Marie Brennan's Blog, page 117

Dice Tales at Book View Cafe: Different Challenges

This week over at Book View Cafe, I’m talking about “Different Challenges”: physical vs. mental vs. social, and the different ways those get treated in play.

Comment over there!

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

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Tales of Enchantment!

(I play too much Dragon Age. The word “enchantment” always comes out in Sandal’s voice in my head.)

I’m very pleased to announce “Tales of Enchantment,” a giveaway of more than 40 historical fantasy romances, plus a Kindle Fire to read them on. It’s organized by Patricia “Pooks” Burroughs, a fellow member of Book View Cafe, and features various other familiar BVC faces, like Irene Radford, Patricia Rice, and Sherwood Smith.

My own contribution to the bundle is an ebook of Midnight Never Come. Some titles swing the emphasis more toward “history,” some toward “fantasy,” and some toward “romance;” with more than forty books in the pile, there’s plenty to match all kinds of tastes.

The giveaway ends in seven days, so get your name in now! And note that if you share it and somebody else signs up from your share, you get extra chances to win. So spread the word!

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

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Dice Tales at BVC: Keep It Moving

The most recent installment of Dice Tales at Book View Cafe is “Keep It Moving,” talking about things that can disrupt immersion, and strategies for mitigating those problems. Comment over there!

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

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if you can’t win, change the rules of the game

I don’t have the link, but my husband recently read me bits from an interview with or article by one of the screenwriters for the upcoming Doctor Strange movie, wherein the screenwriter referred to the character of the Ancient One as “Marvel’s Kobayashi Maru.” This is, of course, the character that recently got whitewashed by casting Tilda Swinton in the role; the screenwriter’s piece argued that it’s a situation in which there is no good solution. To wit:

1) The Ancient One is, right out of the gate, kind of a horrible racist stereotype. Mystical Asian master teaches white man the ways of magic! Yyyyyyeah, when that’s your starting point, you’re already in trouble.

2) Okay, say you don’t whitewash the role; you cast an Asian actor and just accept the fact that you’re going to perpetuate the Mystical Asian Master stereotype. The character is canonically Tibetan; you cast a Tibetan actor. Congratulations: you have just walked into a minefield, and its name is “Tibetan/Chinese politics.” China says “screw you, we’re not showing that film in this country,” and you lose out on one of the biggest markets in the entire world — a market which is pretty much necessary to make a film of this kind profitable.

3) Okay, okay, so no Tibetan actor. Cast a Chinese man instead! China’s happy! . . . at the cost of supporting China’s imperialist attitudes toward Tibet and erasing Tibetan identity.

Each one of us probably has an opinion as to which of those three options (whitewash the role and dilute the Asian stereotype; cast a Tibetan actor and eat the massive financial and political hit; cast a Chinese actor and erase Tibet) is the least of the available evils. But the fact remains that none of them are straight-up good options; up to that point, I agree with the screenwriter’s argument.

But I also look at that, and then think about the Kobayashi Maru scenario.

If you can’t win, then change the rules of the game.

For example: I’ve been told that in some versions of the Doctor Strange canon, the hero is Asian instead of white. I haven’t been able to track down a citation for that, but it doesn’t have to be previously true to be an option now; instead of whitewashing the Ancient One, racebend Doctor Strange himself. Then you may still have your Mystical Asian Master, but he’s not teaching a white man his secret ways, and you have a headlining superhero who’s a man of color. It doesn’t solve your Tibetan/Chinese political problem — plus you have to decide what ethnicity your Doctor Strange will be, which potentially carries its own complications — but it does help mitigate the problematic nature of the Ancient One himself, and his relationship with Doctor Strange.

Or my sister’s suggestion: cast a Tibetan actor as the Ancient One . . . and then re-film those scenes with a Chinese actor for the Chinese market. Sure, it’ll cost some money, but not nearly as much as losing out on the Chinese market. You’re still kind of complicit in China’s relations with Tibet, and you haven’t solved your “Asian master teaches a white man” problem (unless you combine this with the above), but it’s a potential compromise.

Or — and this is my preferred solution — get rid of the problem entirely, by getting rid of the Ancient One.

Jettison the inherently problematic baggage you inherited from previous versions of canon and come up with something better. Sure, the fanboys will wail and gnash their teeth — but whatever, they can suck it up. They already understand that there can be multiple different canons, sometimes with wildly divergent stories for how the hero got his powers; let this be another. Give Doctor Strange a different origin story, one that isn’t founded on a horrible racist stereotype. Change the rules of the game. Play something better.

