Marie Brennan's Blog, page 103

Goodreads giveaways, and still looking for icon help!

In the never-ending attempt to keep my stock of author copies under control, I’m offering up three copies apiece of Voyage of the Basilisk and In the Labyrinth of Drakes. You’ve got about three days left to enter!

Also, I’m still looking for icons! Renewing the call not because I haven’t been offered a good selection, but because I want to give more people a chance to win the two Advance Reader Copies of Within the Sanctuary of Wings. Get your image manipulating on and maybe get a book!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/796313.html. Comment here or there.

The Cheese Theory of Adaptations

My sister and I went to see the Power Rangers movie this past weekend.

You may think this was due to some nostalgia on my part. It’s not: I never watched the show, never had any of the toys, only vaguely knew it was a thing. My previous attachment to Power Rangers was nil. But the trailer looked fun and I’d done a whole lotta adulting over the previous couple of days, so off we went, even though my sister said that “everything Haim Saban touches is covered in a layer of Cheez Whiz.”

This led to us formulating the Cheese Theory of Adaptations.

At the low end you have something like the G.I. Joe movie. Was it cheesy? Yes — but it wasn’t good cheese. In fact, it was pre-sliced American cheese, and we’re not even sure the film-makers remembered to take off the plastic wrapper before offering it to us.

On the high end you have the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Which is also incredibly cheesey — but you find yourself saying, “dude, is this gruyere?” We’re talking high-quality cheese here, folks. The sort you can eat without feeling ill afterward, and even want to eat again.

The Power Rangers movie isn’t gruyere, but my sister and I agreed that it’s a good, decent cheddar. The weakest part of it was the obligatory Mecha Smash Fight at the end; by putting all the heroes into mecha, you restrict 90% of their opportunities to act, because the close-up shots of them mostly consist of them talking and then being shaken around their cockpits. But the good news is that the mecha part only comes at the very end of the movie, because the writers were far more interested in spending time on character development. These Power Rangers are a bunch of messed-up kids, and they aren’t able to “morph” (manifest their color-coded suits of armor) or control the mecha until they sort out some of their messes. That runs the risk of being pat — an After-School Special kind of story — but it isn’t, because “sort out” isn’t the same thing as “get over.” Nobody learns a Very Important Lesson and is thereafter rid of all their issues. Resolution comes in the form of honesty, of admitting they’ve got problems and trusting one another with their secrets. It lends weight to the idea that they have to work as a team; you can’t do that when you’re afraid to show your true self to your teammates, very real warts and all.

And there’s something to be said for throwing your entertainment dollars at a movie that shows a broad cross-section of the teenaged world. The Red Ranger and team leader appears to be your usual whitebread sports hero (and in the TV series that’s apparently what he was), but he’s got a history of sabotaging himself in disastrous ways; the introductory scene ends with him wearing a police-issued ankle monitor after a high-speed chase and subsequent wreck. He’s the only white member of the team. The actress playing the Pink Ranger (whose color palette has shifted closer to the purple end of the spectrum) is half-Gujarati, and her character is in trouble for having forwarded a sexually explicit photo of her friend to a guy at school. The movie shifts things around so that the black character is no longer also the Black Ranger; he’s the Blue Ranger instead, and on the autism spectrum, while the Black Ranger is Chinese-American and taking care of his seriously ill mother. Finally, there’s been a fair bit of press around the fact that the Yellow Ranger (played by a Latina actress) is the first LGBTQ superhero in a feature film.

So like I said: a good, decent cheddar. The characters are vivid and interesting, their problems feel very real, and the resolution on that front isn’t too tidy or simplistic. The villain and the throwdown with her are the least interesting parts of the whole shebang, but they don’t take up too much of it overall. It was a fun way to spend my Sunday afternoon.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/796013.html. Comment here or there.

two last icons!

I realized recently that not only do I not have an icon for Within the Sanctuary of Wings, I don’t have one for In the Labyrinth of Drakes, either.

So! I have two ARCs of Sanctuary to offer in exchange for people making me pretty icons out of the cover art for those books. You can find the full images for Labyrinth here and Sanctuary here. The icons need to be 100×100 pixels and contain the titles of the books; beyond that, arrange ’em however you like. I’ll pick two recips out of everyone who sends me an icon — so if you want the book early, fire up your mouse!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/795683.html. Comment here or there.

a sneak peek for WITHIN THE SANCTUARY OF WINGS

It isn’t nice to taunt . . . and you still have nearly five weeks to wait before the novel itself can be in your hands. But if you need your appetite whetted just that little bit more, Tor has posted the first chapter of Within the Sanctuary of Wings.

