from other humans, especially “dragon-children” with close draconic ancestry. So basically, what it boils down to is Vathara’s favorite nation having literally superhuman ancestry (I count “being a dragon” as superhuman) something none of the other nations do (it also adds another layer to fic!Fire Nation’s persecution complex, since they think if the other nations find out they’d consider them subhuman). Normally, I’d love to read about a culture of dragon-people, but it’s just so incredibly out of place in the Avatarverse that I can’t really connect with it there, especially since I feel like it just serves to underscore that Vathara’s favorite culture is special, everyone!

Basically, there’s a lot I find conceptually interesting in Vathara’s Fire Nation, but I don’t like it as written. Personally, I’d emphasize the self-destructive nature of their feudal honor culture more, play loyalty for horror in general (not just if you’ve got a bad lord), and move it out of the Avatarverse entirely into another setting where the dragon stuff could be made to actually fit, or at least into a fic where it’s a full AU from the start in a sort of “Avatar: The Last Airbender reimagined, ultimate universe style” rather than a canon divergence AU that still accepts large swaths of the show as having happened. This is something I’ll be coming back to quite a bit, actually, since I think Vathara’s Fire Nation really highlights how much of this stuff I’d find much more palatable as original fic (or, again, full AU) rather than fanfic.

The Air Nomads: Okay, this is where I think real problems lie. Because even if I unironically loved everything else about the fic… I still wouldn’t be able to rec it unreservedly if it had Vathara’s take on the Air Nomads in it. Whereas most of my other issues with the fic are about context and execution, its take on the Air Nomads is something I find inherently irresponsible and indefensible on its own merits. Vathara’s Air Nomads disturb me – not their activities in the fic, but the meta fact that this portrayal exists at all. What am I talking about, you ask? Well, first off, there’s a running theme that starts in the fic early any time the Air Nomad genocide is mentioned talking about how it actually makes perfect sense that everyone in the world secretly hated and resented the Air Nomads and weren’t that sad to see them go. To the point that it starts getting uncomfortably victim-blamey. Then we later learn that in the distant past the Air Nomads used to be Mongol-like warlike conquerors. Okay, that’s not as bonkers as it seems on the surface (real-world Tibet did have its imperial age, and there are some interesting historical connections between Tibet and Mongolia) but considering the earlier portrayal, I still side-eye it. And then, we get the big reveal – the Air Nomads, or at least the Air Monk elders, were evil. See, the airbenders’ version of mind control is something called “Harmonious Accord” that is never really explained in detail but is apparently just flat-out brainwashing. And the Temple Elders used it to force all their people to agree on everything and to use the Air Nuns as baby factories then force them to give up their children to be raised communally. Anyone who dissented, and anyone who wasn’t a bender (canonically, all Air Nomads were benders, but clearly Vathara knows better) were kicked out and forced to live among the other nations, which boiled down to the Air Nomads inflicting their criminals on everyone else. Since they were all conditioned to not be attached to anything, the Air Nomads wandered around the world, causing disruption and refusing to deal with the consequences of their actions. Oh, and little things like “compassion” were brainwashed away too, apparently (which is, like, the antithesis of actual Buddhist belief – hey, Vathara, compassion’s the whole point). And it turns out that their pacifism was a hypocritical sham, forced on them by one bitter old monk (who started the temple system) who was jealous of the warlords and seized power during a power vacuum and remade the whole culture in his image (and apparently by forcing the airbenders to be peaceful, he somehow locked them out of most of their powers, including healing… somehow). Yeah, so basically, Vathara’s Air Nomads were a literal brainwashing cult created by an evil old man bitter because he wasn’t a good warrior as a form of revenge, and everything Aang knew about his people was a lie! I can get trying to grey up the Air Nomads a bit, break a few of Aang’s pedestals, but this is just excessive. And, sort of as the antithesis of how it seems like nobody can ever get a word in edgewise arguing with a Fire Nation character, any time Aang tries to defend his people, he’s met with evidence of some new horrible thing they did.

Now, like I said, Embers doesn’t try to justify the genocide itself. The mass murder is clearly portrayed as wrong (though it also has some of the edge taken off – a lot of the kids got out, with help, and there are enclaves of surviving airbenders around the world, including in the Fire Nation, so Aang’s not really the Last Airbender). But at the same time, the destruction of the Temples themselves and the culture that was based there… Vathara seems to think that was good, or at least necessary? She even has Gyatso, or at least his ghost, seem to agree with her on that. And, okay, I hate it. I hate that Vathara took a peaceful, monastic people from canon and turned them into evil baby stealers, for reasons I’m not entirely sure on (partially, I feel this may be to punish Aang specifically – more on that when we get to characters – but I also can’t help but wonder if a Buddhist monk wronged Vathara somehow in real life, because it’s sort of… weirdly personal). But I especially hate it because the Air Nomads are a stand-in for people groups who have faced genocide in real life – Tibetan Buddhists most obviously, of course, but others as well. And while Vathara did say in some of her ANs that she wanted to engage with the sort of propaganda that makes genocide possible… what she honestly ended up doing, IMO, was creating a culture where that propaganda is true (they’re not like us! They don’t think like us! They don’t value our culture! They don’t care about family or loyalty! Peaceful coexistence with them just isn’t possible!). And, well, by about the dozenth chapter where I feel like I’m being treated to the Protocols of the Air Temple Elders (seriously, the only thing that saves the fic from flat-out slandering the Air Nomads with blood libel is that they don’t seem to steal other nations’ children – though honestly, I wouldn’t put it past Embers’s Air Nomads) I just feel angry. Even Yangchen gets reduced to having been a brainwashed nun who had to be saved by the yaoren before she could realize her destiny as the Avatar. I just… am deeply disturbed Vathara thought going this far was okay, and desperately hope the unfortunate implications here were unintentional. Desperately.

The Water Tribes: Vathara’s take on the Water Tribes has me torn. On the one hand, she does go into a lot of detail about what the lives and customs of an actual Arctic tribal people might entail, in particular how their wars and raiding work, how their chiefs lead and gain honor, the role of women elders in the tribe as peacemakers, negotiators and sources of wisdom and authority, etc. I like all that stuff a lot. But there’s also some problems. The biggest problem, as I’ll get to when we talk about characters, is Katara. Vathara openly hates Katara, and a lot of what we learn about the Water Tribes is filtered through her take on Katara, which ends up painting a lot of it in a bad light. Furthermore, a lot of the comments Vathara makes about the research she did for the worldbuilding here comes across as, well, pretty condescending in the way she explains how “tribes” have to prioritize survival above all else (as if “tribes” are some sort of unified phenomenon), using the “E word” unironically when talking about real-life Inuit peoples, and the hopefully unintentional implication that anyone who lives in the Arctic is definitionally driven insane by the lack of a regular day-night cycle. Ultimately, this ends up painting a picture of the Water Tribes (especially the Southern Tribe; the Northern and Foggy Swamp tribes don’t get as much focus) as backwards and parochial, focused on their own communities above all else and not really caring about the rest of the world except as it affects them; also, they’re seemingly obsessed with revenge, to the point that it’s treated as fact that if a Water Tribe Avatar is born while the Hundred Years’ War is still ongoing, it will almost certainly end with said Avatar leading their people to commit genocide on the Fire Nation as “enemies of the tribe” (which also serves to feed the fic’s ideas about Fire Nation victimhood, and is part of a general trend where the fic equates “the desire to see the Fire Nation as a state and military power defeated” with “virulent racism against the Fire Nation as a people”). Also, Vathara’s waterbenders have the power to control other peoples’ emotions and bind them together towards common attitudes and goals; it’s very telling that unlike Fire Nation loyalty, this is called out as being creepy and dangerous, and Katara gets portrayed as a terrible person for doing it, albeit subconsciously. It’s not all bad – Water Tribe warriors, including Sokka, Hakoda, and Bato, tend to get fairly sympathetic portrayals (even though they do sometimes need other characters to explain things to them that I really think they shouldn’t) but then you also get weird asides like the implication that Gran Gran is apparently into murder and eugenics(!) on rather spurious reasoning. So, all in all, it’s a mixed bag, with some genuinely interesting worldbuilding I actually really like, that unfortunately often gets filtered through a seeming need to make Katara look bad that negatively impacts the portrayal of the whole culture.

The Earth Kingdom: This will be the shortest section, as Vathara’s Earth Kingdom feels very close to the canon Earth Kingdom. Even earthbenders’ form of mind control apparently just involves binding people to honor contracts and agreements, which is pretty straightforward and doesn’t get much focus. The biggest issue is the Dai Li. Honestly, I think Vathara gives the Dai Li more overt whitewashing than she does the Fire Nation. Vathara’s Dai Li are actually supposed to be an order of badass spirit-fighters, protecting the people from dangerous spirit world threats, which they apparently still do most of the time, with the whole "secret police” thing being more of a sideline. While Long Feng is still presented as evil, the overall vibe is more that the Dai Li are only corrupt because he’s in charge, rather than the whole organization being rotten (and we’re treated to a number of sympathetic Dai Li characters, most obviously Shirong, while the Gaang get called out for assuming the Dai Li are evil, even though none of their interactions with them have given them any reason to think otherwise). And even Long Feng gets a war hero backstory he didn’t have in canon. I assume this is more of Vathara’s desire to add moral greyness to the setting, but, well, I don’t think that the creepy authoritarian secret police were a group that really needed a sympathetic POV showing that they’re mostly a bunch of honorable men who just want what’s best for their city and it’s just the guy in charge who’s a bad apple, honest! She also gives Kuei a bunch of superpowers for being Earth King, which I’ll discuss when I get to the fic’s themes since I view it as part of a larger trend.

Spirits: Embers uses spirits a lot; it also really plays up the blue and orange morality of spirits in a way I genuinely like and appreciate (though Vathara seems weirdly defensive about this, like she expects her readers to assume that all spirits must be “good guys” and she has to defend a different portrayal, despite the fact that in my experience most of the Avatar fandom considers spirits to be assholes and thinks the world would be better off without them). I do have one particular issue, though. Maybe no one else cares, but as a grad student in religious studies it bugs me so much. That’s Vathara’s use of real-world deities. Agni as the Fire Nation’s patron god has some slight basis in canon, since Fire Nation honor duels are called Agni Kais (Agni is the name of the Vedic fire god… but it’s also literally just the word for “fire” in Vedic Sanskrit) but then out of nowhere partway through the fic she throws in Guanyin as a deity worshipped in the Earh Kingdom, and Tengri as the deity of the Air Nomads. Tengri, in real life, is the chief deity of Tengrism, a traditional religion of Mongolia (which ties back to the connection between the historical Air Nomads as fantasy Mongols from the fic’s history) while Guanyin is indeed venerated in China – but she’s a Buddhist bodhisattva, which is especially weird because the Earth Kingdom isn’t really coded Buddhist in either the show or Embers (shouldn’t the Air Nomads be the ones revering a bodhisattva? And this one really gets me in particular; for some reason, likely Guanyin’s comparative real-life prominence, it feels as immersion-breaking as if it turned out one of the Air Temples was now home to a sect of Christian or Manichaean monks). It’s especially jarring because the Water Tribes still revere the Moon and Ocean Spirits rather than real-world deities (and Vathara gets their names backwards – the Moon is Tui and the Ocean is La, but she flips them for some reason). Honestly, I wouldn’t use real-world deities in the Avatarverse in the first place (I have referenced Agni in some of my old fanfics, following fanon at the time, and I now consider that something of an old shame, fwiw) and if I did, I’d stick with a unified theme of Vedic deities (going off of Agni) rather than taking a grab bag of different traditions and trying to weld them into one cosmology.

The Avatar and Yaoren: Vathara’s take on the Avatar is… interesting. On the one hand, she does have a running theme of each Avatar having to wrestle with their predecessor’s mistakes which I like, and which basically became canon as we got more stories focused on different Avatars (though I do think Vathara sometimes takes it a bit too far, making it seem like the Avatar has caused more problems than they’ve solved; seriously, what did Kyoshi do to you?). On the other hand, she for some reason feels the need to retcon that the Avatar is not actually the reincarnation of their predecessors, but the World Spirit (this fic being mostly written before the introduction of Raava) choosing a new, different human host each time. And I absolutely don’t get the point to this (conceptually, the Avatar is basically a cross between the Dalai Lama and the Avatars of Vishnu, and in traditional interpretations that’s not how either of those work) and it mostly just seems to be thrown in to give Aang something else to be wrong about. Yaoren, on the other hand, Vathara loves; they’re her own creation and as two-element benders are basically mini-avatars (though they’re actually older than the Avatar) and of course Zuko gets to be one. And while the fic goes into a lot of detail about how traumatic the experience of becoming a yaoren is, the way it also lays on thick how important yaoren are and how the Avatar needs them as advisors and how the world falling out of balance is partially due to their decline and how her yaoren characters (especially Langxue) seem to have a better idea of what’s going on and how to fix it than everyone else just oftentimes makes it feel like she’s really laying it on thick regarding how amazing this creation of hers is, with the traumatic aspect being more about milking more sympathy for Zuko than something that actually affects the plot (ie, being a yaoren supposedly cuts Zuko out of the line of succession for good, since he’s now technically a waterbender… but that ends up not mattering because the position of Fire Lord is abolished anyway, and it doesn’t stop him from becoming the Great Name of Dragons’ Wings once it’s established).

Well, this is all getting a little long, so I think I’ll stop here for now and split my overall review into two parts (at least). I hope you’ll join us next time, as we dig into characters, plot, theme, and the fic’s relationship to canon. And if you’re reading this and do like Embers, please keep in mind that I’m not trying to attack you for liking it, and all of this is just my own opinion, no more, and no less. Otherwise, see you soon (fingers crossed!) for part two!

#critical #embers #embers critical #fanfic review #reviews #avatar the last airbender #long post

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ava-of-shenanigans · 1 year

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What are your thoughts on the new Renfield x Dracula rendition 2023? I for one was so enthralled that I want to start reading the book. I have Dracula on my shelf, is that all there is to it?

