Marie Brennan's Blog, page 168

Reddit AMA on Tuesday March 11th

Have you ever wanted to ask me anything?

Well, tomorrow you’ll have your chance. At 4:30 Eastern time (1:30 Pacific time), I will be doing an AMA on Reddit — an “Ask Me Anything.” You’re free to ask about the Memoirs of Lady Trent or something else writing-related, but you’re by no means required to; if you want to know what my favorite food is or how my recent karate belt test went, those kinds of things are all fair game.

I’ve never done one of these before. It should be an adventure . . . .

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The Littlest Shodan-Ho Checks In

As of tonight, the belt I wear in karate class is black.

. . . mostly.

My actual rank is shodan-ho, which translates to something like “probationary first degree.” It means I wear a black belt with a white stripe. After my next test (which won’t be for months), I’ll wear a black belt with a red stripe, and then some number of months after that, I will be an actual honest-to-god black belt.

This means I have made it through the “brown belt blues,” i.e. the stretch of time where you feel like you’re making no progress at all. Our dojo has three degrees of brown belt (going from sankyu to ikkyu), and it’s a minimum of 45 classes between tests; at two classes a week, you spend a long time as a brown belt. Apparently a lot of people burn out and quit at that stage. (I myself am guilty of having slacked off for a while in there.) But now I’ve rounded the corner; the end is in sight.

Except of course it isn’t an end at all. Shodan basically just means that you’re considered “trained” — I’d give the serious side-eye to anybody below that rank who set themselves up as a teacher. There’s nigh-infinite room for improvement above that, though. The lowest-ranking teacher at our dojo is third dan, and Shihan himself is ninth. So, y’know. Shodan isn’t “mission accomplished; now I rest on my laurels.” But it’s a landmark, and one that is no longer quite so hypothetical. I could be there in a year and a half, if I’m consistent about making it to the dojo.

My test on Friday was kind of brutal, mostly because I was the only adult karate student testing this month, which means I had to go through the whole thing without any pauses. (Normally you get to rest while the other students perform their kata.) Stances, standing basics, moving basics, four karate kata (two pinan of my choice, jitte, and tomari passai), two sai kata (kihongata ichi and ni), two bo kata (donyukon ichi and ni), thirty-five shrimps, thirty push-ups, running in place for a minute. It took me ten minutes afterward to change out of my gi and repack my bag, I was moving so slowly. But I passed, and that’s the important part.

It’s very satisfying to look at how much I’ve learned. Not the number of kata, but the knowledge of how to perform them: the ability to think about something in jitte and connect it to a similar-but-different move in pinan san-dan, or to catch an error in my own movement before a senpai comes along to correct me. I’ve been doing this for a little over five years, and the progress is real.

Give me another year and a half, and you might even be able to call me fully trained.

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A Year in Pictures – Lal Bagh Clock

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I don’t know why there appears to be one of Snow White’s dwarves lounging in front of this flower clock (which is in the Lal Bagh Gardens of Bangalore) . . . but he amused me.

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A Year in Pictures – Trajan’s Column

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Trajan’s Column in Rome is one of those things that’s tough to photograph, because it’s tall and skinny and what makes it interesting is the intricate carvings that cover its surface. This is a detail shot of those carvings; now imagine 98 vertical feet of that. (It depicts Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars.) This is a case where Lightroom is very helpful: the carvings are not actually that distinct in normal light, but by fiddling with the settings I was able to bring them out so that the artistry can be fully appreciated.

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Supernatural Re-Watch: “Dead Man’s Blood” and setting up for the end

The last two episodes of S1 basically make a two-parter, even if they aren’t identified that way. “Dead Man’s Blood” isn’t part of that, but given the things which appear in it, it’s very much the staging ground for the season finale. And the elements here aren’t just important for that finale; they reverberate for years afterward.

The most obvious element I’m referring to is the Colt. It’s a useful plot device: a weapon that can kill anything, but has a limited number of uses. In the long term that limit gets mucked with, of course, but in the short term, every time somebody pulls the trigger, it’s a significant choice. It’s Jack Sparrow and “this bullet is not meant for you,” except even bigger, because Jack’s decision to save that bullet is ultimately just a matter of personal idiosyncracy. Without the rounds for the Colt, the Winchesters have no way to get vengeance on their enemy.

(I am still sad I never got an episode in which Sam Elliott played Samuel Colt. That is something the universe really ought to have given me.)