I think the screenwriter did a good job of outlining the dimensions of the box they were stuck in. I just wish he and the director and the producer had realized that they didn’t have to be in the box — that they had the power to bust out of it entirely. It would have been better than the route they went.

(And Scarlett Johansson as Major Kusanagi? )

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

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Dear NPT writer

Let me apologize up front for the fact that this is a terrifyingly long Dear Writer letter. :-) It's because I've let my inner fan off the leash, and she likes to squee all over the page. There are lots of suggestions in here, but if reading them makes you think of something else entirely you suspect I'd enjoy, then go for it! At this point I have a decent number of fics posted on AO3, plus gifts I've received in the past, so you can divine from their entrails if you need more clues. (And I have some more general notes at the end.)

The fandoms are in alphabetical order. Each has only one character requested because they're what I really care about, but you are more than welcome to include other people in the story.

***

Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Characters: Solas, Mythal

SPOILERS AHOY IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE ENTIRE GAME DO NOT READ THIS I MEAN IT JUST KEEP PAGING DOWNWARD

What I love about it: Bioware always does great characters, and Solas, for all his faults -- maybe because of them -- is one of my favorites. Also omgwtfbbq Trespasser ripping my heart out and stomping it into the ground.

What I'm looking for: Given the stuff Trespasser revealed about the elven past, I would really love to get something set back then, when Solas was operating as Fen'Harel. This could be him freeing slaves and removing the vallaslin from them, or him creating the Veil if you feel like getting your epic magic ritual on (at Skyhold, though it sounds like the actual fortress there is more recent than his day). Or maybe the watershed moment that caused him to become Fen'Harel -- whatever it was that made him decide that his mission in life was to free people from the control of the so-called gods.

I've included Mythal in my signup as a form of insurance; I'm crossing my fingers that anybody who offers her (separate from Flemeth) will be willing to write the ancient past. I'd love to see her interactions with Solas, since she seems to be the one "god" he had any fondness for. If you want to write about her murder, I'm fine with that, so long as she shows up as a character before she gets whacked -- I'd prefer if the fic didn't start with her already dead (or if it does, it has flashbacks to before). But if you have a really awesome fic idea where including Mythal would involve gratuitously crowbarring her in, I'm okay with you leaving her out.

In terms of the surrounding context, the more you can play up the differences between the world before the Veil and the world after, the better, as far as I'm concerned. :-) This is a time when spirits were a part of one's surroundings, when magic was everywhere in a fashion modern Thedas can't even conceive of. I'd like the gods to be impressive: they may be elven mages rather than actual deities (a fact which CRUSHED my Inquisitor's soul), but I don't want them to seem petty, y'know? They were awesome enough to be worshipped at a time when the world itself was already cranked up to 11. That ought to mean something.

If the thought of writing about the distant past like that intimidates you too much, I'm also okay with a story about Solas (sans Mythal) waking up in the modern world. He's weak, he's been asleep; this is the first time he's really seen the consequences of the Veil. I'd rather not get a fic about him going to Corypheus for help with the orb, but anything before that is fine.

***

Fandom: Highlander
Character: Methos

True story -- back in the Stone Age of Compuserve et al, when I had only seen a few episodes of Highlander, I was nosing around on internet fansites and came across references to Methos: the Oldest Immortal Alive! He’s Five Thousand Years Old!!! And I rolled my eyes because my god did that sound like a terrible idea.

Then I saw an episode with Methos in it, and realized he's the best character in the show.

So, um. The tl;dr version is METHOS YES PLEASE. The rest of this is me fangirling about why I like him, followed by some vague nods to what I'm keen on seeing.

