Marie Brennan's Blog, page 119

My FOGcon schedule

I just realized I hadn’t posted this yet.

The Ethics of Magic — Saturday, 10:30-11:45 a.m.

Fantasy characters often have special powers: fireballs and lightning bolts, telepathy and mind control, shapeshifting and many more. In many stories, though, the appeal of seeing these powers in action overwhelms the question of HOW they should be used. What ethical considerations come into play when extraordinary things become possible? Which stories have examined these questions, and which ones sweep them under the rug, to horrifying effect? (with metaphortunate, Garrett Calcaterra, and Madeleine E. Robins)

The First Annual Meeting of the FOGcon Draconic Appreciation Society — Sunday, 1:30-2:45 p.m.

Some of them dwell under mountains, on hoards of gold. Some of them *are* mountains, looming above the towns they hold in thrall. Some of them are members of a society as mannered as any Regency. Some of them are now human in form, if not in all their senses. Dragons are a wonderful, and varied bunch; let’s get together and talk about some of our favorites, and why we love them so! (with Steven Schwartz and Jo Walton — and then either there was a coding glitch, somebody got REALLY excited about Jo, or there are going to be 637 more of her on the panel with us)

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

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The Littlest Black Belt Crosses the Starting Line

After seven and a half years of practice, two months of really hard work, a couple weeks of rather gruesome stress, and fifteen minutes of actual kata . . . .

. . . I am a black belt in shima-ha shorin-ryu karate.

In a way, the test is more ceremonial than anything else. Shihan’s been watching you the whole time; he cares more about your general level of skill than how you perform in a single, specific moment. I screwed up the footing at one point on jitte — knew it even as my feet were moving into place. But I still passed. Because I don’t always screw up the footing on jitte, and even if those weren’t my best performances of each kata — my performance in a test is never my best; nerves get in the way too much — I showed that I know what I’m doing, well enough to qualify, at least.

My sister-in-law, who is a sensei at the dojo, said something very useful to me about two weeks ago: as much as we want to feel like we’ve earned our black belts with the test, her take is that you earn your belt after the test. The test itself is a formality, a thing to get out of the way so you can go back to working on your karate and growing into the belt you now wear. Her words of wisdom did a lot to help me stop stressing (well, stress less). And now, with the test over, I know exactly what she means. Shihan gave me some esoteric tips on movement; now in class, rather than running all my kata back-to-back in order to build my endurance and learn how to pace myself, I can stand there wiggling my shoulders and sticking my knuckles into my ribs and doing things that won’t have an immediate effect on my kata, but will make me a better karateka in the long run.

Because the thing to remember is: as much as outsiders think of getting your black belt as “graduation,” as having arrived . . . it’s really the starting line. All those belts below black are more recent inventions, a way to let you see the progress you’re making on your way to, not mastery, but basic competence. I have now achieved basic competence. Yay! Time to really get to work.

. . . no really, time to get to work. Because my test wound up being scheduled for a Wednesday afternoon, I have class tonight. I’m looking forward to sticking my knuckles into my ribs and seeing what happens. :-D

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

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ARC giveaway results!

Totally irrelevant to the actual choosing of a winner, but relevant to my curiosity: here’s how the “favorite character” voting fell out.

Natalie had an early lead and never lost it. Though for a brief time in the middle the second-place contender drew near, she wound up with twice as many votes as her closest competitor, making her the clear victor. Yay, Natalie!

Second place was . . . . Suhail! And behind him, Jake. Other candidates included Tom, Jacob, Heali’i, the dragons en masse, and the sparklings in specific. :-) If I count secondary votes, though — the respondents who said “Character A, but I also really love character B,” then Greenie got a vote, Heali’i got more support, and Jake pulls up to be tied with Suhail for second place. Natalie also got a secondary vote, though, so she remains ahead of even Suhail + Jake + Jake’s secondary votes combined. So I guess y’all like her. ;-)

But I’ve made you wait long enough. According to my highly scientific random number generation method*, the winner is . . .

. . . beccastareyes, on Livejournal!

Send me your address, and I’ll get the ARC out to you as soon as I can!