I have not seen Renfield 2023 so I don’t think I’m really qualified to give an opinion on it. From what I have seen/heard of it though, it seems like their Renfield is a lot more based on Renfield from the 1931 movie, where he was played by Dwight Frye than he is on original book Renfield. The most obvious and superficial difference would probably be that 2023 Renfield is a pretty young man, like Dwight Frye Renfield, while OG book Renfield is 59 year old man. Renfield having a lot more of an obvious relationship with Dracula and acting directly as an assistant to him is also something that I think comes more from the 1931 movie. Renfield is the best character in the original book (fight me /light-hearted) but doesn’t show up a lot of in it, so if you’re reading it just for the relationship between him and Dracula you’ll probably get pretty bored. Renfield in the original book is also a character who has a lot of things that are hinted at or implied about him, but most of them are never really explained. That does make him a very fun character to speculate on or make headcanons about, but since the book has several parts where the characters will just take a moment to sit down and straight up explain what all the vampire lore that’s been implied so far is, it does feel like a cop out that none of the things that were hinted about Renfield are ever addressed afterwards.

Also, since Renfield 2023 is a horror comedy about a guy overcoming his abuser, I should probably bring this up about the original book if you want to read it, but it’s kind of a hard thing for me to know how to explain, so sorry if anything I say is unclear: Uh, basically, by writing a mentally ill character who he did not see any need to treat with respect and viewed as subhuman, deeply bigoted author Bram Stoker managed to stumble ass backwards into writing the most realistic and honest portrayal of psychiatric abuse that I’ll probably ever be able to find in any piece of media ever?

In the original book, Renfield basically has psychosis (delusions/hallucinations) and is being held in an asylum and abused by a doctor who is one of the most central main characters characters of the novel. Bram Stoker didn’t feel any obligation to make Renfield appealing or relatable to the contemporary ableist Victorian audience, and in most of his scenes it feels like we’re intended to him find his mental illness either creepy or funny. Sometimes it also feels like we’re supposed to find him pitiable, but it’s mainly either creepy or funny. However, Bram Stoker, seemingly by complete accident, managed to make Renfield behave in ways that are very realistic to how someone going through that abuse would actually act. It’s hard to really explain, it feels like Stoker was envisioning Renfield as this ableist caricature of mental illness, but then didn’t think through the implications of a lot of the stuff he wrote, and unintentionally made him complex and incredibly realistic. Reading about OG book Renfield switching between doing things that are really gross or embarrassing because he’s in a state where he has very little grasp on reality or control over himself, to trying to maintain his dignity in his more lucid states only for his abuser to force him back into humiliating himself, to doing gross, humiliating, or bad things intentionally because it’s the only way to feel like he has any power in or any way to potentially escape a situation where someone who sees him as subhuman has complete control over him, and the way his story ends is… the most raw and painfully honest depiction of what it feels like to be in that situation that I will probably ever be able to find anywhere. And it was made by an author who was definitely not aware that he was doing that, in a story that doesn’t even really acknowledge it.

Also, in my opinion, Renfield has a lot of moments that are actually funny and not just in a “mocking someone for displaying mental illness” way. 95% of the characters in Dracula are restrained, polite Victorians who never complain about anything ever and refuse to communicate properly because of it. But Renfield is just so blunt, and rude, and openly sarcastic whenever he has the chance to be, and the people he is talking to always deserve it, which is amazing.

So, yeah, OG book Renfield is one of my favourite characters of all time, he’s the best character in the original book , he manages to be both very fun and iconic while also being deeply tragic at the same time, which is great, but if what I’ve incoherently rambled about in this post doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, the 1931 movie is probably a better bet for you.

#Renfield #rm renfield #dracula #dracula novel #ava has thoughts #tw psychiatric abuse mention #My favourite dracula scene is and will always be the one where Mina goes with Seward to talk to Renfield #And because he has a delicate lady™ with him‚ Seward can’t do anything that bad to Renfield at that moment because it might upset her #And Renfield is so nice and respectful to Mina and then the moment Seward speaks Renfield is like ‘shut up you idiot’#‘Mrs Harker did you know that the beloved doctor is a dumbass and everything he says is terrible?’

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agentgrange · 1 year

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What is some fiction outside of the mythos or DG that you look to for inspiration?

Excellent, fun question. I've been on a narrowboat trip through the countryside and hadn't had a lot of time to get my thoughts out so this is a great way to get back in the headspace actually. This isn't going to be the most coherent answer in the world but off the top of my head here's some ideas and recommendations in no particular order.

Philip K Dick-- I've talked about his work a bit before, less because of his works themselves (there's a lot there that's problematic and can be cut) and more because he really channels that bridge between Lovecraft's historic paranoia and a modern contemporary setting

Basically any works by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison-- I feel like I don't need to say a lot about these authors, they really are the triarchy that serve as the prime example of how to distill complex occult principles into media. They really paved the way for how to take an abstract idea and shape it into fiction as a way to sort of upload an idea into another person's brain.

Rawhead Rex by Clive Barker and Les Edwards-- this graphic novel really was my gateway into horror as something more complex than the slasher / torture porn that was en vogue when I was growing up which had previously turned me off of the genre.

Strangehaven by Gary Spencer Millidge-- beautiful and inspiring labor of love about a small town subject to extraordinary circumstances

Mononoke & Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales-- Beautiful stories that give a window into how another culture expresses the same ideas as a lot of the works above

Satoshi Kon's movies to me really tap into the same energy as Philip K Dick but without a lot of the ugliness and much more beauty. Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers are my two favorites to the point that I honestly get emotional just thinking about them.

I don't need to tell you about Akira, but I will absolutely recommend you don't discount it's more low brow contemporaries like Urotsukidoji and Wicked City for some fucked up exploitation anime.

Possession (1981) is genuinely my all time favorite work of surrealist horror and a cornerstone for a lot of my ideas

Society (1989) what if Possession was even more fucked up & grind house but also silly? :3c

Obviously X-Files, Twin Peaks, and True Detective are giant influences but I'd like to recommend a fourth "weird cop" show-- FX's Fargo. The original movie was already a true crime classic but the show really takes it to 11. Season 2 is probably my favorite for reasons that will be apparent for anyone who's watched it.

Lastly the bulk of media I regularly consume is usually actually non-fiction. History, particularly US history, is fucked up and clown shoes enough that it has all the inspiration you might need if you just have a good source that can present it as an interesting narrative. Last Podcast on the Left is a good gateway into this but there's plenty of other more "serious" sources that can still be just as entertaining like the podcast Blowback. Once you're able to put history into a narrative you can be entertained by and feel invested in it becomes a lot more interesting to read books from authoritative sources that help feed into that interest because you have an emotional connection to it instead of it just being a series of context-less names and dates.

#field scribbles #asks #this was a lot of fun thank you!#bonus answer only for tags-- deathproof #its the only Tarantino movie i endorse #horror inspo

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treesap-blogs · 2 years

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Saturday evening post!! “The Merciless Ones” review by Namina Forna

Hello, Tumblrians! As you all might know, I read The Gilded Ones back in January, and really enjoyed it! Namina Forna pulled me into the story with the brutality outlined in the first half, as well as the strong friendships that powered Deka’s journey throughout, and all of the possibilities for exploring the series’ world. Unfortunately though, the ending was clunky to say the least, and it..created a bunch of flaws in the narrative that’d been set up until then. Overall I wasn't jiving with it. But! Seeing as it was still a solid novel, and it displayed Forna’s potential as a writer (it was her debut novel I’m pretty sure? I’ve unintentionally read a lot of those, goodness), I immediately put The Merciless Ones on by TBR! To which it was ordered by a librarian, and it arrived around the last week of the month :).

I have incredibly mixed feelings about this book, though. Of course, when reading a book that expands on an ending that I disliked (the same thing happened with Six Crimson Cranes to some degree?), it’s logical to assume that I as a reader wouldn’t really enjoy it as much, although I was hoping it would show some promise. It did, in some part! Firstly, I was waiting to see some of the political aftermath of the ending, and we saw that with the Alaki’s treatment, and a bit of inclusion on how the blood ceremony was handled after that (it was basically no longer practiced, spoiler). It integrated more of that brutality present in TGO, especially with the beginning starting off with a bang, as the first sentences are literally about two corpses Deka finds.

Overall though, it had the same issues as its predecessor but intensified: Plot twists felt predictable(except for one?), and the foreshadowing was very obvious because of that. Around the 1/3rd mark I just started making fun of Deka’s “guesses” being proven right again.

SPOILER SECTION!! If you want to read ahead, sure.

Firstly, Melanis got to be cartoonishly evil in the ending. I actually giggled when Deka (foolishly and half-hazardly) tried to convince Melanis into joining her side because The Gilded Ones were lying the entire time (..shocker), to which Melanis just prided them on their sexist cruelty lmao💀 like okay “that just makes me love them even more!” jdkwnfkensof

Actually, everyone gets to be cartoonishly evil by the end?? Goodness.

Speaking of the gods and their sexism, I..don’t know how to feel about how it was handled here. It felt like there was too much “both sides-ism” in the narrative now, even if Deka’s internal monologue says multiple times that the male monarchs/authorities went totally overboard and shouldn’t have created the misogynistic society that literally tortured Deka (and literal millions) in this series!! But now we have a reason for that oppression(kinda), and it feels weird. Why does there need to be a logical reason for it? Fine, I guess it’s for plot reasons because of how the Merciless and Gilded Ones are counterparts of each other (the former essentially being a genderbent version of the latter), and eventually turned against each other, yada yada yada…

It felt like Forna wanted to make the gods complex or interestingly evil but..I don’t know, execution wasn’t really that great.

Deka is also ridiculously overpowered?? I completely forgot she was said to be wholly immortal in TGO, and for most of the book it just makes her feel detached from the other characters and a chunk of the stakes of the narrative. Especially with how she literally is for most of the time?! I might not be original for stating this (shoutout to a helpful Goodreads reviewer, I wish I remembered your user, bless), but what made the first book really stick was that even with the fantastical elements it still felt human. Britta and Deka’s unconditional friendship, how the Alaki supported each other, their very human emotions and struggles despite what you’d expect from the premise carried it. For TMO, we got a false(?) McGuffin, along with Deka being very different from her friends..being truly immortal, the only one who can communicate with the gods, kind of being a god herself. It’s..huh. AND NOW SHE CAN GIVE OTHER PEOPLE ABILITIES?! NOT JUST ABILITIES BUT IMMORTALITY?!?! SLOW DOWN😭 (At least we establish she has some limits though, because her physical body is taking physical damage by the end. How the hell does she even work though?! Is she a soul? Something incomprehensible to the human mind, vast and cosmic?? But then how was that formed, is she just..separate from the body she was born/created with? That raises so many questions!!?)

Anyhow. It really set in that I kind of excused how rushed Kaita and Deka’s romance was? They started out with a rivalry or “hating each other”, had one conversation and suddenly they got googly eyes for each other. I’m thinking of this because their “development” was mentioned somewhere in the book, as a way of signaling to the readers how far they’ve come. But it?? Sure doesn’t feel like it in retrospect haha. He also doesn’t do a ton in the book, except for when they legitimately tried to redeem Deka’s father because he’d “realized his mistakes” or some bullshit and he talked some sense into her (BC HER FATHER LITERALLY TORTURED HER?? WILLINGLY!! SHE LITERALLY CHANGED HER APPEARANCE TO NO LONGER HAVE HIS CHARACTERISTICS BECAUSE SHE WAS TRAUMATIZED BRO🧍). I like that Kaita did that actually because I was like “TALK YOUR SHITTTTT” like Deka wdym “I hated my father all this time😔and for what reason😢” Kaita literally was like HE BEHEADED YOU!! Such a stupid part of the book like girlie I get having parental issues but I was gonna lose my shit fr if Forna used his death as a means of redeeming him chkwncosnfoenforn.

That rant aside though, again, Kaita was mostly useless.

I also just found a lot of stuff to be unintentionally funny this time around because the plot got to be nonsensical after a while. There was one part I did find genuinely funny though less so because of the bad writing and more so just the way events played out?? One of the highlights of this book in my opinion was when the Merciless Ones(the male gods) were trying to mess with Deka’s memories and she knew and was just so fed up of being manipulated by gods she just walked out of their chamber lmfao.

One last complaint! Not digging the sudden introduction of romantic relationships for this book. The first one was so based around platonic ones, and found family even, that it kinda took away from that :(.

Ok! Complaints aside! I’m a little intrigued by what they established with White Hands — will she get to explore her own gender and identity outside of what the Gilded Ones pushed onto her in the next book? (Does that mean they could be non-binary like Thandiwe?) Are they technically intersex, therefore making their story also kind of work as an allegory for forced intersex surgeries? I’m kind of intrigued, as a non-binary reader.

Last things I feel like discussing for this section!! I was pretty stoked that Karmoko Thandiwe was revealed to be non-binary! They were my favorite of the Karmokos in the last book, probably one of my favorite characters overall, their introduction just stuck with me and was so metal. (The “I’ll cut your tongue off and put it in a jar to keep me company” thing caught me so off-guard lmao but it was also kinda badass.) I do feel like the confirmation of it was a little awkwardly worded, though (as are most instances of NB rep unfortunately because it’s often expected that the audience won’t automatically catch on, so we gotta have their gender and pronouns be explicitly stated). Karmoko Huon being trans surprised me though! I’m not gonna lie, maybe there were some hints I could’ve been missing out on because Deka was like “oh yea! I guess I picked it up from the specific way she was shut out from society and ostracized” and I just? Couldn’t remember any of that really standing out?? Or maybe it’s like the Kaita relationship thing where not as much really happened? Anyhow. The influx of queer representation was unexpected but good, although I feel like they only got surface-level on how queer people are oppressed in a multitude of ways in this world, specifically in the case of alaki/women? I guess I get why that was the case though, because Deka is our POV and she’s not queer in any way. Point is though I just wish there was a bit more time spent on that, not because I want to see people suffering on the pages even more(heaven knows there’s enough of that for this series), but so there could be a little more care put into discussing it?

I think that’s all the spoiler-y stuff I have to discuss!

