Marie Brennan's Blog, page 162
April 30, 2014
A Year in Pictures – Boxer of Quirinal
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I’m fairly certain this is a replica of the Boxer of Quirinal, not the original, but it was still cool to see. I had seen a picture of this statue shortly before making the trip (because I was looking for images of a cestus), so coming across it in the Ashmolean was a pleasant surprise.
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NPT letter
***
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes
I saw The Winter Soldier with some friends -- and then went back two days later and saw it again with a friend who hadn't been able to join us the first time. Because apparently the way to get me into the theatre is to tell a story about a guy who's had his mind wiped and reprogrammed countless times over the last seventy years. :-D
Seriously, I love that concept so much. I'm kind of sadistic as a reader, and for that matter as a writer; I enjoy watching characters suffer. (Maybe I shouldn't admit that so readily . . . .) And one thing prose fiction does really well -- better than movies and other AV media -- is interiority, i.e. the subjective experience of a character, what's going on behind the eyes. So I find myself craving a story that really digs into Bucky's head during his time as the Winter Soldier.
What did that feel like? I haven't read the comics, so my only knowledge of canon there is basically what you get glimpses of in the movie, i.e. he was kept on ice in between jobs, and apparently they have a way of reformatting his brain when he starts to slip free of their control. Was any part of him aware during the periods of cryogenic stasis? Did he have weird, fucked-up dreams? How did they program him to be their pet killer in the first place? What's it like when the memories start to come back, and how does it feel when they get torn away again? I'm also interested in his relationship with his body, if that makes any sense -- the cyborg arm and the fact that he seems to be stronger/more resilient than he used to be.
You're welcome to approach this from any point in time that appeals to you, whether it's the early stages in which the Winter Soldier was created, the decades after that in which he was killing people for Hydra (maybe a Russian branch of Hydra, if you want to cross with comics canon?), his encounters with Steve in the movie, or what happens after. I just want a story that will dig into his brain, so to speak. It doesn't have to be straight-up introspection, either; it just occurred to me that what I'm asking for could be read that way. I have no objection to action or plot or interactions with other characters! Introspection usually packs more punch when it's embedded in that kind of stuff anyway, though if you want to deep-dive straight into his thoughts, feel free.
(Dang it, now I want to watch the movie again . . . .)
***
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.
Why I like him: uh, because he’s 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 blunt 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
Now that I’ve written a mini-dissertation, what about the actual request? Well, 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 for realz 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: Star Trek
Character: Spock
Right, so this request is kind of weird. :-)
As I said in my signup, I want a pon farr story -- but not the usual kind of pon farr story. I'm actually not looking for smut, though if sex ends up being part of what you write, that's fine. (It would be a bit silly to say "pon farr!" and then insist on no smut.)
What I want -- and this won't surprise you if you've read some of my other requests -- is Spock's experience of pon farr. It's kind of a fascinating concept to me, given the Vulcan culture it's a part of; these people are all about rationality and logic and mind over body, and then they have these moments where instinct and the body say, it's our turn now. Loss of control, inflicted on characters who prize their self-control above all, is one of my favorite tropes, so it's no surprise that this one has caught my interest so strongly.
And it gets complicated in the reboot because of the destruction of Vulcan. Is T'Pring still around? (Probably not, though if having her be one of the survivors suits your story, I have no objection. She's kind of a fascinating character in TOS, the way she works within the constraints of tradition to try and get what she wants.) Does the loss of the planet and most of their race change the schedule for Spock, making his episode occur earlier/later/at some unexpected time? Given that Spock is half-human, how does he feel about the Vulcan half asserting itself so inexorably, especially when there are so few Vulcans left? Does he realize what's going on right away, or does he fail to recognize the early signs/think it can't happen to him because he's half-human or because T'Pring is dead/etc?
Per what I said above, I'm okay with sex being part of the story. I'm also okay with violence being part of it; the idea that the other way to snap out of pon farr is to kill somebody is kind of fascinating in its own right. (And I'm a big fan of the way fight scenes can reveal or change or confirm aspects of a character. Which is also true of sex scenes, of course.) Mainly I just want the focus to be on Spock's interior experience during the whole thing. Is he ashamed of it, the way human cultures surround some of our own unavoidable bodily functions with shame? Does his rationality go away, leaving him driven purely by id -- and if so, how does it feel to watch it slip away, and then to have it come back afterward? Who (if anybody) does he choose to involve in the situation, and who (if anybody) gets involved without him choosing, and how does that change his interactions with them when it's all over? Sure, theoretically Spock could be all "yes, this is a natural function and a necessary one for my species at the moment, so I'm going to handle this in a sensible and uncomplicated fashion." But it's more fun when the experience is traumatic instead. :-) (See above re: me liking characters to suffer.)
***
Other info: I think the above gives a pretty good picture of the spectrum of things I like. Drama is good, drama mixed with humor is even better when the story suits it, I don't mind violence so long as it isn't splatterpunk gore. I adore stories with plot in. My default preference is for stories that fit in with canon -- "this could be the secret backstory/sequel you never knew about" or "if you changed X, things could totally have gone this way" -- as opposed to outright revisions, though some of my specific requests deviate from that.
Above all, I hope you have fun!
April 29, 2014
several recent books
I am not going to pretend I have any kind of objectivity here. None of these writers are strangers to me; they range from “the woman I’m about to go on tour with” to “the guy whose short stories I was critiquing when he was an undergrad just getting serious about writing.” 
But their books are excellent and I recommend them to you. All three are recently released!