What I love about it: uh, Methos being awesome? The writers avoided the pitfalls I automatically expected when I saw “five thousand years old, world’s oldest living immortal.” He’s not some uber-powerful demigod; he’s just a guy, and not even the strongest one out there. He’s also not some wise, enlightened elder -- though they poke at that idea entertainingly in “The Messenger.” He isn’t weighted down by the angst of his life; he has a fabulous sense of humour (that extends to mocking himself), and I loved how they handled the relationship with Alexa. So often, immortal characters (vampires, etc) moan about how they can’t get attached because the people they love will die and then it’ll be grief foreeeeeever; with Alexa, Methos is all, “Let’s date! Wait, you’re dying of cancer? NO TIME TO LOSE THEN” instead of flinching away from the pain. At the same time, man does he have some trauma and angst in his past (Horsemen, anybody?), which I am very much a sucker for. He doesn’t put dignity (or sometimes even honor) ahead of his own survival; yet on the other hand he will risk himself for his friends -- and also, every so often, this sort of masochistic or even self-destructive streak rears its head. He nearly suicides to Duncan in his first appearance (which, to be fair, is mostly because the writers originally intended him to be a one-off character), and then in “Comes a Horseman,” when he’s trying to squirm out of the conversation and Duncan won’t let him, he turns around and just starts twisting the knife in himself, talking about his own past in the most unforgiving way possible. And yet, there are moments where the wisdom comes out. I love the exchange between him and Duncan at the end of “The Valkyrie,” about who judges whom, and his epic speech at Amanda in “Methuselah’s Gift” is sheer brilliance. (The plot of that episode is Macguffin Ahoy! from one end to the other, but it’s worth it just for that speech.)

Basically, I love every episode he’s in and everything they do with the character (though I don’t remember season six very well), so if you have a Favorite Methos Moment, odds are I like it, too. Hanging out with Byron? Shooting Duncan in the head? His confrontation with Kristin at the end of “Chivalry?” (“A man born long before the age of chivalry” -- that was a nicely chilling moment.) Awesomesauce, all of it. :-D

What I'm looking for: Now that mini-dissertation is out of the way . . . I'm open for pretty much anything, but there are a few approaches I’d prefer you to avoid:

1) Anything that flat-out contradicts canon. Unless I specifically ask for an AU or crossover or fixit fic, etc, I like receiving things that fit into the world and history presented in canon. This doesn’t mean you have to drive yourself batty double-checking every last detail for fear of contradicting one (I probably wouldn’t notice the contradiction anyway), but it does mean I’m not keen on “the Horsemen team up again in the twenty-second century” or whatever.

2) Shippy fic or porn. Although I like his relationship with Alexa, I’m not that interested in a fic that focuses on it, nor do I really want to see him slashed with Duncan/Joe/Richie/whoever. Which is not to say you have to avoid relationships like the plague; if it would fit your story to have Methos be involved with some character of your own devising, that’s fine. (Female or male. I read him as straight, but open-minded enough that he wouldn’t say no to other kinds of fun. Especially if he were in a time and place where that sort of thing was mainstream, e.g. ancient Greece or pre-Meiji Japan.)

3) Horsemen-era stuff. I’m not hugely averse to this, so if you have a brilliant idea for something in that time period, go for it. But Horsemen-era Methos is not yet the complex character I love, so he’s less interesting to me. Also, I’m an archaeologist, so the TV version of the Bronze Age makes me roll my eyes. Though if you can do a more realistic Bronze Age, rock on!

Since now I feel like that makes me sound choosy, let me say that beyond those three things, I really am up for just about anything! Emo fic about some tragedy in Methos’ past; hilarious fic about a ridiculous caper; introspective fic musing on immortality and being thousands of years older than everybody around you; grimdark fic about the Gathering actually coming down. If you have a time period you really like, feel free to set the story there; if it’s a time period you know a crap-ton about, yes please. I adore historical fiction full of chewy little period details.

(If it’s a historical period in which -isms become an issue: you’re welcome to address them or sweep them under the narrative rug, whichever suits you better. I kind of think that Methos, with that range of experiences under his belt, has probably learned not to make snap judgments about people based on externalities, but that doesn’t mean he’s 100% free of prejudice. I also know that the prejudices we’re familiar with are very much an inheritance of the last few centuries, and that racism and sexism in, say, republican Rome operated in different ways than ours. So basically, do whatever serves the story best/you are okay with writing; I don’t particularly need this to be issuefic, nor am I driven off by characters acting in less than fully enlightened ways.)

***

Fandom: Rurouni Kenshin
Characters: Shinomori Aoshi, Makimachi Misao, Kashiwazaki Nenji | Okina

What I love about it: this was the first anime I ever really got into, and it remains one of my absolute favorites -- especially the Kyoto arc. I heart so many of the characters (pretty much anybody in the Kyoto season), and I like the questions it asks about violence, redemption, and other such topics. My personal interpretation is that it depicts a post-superheroic world, with Kenshin trying to put an end to the conditions that produced all these amazing badasses, because those conditions were awful and nobody should have to live through them.