End of spoiler section!! You may proceed :)

Like the first book though, I liked the action scenes! Even if the plot they were part of was kinda clunky the way the fights played out were solid in my opinion. (And there were a couple times where some batshitery popped up mid-battle and I was like “OH FUCK!” and nibbled on my imaginary popcorn.)

Overall, it feels too harsh a descriptor to call this “worse” than TGO, but I just wasn’t vibing with it as much. All the gripes I had with book one were more prominent here; it felt like the feeling I had reading the ending was extended to approximately 300 more pages. (I’m aware the book is longer than that. The number is there for a reason because it wasn’t that the entire time.) Deka’s backstory stuff just gets increasingly convoluted.

But, with all that’s said and done, I’ll still be seeing how this series ends, because I enjoy most of it and am too far along this journey with these characters to just abandon them. Consider TGO a complicated favorite, if you will.

Book rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 stars.

Paz, signing off!

(Book trigger/content warnings: Torture, gore, PTSD, grief(death of a parent), references to homophobic and queerphobic abuse.)

#book talk #book review #booklr #the gilded ones #the merciless ones #namina forna

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aeonknight · 8 months

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I find YA novel title trends really interesting. It used to be very common to see books called "The [Word with obscure meaning or one that doesn't necessarily work as a noun being used as one]" which was popularized by "The Giver," which caught readers eyes with a strange word that they want to think about or read the book to unravel, but that naturally evolved into "The [Noun] of [Main character name]" or sometimes "The [Noun] of [Dead character name]," for which I blame Twin Peaks somehow, but it more generally marked a trend in YA books moving towards mystery and intrigue. On the other hand, more adventurous stories tended to stick with "The [Noun]," with said noun generally being an important plot or lore item or event. This doesn't have one originating factor, it's just that it's a very basic way to name novels, but it does give readers a good idea of what they're getting into, plot wise. And when I say [Noun] here, it can be something complex, including descriptors or things. Examples of this are The Lightning Thief or The Hunger Games. This title trend split into two and then three as authors needed more complex titling. First off was "The [Adjective] [Noun]," which was simply a way to create more complex titles, but then... a new challenger arose. In my opinion inspired probably by George RR Martin's series being called "A Song of Ice and Fire," and to a lesser extent the series titles all being "A [Noun] of/for/with [Nouns]," the title trend emerged of naming things accordingly, especially in fantasy. To be clear, A Song of Ice and Fire is NOT YA, but it is what inspired the change in general, which was then popularized amoung YA by a certain Sarah J Mass and her series "A Court of Thorns and Roses." This isn't bad titling, necessarily, but every series being "A [Noun] of [Nouns] and [Nouns]" does make it a lot harder to differentiate them. "A Court of Thorns and Roses" also has a smaller trend of many books including the word "thorn/thorns" in their titles, which is often a way to show that the MC is different or special or dark (like a thorn on a beautiful rose, often ignored but dangerous and often rebellious), which is especially true in regency inspired fantasy stories about poor girls rising up to get involved with and dismantle fancy governments. Also, this is emblematic of a trend in YA books going from being very male oriented or at least gender neutral in target audience (The Giver and Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings have male protagonists, as did most of the many fantasy adventure stories for the time), though with a lot of books about girls becoming women and moving into adulthood, to modern YA having a much more heavy lean on romance novels written for girls (and occasionally about queer boys but even then those are often debatably written for girls). I consider this a marked change because even though there were always YA books written for a female audience, they've definitely moved more towards romance and wish fulfillment over coming of age stories. Another thing that's interesting, the genre name has become YA even though the target audience is clearly people in the 13-16 age demographic, which is NOT young adults, whereas the older books (from the 90s especially) were instead called teen books, which makes a lot more sense.

#young adult novels #ya literature #im probably the only one who finds this interesting but whatever #also none of this is meant as derogatory or insulting to authors for their title choices or readers for their choice of text #i just find the evolution interesting

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elainemorisi · 2 years

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for someone who has never and probably will never lived anywhere near them, wildfires freak me out to an irrational degree

#was just finishing a book by an australian got to the bit about bushfires #specifically about deciding whether to leave or fight them and ways to fight them #aaaaaaaaaah #it even shows up in the original novel that is basically All The Author's Complexes; the climax is the defeat of an urban fire #which triggers the exact same aaaaaaaaaah #but then was just reading Floridians talking about hurricane evacuation and was reminded #so it's maybe the 'disasters that must be fled' part at least in part?#none of the natural disasters I've lived with (tornado and blizzard primarily) are things you flee #there's some flooding near where I live now but not at all frequent and flooding alone doesn't freak me out like that idk

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prairieprayer · 3 years

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An Outside Look on Dragon Riders of Pern (and why it amounted to nothing)

My initial contact with the Dragon Riders of Pern were the dogeared paperback books that lined the shelves my roommate's father coveted so lavishly. With their aged covers, their traditionally drawn scenes of drama, I knew they were old and I found myself automatically turned off by them by that alone (I know, I know, I shouldn’t judge a cover). I wouldn’t find out till months later that this series by Anne McCaffrey was one that had been well beloved for decades; not just a few weird looking Goodwill books. That it had been the source of numerous old roleplay MUDs (basically, fancy chatrooms). And, unsurprisingly with its age, that its author was one of the many at that time who despised fanworks and issued DMCAs against people, often with threats to sue.

And I can’t help but wonder if that was why this supposedly long lived and adored series... has never amounted to more than a handful of contentious fantasy sci-fi novels on gen-X and baby boomers’ shelves.

In the beginning her rules were essentially: look, but don’t touch. Read, but don’t engage. And if you did engage it had to be in an approved format that only she could agree to. Even in the early 2000s McCaffrey was still at odds with those who had stuck around her series for so long. She began allowing fanworks and easing up on her rules: read, and engage... but only by a ruleset she designed. And no porn. Even though sex was a major aspect of the books (so I hear). Her thought process seemed to be under the impression that fan work damaged her ability to sell her property for video game and filming rights. “Don’t use my characters, only your original fan ones, because if you do I’ll be telling Ubisoft and their legal team will contact you!” But then that game Ubisoft apparently set out to make for the Dreamcast didn’t even sell well, and... that was that. And have you heard of the Dragon Riders of Pern movie? Of course not, because it doesn’t exist. Despite being a relatively popular sci-fi novel series, with a concept that could have the crap milked out of it, all it got was one poorly received game and the hopes and dreams for a film. Hell, even the Dreamcast ended up a dead end console. So you won’t exactly be seeing that game re-released on your PS2 or Xbox.

So how? How is it this beloved series amounted to... pretty much nothing culturally? Amounting to even less than a single book; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which went on to produce the well-known and influential Blade Runner films, and which was published around a similar time as Dragon Riders? Everybody knows Blade Runner, everyone knows that phrase. But Dragon Riders of Pern? Good luck finding a single person amid your nerdy friends under 30-40 who knows that 23 book-long series. Just go on YouTube and search the series and find essentially nothing. Where’s the fanart? The animations? The memes? It’s not there. Yet this series has a concept and a complex social world that modern audiences would be dying to latch onto, if only they could be modernized, and if only their past hadn’t been so garbage.

I believe Anne McCaffrey’s strict grasp over her fanbase was what caused the downfall of her series (aaand perhaps her ancient views on sexuality had part in that too). Why it’s been left on the fringes on fandom, yet somehow has the appearance of being rich with history. The avid fans she did have, the ones who would have advertised her series for her through fan works, were either pushed into secrecy by her ironclad rules or were pushed away from the work all together by her personality. And so you know what took her niche? The niche HER books could have filled in fandom, were it not for how strongly she disliked fanworks? How to Train Your Dragon (now a popular book, movie, and TV series), and Wings of Fire (a power house fandom amid animators on YouTube). But god forbid you drew her characters in 1980, showed the drawing to a friend, and thus sub-sequentially introduced your friend to the series. Big no-no.

Dragon Riders of Pern will now forever live in the shadows of greater fandoms that dominate media in 2021. I look at the base concepts of her series: a sci-fi world set on an alien planet, devastated every 200 years by essentially an alien plague. A plague that only a dragon with a telepathic bond to a human can burn away. And a telepathic bond with the capacity to cause sexual passion between riders, and were it to be modernized, likely between the riders and their dragons as well (What? They’re sentient and speak human language, it would romantic af). But those concepts, like their author, will perhaps never be any greater than they were those first few years the books were published. They will never truly have a massive fandom; they will not live on in the same way old Star Trek or equally old fandoms do. Even now as one of her children continues the series, older fans allegedly dislike the new concepts. What was good about it has been turned to ash in the wind, and the time for it to grow a dedicated fan base has long, long since passed.

Just goes to show you how important it is to not... well... threaten to sue your only fans for engaging. Those fans are the only people who are going to make or break you as a culturally significant author. Your ideas, your stories, your passions can be the next Star Trek... or they can get a single poorly received game on a console that has been lost to time.

#dragonriders of pern #anne mccaffrey #fandom #dragons #scifi #meta

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grecocerullo · 2 years

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what are your other favourite books? ever since i finished the quartet i've been desperate for something as good

Oh, I have a lot of favourite books, but the thing is, most of them are not like the Neapolitan Quartet, so I can’t really judge whether they’re just as good in relation to it? If that makes sense. I mostly read either fantasy or classical literature - my all-time favourite books include Lord of the Rings, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Dracula, Les Misérables, and many others, and I’d be happy to talk about them but I’m not sure they would do! That said, here are some really good books that I think you might enjoy if you enjoyed Ferrante's novels:

Villette by Charlotte Brontë - if you're interested in painfully relatable but not always likeable female protagonists like our girl Lenù, you might like the story of Lucy Snowe who becomes a boarding school teacher in a small Belgian town where she faces intrigues, introspection, heartbreak, several other not necessarily likeable characters, and even a ghost. I dare say, this novel surpasses the more celebrated Jane Eyre for me.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn - a suspenseful, suffocating thriller about a journalist who goes to her hometown to investigate the murder and disappearance of teenage girls and is forced to confront not just this mystery but also her own toxic family. Complex female characters, themes of unhealthy family relationships, between mothers and daughters in particular. There's also an excellent eight-episode TV adaptation starring Amy Adams.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - yeah, yeah, another Brontë sister, I am not being original, but if you want another novel about cycles of abuse, willful women whose lives are not their own, and simply a bunch of characters who are various degrees of horrible towards each other and yet connected for life, I can't think of a more suitable book than this one. The plot needs no introduction, I believe.

The Time in Between (El tiempo entre costuras) by María Dueñas - I recommend this one if you’re interested in a story about a woman’s life against the backdrop of changes in social and political environment. However, it is less character-driven than the Neapolitan Quartet, and more of an adventure novel - it’s about a Spanish seamstress who becomes a British spy during World War II. There’s also a TV show based on it.

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler - this one also features an intimate, homoerotic female friendship, a disastrous romance, and an unreliable female narrator with a typewriter, but it is a very different animal from My Brilliant Friend. It’s about a teenage girl writing a (presumably) true story of the events that led her and her friend group to the murder she ended up charged with. It is witty and weird, and the author is actually the same guy who wrote A Series of Unfortunate Events (another one of my favourite book series, by the way).

Some more female-driven books that I won’t describe in detail because I don’t think they resemble the Neapolitan Quartet much, but they’re all great:

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan (fuck the Sophia Coppola movie though, it doesn’t do the book justice and erases the characters of colour)

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

#i tried to think of another book with as much focus on female friendship but unfortunately i just couldn't #maybe dare me by megan abbot but i find it one of the rare cases when the screen adaptation is better than the book itself #anyway i hope this will be of use! and if you're also interested in different genres than the quartet i'd be happy to rec some books too #asks #anonymous #*

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neocatharsis · 3 years

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NCT’s Mark Lee on Dreams, Instagram Poetry, and Growing Up

Mark has a lot going on — but he’s making time for poetry, introspection, and, of course, the members of NCT Dream. - Vivien Wu

“I’ve been thinking about dreams a lot these days!” Mark Lee exclaims over Zoom from SM Entertainment’s Seoul headquarters.

The 21-year-old leader of NCT Dream is enthusiastic as he mulls over the meaning of dreams, his back against a wall of pink and yellow flowers assembled by his fellow NCT members. He’s wearing a simple, white tee, and when he gestures with his hands, you can catch glimpses of the friendship ring that all seven members of NCT Dream wear as a symbol of their bond.

“I actually feel like dreams hold a large portion of a life, and I’m not just talking about the subconscious dreams that we all have when we sleep,” he continues. “If you put it in a way where dreams are actually things that motivate us, and the drive that keeps us going, especially as a strongly driven person myself, I feel like… a guy with no dreams is like…” He looks up, thinking. “…A car with no engine. So, I think it’s as important as yourself. That’s how deep I go with dreams.”

His interest in dreams is fitting, considering that they are also the central, underlying concept to the lore behind NCT Dream’s parent group, NCT. They connect their three subunits, NCT 127, NCT Dream, and WayV, in a complex, Inception-inspired fictional universe where dreams are the only way they can find each other, and where upon uniting they can mix to form new subunits collectively referred to as NCT U. In practical terms, this has resulted in a 23-member mega-group that is multifaceted in every way — from their musical styles and visual aesthetics to their cultural backgrounds and spoken languages.

NCT Dream’s original teenage concept meant that members were supposed to “graduate” when they came of age, and as the oldest, Mark was the first to leave the group at the end of 2018. Having grown attached, however, fans were devastated at his departure; after a year of separation, SM announced that the graduation system would be scrapped and that he would rejoin the group. Their new album, Hot Sauce, is the first with Mark in over two years. As fellow member Haechan declared in an interview with Teen Vogue earlier this week, “Mark [is] very special. NCT Dream means Mark.”

