Marie Brennan's Blog, page 198
October 1, 2012
Banned Books at BVC
No, not our books being banned. (Though some of them may have been. And writers always joke that a banning attempt is fantastic publicity. Can you imagine if some parent challenged
Lies and Prophecy
for promoting witchcraft? I mean, it really kind of does, except for the bit where we haven't undergone a minor apocalypse that left half the population with pyschic powers. But trying to keep a book out of the hands of kids is a great way to get them to read it.)
Where was I? Oh, right. It's Banned Books Week, and over at the Book View Cafe, we're celebrating with a bunch of posts on the subject. Sherwood Smith kicked it off with a look at censorship through the centuries, and there are other posts about 50 Shades of Gray , the mechanics of banning, torching books for fun and profit educational purposes, and a church-sponsored burning, along with cheeky pictures of BVC authors with dangerous books.
I believe there are more planned throughout the week. I think it's fascinating, looking at the entire phenomenon of censorship and the means by which people try to pursue it. Fascinating, and scary. Because I have grown up in the absolute belief that suppressing the written word is wrong-headed at best and evil at worst, and try as I might to understand the position of those who seek to do so, I'm never going to sympathize with it.
Where was I? Oh, right. It's Banned Books Week, and over at the Book View Cafe, we're celebrating with a bunch of posts on the subject. Sherwood Smith kicked it off with a look at censorship through the centuries, and there are other posts about 50 Shades of Gray , the mechanics of banning, torching books for fun and profit educational purposes, and a church-sponsored burning, along with cheeky pictures of BVC authors with dangerous books.
I believe there are more planned throughout the week. I think it's fascinating, looking at the entire phenomenon of censorship and the means by which people try to pursue it. Fascinating, and scary. Because I have grown up in the absolute belief that suppressing the written word is wrong-headed at best and evil at worst, and try as I might to understand the position of those who seek to do so, I'm never going to sympathize with it.
Re(Visiting) the Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm (analysis)
[This is part of a series analyzing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels. Previous installments can be found under the tag. Comments on old posts are welcome, but please, no spoilers for books after this one.]
And now we talk about structure.
I don't envy Sanderson the challenge he faced, picking up the end of this series and trying to wrangle it into something like order. Jordan may have insisted that by god it was going to be ONE MORE BOOK, but I don't see any way in hell that could have ever worked -- and I say that without even having read Towers of Midnight yet, let alone A Memory of Light. There's enough here in this book that unless both of those are Crossroads of Twilight-level bogs of plotlessness (which I very much doubt), a single volume would have read like the Cliff Notes version of the finale.
But Sanderson didn't have a terribly good foundation to build on, structurally speaking, as he went into the final stretch. Card-weaving would make an ideal metaphor to describe the situation here, but since very few of you know how that works, we'll go with architecture instead: he, as the construction manager, inherited a building with four good, solid stories at the bottom, three or so dodgy levels above that, three ramshackle levels held together with increasing quantities of baling wire and duct tape, and then one that makes a valiant attempt at being structurally sound. Atop this mess, he had to build one (eventually three) final levels, and make them as habitable and pleasant as possible.
(Full disclosure: I wrote this post before reading Towers of Midnight, but ended up going ahead on that one just so I could stop worrying about spoilers when I look things up on the wiki, etc. As I polish this for posting, though, I'm avoiding making any changes that reflect my opinions post-ToM. Those comments, I will leave for the ToM posts.)
There are inevitably going to be some decisions he makes that are not ideal in their own right, but are necessary from the perspective of the eleven stories of varying solidity beneath him. Sanderson could focus equally on the major characters, but it would come at the price of delivering satisfying amounts of forward motion and resolution -- and that's a particular concern here, in the first of his own books, where everybody is going to be judging his ability to finish what Jordan started. He had to make this part of the story as exciting and satisfying as he possibly could; even, I think, if it meant creating problems for himself later on. Alternatively, he could go the Martin route of ignoring certain people entirely, so as to advance the chosen characters more energetically; but this would probably piss off readers for whom their favorites were among those ignored, and that's a real problem when he's trying to establish himself as Jordan's successor. Unsurprisingly, then, he went with a compromise: acknowledging most of the major protagonists -- Elayne being the chief exception -- but somewhat neglecting a few (Mat and Perrin) in favor of being able to accomplish something significant with others (Rand and Egwene).