Thanks to everybody who sent in their votes. Keep an eye on this space for more giveaways in the upcoming weeks!

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*i.e. dice

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

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Stop. Just — stop.

(This post theoretically contains spoilers for Castle — but only if you consider it a spoiler when I talk about something done by practically every TV show ever.)

So my husband and I have been watching Castle lately. We really like the Castle/Beckett relationship; it doesn’t make the mistake committed by so many other buddy stories that pair up a free spirit with a by-the-book type, of making the by-the-book type a humorless automaton. Beckett gives as good as she gets, in her own way. And the show does a semi-decent job of explaining why it takes them years to get together: Castle’s had a string of failed marriages; Beckett has some major hangups. But eventually they do actually sort themselves out and start a relationship —

— whereupon, of course, the show has to start playing the OH MY GOD THEY’RE GOING TO BREAK UP card.

Foz Meadows had a post recently about bad TV romance wherein she rants quite eloquently about the investment of TV writers in the “will they or won’t they” dynamic. UST gets strung out for years, with the characters sitting on the fence long after the point at which they would have either hooked up or moved on — and then when they finally hook up, the implied verb of “will they or won’t they” is “split” instead of “get together.” Because the vast majority of TV writers (or possibly just the vast majority of the execs they answer to) have no freaking clue what to do with a romantic pairing that isn’t either impending or in peril.

And as Foz points out, the obnoxious thing is: they know exactly how to write that kind of thing, because they do it all the time — with male friendships. On Castle, Ryan and Esposito don’t always agree; sometimes they’re competing with one another or at odds over some issue. But in eight seasons, the show has never once relied on baiting us with the question of whether they’ll settle down as working partners, or whether they’ll split up and start working with other people. The writers don’t need those tricks to make the characters interesting to watch. Their banter is enough, and the pleasure of watching them do things together.

Ah, you say, but they aren’t the protagonists.

To which I say: so what? Why do the central figures of every male/female buddy show ever* have to not only get romantically involved with one another, but spend almost their entire existence in romantic limbo? Why can’t we have more Mr. and Mrs. Smith-style teamups? More couples with the exact same dynamic given to male/male buddy pairs, except with bonus smooching? As Foz points out, insisting on the uncertainty model for the romances means that all kinds of other tasty narrative material — “shared interests, complex histories, mutual respect, in-jokes, magnetic antagonism, slowly kindled alliances and a dozen other things” — is now off-limits.

It wasn’t entirely off-limits in Castle because the show let those things build between Castle and Beckett, during the period of time where they were sorting out their nonsense. But of course now we need Tension — we need Doubt in the Relationship — so all of a sudden they’re barely talking to one another. Bye-bye, in-jokes. Farewell, alliance. All those shared interests and complex histories? Irrelevant now. Because BY GOD we need the audience to be asking themselves “will they or won’t they?”

Even though the audience knows the goddamned answer.

Stop. Just stop. We know what’s going to happen with Castle and Beckett, and in the meantime, everything I like about their relationship has been squandered for the sake of that fake uncertainty. Quit it. Let the two of them behave like functional adults, and trust that the rest of the story is interesting even if that question has been answered.

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*Exception that proves the rule: Will and Grace, because Will was gay. Though for all I know, the show spent its time pretending they weren’t going to wind up being best friends/oh my god maybe they’ll stop being friends.

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

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Win an ARC of IN THE LABYRINTH OF DRAKES!

I neglected to mention this on the release date, but: A Natural History of Dragons is out in French! (Or rather, Une histoire naturelle des dragons.) That makes the first translation to hit the shelves, though there are others in progress.

As it is now four weeks to the release of In the Labyrinth of Drakes, it seems a prime time for an ARC giveaway! All you have to do is tell me — in comments, by email, or on Twitter — who your favorite character from the series is, OTHER than Isabella. (Ruling her out because, judging by the fanmail I get, she’d be 90% of the answers.) Deadline is noon PST tomorrow; I’ll pick a winner at random and ship out the ARC.

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

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Dice Tales at BVC: “From OOC to IC”

Over at BVC, my weekly post on RPGs and storytelling: “From OOC to IC,” talking about the shifts between those registers, and when and how they blur into one another. Comment over there!