But before the rapper led NCT Dream, and before he joined NCT U and NCT 127 and SuperM — the man is in high demand — Mark’s childhood dream was writing. He grew up in Toronto, and through doing school projects and essays quickly discovered that he had a natural way with words. Inspired by Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan, Harry Potter, and James Patterson, Mark dreamt of becoming an author, long before he was recruited by SM at a global audition in Canada in 2012. “When I was in school, I was always the kind of guy who would write more than expected, and that became a thing that clicked for me,” he says. “I was like, ‘Maybe it’s something that I naturally do?’ But then that kind of turned into rap writing too, so I guess they kind of clicked together.” It explains his prolific career as a lyricist; since debuting, he’s amassed over 30 songwriting credits across his various groups, contributing to songs as iconic as NCT U’s “Boss,” NCT 127’s “Cherry Bomb,” and NCT Dream’s “Chewing Gum.”

Even with such an extensive body of work, however, penning lyrics hasn’t satiated his appetite for literary expression. In an interview with Japanese magazine Men’s Non-No, he revealed that he still hopes one day to write a book, whether that be a novel, autobiography, or something more philosophical.

In the meantime, he’s taken to writing what are basically short poems on his Instagram, which he created just a few months ago. He’s gathered over 4.5 million followers since then, but having such a large audience hasn’t deterred him from being endearingly vulnerable with the way he writes. When I refer to them as poems, he laughs and looks embarrassed, but when I ask him to tell me the stories behind them, he’s enthusiastic again. They’re short, but offer brief glimpses into Mark the writer — sharp, inquisitive, and thoughtful. As pieces of literature, they’re a little rough around the edges, but the sincerity he’s known for shines through, illuminating the introspective, philosophical side that may not be so obvious in person.

His first poem, loosely titled “Late Night Scribbling,” put into words his musings about sleep, thoughts, feelings, and writing. It meanders from topic to topic, hovering between feelings of hope and hopelessness, before ending with a comically awkward “haha.”

“I actually wrote that by imagining how I wanted to organize my Instagram page,” he explains. “I was thinking of creating an Instagram, then I realized that, well, I’m not really a picture kind of guy, I’m not really a travelling kind of guy… I kind of studied who I am first, and I [asked myself], ‘What’s something that I can really portray in an intimate way?’ and it turned out to be writing.”

“I started to brainstorm what kind of topics I could write about, and then from there on, I started to write a little each and every night, and that turned into Late Night Scribbling,” he continues. “That kind of gave me courage to start Instagram in the first place, that piece of writing.”

Two weeks later, he followed it up with “Black Socks,” a whimsical ode to, well, black socks — complete with accompanying photos of him wearing said socks. Immediately, it feels more confident and cohesive than its predecessor. Using the neat and tidy look of black socks as a metaphor, he describes his own mindset for living life: “Pleasure from perfect alignment; That also goes for my ability to be parallel with my thoughts and actions; I try to live out what’s in my mind, and keep it consistent even when forgotten like a working habit.”

Comments on the posts praise his writing and encourage him to continue sharing these small pieces of himself. On the stage, Mark takes on a confident, larger-than-life persona, while in vlogs and spoken interviews, he’s a bubbly character full of laughter and boyish charm. What the poems show is that, beneath these outer appearances, there’s another layer of complexity that is yet to be fully explored, and it’s not surprising that fans want to know more.

His day job as a K-pop idol doesn’t allow a lot of time for hobbies, though, and he confesses to not having written much lately. Despite that, he’s determined to stay in the industry for as long as possible. “Longevity is something that I’ve always been aiming for,” he says. “I’m willing to do this for a long time, and that requires a lot of work. I’m willing to take that as a challenge and I’m trying to stay as long as I can, but with quality.”

That focus on quality informs his preparations for the upcoming promotions with NCT Dream. In both their fictional world and ours, NCT Dream are a central component of NCT by virtue of their unique focus on growth — the seven members were aged between 14 and 17 when the group first debuted in 2016. Fast-forward five years, and the members are now 19 to 21, having reached a milestone in January when the youngest, Jisung, finally became a legal adult in Korea. When asked if he feels like an adult yet, though, Mark gives an extremely relatable answer with zero hesitation.

“I still feel like I’m in middle school, I’m gonna be totally honest. I swear to God, I feel like I’m… All right, I’ll put it up — I feel like I’m in high school!” He laughs. “I even had this talk with Jisung, ‘cos he’s the latest that turned into an adult. He said that he still feels like he’s a student, he doesn’t feel like he’s 20 [19 in international age] right now.”

It’s been a long time since all seven Dream members — Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle, and Jisung — have released an album together, and as the first full-length album since their debut, the fan anticipation is palpably intense. Mark himself has mentioned in various vlogs how important he believes this comeback to be, and that conviction becomes obvious whenever he talks about it.

“We had a talk all together, the seven of us, without any cameras or anything. I brought all the guys together and we talked before the whole momentum started, and I said that I’m willing to put my everything on this one. Like, I always had, but I feel like… the whole universe, or like— ” He pauses, trying to figure out how to articulate himself, and his next line is the most emphatic of our whole conversation. “There are things that are out of our control, but we can see and feel when the pieces match together sometimes, and I feel like this specific moment, this particular album, kind of had those essential parts.”

He’s thinking about all of the context surrounding this comeback: the group’s coming of age, the reunion of all seven members, the scale of the album, the fact that Jisung has only just recovered from a leg injury that meant he couldn’t dance for months — even the fact that 2020 was, against all odds, the best year yet for NCT, with release after release bringing them unprecedented success and momentum.

“I felt that coming and I explained all of that [to the group],” he continues. “This whole period of time has a lot of meaning to it, and we’re not taking that for granted, we’re working hard.” With everything that’s happened, Hot Sauce is a historic moment for NCT Dream, and that’s been reflected in their numbers — the album clocked over 1.7 million pre-orders, obliterating their previous record of 500,000 for last year’s EP, Reload.

Their familial bond and the success that has come with it is the culmination of years spent living, working, and growing up together. The members have collectively missed out on key experiences that most teenagers might take for granted, distanced as they are from normal life, and the group also benefits from an unusually loose adherence to traditional Korean age hierarchy. The result is a brotherhood that goes beyond just being colleagues. “What we have is pretty intimate, and it’s also genuine,” Mark says.

About his role, he is matter of fact. “I’m by far the most easily approachable punching bag for the team. I am not… complaining…” He laughs. “But all jokes aside, I feel like my role for this team… Yes, I am the oldest and I am the leader but I’m also… In Korea, in the culture, age is very important, but we’ve come so far that all those borders kind of just vanished and we’re all pretty much friends, and I guess I’m just a friend of theirs too.”

It’s true that, despite being the leader, his friendly personality and endearingly awkward mannerisms mean that he commands about as much authority as a small puppy. Instead, much like a puppy, he is showered with love and affection (fellow member Chenle refers to Mark as his son and his actual puppy Daegal as Mark’s little sister), but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a dependable leader figure. The opposite is true — in Renjun’s words, Mark’s presence unites the group in a way that makes him irreplaceable.

And while this may be the fifth year since their debut, in the grand scheme of things, the members of NCT Dream are still very, very young — by most standards, they would still be considered to have their entire careers ahead of them. Growth has brought them here, but where does Mark think it will take them in the future?

“Growing just never stops for us, I can see us growing continuously, endlessly,” he replies. “What the future holds is something that we will never know, but we always do try to prepare during the present, and so with whatever time we have currently and with whatever album, or whatever stage, or whatever piece of music it may be, we’re willing to make sure that we have the next one coming too.”

A final thought. “I’m glad that we’re striving for that, ‘cos we started off as…” Mark shakes his head, “…as babies.”

#nct #nct dream #Mark #nct 127

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frumfrumfroo · 3 years

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"#also american franchises based on ya novels need some seriously enticing incentives for me to give them a chance" If you don't mind talking about it, I'd love to hear this explained more! I'm really curious about why this is and what about American YA franchise novels puts you off...? Also more generally, what makes these types of stories cowardly and how writers can avoid being cowards/making cowardly choices/examples of when they do? Like what is a cowardly choice and what is a brave one?

Well, it’s basically a pile up of red flags for me. First, that I don’t like YA. By which I mean the American publishing industry standard that constitutes the ‘genre’, not the concept of stories for young adults.

There’s an (enforced?) house style of basic, utilitarian prose I find extremely boring to read and YA novels are overall simplistic even when they engage with nuanced ideas. Obviously that’s by design because they’re meant to be really accessible, but for me it’s frustrating and unsatisfying. It’s possible to be simple and accessible while still offering a lot of thematic richness and subtext, but you don’t often get that. It’s possible to write beautiful prose for even small children, so there’s no excuse for how dry and beige and lacking colour the writing tends to be.

I’ve made repeated exceptions because of an exciting premise or someone’s rec and it’s just... never been worth it. I prefer to read something unconstrained by those standards, both stylistically and regarding the content. I like complex prose and complex (or at least deeply resonant) characters. If I’m going to read something that’s pure formula or where I might have to look past weak prose, I’d rather read fanfiction and have it star characters I already care about.

And I’m just tired of the American cultural death cult and the attitudes to storytelling that go with it, so I’d rather have less of that in my life. There’s some writers/directors/actors I really like and will continue to follow, but I want to mostly take a break from US media. The relentless propaganda in their mainstream entertainment is also very... wearying.

I was kinda being facetious about writers being cowards, but I just mean doing a cautionary tale about a girl who stays with her NiceGuy childhood friend who’s afraid of her agency and gives up her power because actualising into an adult hero is scary and dangerous and sexual desire is scary and dangerous and making a human connection with the woobie villain is Bad... like, that’s a ‘safe’ choice that was passé for women’s fiction in the nineteenth century. It’s like Romanticism didn’t even happen for some people.

Courageous storytelling to me is actually challenging either your protagonist or your current cultural milieu. Interrogating the received wisdom you and your audience probably take for granted. Coming of age stories need to ask what adulthood actually means and whether the ‘expected’ choices are really the right ones; they have to show the person who is growing up wrestle with the discovery that their authority figures and foundational assumptions are fallible. That doesn’t mean you have to decide it was all wrong, maybe you reaffirm your original beliefs, but they should still be questioned and an adult understanding of them should be more nuanced. If your protagonist ends up back where they started, your story better have been about resolving why they weren’t content with that at the beginning and how it was their perspective that needed to change rather than their circumstances. Otherwise your message is just ‘give up and don’t hope for something better’.

So many stories now are ‘cowardly’ to me because they’re entirely unchallenging, even at the most basic level, and are about protagonists who never struggle or fail. Or they’re simply credulously cynical and complacent, which is just lazy imo. Standing for something, saying something, takes courage. Saying ‘pfft, it’s whatever, nothing matters’ as if a thin veneer of pseudo-nihilism makes you intelligent is juvenile. We’ve seen how often hacks will dismiss the entire concept of art as having meaning in order to deflect criticism (’themes are for eighth grade book reports’, ‘I don’t like to think about the meaning of anything I write’, etc.), as if only a pretentious snob could possibly care about this most essentially human activity of interpersonal communion through storytelling and searching for purpose. The truth is that these people are embarrassed by their incompetence and the fact that they’ve been caught totally uncritically regurgitating a shitty reactionary narrative without a hint of self-awareness so they pretend they ~weren’t even trying~ and never wanted to tell a real story in the first place.

#I get a lot of YA recs and I hope people are not offended but it's just not for me #I've tried #it's absolutely fine to like it I just don't #I do think people shouldn't read exclusively YA but that's another issue #I could get into a whole new rant about how idealism is constantly demeaned as naive or childish #where idealism actually takes enormous moral courage #and there is literally nothing more juvenile than shallow cynicism #but I have a problem with the old tumblr credo about YA being superior for having optimism and dealing with ethical quandries #a) read better adult fiction b) is much YA really optimistic or are we talking about anti standards of what 'positive' means #because it seems to me a lot of the time what they mean by positive is 'unchallenging' and what they mean by happy ending is 'affirms my #biases and assumptions and keeps all the labels on characters the same'#where genuine optimism involves a rejection of this ubiquitous Calvinist streak #hope not that you can beat the bad guys but hope that you won't have to fight because you got through to them

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takerfoxx · 4 years

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In response to JK Rowling and Joss Whedon, my (former) idols

I really didn’t want to have to do this.

So in addition to…=gestures vaguely=…all of that, the last few months have been kind of sucky when it comes to learning some really unpleasant things about artists that I looked up to, admired, and was in fact inspired by. I’ve already spoken about the Speaking Out movement revealing a lot of ugly behavior from various wrestlers, some of which I was big fans of, and then later we got Chris Jericho being a full-on MAGA. Yeah, that all sucked. But those were just performers whose work I enjoyed watching. The one that really hurt were writers who I deeply admired, whose stories I love, and who I was heavily influenced by.

The first, of course, was finding out that JK Rowling, the author of perhaps the single biggest YA fantasy series of all time Harry Potter, is a TERF. This really sucked for a number of reasons. Firstly, I really like Harry Potter! I mean, I’m not a super fan or anything. I came into it when things were kind of dying down, like the whole book series had already been released and there were only a few movies left, but I still really enjoyed it, have all the books and movies and a fair amount of merchandise swag, including a nifty wand I got at Universal Studios. Shit, I got two replicas of the Sword of Griffyindor, thanks to them screwing up my order in my favor and sending me a duplicate! They’re on my wall right across from me as I type this!

But in addition to writing a book series I really liked, JK Rowling was supposed to be one the good guys. She’s been vocally progressive, often openly comes down on British right-wing nonsense, has supported various persecuted minorities, and is on record as being one of the few self-made billionaires to actually stop being a billionaire for a time because she donated so much money to charity. And while we mock it now, her revealing Dumbledore as gay was a huge deal at the time. Plus, she cultivated this reputation as Auntie Jo, that cool, supportive aunt we all wanted.

But for a while her stock has been dropping. Her preference for confirming “representation” via tweets instead of explicitly putting it in the text of her stories has raised the question of queer-baiting, especially with a whole-ass movie with a young Dumbledore and Grindelwald to make their relationship explicit but failing to do so. The whole Nagini thing from the latest Fantastic Beasts movie was pretty gross. And re-examination of various problematic elements from the original novels has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Now, none of these really looked to be intentionally malicious, of course. Just about everyone’s early work will have problematic elements; that’s just how people work. And the later stuff smacked more of ignorance than anything. But after all this time, it’s like, c’mon. You should know better by now.