I'll note in passing that I'm familiar with both anime and live-action movie canons, so you're welcome to use either of them, or even potentially mix and match -- just let me know in the author's notes at the beginning which approach to expect. I haven't read the manga, though, so while you can bring in elements of that if they fit, you'll need to establish them more clearly for me in the fic itself. (Also, I'm perfectly comfortable with the Japanese names for various things -- Oniwabanshuu, Hitokiri Battousai, Bakumatsu, etc -- and generally prefer those to the attempts to render them in English.)

What I'm looking for: Aoshi is the center of my request here. Depending on which of the following options you go with, you can choose to leave out either Misao or Okina.

Option number one is backstory, showing Aoshi when he was the brilliant young captain of the Oniwabanshuu. I'd love to see what made him so awesome, because it had to be more than just his skill with a pair of blades (and let's just pause here to admit that dual-wielding is always hot). The guys who are with him in the Kanyruu eps are intensely loyal; what did he do to win that kind of devotion? How did he earn his rank in the first place? What awesome things did he pull off during the defense of Edo Castle? Action is a plus here, but not a requirement. If you go this route, you can leave out Misao; I'm okay with their relationship later, but it would skeeve me out a bit to have her hero-worshipping Aoshi when she's even younger than in the main story.

Option number two is basically the "redemption is hard" story. :-) This would be set post-Kyoto, when Aoshi is trying to put his life back together after having thrown away pretty much everything in his quest to defeat Kenshin. How does that even work? How can he deal with the rest of the Oniwabanshuu, after what he did to Okina? What purpose does he even have in life at that point? I'm a huge sucker for that kind of story, a character who has done awful things trying to tiptoe his way back toward decency and forgiveness. Misao loves him enough to forgive him just about anything, but that doesn't mean everything between them is instantly peachy after Shishio dies. If you go this route, you can leave out Okina, but you're also welcome to include him; if memory serves, where things stand for him depends heavily on which canon you're using.

***

As for more general notes . . . .

Things That Are Yay: plot! (Casefic, etc. If you have the time and energy -- I know it can be a lot of work.) Exploration of character motivations, exploration/expansion of the setting. Fic that could fit into canon. Drama, up to and including aaaaaangst. Characters getting whumped on. Witty humour, especially if it's used as the jab to set up the dramatic roundhouse that follows.

Things That Are A-okay: violence, up to a point (see below). Non-explicit sex. AUs of the "what if this event went differently?" sort. Inclusion of nominated characters I didn't request. Inclusion of canonical characters who haven't been nominated. Original characters as needed for the story. Most povs, tenses, narrative formats, etc.

Things That Are Meh: straight-up character introspection. Nonfiction-style worldbuilding. Second person pov without a really good reason.

Things That Are Nay: radical AUs like coffee shop, genderswaps, a/b/o, etc. Explicit smut and its associated kinks/tropes. "Five Things"-type stories (I've read some good ones, but that format rarely does it for me; I much prefer one continuous tale). Requested characters having only a cameo in the story, unless otherwise specified in the prompt. Gross-out humour. Humiliation. Characters being flat-out stupid. Character bashing. Torture porn, especially with female victims. Women being sidelined in general.

***

As mentioned before, I'm russian_blue on AO3, so feel free to look at what I’ve got there if you need more data on what I like. And above all: have fun!

The final count(down)

Actual number of html pages on my site: 351.

Assuming I didn’t miss any.

The good news is, I intend to remove some of the cruft, and doing that will reduce the number to 267. That’s more than 20% less! . . . but it’s still a lot. Doing the transfer is going to take bloody forever. I am sorely tempted to pay somebody to do it for me (this is a service my site designer offers), except that I know this is also my big chance to tidy everything up: change the organization, fix broken code, add information I left out before, remove stuff that’s out of date. So I plan on doing it myself, though I reserve the right to change my mind partway through.

I can do ten pages a day, right? At which point this will only take me . . . a month.

Yeah.

So yes, there is a new site on the way. Just don’t expect to see it any time soon.

(And for the record, the closest guesser was weareadevilcow on Twitter, with 341.)

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

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Like those carnival games

I’m preparing to do a major overhaul of my site, and part of that process includes taking an inventory of the current site.

Which is rather large.

So let’s play a game! You guess how many pages there are on the site — individual .html files, not counting images and offsite links. Whoever comes closest to the real number will get a prize: their pick of my current inventory of author copies. (In the event of a tie, I’ll flip a coin or roll a die or whatever.)

Get yer guesses in!

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

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Two more Dice Tales posts up

Because I was traveling last Monday, I neglected to link to that week’s Dice Tales post at Book View Cafe: Shared Delusions,” discussing the techniques gamers use to help everyone imagine the same thing (or at least a close enough facsimile thereof) while telling the story. This week’s post expands on one aspect of that and talks about “Costuming.”