This episode also introduces the notion of other hunters. We’ve had a passing reference here and there — I think Dean said something about Pastor Jim at one point — but Elkins is the first one we actually see. It sets up a larger world in which the Winchesters are not the only people who know about monsters, the only ones trying to do something about it. Furthermore, it confirms the aesthetic that says the people who do this kind of thing are not playboy billionaires with high-tech Batcaves. Like the Winchesters, they’re just ordinary people, making do with what they can pull together for the fight.

Really, though, as with “Something Wicked,” the most important thing here is the Winchester family.

I said before that it’s an interesting choice to have certain archetypes cross-cut each other in the protagonists. Dean is the bad boy and also the obedient son; Sam is the good guy and also the rebel. He’s the one who pushes a confrontation with John here, refusing to follow orders until John shares some of what he knows. And Dean, in his turn, is the one who plays peacemaker, placing himself in the middle to try and defuse the conflict. I don’t think it’s reading too much into the scene to say that for Dean, watching his father and his brother go for each other’s throats is much worse than facing down monsters. Fundamentally, those two are all Dean has. If his family falls apart, he’s got nothing.

But Dean has started to grow as a person, thanks to John’s absence and Sam at his side. He starts out by telling Sam to stand down, but winds up saying the same thing to his father. And ultimately, of course, he and Sam disobey John’s orders, first arguing about the plan and then coming to help him in the final showdown. Sam grows, too: he reconciles with John, which is important given what’s about to happen in the next two episodes. In retrospect, it’s ironic to hear John say that he never wanted this life for his sons; Mary felt the same way. And it’s of a piece with the bits we’ve gotten before that John says his fixation when Sam left was on the fact that his son would be alone and vulnerable. Sammy is the one he protects, after all. But it isn’t quite true to say they’re alike now, because Sam has a brother at his side — an equal. John had only sons, and as we can see here, he has a hard time treating them as partners rather than subordinates. (Man, it hurts when he yells at Dean for not taking good enough care of the Impala. We’re far enough into S1 that I suspect most viewers feel the identification between Dean and the car, and so to find out that he got it from Dad, and to be accused of mistreating it, makes that moment really harsh. You can imagine it contributes to Dean coming around to Sam’s point of view, that their father is treating them like children and needs to stop.)

It’s a watershed episode on a character level. John admits they were right to disobey him, and says “we’re stronger as a family.” (More on that in my next post.) Their response is still “yes, sir” — there’s still a hierarchy here — but the dynamic has become a more functional one. Which means everything is in place for the end of the season, and the beginning of the next one.

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A Year in Pictures – Wieliczka Dwarf

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Wieliczka needs a bit of explanation. It’s a 13th century salt mine that was in continuous operation until 2007, when the double whammy of low salt prices and flooding caused it to close down. But it’s still a major tourist destination, because in addition to the miles of tunnels (178 miles, to be prices) — only a tiny fraction of which are open to the public — the saline lakes, the underground churches, and the incredible architecture of supports propping the place up, there are the sculptures: all carved out of rock salt, most of them by miners, and frankly kind of amazing. This is one of the dwarves that are said to haunt the mine, lurking adorably in the darkness.

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Supernatural Re-Watch: “Something Wicked” and family

I didn’t originally intend to post about this episode, because I remembered it as being a perfectly competent but not especially important bit of the first season. Rewatching it, though, I was struck by the way it performs some quiet-but-vital work on the issues of character and theme.

There’s an obvious parallel built in here: Michael, the kid at the motel, has a brother he wants to protect, which of course echoes the dynamic between Dean and Sam. It’s more than just an incidental thing; brothers are pretty much the biggest running theme in the entire series. And just in case you missed the comparison, the episode has flashbacks to wee!Dean and wee!Sam — which in general is not a graceful way to do things, but in this case I think it’s necessary to establish more than just the parallel.

The flashbacks show us key components of how the Winchesters came to be the family they are today. We know some of it from what Sam and Dean have said, but they’ll never say all of it; some things they aren’t aware of, and others they’ll never talk about. The only way for the audience to learn this stuff is to see it directly, i.e. in flashback . . . or else to have it play out over a long period of family interactions. And since John’s days on this earth are numbered, we don’t have the time to infer all the necessary elements by reading between the lines.