But the biggie came when her transphobic views finally came to light. Now, this one had been brewing for a while, due to some questionable likes and statements on her twitter. But then she decided to just go public and published what essentially amounts to a TERF manifesto, one with a very “love the sinner, hate the sin” condescending attitude and had a real persecution complex air to it.

Now, I’m not going to go into detail about what the manifesto was about, what the circumstances surrounding it were, or how wrong it was. It’s already been raked over the coals, dissected, answered, and debunked in detail by people far more qualified than me, so odds are, you’re already well aware of its contents and the subsequent rebuttals. But the gist of it comes down to her basically believing that transwomen are actually cis men claiming to be trans so as to infiltrate and invade female-only spaces.

Yeah.

Okay, that’s gross, but…why? Why is someone so noted for being progressive and wanting to foster an inclusive environment making this the hill of exclusion that she wants to die on?

Well, that’s where things get tricky. She mentions that prior to Harry Potter, her first marriage was highly physically and sexually abusive, and when she escaped from that, she had no place to go, leading her to be homeless for a time.

Oh.

Well, that makes sense. Someone goes through a highly traumatic experience with a member of the opposite sex, has no support structure when she escapes it, is left to fend for herself, only to suddenly get rocketed into fame, fortune, and influence, which in turn leads to a Never Again mentality. She was hurt, no one was there to help her, and now she’s afraid of men invading women-only spaces to victimize others like she was victimized. So…literally transphobic. Literally a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

Guys, this is so fucked up. Like, how do you even approach something like this? She’s a victim in every sense of the word, so of course she’s going to have physiological damage and a warped view of things. I mean, if I found out that a close friend of mine went through the same thing and had the same prejudices, I would be nothing but sympathetic! I mean, I’d still do what I can to convince her to overcome those prejudices, but I’d still show sympathy and support for what she went through.

Abuse warps people. There’s a reason why so many abusers are abuse survivors themselves. It makes you terrified of being hurt again and often causes people to adopt toxic behaviors, beliefs, and reactions to protect themselves. I’ve already talked about it at length while discussing She-Ra and its own handling of the cycle of abuse, which included franks discussions of Catra’s horrible behavior, why she was the way she was, while never losing sympathy for her and rooting for her to overcome it. So if JK Rowling is an abuse survivor, is it really right to come down on her for having warped views because of that abuse?

But that’s the problem. See, she isn’t your troubled friend that you’re trying to help. She isn’t your cousin Leslie who’s a really sweet person but unfortunately adopted some bad ideals due to trauma suffered. She JK freakin’ ROWLING, one of the most famous, wealthy, and influential women in the world. She has a platform of millions, if not billions, which means her voice lends credibility to her bigoted beliefs. Alt-righters and other TERFs have already swooped upon this for giving validation to their awful beliefs, which puts trans people even more at risk. And as horrible as Rowling’s experiences might have been, the trans community is often the victim of far worse, and they don’t have a mountain of money and an army of defenders to protect them like she does. I’ve said it time and time again: just because you’re a victim, that doesn’t give you the right to victimize others! And bringing things back to Catra, as much as I loved her redemption in the final season, she was still a TERRIBLE PERSON for a huge chunk of the show, one that needed to be stood up to and stopped.

So yeah. That’s the messiness that is JK Rowling.

Now, let’s talk about the one that really hurts. Let’s talk about Joss Whedon.

I’ve made no secret of what a huge Whedon fan I am. Unlike Rowling, I was a HUUUUUGE superfan. Seeing Serenity for the first time in theaters was akin to a religious awakening to me as a storyteller, making it one of my top three movies of all time. Firefly is my favorite show ever. And I adored Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse as well. I love Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers. The very first fanfic I ever wrote was a Firefly fanfic that disappeared along with my old laptop. I know his style isn’t for everyone, but I cannot understate how much of a personal inspiration he is to me as a writer.

And like Rowling, Joss was supposed to be one of the good guys! Buffy was monumental in pushing the needle when it came to female empowerment. Will and Tara were groundbreaking as a gay couple. He’s been outspoken for years about his feminist views and beliefs and was seen as one of the most prominent and influential feminist voices in Hollywood!

And then things started to go bad.

One day he was on top of the world, the mastermind behind the first two Avenger movies. And the next, it seemed like he was in freefall. It’s hard to really pinpoint exactly when the change took place. Some would say him being brought in as a last-minute substitute for Zack Snyder to take over on Justice League after Snyder had to leave due to family tragedy, and the subsequent awful critical reception to that film tarnishing his image, even if those were very unique circumstances that couldn’t really be blamed on him. Others might point to Age of Ultron’s less than stellar reception, as well as criticism of some questionable jokes and certain creative decisions regarding the character of Black Widow, which then led to a more critical examination of how Whedon continues to write female characters, as while his work might have been revolutionary in the 90’s, his failure to evolve with the times had meant that many of his portrayals are now woefully outdated and problematic, with his vision for a Batgirl movie getting hit with a lot of backlash as a result.

Again, I’m not going to go into too much detail, as this is all public knowledge and can be easily looked up, but overall it seemed that Whedon entered into a period where he was getting criticized more than he was celebrated, and his image of a guaranteed hit maker was now in doubt.

But all of this wasn’t the big problem. All creators go through rises and slumps, and everyone hits points where they get hit with a barrage of criticism; that’s just part of being a public creative figure, especially a progressive one. And had nothing happened after, it would have probably faded, got forgotten, and Whedon would have moved onto the next project with no fuss.

But as it turned out, it wasn’t just a minor slump in his career. Instead, it was the priming of the pump.

In 2016, Whedon divorced his wife of sixteen years, Kai Cole, and in an open letter, Kai Cole accused him of being a serial cheater, who would have affairs with a great many women, from co-workers, to actresses, to friends, to even his fans. And in addition to raising questions of him possibly abusing his position as showrunner to elicit sex from those working on his projects, there also is the ugly question of how could someone who speaks so highly of women then go and backstab the person who was supposed to be the most important woman in his life, as well as lying to her and denying her the autonomy of deciding whether or not she even wanted to continue to have a relationship with him?

Furthermore, Whedon himself has not explicitly denied these accusations, and comments made by him seem only to confirm them.

Now if you’ll recall, I reacted publicly to this news, and despite my admiration of Whedon’s work, I came down on Kai Cole’s side, and stated that while things like marriage issues and infidelity were no one’s business but that of the couple’s, it did raise a lot of uncomfortable questions about how Whedon treated the women in his life and he really needed to get his shit in order.

But hey, a messy private life and a guy falling into temptation isn’t that big of a deal, right? Plenty of creators also go through multiple marriages and have problems staying faithful and still continue making great art. We’re all human, it’s a stressful job, and this shit just happens, right? Sure, it’s gross and a shitty thing to do, but ain’t no business of ours, right?

In late 2020, actor Ray Fisher, who played the role of Cyborg in Justice League, openly accused Joss Whedon of fostering a hostile work environment, claiming that the director’s behavior was abusive and unprofessional, and that Whedon in turn was protected by DC executives.

DC and Warner Bros. came down against Fisher, claiming they had done an internal investigation that turned up no evidence of wrongdoing (yeah, sure they did), and soon Fisher was out as Cyborg, apparently for rocking the boat.

But then Charisma Carpenter, noted for her important role as Cordelia Chase in both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, then spoke up, claiming to be inspired by Fisher in doing so. She described Whedon did indeed foster a hostile work environment on his projects, that his often acted in a toxic manner, from asking incredibly invasive and inappropriate questions regarding her pregnancy to insulting her on set. She said that she made excuses for him for years, but after undergoing a lot of therapy and reading what Ray Fisher had to say, she felt compelled to speak out.

And this just open the floodgates. Other actors and actresses also came forward, some with stories of their own, others to offer support. Even Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, confirmed Carpenter’s stories and said that she no longer wanted to be associated with Whedon. Michelle Trachtenberg, who played the character of Dawn, stated that she also experienced toxic treatment from Whedon despite her being a minor at the time, and says that the set had a rule that Whedon wasn’t allowed to be alone with her again, which really raises some sickening questions of what happened the first time. Even male stars have spoken out, from words of support and apologies for not speaking up earlier from Anthony Stewart Head and David Boreanaz, to an earlier interview with James Marsters, in which he described being terrified of Whedon, mainly due to an instance when Whedon was frustrated with the popularity of Marsters’s character of Spike messing with his plans and physically and verbally taking it out on the actor. There have been many corroborating stories of Whedon being casually cruel on set, on seemingly taking delight in making his fellow show writers cry, and even the man himself admitting to enjoying fostering a hostile work environment during his director commentary of the Avengers. We’ve joked about Whedon’s supposed sadism for years, but that was in regards to how he treated the characters in his stories, not the people helping him make them!

So yeah. That’s the problem with Joss Whedon.

So, do I think that Joss Whedon is somehow some kind of sociopath who lied about his feminist principles and deliberately put on a progressive façade specifically to get into a position of power so he could torment people? No, of course not. I think he was sincere about his beliefs, and I do think he didn’t realize the wrongness of his behavior. But that’s kind of the problem. See, it’s one thing to have kind of a trollishness to your nature, a sort of sadistic side. No one can help that. But when someone with that quality gets put into a position of power in which they are protected by both the higher-ups and their legions of fans, they are allowed to mistreat and continue to mistreat people. And by never suffering any consequences, that sort of toxic behavior becomes internalized, becomes a habit, becomes their moda operandi. And when you’re constantly getting praised as a creative genius and a wonderful feminist voice, any self-criticism just gets wiped away, and you think yourself above reproach, leading to what Joss Whedon became and went on being.

And you know what scares me the most about this particular issue? It’s not that I am a fan of his stories. It’s that I can so easily see myself turning out the same way.

Look, I’ll be upfront about it: I’m kind of a sadist myself. You’ve seen it in my stories, you’ve seen me gloating after a particularly dark plot twist makes my readers freak out. That sort of stuff is fun to me. There’s a reason why I have a much easier time in the dark and violent scenes, because I’m channeling something ugly within me. We all have a dark side, and this is mine.

But UNLIKE Whedon, that doesn’t carry over to how I treat people in real life (unless Monopoly or Mario Party are involved, then it’s fair game). Maybe it’s because I wasn’t given the sort of power and praise he did so early, and I was always taught to be considerate of other people’s feelings, but if I ever find out that I hurt another person or went too fair, I feel TERRIBLE, and it just throws me off all day until I apologize. Even if I don’t notice right away that what I said or did wasn’t cool (autistic, remember?), when it’s pointed out to me and I have some time to think on it, yeah, the guilt is on and I make a point to apologize to whoever I’ve hurt. I’ve even made a point to apologize to members of my family for inconsiderate stuff I said years ago as a little punk kid because it wouldn’t stop bugging me.

So maybe Whedon got too big, too fast. Maybe putting people on these sorts of pedestals, especially progressive ones, is ultimately a bad thing.

So where does this leave us? How are we to treat JK Rowling and Joss Whedon, one who developed a lot of transphobia due to abuse suffered while the other became a toxic individual due to unchecked control and a lack of consequences? Can we still enjoy their stories despite them now being colored by their creators’ falls from grace? Can we separate the art from the artist, or do we have to do a clean split?

Honestly, I feel that has to come down to the individual. I can’t remove the influence Rowling and Whedon have had on me as a storyteller, and I still highly respect both of their talents despite taking major issue with their problems as people. And I’m not going go throw away all of my Harry Potter or Firefly stuff. Because that’s my stuff. It has value to me, it doesn’t represent the issues with their creators, and a lot of it was gifts from people who are dear to me. Though I do think it’ll be a long time before I return to either of their work, as I just don’t have the stomach for it now.

But I will be avoiding any projects they have in the future. I don’t want to put money in their pockets that might go on to support their toxic beliefs or behavior. And as for royalties for their past work that would also support the cast and crew of the Harry Potter films or those who worked on Whedon’s shows who do not deserve to lose money because we don’t want any of that money going to the creators? Er, that question is a little above my paygrade. I don’t know. You’ll have to all decide for yourselves. As for me, I still have a lot of thinking to do.

Regardless though, if I or anyone else is still able to enjoy their work, then it’s important to not divorce what these people said or did from the art they created, even if it makes enjoying that art less fun. It’s important to be critical about what we enjoy, to acknowledge the bad aspects along with the good, and open up discussion of those elements, because that’s what mature adults are supposed to do.

And as for JK Rowling and Joss Whedon, whose stories I love, whose talent I admire, and whose past good work I’ll happily acknowledge, I do hope they both experience some sort of realization and enter into a period of self-examination that leads to them getting help for their issues, for Rowling to get help in coming to terms with her trauma and realizing that she’s wrong about the trans community and a full apology, and for Whedon to also come to terms with his toxic behavior and how he treats people, for him to make no excuse for what he did and sincerely apologize to those he hurt and work on bettering himself, as well as them both examining some of the more problematic tropes still present in their works. Because despite everything, I do feel that they can still be a creative force of good, and it would be a shame if they let themselves self-destruct.

But if not, then if it comes down to choosing between Rowling and the protecting the trans community, if it comes down between choosing between letting Whedon continue to make shows and protecting actors and writers from his abusive behavior, then I know who I’m siding with, and it ain’t the two individuals this whole essay is about. No story, no matter how good, no matter how creative, is worth letting sacrificing vulnerable people in order for it to be made.

#jk rowling #joss whedon #harry potter #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #angel #firefly #justice league #ray fisher #charisma carpenter #kai cole #transphobia tw #abuse tw #toxicity tw #TERF tw #rant #TERFs don't interact I do not want to talk to you #same for abuse apologists

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thetypedwriter · 3 years

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A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review

A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review by Brigid Kemmerer

My gosh, I feel like I have enormous feelings about this book.

So, I had seen this book for awhile bestow the shelves at Barnes & Noble and while it drew the eye, it also didn’t entice me right away. I must have read snippets of the backside summary a dozen times before I finally succumbed and purchased it when the store was having a buy one, get one 50% off deal.