The form this compromise takes is partly based, I think, on the fact that he'd written a substantial chunk of the "last book" before the decision was made to split it into three. Rand's later chapters make references to Perrin and Mat in situations we have not yet seen them in; their timelines are clearly no longer in synch. Personally, I have no problem with that. The Path of Daggers showed what happens when you start arbitrarily slicing your narrative into novel-sized chunks of timeline, rather than structuring it around having satisfactory payoffs at appropriate points. This is better, even if it does have its flaws.
Could you do this book more efficiently? Sure. Skip the scene where Ituralde prepares his battle at Darluna and start with the aftermath scene, where he talks to the Seanchan general. Or skip that one, too, tell us in narrative about what he's been doing, and go straight to the scene where Rand shows up and recruits him for the Borderlands. Or don't even do that. Leave him entirely as background, something Rand mentions in passing. (Really, if you were going to do that, you should have done it back in CoT, rather than launching him as an ongoing POV character. But I digress. Much like this series does!) Skip Gawyn's time with the Younglings and just show him leaving, or go further and pick him up when he arrives at the rebel camp. Indicate the repetitive, inexplicable punishment Aviendha's been getting from the Wise Ones, but don't actually show it.
You could do that. I'm unconvinced, though, that it would (at this stage) be an improvement. Back when I made my first post, about The Eye of the World , I talked about how you could theoretically have the Trollocs attack on page 20, instead of spending time on Emond's Field and the people there. I feel like we have, at long last, returned to something approaching that equilibrium here. You could make small excisions, maybe, but given the starting conditions going into TGS, big jumps would feel like the story was rushing -- like Sanderson was taking short-cuts to the end of the story, trying to deliver the plot points without much care for atmosphere. Aviendha's situation doesn't mean much if we get told, not shown, the final lesson a Wise One must learn. Rand's abandonment of Arad Doman is significant even if, ultimately, he doesn't do much there; it is significant because he doesn't do much there.
Of course, my tolerance for spending so much time on Ituralde and Gawyn and so on is mostly there because of what happens with the major protagonists. You guys, Rand appears IN CHAPTER ONE. It's like he's the main character or something! Seriously, I've said before that Rand hasn't really felt like the center of the story since roughly Lord of Chaos. Here, he finally moves back into the spotlight. And it's funny; I find myself inclined to say "he doesn't accomplish much" on a plot front in this book -- despite the fact that he wipes out two Forsaken. (Theoretically. While checking something else, I noticed that Graendal gets pov several times in Towers of Midnight. That may simply be an artifact of timeline de-synchronization, though.) The thing is, the Forsaken don't much feel like significant elements of the story at this point; with the exception of Moridin, they're just pins Rand needs to knock down on his way to the important stuff. They're on par with trying to find somebody to run Arad Doman. It's an item on a checklist, not a turning point in its own right.
Here's the thing, though. Even if Rand didn't take out Semirhage and (maybe) Graendal, i.e. accomplish meaningful plot actions, I would still be happy with The Gathering Storm. And that's because he undergoes a meaningful character arc over the course of the book. Figuring out a reason to care about the world and its fate isn't exactly a plot issue -- not in the way people usually use that word -- but it's far more satisfying to me than throwing down with a villain would be. We've had a lot of villain throwdowns over the last eleven books; more right now wouldn't really add anything new. Rand's transformation is new.
And it comprehensively settles the question I'd asked before, about whether the whole issue of Rand trying to be "hard as stone" and Cadsuane/Sorilea trying to soften him was actual thematic commentary, or just a way to have a macho hero with one touching moment of weakness at the end. The shift in him as a result of Semirhage's attack is unambiguously BAD, both on a metaphysical level (the connection to Moridin and the Dark One, the weird shadows around him) and a psychological one (the world needs a savior who actually gives a damn about it). I may roll my eyes a bit at the heavy-handed phrasing of his thoughts and the "I am cuendillar" image, but the idea is a good one. Hard-as-stone Hero = Not Good. I'm interested to see how Rand's epiphany plays out in Towers of Midnight.
On to the smaller issues. I like the principle of how Cadsuane breaks Semirhage; it makes very good sense, and is kind of pleasing to boot, given how much I dislike the Forsaken. I do think, however, that it takes effect too quickly (seriously, one spanking and she starts eating off the floor?), and also do wish, in light of previous incidents in the series, that it weren't a freaking spanking. But yes, disrespecting her is very much the way to go. And sheer, straightforward brutality is probably the way to take out Graendal, too. As Rand says, let her think you're going to play her game . . . then punch her in the face.