April 25th. If you think you’re chewing your fingernails off, know that mine went away months ago!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/795630.html. Comment here or there.

The New Green Wave

Here's something with green in it for St. Patrick's Day: pic.twitter.com/EJzMaP9nlh

— Marie Brennan (@swan_tower) March 17, 2017

Fun fact: people used to hate the idea of those dirty immigrants with their foreign religion coming into the U.S. By which I mean the Irish.

— Marie Brennan (@swan_tower) March 17, 2017

Fleeing starvation? Lots of Americans didn't care. Go home. No Irish wanted here.

— Marie Brennan (@swan_tower) March 17, 2017

Now, of course, people are proud to have 1/64th Irish ancestry or whatever, and it's Muslims who have taken the place of the Irish.

— Marie Brennan (@swan_tower) March 17, 2017

So here's a suggestion for St. Patrick's Day: do something to help Syrian refugees or make Muslims feel at home in the U.S.

— Marie Brennan (@swan_tower) March 17, 2017

Take some of the $ you would have spent on getting drunk and use it on behalf of the new green wave. https://t.co/8E8EaL8nEy #StPatricksDay

— Marie Brennan (@swan_tower) March 17, 2017

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/795373.html. Comment here or there.

Lives in the Balance

I’ll keep this short and to the point.

The intended replacement for the Affordable Care Act is going to kill people.

It sounds melodramatic — but it’s true. It will leave an estimated 24 million Americans without insurance (compared to the ACA), which will make it extremely difficult for them to afford healthcare. It cripples Medicaid, because poor people don’t deserve to be healthy, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, because children only matter while they’re fetuses — oh wait, insurers wouldn’t be required to cover maternity care, either. Nor birth control. Nor gynecological exams. And we all know what the right wing wants to do to Roe v. Wade. So you’re having that baby whether you like it or not, but don’t expect any support from conception until after your kid has graduated. Guess you should have kept your legs closed, bitch.

Call your elected officials. Call them until you get through, because their lines are swamped, and it may take you a while. Especially if you’re represented by a Republican in either chamber, for the love of god, call them. A number of them are already wavering; they know this is bad. But this isn’t the kind of bad where it’s okay to let it happen and let them reap the consequences later, because for them, the consequences will be that maybe they get voted out of office two or four years down the road. For other people, the consequences will literally be death. They need to hear voices telling them not to do it, before we get that far.

For the sake of the millions of people who will be hurt by this, speak up. Make your voice heard. Make a difference.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/794916.html. Comment here or there.

New Worlds: The Shape of the World at Book View Cafe

My second Patreon post — first if you don’t count the introductory riff — is now live at Book View Cafe! Comment there, or head over to my Patreon page to become a patron yourself.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/794665.html. Comment here or there.

Introducing New Worlds: essays on worldbuilding

After a hiatus following the completion of Dice Tales, I’m back to blogging at Book View Cafe, this time with a series I’m calling New Worlds. I’m putting ten years of anthropology education to good use by writing about worldbuilding: different aspects of setting and society that can make for an interesting story, with copious examples drawn from the wide array of places and time periods I’ve studied. The introductory post is up now, and the series will continue every Friday until I run out of things to say.

But wait — there’s more!

Those of you who have already clicked through to that post will have seen that this is a Patreon-funded project. That’s right — I’m taking the plunge into the subscription model of crowdfunding. The Patreon page has details, but the short form is that by backing the project, you can get photos, ebooks, extra essays, or more personalized rewards: the opportunity to request that I cover topics of your choice, feedback on your own worldbuilding questions, or even story critiques. More complete details on the reward levels are posted here. The Patreon is set up so that the subscription is per month, not per creation, and you can change your backing level at any time.

If you have any questions, drop me a line!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/794404.html. Comment here or there.

Elfquest Re-read, Captives of Blue Mountain: One Heart, One Mind

(This is part of my Elfquest re-read. There will be spoilers.)

It’s tempting to see Winnowill as an aberration, because in many ways she is. No character in this series, be they elven, human, troll, or Preserver, ever comes close to her level of persistent malice. But in focusing on her, it’s easy to lose sight of something else:

The Gliders as a whole are seriously messed up.