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

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Books read, February 2016

The Wicked + the Divine, vol. 1: The Faust Act, Kieron Gillen (writer) and James McKelvie (artist).

The Wicked + the Divine, vol. 2: Fandemonium, Kieron Gillen (writer) and James McKelvie (artist).

The Wicked + the Divine, vol. 3: Commercial Suicide, Kieron Gillen (writer) and James McKelvie (artist).

(I’m listing them all together for the sake of convenience, but they were interspersed with other things.)

This is a comic book series set in a slightly alternate version of our world, where every 90 years there is a “Recurrence”: twelve gods manifest in twelve mortal hosts (not the same gods every time). They become instant rock stars, or period equivalent, with people falling at their feet in ecstasy; within two years all twelve are dead.

The storytelling here is a little bit disjointed — especially in the third volume, which is basically a collection of one-off issues that go into more detail on a selection of this particular Recurrence’s pantheon. But even when the story is moving forward, it often does so in a fashion that’s a little hard for me to follow; what I thought was the through-line turned out very much not to be. Despite that, I’m enjoying the series. I like the variety of gods: at the start of the series, not all twelve have manifested yet, but you’ve got Amaterasu, Baphomet, Minerva, Lucifer, the Morrigan (and Badb and “Gentle Annie” — she switches between aspects), Inanna, Woden, one of the Baals, and a Tara nobody’s quite sure of — there are several different Taras she could be. The gods appear to be no respecters of detail; Lucifer is a woman, Inanna is a man, and there’s discussion of what it means that Amaterasu showed up in the body of a white Englishwoman.

The main thing I will say — and I don’t think this is a spoiler — is that I don’t trust a single word that comes out of Ananke’s mouth. She is (in some theogonies) the Greek personification of Necessity, and she seems to be some kind of mentor figure to the pantheon each time around. She is also a highly dubious character, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s really up with her and the whole Recurrence thing.

Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho. A fun romp, though ultimately it didn’t hang together as much as I wanted it to. You’ve got the decline of magic resource in England, the challenges to Zacharias as the Sorcerer Royal, the troubles on Janda Baik, and Prunella’s mysterious legacy — but because all the Janda Baik stuff was offstage, being reported second-hand by characters who mostly didn’t stick around long enough to make much of an impression, it felt more tacked-on than I would have liked. And Prunella’s backstory wound up being wholly unrelated, except insofar as she happened to be involved with the rest of it. Certainly it’s possible to go too far with linking things, tying every narrative strand up in such a neat little bow that it comes across as entirely contrived. But this didn’t link them enough for my taste (a Big Revelation doesn’t mean much if the facts revealed are entirely without context), and the resolution of some of the problems felt much too convenient — all the stuff at the seaside, basically. But I very much liked the complexity of the relationships between the two protagonists and their surrogate parent figures, and the fact that Prunella keeps one very practical eye on the necessity of securing her future by ordinary means.

Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate, Richard Parks. Set in the same continuity as his Lord Yamada stories. I mentioned after reading the collection that the last piece felt much less like a short story and much more like setup for the novel; well, it turns out that it’s literally the beginning of the novel. It works much better in that context. Overall, though, I prefer the short stories — not necessarily because there’s anything wrong with this book, but just because I like what the stories are doing better. Each one of them tends to be a bite-sized look at some aspect of Japanese folklore, with Lord Yamada investigating and solving the mystery, then resolving the spiritual problem; here the same thing is generally true, but the additional wordage is almost entirely filled with politics instead of additional supernatural things, and that’s not really what engages me with this series. Plus, I do think Parks leaned overly hard on the “my protagonist and narrator has figured out what’s going on, but you the reader must remain in the dark” trick — which I know is a trope of a certain kind of mystery fiction, but it works better for me in third-person stories, or at shorter lengths. It made the Lady Snow stuff fall kind of flat in the end. Still, I’ll go on to read The War God’s Son at some point.