Comment over there!

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For the edification of the reader

The recent brouhahah over Stephen Fry saying asinine things about trigger warnings has given me an idea.

I’m going to add something to my website. I don’t know yet how I’ll arrange it in terms of code and presentation, but I’m going to provide content warnings for my fiction. Because I’ve had parents email me asking whether my book would be suitable for their kid (my inevitable answer: depends on the kid, and I don’t know yours, but the book contains XYZ), and readers asking whether my book contains a particular type of thing because they just don’t feel able to deal with that right now. So why not make that information publicly available? Yes, spoilers — but nobody will force you to read the content warnings. They’re there for the people who want them, and everybody else can go their merry way, exactly as they’re doing right now.

It will take me a while to write all this up (because I want to include my short fiction, not just my novels), and like I said, I need to figure out where I’ll put it on my site and how to code it (if you’re there to check the warnings for Work A, you won’t necessarily see all the warnings for Works B-Z). But apart from the labor involved, I see no reason not to provide this information. Also, I figure it would be good to ask: what kinds of things do you think it would help to see warnings for? I’m thinking major common ones, rather than trying to pin down every little thing — triggers can be very idiosyncratic. I’m also thinking of the kinds of things parents worry about, which aren’t so much triggering as inappropriate for kids at certain ages. So far I have:

Violence

Non-graphic violence
Graphic violence
Sexual violence
Murder
Major character death

Profanity

Mild profanity (i.e. “damn,” “hell,” etc)
Strong profanity (i.e. “fuck”)

Mild sexual content (i.e. reference to sex, but no direct depiction)
Drug use (not including tobacco, but including alcoholism)
Mental illness (PTSD, depression, etc)
Psychological abuse
Harm to children
Harm to animals

I’m not including things that haven’t actually shown up in my fiction, e.g. graphic sexual content, and obviously people’s boundaries for things like “non-graphic violence” vs. “graphic violence” differ. But if you can think of anything major I’ve left out, do let me know. (I’m also probably going to include special notes where necessary, e.g. “In Ashes Lie covers a period of plague in London, and gets quite grim and detailed about that event.” Because I don’t generally think I need to warn for illness, but I feel that’s one of the most horrific things I’ve ever written, and people might want to know it’s coming.)

Basically, I can go on providing this on a one-at-a-time basis — which requires people to do things like ask me “is there sexual violence in this book?,” thus possibly disclosing their own history in a way they would rather not do — or I can just put the info out there. I think the latter is the better way to go.

EDIT: good lord, self, have you written anything that doesn’t have non-graphic violence? (Answer: yes. But not at any length above novelette.)

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All Around the Internet and the Western United States (plus other locations)

It’s been just two days since the release of In the Labyrinth of Drakes, and already I have stuff I should link to!

First of all, I’m up at Tor.com with a nonfiction post titled “Learning to See Through Photography”, where I talk about how I went from taking really crappy pictures of my camp friends to displaying selling prints at Borderlands.

I also set a land-speed record for time elapsed from drafting a post to it going live on someone else’s site: around midnight I started writing a requested post about dragons (riffing off the panel I was on this past FOGcon) and sent it off to my UK publicist at about 1:30 in the morning. By the time I went to bed at 3, it had already been posted to SFF World! Talk about quick turnaround . . . .

And I know I linked to this before, but I should mention again that “From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review” went live on Tuesday. You don’t need to have read the Memoirs to understand the story, nor does it contain any real spoilers.

But! Speaking of Borderlands!

This Saturday, at 3 p.m., I will be doing a reading and signing. It will be lonely without Mary Robinette Kowal — come keep me company! :-) (And come see my pretty photos on the wall!) After that, I’m doing two other tour stops in the immediate future:

Monday, April 11th, at 7 p.m., I will be at the Powell’s Bookstore in Beaverton, in the Cedar Hills Crossing mall.

Tuesday, April 12th, also at 7 p.m., I will be at the University Bookstore in Seattle — in company with a certain artist. So if you want to get your books signed not only by me, but by Todd Lockwood, this is your chance to do both at once!

Further plans include Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego for their “birthday bash” on May 7th, the Bay Area Festival of Books in June, and in between those things, my Very First International (Non-Convention) Appearance at Les Imaginales in France. I don’t know whether any of my European readers will be able to make it there, but if so, I’d love to see you!

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