Lame, I know.

That being said, A Curse So Dark and Lonely surprised me in a lot of pleasant ways and at the end of the experience it was a book I genuinely enjoyed reading, despite the flaws throughout.

First off, somehow, in ways that I don’t even fully understand, I did not realize that this was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

You might ask, seeing the title, the reviews on the back literally calling it a retelling of a classic fairytale, the summary itself, and the basic premise, how did I not realize what the true nature of this book was?

I genuinely have no idea.

I really don’t.

It’s so flabbergasting that I don’t even have a proper answer for you other than Beauty and the Beast was not my favorite Disney movie growing up and that I probably should have spent more time checking out what bargain books to buy before I laid down the cash.

Oh well.

That being said, retellings of classic fairy tales has been a fairly popular phenomenon in the YA literature scene (and popular culture as a whole, really) for the last couple of years and while I can see the appeal, it was never something that beckoned me.

I’m not a huge fairytale fan to begin with so a retelling of the original doesn’t hold much sway in terms of intrigue and buy-in.

If I had known what A Curse So Dark and Lonely truly was, I never would have bought it. Frankly, it’s a little sad because I genuinely would have missed out on a very fun and engaging read. Fortunately enough, however, my dumb actions actually paid off in good luck this time around.

The whole premise is exactly what you’ve probably surmised up to this point: an enumeration of Beauty and the Beast with some modern fanfare and twists and turns along the way.

Rhen is the current Crown Prince of Emberall, a country in some parallel world to the one that you and I currently exist in. With a series of twists, the main protagonist, Harper, is unwillingly hoisted from her homeland of Washington D.C. to the magical world of Emberfall, which unfortunately is not all that magical with a looming war on the horizon involving a neighboring nation, rumors of a savage beast that has wreaked havoc on the country, and a wicked witch that delights in torment and carnage to sadistic glee.

Soon enough, a high school dropout with cerebral palsy soon finds herself in the imaginary role as the Princess of Disi, an allying nation that has promised aid and troops to Emberfall and potentially betrothed to the Crown Prince, Rhen.

To make matters more complicated, Harper finds herself often in the company of Grey, the lone soldier of the Royal Guard and Rhen’s constant shadow, a figure she soon begins to trust despite herself.

With a war on the horizon, the ever-present threat of the witch Lillith, the haunting promise of the beast’s return, and evolving feelings, A Curse So Dark and Lonely is a lovely concoction of both fast-paced action, romance, humor, and fantasy. This whole book gave me a pleasant buzz from start to finish.

The plot itself, while recycled at its core, is fresh enough with the modern flare of Harper being from D.C. (Disi-this still makes me laugh), representation in the form of a character with a disability like cerebral palsy, interesting and complex relationships, and opposing enough with the threat of Lillith and future battles that it never seemed pithy or banal.

While the world building is...mediocre, I don’t think it was amazing nor do I think it’s awful, it’s a useful enough background for the characters and their emotions to take place, which honestly is the real focus throughout the entire novel (although the author did take some liberties by inputting in things like the castle automatically regenerating food-how much more deus ex machina can you get?).

Kemmerer’s writing style is also fine. Nothing groundbreaking, but also not writing I find abhorrent or even unlikeable. She comes across as a typical YA author to me in terms of her vocabulary, her figurative language, and her writing style.

The real focus, if you haven’t caught on by now, are the characters.

I genuinely like all three main characters quite a bit, which, if you regularly read my reviews, is quite the anomaly.

Rhen I find to be strangely complex. While he fits the mold of the brooding, arrogant prince that actually cares deeply for his people and his country quite well, I also found him more interesting than just the archetype of the royal son.

He’s surly, dark, and quite temperamental. While he does care deeply about his people, he’s often selfish and petty. Honestly, he shouldn’t be very likable at all, but it’s for that reason alone that I do like him.

I like that while he might be a good ruler he’s not necessarily a good person and I like the dichotomy and the conflict that implicitly comes with that struggle, a struggle often shown to the readers and the two other characters he’s closest with: Harper and Grey.

In addition, often in YA I feel like authors constantly feel pressured to make romantic love interests “perfect” which to me, translates to being stereotypical and boring. Very often my favorite characters are the ones who are flawed and complicated-just like Rhen.

Grey is also a character that I thought would be more simple than he actually turned out to be. I originally thought Grey was going to be the stoic, soldier type and while he is, I also really enjoyed seeing his lighter side, his sense of humor, his love for children, and the deadly loyalty that binds him not because of a curse or a spell, but because of his own stubbornness and dedication to the decision that he made and the refusal to break it.

I found this honor code fascinating and his adherence to it almost obsessive. His loyalty to Rhen is both baffling and intriguing and often it was the best part of the novel for me.

Which brings me to my next point: Rhen and Grey’s relationship is hand’s down the best part of this book. It’s a complicated relationship and, therefore, really fascinating to read about it. They have a serpentine history involving Grey being the one to let Lillith into Rhen’s chambers which sets off the whole curse business in the first place.

However, as Rhen says later on in the book, it was his choice to keep Lillith overnight and to pursue romance, not Grey’s.

There is guilt, blame, affection, loyalty, ownership, friendship, frustration, anger, sacrifice and more to their relationship. Their history stops them from being true friends, as do their roles as prince and guard, yet they are the only companion the other has for seasons upon seasons.

At the end of the day, Grey is all Rhen had for a very long time and it shows.

Their relationship was always so engrossing to read about due to its complications and its nuances. Very few YA relationships, especially that of platonic male friendship, gets even near the level of depth and grey (I couldn’t help this pun) area shown between Grey and Rhen. Their relationship alone is a huge draw for why I found this novel so captivating.

I did wonder for a while if perhaps there were more than platonic feelings involved, but I could never quite put my finger on the true nature of their relationship or their feelings towards each other, which I find absolutely amazing. Their relationship is messy and complicated, just like real life relationships are.

That leaves the third piece of the puzzle: Harper.

Out of the three main characters, I like Harper the least, but I do still like her. I like that she’s strong and tenacious, not in spite of her cerebral palsy, but in addition to her already present bravery and ferocity. She’s headstrong, stubborn, kind, merciful, and compassionate.

My dislike from Harper stems from the fact that she’s a little too perfect, especially compared to Rhen and Grey, who I found to be much more convoluted characters.

Again, harping (hahah) back to stereotypical YA, other than her cerebral palsy, I don’t think there’s anything in particular about Harper that makes her complicated, flawed, or especially interesting.

She’s a good girl willing to give it all up for a country she’s only known for a few weeks even though her mother’s dying at home and her brother is most likely involved in some kind of gang violence.

The best scenes with Harper are the scenes were she is struggling to choose between the two worlds and weighing her options, as at some points it does depict her as selfish and wanting to go home, even though she knows it would doom thousands of people.

But of course, this is all taken care of later when she realizes D.C. isn’t her true home any more and that Emberfall has become where her heart lies.

Lame.

Kemmerer made Harper just a little too pristine for my liking, which is why she ranks lower than both Rhen and Grey when on paper she is by far the best in terms of personality and character traits.

This especially grates on me when Kemmerer tells us that Harper is fantastic instead of letting us glean that for ourselves. I really dislike when an author tells me instead of shows me that someone is brave or kind or amazing or whatnot and I feel like there were enough instances of Harper being all of those things without having needed Rhen or Grey to point it out all of the time.

I also do feel like there is some weird shaming regarding things typically seen as “feminine” in relation to Harper and why that makes her “better.” For example, Rhen talks often about how no girl ever has ever done what Harper has done, like attacking him.

I’m sorry? You’re telling me that Grey has kidnapped hundreds of girls and not one of them before Harper tried to attack them? In any form? Really?

I find that preposterous.

Other instances of Harper being unique in this fashion is also sprinkled in, like how most girls apparently only care about the dresses and the jewels in the castle, but not Harper. Or how most girls would be crying from a scar on their cheek, but Harper is just upset that she misses her target.

I get what Kemmerer is going for, but these force-fed characterizations really bothered me and were the most irritating thing about the book.

Being feminine or caring about stereotypically feminine things like jewelry or dresses does not mean that someone can’t also be strong and brave and fierce. I dislike a lot of the subliminal messages in the novel in regards to that.

In terms of romance, again I have to ask myself when the trope of the love triangle will die. Perhaps it never will. Perhaps it will live on for eternity, forever immortal and present in nearly 90% of YA literature.

The love triangle between Grey, Rhen, and Harper doesn’t bother me so much in this novel as I feel like it isn’t truly focused on very much, which I appreciate. I understand that Harper has feelings for both Grey and Rhen, but her feelings make sense. I don’t feel like Kemmerer is just foisting a love triangle onto the readers for the sake of having a love triangle.

It felt somehow...natural.

In addition, most love triangles suck as they’re very one sided, usually in terms of the female’s POV.

In this case however, the love triangle is influenced by Grey and Rhen’s relationship, where the lines are very blurry and for a good portion of the book I thought perhaps they were in love with each other and Harper.

Frankly, I would have been ecstatic if this was the route Kemmerer had taken. Not many YA authors go down this route, but examples like Mark/Cristina/Keiran from The Infernal Devices and Niall/Irial/Leslie from Ink Exchange are actually the only examples I know from YA literature so this would have been so welcome and anticipated.

If Kemmerer had gone down the route of looking into a polyamorous relationship I would have been over the moon. I don’t think she is sadly, but polyamrous relationships are still so few and far between in YA that it would have been utterly captivating, especially as she has all the ingredients to do so.

Or, I thought she did.

Until it’s revealed at the very end that Rhen and Grey are brothers. Or, at least half-brothers.

Yeah.

It’s super unfortunate.

I’m genuinely disappointed that this is the route Kemmerer decided to take it as it seems so grossly safe. It’s almost like an intense male/male relationship can’t exist unless it’s romantic or they’re brothers and I despise that.

Hence, why I have also decided that I won’t be reading A Heart so Fierce and Broken. I want to keep the memory and the interesting relationships between the three characters as it is: interesting.

I have a very strong feeling that if I read the sequel that will all be shattered.

When all is said and done, I really enjoyed this book. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to reading it and I wasn’t expecting very much, but it met all of my expectations and more.

I am sad that I won’t be finishing the series as a whole, but I know that the direction it's going will only make me frustrated and annoyed and I would rather preserve the positive emotions attached to A Curse So Dark and Lonely than ruin it with a sequel that I know won’t meet the expectations I have.

Perhaps that’s unfair to say, and rightly so, but I know myself and I can see where the sequel is going and I’m almost certain that I won’t like it.

So in this case, I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and savor the moments I had reading this novel in all its fairy-telling glory.

Recommendation: If you love Beauty and the Beast, fairytales with a modern twist, interesting characters and interesting relationships set in a fantasy world where the music never stops playing and a savage beast runs rampant, than this book is calling for you.

I didn’t know that I needed this novel in my life and now I’m so glad that it is. Captivating from beginning to end, if you’re anything like me and a sucker for interesting romance and strong, nuanced characters you won’t be able to put this down either.

Score: 7/10

#a curse so dark and lonely #a heart so fierce and broken #brigid kemmerer #popular fiction #Popular Books #teen books #Teen Romance #teen fiction #book review #book blog #Book Recommendations #book rec #ya fiction #YA Book Review #ya book rec #book blogger

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ouyangzizhensdad · 4 years

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I love ur takes but I'm kind still impressed by ur persistent hate for cql. The novel is the base but all the medias adapted from it take a single aspect of the story and make it their own. Look at the manhwa, audio drama, donghua or the drama. I still dont know what ur issue with the drama is coz for a low budget drama with censorship they did everything they could for the novel fans (yes they recorded straight bit so if they had issues they will go straight but they are a drama)... yes they added a few things for the show to telecast it for the chinese consumption (they dont really need white validation unlike kdrama which has more ifandom). Both cql or winter begonia were handled very well and the dramas were overnight hits coz of the scriptwriters and directors keeping the novel story alive.

I think it's also coz u and most white fans of the novel or cql haven't seen anime and its live actions so u dont know that the live actions made in different periods of time change the story according to the area they're being released in... Itazura na Kiss has 3 live action dramas and all three are from different countries and different time periods so the way all three are adapted are alot different eventhough the base story is the same. If u want to follow the novel read that but if u want to enjoy the story cql, donghua, audio drama of MDZS and the manhwa are very nicely done. I hope just coz white cql fans have issues with the novel u dont spread hate for the drama that has made it possible for a relationship to be shown between two men. The asians arent as thick to think they're best friends, everyone who watches the drama knows that it's a gay love story

Hi anon,

There’s a lot in there and honestly I don’t think I can address all of your points. But I’ll try my best.

I have said many times that I do not hate CQL and that I enjoyed watching most of it. It was a fun little idol drama that wasn’t a very serious watch. At the beginning I even enjoyed the fandom for a little while. Now, yes, I do post a lot of content that is negative toward CQL and/or its fandom. But you may have noticed a few things though. My criticisms (or my moments of incomprehension) are always related to:

Specific issues I have with the choices it made as an adaptation

People trying to pass CQL, a cheaply-made idol drama, as a masterpiece. This is nothing personal against CQL: it has more to do with how it puzzles me that people don’t see to know what competent and good tv looks like. I have nothing against people praising the show, but they don’t have to act as it doesn’t have a lot of basic, technical issues.

the CQL fandom cross-posting everything, or bringing CQL canon and fanon into novel-specific discussions. People can mix and match the canons, of course, but it’d be a nice courtesy to be at least open about it so that people who want to stick to one canon may be able to do so. And it is frustrating because people like me have literally just given up on trying to read fics because authors are not forthcoming about which canon they are drawing from. That’s frustrating and a source of bitterness!

arguments that CQL is a stronger/more complex work of fiction than MDZS. Again, it’s nothing personal about CQL, it’s just mind-boggling having to explain something so fucking transparent.

arguments that CQL is better “queer rep” than MDZS.

absolutely whack takes from the CQL western fandom.

