Marie Brennan's Blog, page 153

A Year in Pictures – Moaning Gargoyle

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Gargoyles are such a weird artistic tradition. They’re grotesque and comical at the same time; I love the expression on this guy’s face. (He’s sticking off the side of La Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.)

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Congratulations to Todd Lockwood

His cover for A Natural History of Dragons is one of the finalists for the Chesley Award, in the category of “Best Cover Illustration — Hardback Book.”

I feel a bit proprietary about this, of course, because the book in question is mine. Furthermore, I had input with Tor about the cover design; I had suggested a skeletal diagram of a dragon, while my editor was thinking of more of a life drawing, and the two concepts got hybridized to produce the final cover. But the cover itself is Todd’s work, and the nomination is richly deserved. Fingers crossed for him to win!

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A Year in Pictures – Decorative Ironwork

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The V&A is one of those museums that’s big enough to have entire galleries for rather random types of things. This is in the gallery of decorative ironwork, and I liked the way the color was simple but the pattern was complex.

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A Year in Pictures – Fireworks over Lake Biwa

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The fireworks display at Lake Biwa in Kyoto during Obon was astounding. It utterly dwarfed any such display I’ve personally seen in the U.S. For the most part it did not photograph very well — I would have needed to set my camera on a tripod and have it take lots of rapid-sequence shots to have much hope of catching things at the right moment — but this one came out pretty well. (The shadow impinging on the left is a tree; the spot of light lower down is someone’s cell phone. I don’t know how many thousands of people were there, but judging by the crush in the train on the way out, it felt like the entire population of Kyoto.)

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Supernatural Re-Watch: “In My Time of Dying” and season premieres

I never thought about it until I sat down and rewatched the episode for this project . . . but this is a really weird episode to open your season with.

Think about it. What do you want a season premiere to do? It should be a good entry point for people who are new to the show, since this is pretty much your best chance to pick up fresh viewers. That means it needs to give a good sense of the flavor of the show, while also not relying too heavily on stuff those hypothetical new viewers don’t know.

From that standpoint, this episode fails resoundingly — in fascinating ways.

This is not a Monster of the Week episode. It does not feature the Winchester brothers saving anybody from some supernatural threat. It does not end with an exciting battle; the closest thing it has to a fight is Dean trying to pull the Reaper off his comatose body. What it does feature is the fraught family dynamics that have been built up over the last few episodes of the previous season, and the final playing-out of the relationship between father and sons.

I have a suspicion, actually, which is that Kripke originally intended this to be the S1 finale, rather than the S2 premiere. Certainly the next episode, “Everybody Loves a Clown,” looks more like an entry point to the story than this one does. Kripke may very well have meant to close on the emotional punch of John sacrificing himself for Dean, but then either changed his mind or was pressured by the network into doing so. (Am I right? I have no idea. But I would find it very plausible.)

As payoffs for the family arc go, this one is quite well-constructed, especially in the bits where Sam leaps to the conclusion that his father cares more about killing the demon than saving Dean, and John reverts partially to form by not telling Sam what he really intends. This is probably one of the most important moments in the series from a thematic standpoint, because it’s the first iteration of the Deal With the Devil motif you get over and over again from different angles. John sells himself for Dean; pretty soon Dean will sell himself for Sam; Sam will then try to sell himself for Dean and fail; and so it goes.

It’s also an excellent conclusion to the shift we’ve seen with the three Winchesters since John showed up. Yes, John plays his cards close to his chest, which is regression in terms of treating his sons like partners instead of subordinates. But he’s always been 100% fixated on killing the demon — to the point where Dean figured out John was possessed when John praised him for using the Colt, rather than reaming him out — and now, when the moment comes, he lets that go in order to save his son. Furthermore, though it never gets said directly, there’s a sense that John is willing to do this because he trusts his boys to pick up the torch. He let them go to face the demon in Salvation, while he went to delay Meg; now he relinquishes his role in the battle entirely. It isn’t the kindest thing to do, given that he’s saddling them with that responsibility — but they’ve proven their willingness to take it up.

Speaking of relinquishing your role in the battle . . . .

I think the Reaper’s conversation with Dean is one of my favorite moments in the series. The Winchesters are the heroes of the story, which means it’s up to them to save everybody, and so it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying, of course they have to survive. The world needs them. But when Dean presents those arguments to the Reaper, she doesn’t buy them. Sometimes your time just ends. Sometimes — often — you’re not ready when it happens. Those around you have to go on alone. If he wants to say, he can . . . but at the cost of becoming exactly the kind of monster he fights.