Let’s take a look at them individually. I can’t remember whether anyone else gets named in Siege at Blue Mountain and The Secret of Two-Edge (I think Reevol is the only one?), but in this volume we get Winnowill, Tyldak, Kureel, Aroree, Lord Voll, Egg, Brace, and the two Doors. The first is a villain; the second and third are arrogant jerks; Lord Voll is mired in complete passivity and then, when he rises out of it at last, kidnaps children as hostages for his dream. Aroree is the closest thing to a “good guy” in that lot, and she’s not what you’d call reliable about it. As for the others . . . on this re-read, I found myself trying to imagine their backstories. Egg I can kind of understand as an obsessive artist, losing himself in the beautiful, endless challenge of his work. Brace, though — with endless time to work in, he hasn’t managed to reshape things permanently to keep the mountain from falling on their heads? But the two Doors are the one that really boggle me. I can think of no image more emblematic of the Gliders’ social and psychological petrification than the Doors sitting in their niches, letting the centuries roll by while they do nothing other than shape the stone open and shut. How stultifying must their lives have been, to make devoting themselves to that job sound like a good idea?

It’s fascinating to me because although the Gliders are not High Ones in the strict sense — none of them, not even Lord Voll, remember the palace first-hand — their stated goal was to re-create those lost glories, and so they have a better claim to that title than anyone except Timmain. And what have they created? A sterile, claustrophobic world with so little to recommend it, some of their members would rather go into a trance for the rest of eternity than continue to engage.

And the thing is, we don’t know if that’s the Gliders Doing It Wrong or not. The other tribes speak of the High Ones with reverence. But does that mean they were good and wonderful people? Their own predecessors seem not to have been, what with using up their homeworld and all. I seem to recall the trolls later claiming that their rebellion happened because of how the High Ones were treating them — a claim that gets disputed, maybe? The details have slipped my mind, but I have this feeling that the High Ones were paternalistic toward the trolls, and not in any admirable sense of the word. Their crash landing on the World of Two Moons is their mythical Fall, but they weren’t necessarily innocent before it happened.

Because if humans aren’t all bad, the corollary is that elves aren’t all good. Cutter had his disputes with Rayek in the first volume, but that didn’t shake his belief in elven unity. (As well it shouldn’t: there must have been nasty interpersonal conflicts among the Wolfriders from time to time. Two-Spear, for example.) He comes into Blue Mountain with the conviction that anybody with pointy ears is not just a fellow member of his species, but someone with whom he shares “one heart and one mind.” That conviction takes a more or less fatal beating here, not just because of Winnowill, but because of the Gliders as a whole. They look on his tribe with contempt; Tyldak and Dewshine Recognize, but achieve no harmony between themselves; even Lord Voll, who is in some respects a sympathetic figure, sees nothing wrong with forcing his ambitions on everyone else. He could have shared his vision of the palace with them all when everyone was still in Blue Mountain, and they might have followed him willingly. Instead he absconds with their chief and two children, in a paternalistic belief that if they just follow him, they’ll see that he is right.

There is no real melding of the tribes, as there was with the Sun Folk. Aroree never truly integrates with the Wolfriders, and Dewshine doesn’t stay behind at Blue Mountain. The Gliders cannot change, not en masse and for the most part not individually, either. Their story as a tribe ends in death. (As Winnowill once knew it would: she tried long ago to persuade Voll that they needed to change and grow and engage with the outside world. But she failed, and this is the result.) And so we’re left with an unanswered question: how much like the High Ones were the Gliders? Bad copies, a mockery of not only the true power but also the true worth of their forebears? Or were they in fact quite a lot like the High Ones . . . implying that the change forced on their species by the World of Two Moons was, in the long run, a good thing?

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/794133.html. Comment here or there.

Drawing a circle

During the event I went to at a local mosque a few months ago, one of the visiting religious leaders recited a poem that, upon googling, I find attributed to Edwin Markham:

He drew a circle to shut me out,

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win

We made a circle that drew him in.

It’s a sentiment to keep in mind these days: solidarity, inclusiveness, answering condemnation with love.

This is our monthly tikkun olam post, a place to share your efforts to repair the world and take heart from the efforts of others. The usual principles apply: nothing is too small to share. Ongoing things are good, too; don’t feel like everything you say here has to be some new undertaking. If you’ve made donations of money or supplies, volunteered your time somewhere, helped out a neighbor, changed your life to be better for those around you, or otherwise done something to make the world a better place and counteract the forces pushing it in the other direction, share it here. It reminds you of the good you’ve done, gives you a chance to see the good of others, and may inspire you to new efforts you hadn’t thought of before.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/793934.html. Comment here or there.