You feel that the screenwriter and director kept the story alive, and hey, that’s great for you. Yes, I’m aware that adaptations will change things. Analysing adaptations is actually partly how I developed a lot of my media analysis skills. However, I personally believe that the story that CQL tells and how it chooses to tell it fundamentally changes so much about the narrative, the characters or even the genre of the story that it does not keep the truly interesting and engaging elements of the novel. It might be flippant to say, but even if the production team were truly doing their best (and I do believe they did), it doesn’t mean they achieved what they set out to do--and some of it may just come down to a question of skills, as story-tellers.

Although I am white, I may not fit into the narrative you present since I have watched many live actions and animated series adapting a manga/manhua/novel. I watched my first jdrama 15 years ago, and to be illustrative, this first jdrama was Hana Yori Dango. In the past I’ve also watched many dramas that were originally japanese/taiwanese/chinese/korean and their adaptations. Hell, sometimes even adaptations that crossed to the western market. I assure you that I am familiar with a property being adapted at different times and in different countries and through different mediums. I’ve also interacted with the other adaptations of MDZS. The thing is, what this has showed me is simply that doing something differently doesn’t translate necessarily in doing as good of a job. Adaptations can fail, either by virtue of what they fail to do as their own work of fiction, or as adaptations of an existing property.

I’m not trying to shit on to what CQL may mean for chinese audiences or diasporic chinese audiences as well. When I point out the fact that Wangxian is just subtext in CQL, it’s not because I think “asian audiences are dumb” but because the reason why subtext may be acceptable under censorship is that it keeps a level of plausible deniability. Some people will of course recognise it for what it is, but some will simply not pick up on it or refuse that reading. I also do take pains to remind people how the flow of capital that allows for these adaptations to exist may have to do with how far the portrayal of the subtext is being pushed over any concerns for the original story or nebulous gay rights. I do find it interesting though that CQL is often presented in fandom discussions as this unprecedented occurrence in Chinese media, since there was very heavy subtext in earlier live action adaptations like Guardians or the side couple in Love H2O, just to think of quick examples.

But obviously anon, my more salty or bitter posts about cql seem to bring up frustrations, so if it is an impediment to your fandom experience it might be best to simply unfollow me. If you wish to stay for the novel meta and avoid these posts, I do tag them with either “brine corner” or “cql negativity” or “cql vs mdzs”.

#anon ask #cql negativity

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lilydalexf · 4 years

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Mary Ruth Keller

Mary Ruth Keller has 42 stories at Gossamer, plus her stories are at AO3. She's written a number of short standalone stories, but she's thought through the X-Files mythology and written about it probably as much as anybody ever has. So if you want to dive into the mythology and all its drama, you need to go read her mythology fics ASAP. (But read this long, interesting interview first!) Big thanks to Mary Ruth for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Quite frankly, yes. The Kuxan Sum Cycle branches off the actual series following the Third Season episode Syzygy. I took the myth-arc as it stood at that time, post Nisei-731, and the agents in mid-Rift. Although I didn’t quite realize it when I started out, I was most interested in moving the myth-arc forward in a continuously unfurling narrative, one where Scully and Mulder became an effective investigative team who support each other as partners and friends again. After I started writing in my little corner of the X-F universe in 1996, there was a lot of stuff on the show that just happened, with no real storytelling logic to it I could fathom, but that seemed to be popular. I stopped writing in 2000 because I was frantically busy at my new job (which consumed far too many twelve-plus-hour workdays and weekends) and because my sister and I were trying to take care of my elderly, increasingly frail, Mother. So, I never expected, when I started writing in 2018 and posting again in 2019 (I reposted all my stories, in order, to AO3 and fanfiction.net, because Chermera would never have made sense without them) for readers to take an interest in myth-arc and character issues that the series writers had simply abandoned to go chase, well, anything else, especially if it made no coherent sense whatsoever. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

The fandom was a lot of fun. There were many interesting, engaging discussions I took part in with other fans of the show, some of whom I am still in touch with.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

All of the above. I spent a lot of time discussing writing and characters with other writers on ATXC, except when I was actively working on my novels. Since I was doing basic research into microwave remote sensing of the Earth while working at the Naval Research Laboratory at the time – yes, I was one of those dreaded Department of Defense scientists the show had a love/hate relationship with – my writing happened at night and on weekends. Novels, especially the longer ones, take me about a year from first words on disk until release, which meant I didn’t have all the time to participate on-line as I would have otherwise. But, I enjoyed chatting with the fellow denizens of the Endies Board, and on the EMXC, Scullyfic, and Je Souhaite mailing lists. I’ve saved some of those posts and conversation threads on my older computers, where it’s fun re-reading them from time to time. What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

There were a lot of generous, funny, very intelligent fans involved with X-F back then (not that there aren’t now; there are, of course). I started writing because I wanted to get the myth-arc and the characters back on-track, the long-term story moving forward and the agents again being the smart investigators I loved hanging out with on Friday nights. But, outside of having read a lot of myth, literature, fiction, and non-fiction, I didn’t know enough about the mechanics of writing fiction. Several authors were willing to help out, some explicitly through E-mail conversations, and some from general comments about crafting stories that were posted to ATXC. I had a real problem with how I initially handled dialog, which I had some E-mail guidance on, that was very much appreciated. I also had two quite diligent beta readers, one an on-line fan, and one a real-life friend, both male, who helped me with the direction of the Scully-Mulder half of Anath. I was, at the time, utterly exasperated with how the pair of them had become such complete morons on the series, both totally incapable of investigating anything successfully, which was affecting my writing the characters in that story. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? Ooh, boy. I’d like to say I started watching with the show with the Pilot, but I didn’t, quite. Tom Shales was the Washington Post TV critic at the time the Pilot aired – yes, not only was I a government scientist, I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1992. He was intrigued by the characters and premise and found Duchovny and Anderson engaging while playing their roles. At the time, I was wrapped up trying to work on a PhD while still employed at NRL, so I tucked the review away, waiting until I had Friday nights free to check it out. I’m a great lover of science fiction, so I thought to give the show a try, eventually. [Lilydale note: I found a couple things Tom Shales wrote about The X-Files premiere in 1993: Fall 1993 TV preview article and a “Pilot” episode review.]

The first episode I sat down to watch was the First Season Darkness Falls, where Mulder and Scully get trapped at the logging camp with the Earth Firster, Doug Spinney, the logging executive, Steve Humphries, the Forest Ranger, Larry Moore, and the gooey green bugs. I was amazed by that story. It was as perfect a little piece of science fiction as I have seen on TV (except for one bit toward the end), with an environmental moral to it as well, where all the characters make good and bad choices, and they all suffer or succeed because of them.

What hooked me, really hooked me, were the first/second acts, specifically, Dana Scully’s actions, once they find the desiccated logger in the tree. The investigation is handled logically, in that it’s not the big male agent who goes shinnying up the trunk to look at the evidence while everyone else stands around watching and wailing, “Whatever shall we do!” No, it’s little Dana Scully who takes the ride to the upper branches. This made oodles of sense, in that she was this tiny woman whom two men could lever up that far with a rope, a hand winch, and pulleys. When she gets there, after grimacing (who wouldn’t, considering what she saw), she starts investigating. She does an on-the-spot post-mortem exam, while Mulder makes an ooky male-body-parts joke, but everyone takes her results seriously. I was thrilled. Here was a female character I could really relate to, someone who could hold her own in a difficult situation, unlike most of those on the tube, then or now.

I made a point, over the following summer, of watching as many re-runs as I could, catching up on the episodes and characters. The stories ran to science fiction and horror, which are my preference. Further, although there was an emphasis on the paranormal, several of the first season episodes were written so both Mulder’s wanting-to-believe-but-needing-proof intuitive, emotional approach and Scully’s logical, scientific, justice-oriented viewpoint each got the narrative coherently from initial crime to identifying and apprehending a suspect. It was some spectacular, complex writing, and I was hooked, hopelessly hooked. I discuss this some on my old author web-page, which still exists, courtesy of the Wayback machine), so I won’t belabor it. What got you involved with X-Files fan-fic? The shenanigans within the Third Season, quite honestly. The myth-arc wasn’t moving forward, as it had during the Second Season, which I really couldn’t understand. Carter had given us this bang-up start in the ABC Trilogy with all these new fictional possibilities to explore, but instead, bupkis. The MOTW’s were retreads with no depth or moral/ethical weight to them, except for Darin’s stories. The intelligent agents I had enjoyed spending time with while they pursued their oddball investigations were evaporating before my eyes. Mulder had always been this deeply intuitive character who cared about others and knew he could get it wrong, so needed Scully’s logic in their investigations, even if he didn’t always want to hear her observations and questions. But that character was being replaced by a cookie-cutter misunderstood anti-hero, who wasn’t thinking, just running off to chase butterflies, who was always right because he was The Guy. Scully, as an investigator, the little agent who could, was simply being sidelined. Sure, she’d argue with Mulder, but the writers had stopped giving her and her logical viewpoint a real role in their cases, Darin excepted, again. As the series went on, the Agent and Doctor Dana Scully I respected was replaced with this snappish little female whose only notable skill was running in high heels, who spent her time standing around with her arms crossed, and made pruney faces at Mulder if she were required to do any actual investigating. I hated that character, but, apparently, the all-male writing staff just loved her.

I knew about the on-line fandom, so I thought to check out if anybody else had noticed these “improvements.” First, I spent time at ATXF, discussing the changes with the series, that disturbed a lot of folks, not just me. Eventually, I tripped onto ATXC. There were writers there who understood the two characters, quite well, but weren’t that interested in the other problems with the show that bothered me deeply.

Like many fan-fiction writers, I decided to try to bring in, or in my case, bring back, what I was missing in what was being aired. Sins of the Fathers was the result. As I mentioned above, it was a far from perfect story, but I learned much putting it together, and it got a lot of positive feedback. So I kept writing and trying to improve what I wrote. Folks appreciated it, then and now, surprisingly, which was endless encouragement to keep going. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? With work and my Mom, as I mentioned above, I dropped out for a few years. My new job is still microwave remote sensing of the Earth, at a University-affiliated laboratory, not working directly for the government, but the NASA/NSF-type funding for the research I like to do is much harder to come by, so it takes up a lot more of my time to keep funded and working. Adding to that, I haven’t found places like ATXC in the 90’s or the Endies Board, but I suppose lightning only strikes once. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Not really, no. I’ve enjoyed other TV series, but, I never felt those shows were just throwing away essential parts of themselves as X-F did, or, if they went bad, I simply stopped watching them. A fandom is, or can be, a huge time commitment, which, as I’ve noted, I don’t have that much of. I discuss this quite extensively in my author’s notes at the end of Chermera, so I won’t repeat myself. [Lilydale note: the long author notes are at the end of the story’s last chapter, not in the AO3 notes section.] Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

As a child, I loved reading myths and legends from many different cultures. So many amazing stories, so much that touches on truth. Greek myth, Norse legends, Islamic tales, Celtic fables, all of them. It goes without saying that discovering Tolkien’s fully-realized Middle Earth in my early teens was like falling into an river of endless delights.

In literature, perhaps the character I enjoy most is Sherlock Holmes. On television/in movies, I’d have to say: Beverly Crusher, (early) Dana Scully, Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5, Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan and (early) Aeryn Sun on Farscape, Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1, Hermione Granger, and most recently, Lagertha on Vikings. Dunno, there might be a pattern there. Possibly. Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Yes, absolutely. I started rewatching the series when it ran on BBC America, enjoying the first two seasons again. I’d actually never stopped thinking about Mulder and Scully; I just lost the time to write about them, until two years ago, when I managed to land some long-term funding so I wasn’t staying up nights writing proposals every few months. I’d have a thought about how to advance the story that became Chermera, so I’d make a mental note and play with it in my head. I also have two more novels and a satyr play left to go in the sequence of stories I want to write, so I’m turning over plot-lines and potential arcs in my head all the time. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I do read X-F fan-fic. Since the series has wandered so far away from what engaged me, and most fan-fic keeps up with that, I don’t read very much. As far as other fandoms, one was enough. Do you have any favorite X-Files fan-fic stories or authors?