Attack the Geek, by Michael R. Underwood — a side installment in the Geekomancy series (Geekomancy, Celebromancy, the upcoming Hexomancy). This series is basically “what if you could get superpowers through your knowledge of pop culture?” And don’t tell me you never wished you could do that. 
(Bonus installment: there’s an excerpt from Shield and Crocus up on Tor.com; that’s Mike’s new series, which will be starting up in June.)
Valour and Vanity, by Mary Robinette Kowal — fourth in the Glamourist Histories (Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, Without a Summer). I haven’t read this one yet because it just came out today, but you damn bet I’m going to, and not just because we’re touring together. This series is Austen-ish with magic, and they’ve only gotten richer as they go along. Plus: GONDOLA CHASES. How can you not want to read a book that has a gondola chase in it?
Steles of the Sky, by Elizabeth Bear — last in the Eternal Sky trilogy (Range of Ghosts, Shattered Pillars), though there will be new stories in that world after this, or so I hear. Central Asian-inspired epic fantasy, with some truly awesome worldbuilding elements and also a giant tiger-woman. (My love for Hrahima, let me show you it.) I was belated in reading the second book, so I haven’t picked this one up yet, but as above: you damn bet I’m going to. In fact, it may be coming with me on the trip.
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A Year in Pictures – Kerala Houseboat
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One of the most splendidly relaxing things we did during our India trip was visit the “backwaters” of Kerala — a series of waterways plied by houseboats, like the one you see in this photo. There’s a bedroom in the “house” with a kitchen at the back, and dinner was partly made from fish and shrimp pulled out of the water less than an hour before they went in the pan. I love being on the water, and while I prefer the sea, there’s a lot to be said for a quiet bit of floating around.
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April 28, 2014
she’s a changeling; they get reborn all the time
I have no idea when and how I will do it, but I suspect that one of these years, Ree is going to find her way into some piece of fiction I write.
She was my Changeling character in a long-running LARP, and over the course of five years of playing her, I worked up a fascinatingly complex framework for the metaphysics of her personality. She was a changeling: a faerie in a human body, which meant that psychology and metaphysics and narrative were essentially three sides of the same coin (and hey, it’s the Dreaming; why can’t a coin have three sides?). I don’t know why she came to mind tonight, but she did, and I found myself re-reading the transcript of a scene I once ran via e-mail. Jadael hosting people at his manor for some kind of party — I don’t remember why — and Ree in the middle of her cyclical Court change, which meant she was Unseelie and overwhelmed by fatalism and taking it out on everybody around her. So Jadael, being the perfect host, took her to a building out back and let her beat the ever-living shit out of him in a fight . . . because that was clearly what she needed. Which was both true, and not. It probably wasn’t good for her. But it made her feel better, because she had more anger than she knew what to do with, and whaling on Jadael with her fists let her inflict the fatalism on him, too, and make him bleed into the bargain. And there’s the whole layer that got added in by the Mesoamerican faerie stuff I had invented — stuff which got reworked into “A Mask of Flesh” and several other stories from that setting I haven’t finished and sold yet — Ree formally thanking Jadael at the end for giving her blood, which meant more than he realized, because of the concept of a debt of blood and what it signified to her. She was a diamond that had been shattered, and ultimately I got her out of the pit of her Court change and her fatalism by way of a metaphor, Ree understanding that you don’t fix a diamond by gluing it back together, you recognize that what you have — what you are — is coal, and you make a new diamond through unspeakable pressure over a long period of time.
I don’t think you can tell that story with a human being. Whatever I do with it would have to be higher-fantasy than that, because you need somebody whose soul is a story, somebody who exists through and for the telling of stories, who can re-tell her own story to fix what got destroyed so long ago. Somebody whose psychological problems are metaphysical and metaphorical at their root, tied up in diamonds and blood and fire and ice. Parts of it will go away, I’m sure: the two jaguars and her totemic tie to them, which is straight out of the Mesoamerican stuff and will wind up in the Xochitlicacan stories if it winds up anywhere. The specific framework of the Changeling cosmos, with Seelie and Unseelie and Ree as an eshu. Many of the characters she interacted with. But something about the core is still there in my mind, simmering away, and like blood, it will out.
Someday. Somehow. I’ll let you know when it does.
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Extra time to Design Your Own Dragon!
It occurred to us (i.e. myself and my Tor publicist) that it would be nice to give people in the cities I’ll be visiting on my book tour a chance to participate in the Design Your Own Dragon contest. Ergo, the new deadline is:
11:59 EASTERN TIME ON MAY 15TH
All current entries are still included, of course. But if you were worried about the impending deadline, now you have another two weeks or so to polish your creations. Full details for the contest are here, if you need a refresher.
Now, back to prepping for the tour!
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A Year in Pictures – Barbican Model
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The old/tourist part of Kraków has a lot of these things: little bronze models of the famous attractions, with plaques telling you something about the site. They’re really handy, especially when (as is the case with this model) they show you what the place looked like back in the day. The moat around the Barbican is gone now, except in this pint-sized version.
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April 26, 2014
Documented for posterity, ’cause it ain’t gonna last
My office
is one hundred
percent
clean.
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April 25, 2014
A Year in Pictures – Uffington White Horse
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Some of you may recognize this fellow from In Ashes Lie. It’s the Uffington White Horse, a stylized figure carved into the chalk hillside. The only really good way to get a photo of it is from a helicopter or plane, but I did my best . . . .
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April 24, 2014
A Year in Pictures – Rhodes Dolphins
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By the time I went on my honeymoon, I was starting to get better at photographic composition. This one especially pleased me, with the dolphins in the foreground, the crumbling walls in the background, and the intense blue of the harbor at Rhodes to contrast with the sculpture and the sky.
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