I love that. Of course it doesn’t get taken to its full conclusion, because Dean’s life is saved, again; he doesn’t actually end up having to accept death. (Nothing can actually kill these guys for good.) But it certainly looks like he was on the verge of doing so, before the demon stepped in. It’s a well-executed moment, and because you don’t actually know what John was forced to add to “sweeten the pot,” it sets up a nice reversal when, just as everything seems to be good again, the rug gets pulled out from under you.

It would have made a good season finale, I think. It makes for a good episode. But as a season premiere? It’s a really weird choice.

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A Year in Pictures – Roman Forum

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You have to understand: I am a dyed-in-the-wool Latin geek. Not the most knowledgeable one, not by a long stretch, but I did NJCL competitions in high school, up to the national level in Certamen. The origins of my Latin geekery lie even further back, courtesy of an Odyssey of the Mind project in fifth grade where the problem we chose was “Pompeii.” So for me, going to Italy was like a pilgrimage, and the Roman Forum was my shrine. To actually walk on the Via Sacra and see the remnants of all those old monuments . . . it was a dream come true.

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Books read, June 2014

This was a terrible, terrible month for reading books. I’m in one of those pits where you start reading things and then quit on them, but too many of them are things I get a hundred or two hundred pages into before I decide to stop. Or else I’m reading things I’m not done with yet, like the autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila, which I picked up for research; it’s kind of a slog. (And also a study in religion as Stockholm syndrome. Every time she goes on about how God makes her suffer so that she may better know the depths of His love . . . yeah.)

Plus there were copy-edits. Result: the title of this post only barely deserves the plural.

Skull City, Lucius Shepard. Novella, and technically a re-read, but given that I first read it when I was twelve and remembered nothing beyond the quote we put on our TIP shirt, it might as well have been new to me. Re-read this because Shepard passed away recently, and the Locus roundtable discussion made me realize I had encountered his work once upon a time. If this is representative of Shepard’s writing, then he was a deeply weird writer, but also one with some very thoughtful things to say.

Also: I’m tempted to make a project of re-reading all the TIP stories. I still have ‘em; it might make for a fun experience, seeing what I make of them now.

Also also: holy mother of god I can’t believe Roger got away with giving this story to twelve-year-olds. Even if I didn’t know what “fellatio” meant back then, there’s plenty more that’s clear enough. O_O

Shadowboxer, Tricia Sullivan. Read for blurbing purposes.

You all know me. You know what genres I like. So when I tell you that I probably would have read and enjoyed this book if it had no fantasy content whatsoever and was just about a teenaged Dominican girl trying to make it in the world of MMA, you should extrapolate accordingly.

Voyage of the Basilisk, Marie Brennan. Copy-edits don’t count.

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Building a Better World

Some of you may have seen this excellent set of posts on the blog Generation Anthropocene, using details from George R.R. Martin’s novels to try and build a geological history of Westeros and Essos. It’s a fantabulous bit of geekery, marrying serious scientific know-how to one of the big challenges of writing speculative fiction, that task we refer to as “worldbuilding.”

I read those posts, grinned at the geekery — and then paused.

And clicked around a bit.

And sent an email.

A couple of months later, I am the proud owner of a tectonic map of Lady Trent’s world, along with extensive notes on the geology and climate of her planet. Mike Osborne and Miles Traer of Generation Anthropocene were kind enough to read through the first two Memoirs and take my description of the places that show up in #3, then help me work out the underpinnings of that world in greater detail than I had already. I’m pleased to say that my efforts on the climate front pretty much held up to their scrutiny; I don’t have any howling errors there. Figuring out the tectonics, though, gave me information I need for future maps, and provided a number of new considerations I’ll definitely be trying to work into the last two books.

I want to thank these guys publicly, because they have done yeoman work on my behalf. If this kind of nerdiness is your catnip, you should definitely check out the Generation Anthropocene site.

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A Year in Pictures – Column Capital

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I shouldn’t actually have this photograph. It’s from one of the museum-y bits at Westminster Abbey, and I didn’t realize until after I’d taken the shot that photography wasn’t permitted in there. I’m glad I have it, though, because the under-lighting on the figures is so wonderfully sinister.

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A Year in Pictures – Arms and Armor

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My fondness for the implements of war is showing through. These were on display in the Artus Court of Gdańsk, and something about the simplicity of it just appealed to me. I think it’s partly that you tend to see this kind of stuff formally laid out in a display case, whereas this looks more casual.

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