Reaching back into the dark ages, I’d say Pellinor and Nascent. They may both be available on Gossamer. [Lilydale note: Fortunately, they are!] What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise? Zurvan is the favorite of my older stories. It, like Twelfth Night (Denha on AO3 to avoid confusion with another X-F story named Twelfth Night), builds on the past stories in their trilogies and brings the overall arc to new places. It’s fun to uncover surprises when writing and develop challenges to address in the future, which both of those stories did. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I’d certainly like to. I had planned to write three trilogies with their satyr plays, each of them focusing on an aspect of the mythical Triple Goddess: Maiden, Matron, and Crone, in the X-F universe. Only, being me, I turned it around. Sandra Ann Miller (Samantha) is the Maiden, but I’ve just started telling that part of the arc with the transitional Anath and the first trilogy story Chermera. I’m approaching this trilogy as a coherent tale spread across the three novels, which is different from the other two. The Caroline Lowenberg Trilogy didn’t really get organized until Twelfth Night. It was only the third story I’d ever written, so perhaps I can be excused. The Dana Scully Trilogy was all interconnected, but that was more of an organic, rather than a pre-planned and deliberate, effort. I didn’t really grasp the full arc of what I was creating there until I was writing Chermera and looked back over the threads running from Rustic Suite through Anath. The next story in the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy involves the exposure of the Japanese arm of the Consortium, but, I need to read up on Japanese history, myths and legends, and world view before I write it. After finishing and posting Chermera, that’s what I’ve been doing. The conflict between Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, and her ne’er-do-well brother Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the god of, among other things, storms, marriage, and love, as told in the Kojiki and the Nihongi (both written down in their near-final forms at the same time as we in the West were just recording the first skeletal versions of the Arthurian Legends), will definitely get worked into the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy. I’m starting to put the arcs and plot-lines together, but, I’m not ready to begin writing yet. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work? As I’ve discussed, I do. Part of why I take my time is because Mulder and Scully are owed real, challenging cases to solve - the two intelligent agents with their own approaches, strengths, and weaknesses, remember. Partly, because I have original fiction ideas I’d like to pursue. Trying to do the best I possibly can in the sheltered world of X-F where I attempt to create stories with universal themes, well-realized settings, coherent plot-lines, and original characters who resonate with my readers is practice for the original fiction. I’ll never write the Great American Novel (whatever that is), but I’d like to write stories that are as good as I can make them and fun for my readers, so I keep plugging. Where do you get ideas for stories? Reading and thinking, mostly. I try to look for ideas that haven’t been done to death, or different approaches to old themes. I have four original novels I scribble mental notes on. After I bring this myth-arc I’ve been working on to its (to me) logical resolution, I hope I’ll be able enough of a writer to get started on them. What's the story behind your pen name? Actually, it’s my real name. At the time I started writing, I didn’t think to do anything else. On ATXC and Gossamer, I wrote several of the shorts that are separate from the Kuxan Sum Cycle under the pen name Lise Meitner. She was a Twentieth Century theoretical physicist who explained nuclear fission, then was cut out of a Nobel prize because the judges of her day thought Marie Curie and Irene Joliot-Curie were “enough” women physicists working in radioactivity to be so honored. [Lilydale note: here’s her Wikipedia page. Among many other fascinating things talked about there, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize 48 times in two different categories and had the 109th chemical element, meitnerium, named after her. She also escaped Nazi Germany in a plot involving trains, boats, planes, and an emergency diamond ring. You really ought to read about her.] Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

I’d shared the first five of my novels with my family back in 1996. They liked them, my sister especially. I’m not sure they knew what to make of them. I haven’t shown them to my in-laws, but, I think my sister-in-law found them on her own. We haven’t discussed them, as they aren’t her usual preference, which is Romance. One distant blood relation was thrilled to discover them on-line and wrote me about them. My sister, though, is my (self-admitted) biggest fan. When we were kids, she and I shared a bedroom, where I’d make up stories to tell her at night so she could fall asleep. She and I correspond regularly by E-mail (she’s in Florida and I’m in Maryland). Back while I was working my way through Chermera, she asked out of the blue if I was ever going to write any more. She was thrilled to hear I had been but she doesn’t have regular Internet access other than at her job. I made printed, bound copies of all my stories to mail to her last Christmas. She loves them, bless her. Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I’ve sent Chermera to Gossamer, but, it hasn’t been updated since July 2018. All the rest of the stories are there.

At AO3, my stories are under: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkeller. The Kuxan Sum Cycle is linked together at: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555492.

I’ve published the Lise Meitner stories under my own name there: Faustus Mulder; Late Night Thoughts on Evolution, Hard Times, and Lost Pets; You Just Don’t Understand; and Lux Perpetua. Since I could separate out the trilogies into their own cycle, it just made sense.

At fan-fiction.net, they’re under: https://www.fanfiction.net/~maryruthkeller

Again, the Lise Meitner stories are under my own name. Since fanfiction.net doesn’t have a linked series option like AO3, I’ve added a header to all eleven of the stories in the Kuxan Sum Cycle so far explaining the order. The novels all are tagged with thumbnail versions of the covers I made for them. Also, the literary quotes I started each chapter and begin and end each story with, are kept in the AO3 versions, but are removed at fanfiction.net to avoid potential copyright issues. Shakespeare, Christine de Pisan, the Popol Vuh, the Ugaritic myths around Anath, and others are all long out of, or never were in, copyright, of course, but, just to be on the safe side, I’m following fanfiction.net’s rules.

If folks care to write, I’m still at my old eclipse address: [email protected]. Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Enjoy it, use it as an opportunity to make connections and expand your horizons as a storyteller. Fan-fiction was much more of a home-grown effort back in the 90’s than it is now, when there are how-to books, of all things. But, don’t get so wrapped up one forgets about real life. That’s where all the best stories are.

(Posted by Lilydale on October 27, 2020)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #mary ruth keller

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jeannereames · 4 years

Text

Writing Historical Fiction (Well)

From an anonymous ask:

"What advice would you give to someone who wants to write about Alexander?" Sorry I didn't clarify, I was thinking of writing a fictional novel (but do not plan to publish it, lol)

If you’re just writing for yourself with no plans to publish, you don’t have to worry about constraints like wordcount and publishability. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to sell mainstream historicals. Selling a genre historical is easier (historical fantasy, historical mystery, historical romance). But there’s a reason it took me 30 years to get Dancing with the Lion into print. Yes, some of that time I was actually writing it, but much more was devoted to finding a market for it, and notice that I did, finally, have to sell it as genre even though it isn’t really. (It was that or shelve it forever.)

Yet if you’re asking for my recommendations, I assume you want to write something that’s marginally readable. Ergo, what follows is general advice I’d give anybody writing historical fiction.

For historicals, one must keep track of two things simultaneously: telling a good story, and portraying history accurately enough. It’s possible to do one well, but the other quite badly.

First, let’s look at how to write a good story.

There are two very basic sorts of stories: the romance, and the novel. Notice it’s romance small /r/. A romance is an adventure story; in romances, the plot dominates and characters serve the plot. A novel is character-driven, so plot events serve character development. Dancing with the Lion is a novel.

Once you’ve decided which of those you’re writing, you have a better handle on how to write it. You also need to know where you’re going: what’s the end of the story? What are the major plot points? Writers who dive in with no road map tend to produce bloated books that require massive edits. That said, romances will almost always be faster paced, in part because “what’s happening” drives it. Whereas in novels, the impact of events on characters drives it. Exclusive readers of romances are rarely pleased by the pacing of novels. They’re too slow: “Nothing is happening!” Things are happening, but internally, not externally.

Yet pacing does matter. Never let a scene do one thing when it can do three.

You will want to pay attention to something called “scene and sequel.” A “scene” is an event and a “sequel” are the consequences. So let’s say (as in my current MIP [monster in progress]) you open with a fugitive from the city jail racing through the streets with guards following: he leaps the wall of a rich man’s house and ends up in the bedroom of a visiting prince. That’s the scene. The sequel is the fall-out. (House searched, prince hides fugitive, prince gets fugitive to tell him why he’s running.) Usually near the end of the sequel(s) to the first scene, you embed the hook to the next (a slave of the rich man has been found murdered outside the city walls). The next scene concerns recovering the body and what they discover (then fall-out from that). Etc., etc., etc.

That’s how stories progress. Or don’t progress, if the author can’t master scene-sequel patterns.

It also means—again—you need to know where you’re going. Outlines Are Your Friends. But yes, your plot can still take a sharp left-hand turn that surprises you…they almost always do.

When I sat down to write Dancing with the Lion, I knew three things:

1) I wanted to write about Alexander before he became king.

2) I wanted to explore his relationship with Hephaistion.

3) I especially wanted to consider how both became the men they’d did.

With those goals in mind, I could frame the story. Because I always intended Hephaistion to be as important as Alexander, the novel opens in his point-of-view to establish that. And because I didn’t want to deal with Alexander as king, the novel had to end before he became one. History itself gives a HUGE and obvious gift in the abrupt murder of Philip. Where to open was harder to decide, but as I wanted to explore the boys’ friendship and its impact on their maturation into men, I should logically begin with their meeting, and decided not to have them meet too young. From there, I spun out Hephaistion’s background, and his decision to run away from home to join the circus, er, I mean Pages. 😉

IMO, Alexander’s story is Too Big to do in a single novel, or you get an 800+ page monstrosity like Chris Cameron’s God of War. The author must decide on what piece of the story she wants to tell. (Or, like me, view it as a series.)

So that’s (in a nutshell) how you construct a story.

As for the historical side, there are three levels here:

1) What the world looks like (details).

2) The events that take place.

3) How people living in that world understand life, the universe, and everything.

Number two is probably the easiest. Numbers one and three require deeper research on all sorts of things. Sometimes historical novels spend all their time on number one and completely forget number three exists.

The past is a foreign country. Just as you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) write a novel set in Japan (if you’re American) without learning something not only about the physical country but also the customs…same with stories set in the past.

This is why the Oliver Stone movie failed. He put modern people in a costume drama. He didn’t understand how ancient Macedonians (or Greeks or Persians) thought. So he committed crazy anachronisms like the oedipal complex between Alexander and Olympias. Freud may have named his theory after a Greek hero, but it’s largely a foreign idea to the Greek mind. (Whether it’s valid at all is a topic for another day).

The author has to let ancient people be properly ancient.

Problem: what do you do when they’re SO foreign they’re impossible to understand for modern readers—or their attitudes are outright offensive?

Well, if you don’t plan to get your story published, you don’t have to worry about that. Or not as much. But if you want to share it with others, you might still want to consider it.

There are two basic approaches:

1) Introduce your world through a “stranger” who enters it.

2) Spread out more “modern” views among various characters in the story, to give modern readers something familiar to hang onto.

The first of those is by far the most common. So in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, Claire Randall—quite literally a modern woman—introduces the modern reader to Jacobite Scotland. As she learns about her new world, so does the reader, and in Claire, the reader has a voice to express both their fascination and their horror of that world. In Judith Tarr’s Lord of the Two Lands, she uses Meriamon, an Egyptian priestess, to enter the Macedonian world of Alexander. Judy can then contrast Egyptian and Macedonian cultural values in order to explain them. Meriamon asks questions the reader wants answers to—or Niko (or Alexander) ask questions of her about Egypt.

The second choice (which is what I did in Dancing) is to identify cultural mores likely to offend modern readers: indifference to slavery, glorification of war and conquest, Greco-Macedonian attitudes towards women, and Greco-Macedonian attitudes towards sexuality. Then to assign one of the characters to voice a more modern view. Alexander gets to be a proto-feminist, and I gave points of view to two women. One of those women, I made a slave. Hephaistion gets to express a more modern view regarding the horrors of war. Sexuality was a bit tougher, but I used the boys’ atypical relationship—that the younger is the one of higher status—to illustrate Greco-Macedonian assumptions about what a male-male relationship should look like.

That approach presents more hurdles, but for my purposes, I preferred it.

I harp on this because it’s the biggest problem for historical fiction: not having historical characters! It wrecks what might otherwise be decent research into the details. No matter how much you look up what they ate, how they dressed, the way their houses were laid out…if you have them behaving anachronistically, it’s a bad historical. Or if you have circumstances that just wouldn’t occur.

Let me give an example. I’ve said before that, when I started writing the novel in December of 1988, Dancing always began with a run-away boy (Hephaistion). But in my initial version, he showed up in Pella incognito. The more I read about Macedonia, however, the more I realized that was virtually impossible. There just weren’t that many Hetairoi. He’d have been recognized, and probably sooner rather than later. So I went back to the drawing board and, instead of having him try to hide, he comes right out and says who he is, and that he wants to join the Pages. It might take away the “mystery,” but set up more interesting dynamics: would Philip let him stay? What would his father do? Etc.

That requires the author know enough about the culture to know what’s possible, probable, and impossible. It also requires the author to be willing to change original plans in order to reflect reality, not insist on doing ___ anyway.

A good example of jettisoning history in favor of “what I want to do!” can be found in David Gemmell’s Lion of Macedon. So many, many things wrong with that book, starting with his choice to make Parmenion a Spartan for no historical reason whatsoever—but (I assume?) because Spartans Are Sexy. Parmenion likely belonged to the royal house of Upper Macedonian Pelagonia. Although even if he didn’t, absolutely nothing suggests he wasn’t Macedonian, and quite a lot says he was. The whole duology (with included The Dark Prince) was essentially Blue Boltz ™ Epic Fantasy Does Greece. The fact he actually included a bibliography in back, and got weird, isolated details right only added insult to injury.

Yet Gemmell was a best-selling British fantasy novelist who knew pacing and how to spin a good yarn. For a reader with zero knowledge of Alexander, it would stack up as a predictable but tolerable fantasy set.

Remember that as an historical fiction author, your job is to practice the art of getting it right. If that isn’t important to you, please God, write something completely made up.

At the spectrum’s other end is Showing Notecards on Every Page. You’ve done ALL that hard research, and you’ll be damn sure the reader knows it!

Um, the reader doesn’t care. The reader wants to be transported to another world. How locals in that world shoed horses (or if they shoed horses at all) is irrelevant. It matters only if your main character’s a farrier. And even then, it matters only if said-farrier is having a conversation with someone else while shoeing a horse.

If people want all the little details of history, they’ll read a history book.

Now, how much detail is “too much” can vary from reader to reader, and often has something to do with the genre.

Regular readers of historical fiction are fans because they enjoy history. So they’ll expect proper world-building. But they don’t want the Dreaded Information Dump. Weave in details. The Dreaded Information Dump is a common beginning-author error across the board, but especially bad in certain genres, such as historicals, fantasy, and SF.

What’s an “information dump”? It’s where the author provides details the reader doesn’t need at that point in the story. What the character looks like, is wearing, their family background, what they had for breakfast….

As mentioned, details should be woven into the story organically. What your character had for breakfast matters only if, later, it’s giving him/her gas: “Damn those beans in my breakfast burrito!” Some details may be useful to set a scene and prevent characters from walking around, having conversations in a void, but again, a light touch.

Similarly, One scene, One head. We do NOT need to see everything from each character’s point of view. No, really. We don’t. And dear God, please don’t “head-hop” inside of scenes (unless you’re writing omniscient, but be sure you know what omniscient IS). Drives me BUGGY.

Anyway, back to the Notecard Showing Problem. As noted above, genre expectations and reader preferences often dictate what IS “too much detail.” Generally, historical Romance (the genre) and historical mysteries go lighter on detail than historical fantasy or plain historicals. That’s because the former two have genre conventions that work against it. Romances preference the love story front-and-center at all times, and mysteries have a mystery to unravel. E.g, they’re plot driven. By contrast, historical fantasies tolerate more world building because world building itself is a feature of fantasy (and science fiction too). And the appeal of mainstream or literary historicals IS the world building, so you get massive novels like Ken Follet’s Pillars of the Earth.

I’m blathering now, but hopefully this gives pointers not just about writing Alexander, but writing fiction period, and historical fiction in particular.

#historical fiction #writing #the writing life #writing how-to #Alexander the Great #Dancing with the Lion #ancient Greek fiction #scene and sequel #asks

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