Going to the IMDb to get the name of the kid, I find that even the summary points this out, describing the Winchesters’ previous encounter with the shtriga as “an event which has fueled Dean’s protectiveness over Sam and his blind obedience to his father.” Dean, of course, is clearly Sam’s protector even before that incident; when his father is rattling off all the things Dean needs to do, the “most important” is “watch out for Sammy.” It’s interesting to watch that interaction play out: John initially comes across as harsh, authoritarian, and of course that’s not inaccurate. But it isn’t wholly without sympathy, either. When wee!Dean tells his father “you know I’m not stupid,” John agrees, saying that he’s only repeating all of this because one mistake is enough to screw everything up. When Dean obediently recites “shoot first, ask questions later,” John’s response is “That’s my man,” with a hand on his shoulder.

This isn’t healthy, of course. Any social worker would take one look at how John raised his sons and yank them away so fast, they’d leave smoke in their wake. But it’s clear that John is trying to do what he thinks is right for his boys. He isn’t drunk on his own power or unnecessarily cruel; he’s only necessarily cruel, preparing them for a world in which the monsters are real and out to get them. And you can absolutely see how it creates Dean as the man he is today: the responsibility to “watch out for Sammy” is both a burden and an honor. His father is relying on him, and carrying out his duty is the way to win Dad’s respect, his affection. Failing in that duty . . . Sammy is the one John embraces in the aftermath, not wee!Dean. Sure, the shtriga was after Sam, not Dean. But both of John’s sons have just had a traumatic experience. Both of them need comforting. For Dean, though, there is only rebuke. He had a job, and he didn’t do it. There is no worse sin in John Winchester’s eyes. (Nor in Dean’s, for that matter.) And for all that Sam thinks his father didn’t care about him, the truth is that he is the one John sheltered and loved, like a father should.

The skiving off is well-calibrated, too. There’s no suggestion that Dean resents Sam for needing protection — or even that Dean resents his father for placing that burden on him. (Not yet, anyway.) Dean is an awesome brother. When Sammy says he’s bored with spaghetti-ohs and wants the last of the Lucky Charms, Dean gives them to him, even though he hasn’t had any himself. (And then Sammy, in return, gives him the prize from the box. Awww.) When Dean goes to play the arcade game in the lobby, it’s described as him needing “air” — a few minutes out of the room, and maybe also the chance to pretend for little while that he’s a normal kid. The burden may weary him, but he doesn’t blame anybody for it, at least not right then.

For all that John has a relatively small role in this episode, it’s really crucial. We only saw him briefly in “Home” and “Shadow,” and won’t see that much more before he’s gone for good. If that departure is going to carry any impact, the audience needs to believe in its emotional weight, and that means selling us on the Winchester relationships, fast. I love the little touch at the beginning of “Scarecrow,” when John calls them: Sam’s talking to him at first, with Dean twitching and reaching for the phone, full of questions, but then half a second after Dean gets on the line, he’s sitting up straight and reverting to “yes, sir” and swallowing his orders without any hesitation. The transition alone speaks volumes.

So while the plot of “Something Wicked” isn’t terribly significant — there was a shtriga; it got away; this is Dean’s chance to redeem his past error — the character content absolutely matters. We need this before we get to “Dead Man’s Blood,” before we round the corner into the season finale and the opening of Season 2. And even once those episodes are over, the underlying points are going to be relevant from here to the end of S5: brothers and their father, and the way those three interrelate.

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A Year in Pictures – Dominoes and Dice

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There’s a small exhibition in the Louvre that takes you down to the foundations of the old medieval castle that were discovered beneath the museum. It includes a couple of display cases showing items from those excavations, including these medieval dominoes and dice. Photographing through glass is always hard, but in this case I’m extremely pleased at how the small details of wear and staining came through.

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Happy Book Day to Me

However long y’all have been waiting for this book, I think it was even longer for me. But at last all our impatience is rewarded, for The Tropic of Serpents is out today!

It’s ended up on several “anticipated books coming out soon” lists, which I have to admit makes me exceedingly pleased: Ranting Dragon, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, and at least one other I’ve misplaced. If you are looking to obtain your very own copy, I’ve got a list of places you may buy it without leaving your chair (though this note about buying from a store does still apply).

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go treat myself to a nice lunch . . . and maybe also a visit to the local B&N, to make sure it’s on the shelf/pester them to put it there if it’s not.

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A Year in Pictures – Dragon of the Tower

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Sometimes people miss out on the most amazing opportunites for merchandising.

This dragon stands in the Tower of London’s armory museum, and is constructed almost entirely of weapons and armor. Had their gift shop been selling a miniature replica, I would have bought it in a heartbeat. But whover’s in charge of that stuff is apparently an idiot; there was no such replica, and so alas, all I have are photos.

(Also? Happy Book Day to me.)

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