The Dragon Round, Stephen S. Power. Read for blurbing purposes. This was pitched to me as “the Count of Monte Cristo, with dragons” — which, yes, thank you, I’ll take that. As it turns out, it was less Monte Cristo-ish than I anticipated; it lacks the element of “mysterious and fabulously wealthy nobleman” which I think of as being the defining characteristic of that story type. But it’s a revenge tale, and one with certain kinds of complexity I very much like: for starters, when Jeryon is dumped into a boat by his mutinous crew and set adrift, he’s not alone. There’s an apothecary with him, a woman who refused to go along with the mutiny. And it turns out that the whole survival at sea/on a deserted island narrative feels 300% fresher when it isn’t just a tale of Rugged, Manly Individualism; Jeryon and the poth (as she mostly gets called, though she does have a name) have complementary skills that are both necessary, and along with struggling to survive, they have to figure out how not to kill each other during the lengthy period of time when they’re the only two human beings around.

As for the rest of the story — it doesn’t go the way you expect it to, and knowing not to expect the usual is probably helpful. I didn’t actually realize while I was reading this that it’s the start of a series, and the series is not about Jeryon getting his revenge. According to Power’s website, it’s about changes in the way humans and dragons interrelate — and Jeryon’s quest for revenge is more of an inciting incident than the spine of the tale. So if “revenge story” is not your cuppa, this may still be interesting to you.

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

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Month of Letters followup

Just a quick notice to say that, unsurprisingly, the end of the month brought in a mini-flood of letters. I’m working diligently to get through them, and should have replies out the door by the end of next week at the latest. But I figure you all would prefer that I prioritize finishing the draft of the final book — not to mention that if I don’t take frequent and lengthy breaks, my cursive gets even worse than it usually is. :-P So it’s one letter here, one letter there, in between other things. And of course a few more may yet come in, things that were mailed before the end of February but took a while to reach Lady Trent’s mailbox.

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

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a thing I would love to watch

We had our usual Oscar party the other night, and at one point during all the interviewing (which I mostly don’t listen to, because I’m there to enjoy the fashion), I caught Faye Dunaway saying something about how Brie Larson is an amazing actress.

And it got me thinking: I would love to watch something that involves one or more actors sitting around discussing clips from different performances, talking about what makes them so awesome. What little touches of timing or intonation really bring the character to life, what techniques are being used, etc — basically, the kind of thing I sometimes get up to with fellow writers, when we let our professional squee flags fly and really dig into the craft aspects of our job. I genuinely don’t know what a craft-based appreciation of acting would look like, what kinds of things an actor notices and admires while the rest of us are just sitting there going, “that was a really great scene.” Tony Zhou’s “Every Frame a Painting” series gets into this from the standpoint of cinematography and directing, but not acting; I’d love to get that angle as well.

Can anybody recommend examples of this? A YouTube series, a commentary track on a DVD, anything like that.

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

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the unexpected queerness of Google Translate

Every so often a review for one of my books pops up in a foreign language. Of course, being a nosy author, I want to know what it says — so if it isn’t in a language I read fluently*, I hop over to Google Translate and pop in the address to get a look at it.

Of course machine translation isn’t great. </Scandianvian> Despite our best efforts to date, “vaguely comprehensible” is often the best we can do, because it turns out that language comprehension depends heavily on a million contextual cues that are really difficult to program for. But for my purposes that’s fine; mostly all I want to know is whether they liked the book or not. What amuses me, though, is the unexpected gender-queerness that sometimes greets me as I read.

“Isabella begins his life as a young wife”

Not every language handles personal pronouns the way English does. A lot of them (Spanish, for example) don’t always differentiate gender in the third person singular; the possessive in particular is often gender-neutral. So Google Translate, missing the contextual cues, proudly declares that Isabella is a man, railing against the restrictions he suffers as a woman. Or sometimes she’s a neuter “it” instead. Meanwhile, in other languages, all kinds of things that would be “it” in English frolick along as boys and girls, because their pronouns are gendered in the language of the review.

So for all the (many, many) flaws of machine translation . . . sometimes it amuses me. *^_^*

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*Which is pretty much just English. Neither my Spanish nor my Japanese is good enough for me to really feel like wading through the hard way, especially when I’m pretty sure even machine translation does a better job of it than I will.

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