The fact that he uses balefire on both of them is interesting. On the one hand, yes, erasing bits of the Pattern = Bad, especially when it seems to be unraveling on its own anyway. On the other hand, Rand now knows, beyond a doubt, that it's the only way to be sure of removing a Forsaken from the board. I can't really blame him for using it on those two. Using it on an entire fortress of people, however, is less cool. On the other hand, again, there's an interesting moral question there, since we've been told again and again that Graendal obliterates the minds of her servants. There was no rescuing those people. On the . . . what hand are we on now? Anyway, this isn't just killing people who couldn't be saved; it's preventing them from ever being born again. And that makes this pretty obviously a Moral Event Horizon (for anybody who missed the significance of the True Power usage against Semirhage), not only because Rand does it, but because he doesn't care.
The widespread disintegration of the Pattern is outright fascinating to me. Bits of buildings migrate; will bits of other things start doing the same? Or does the sentience of a person contribute to them holding their own pattern together, so that we don't have to worry about people waking up with somebody else's arm stuck to their shoulder? The failure of plants to sprout and the spontaneous decay of food is seriously alarming -- to the point where I'm wondering how many days are left in-story between now and the Last Battle. It already seems to be nearing the point where the world is going to need some kind of miraculous spring when the Dark One is defeated, or it really will just slide into a non-cosmological abyss of famine and social collapse. It isn't there yet, of course, but a part of me feels like that's because Jordan, and Sanderson after him, are reluctant to fully embrace what the situation they present should look like. I know from my own research how that kind of thing might go, and this book seems to be soft-pedaling it a bit. But this has never been a George R.R. Martin/Joe Abercrombie kind of series, where fucking awful things happen to people at the drop of a hat, so I shouldn't really expect it to start in on that aesthetic now.
Speaking of the countdown to the Last Battle, I made particular note of Verin's assertion that "this battle isn't being fought the way al'Thor assumes it will be." Rand, of course, is fixated on a war along the Blightborder, an assault on Shayol Ghul -- which, narratively speaking, is probably the least interesting option. He's trying to think outside the box, in terms of using Traveling to teleport his armies behind the Blight's own lines, but he's still stuck on the notion of a straight-up war. I am frankly encouraged to have signs that he's wrong about that. A facedown with Shaidar Haran is probably inevitable, since it seems to be the Dark One's avatar, but we've also got Moridin and Padan Fain wandering around, and neither of them are problems one really solves with an army. And there's the fundamental question of what to do about the prison: Min's belief (probably correct) that Rand needs to destroy the remaining seals, Lews Therin's assertion that the Power has to touch the Dark One to patch the Bore (but that leads to corruption), the loss of the Choedan Kal, the general cosmological point that if the Wheel of Time really does turn, then either the Creator made the Dark One's prison broken from the start, or eventually somebody will have to remake his prison anew. I can spin out hypotheticals that involve Rand destroying the Dark One and then, I dunno, Shaidar Haran and Moridin and Padan Fain merging to become the Dark One 2.0 (or 937.0 or whatever iteration the cosmos is really on now) and Rand creating a new, unbroken prison for them, probably with female help, but that's just me letting my imagination off the leash. I have no idea what will actually happen.
Since I mentioned it before, I should note that Sanderson does not sweep away the concept of "pillow-friends," i.e. lesbian relationships between women in the Tower. (I wondered if he would, given his stated political opinions on the subject.) I started to type something about how he's doing as he should, by not projecting his own preferences onto somebody else's story, but then stopped because I have a double standard where that issue is concerned: I'm glad to see him maintain Jordan's inclusion (tepid and elliptical though it is) of homosexuality, but I kind of wish he'd done more to improve gender matters. It's hard for me to judge how he handled that one. Mat's thoughts on the subject felt like too strident of an attempt to hit the "Robert Jordan voice" on gender relations, and Nynaeve similarly felt like a caricature of herself when she went off on "wool-headed men;" also, ye gods with the ogling of other people's bodies in inappropriate circumstances. On the other hand, there are several moments in here that support Leigh Butler's comments about how one of the fundamental problems in this series -- and it is meant as a problem -- is the failure of men and women to communicate with one another. I could have cheered when Siuan finally laid her cards out in front of Gareth Bryne, and was rewarded with an improvement in their working relationship. There were similar, though smaller, moments between Rand and Nynaeve, and Egwene said things to Gawyn rather than leaving them unspoken and expecting him to figure it out on his own. Even Faile told Perrin what she was thinking, which felt radically out of character for her. <g> It's a mixed bag, I guess, and too much so for me to figure out which bits are Sanderson trying to ape Jordan, which bits are him trying to improve Jordan, and which bits are where the story was going anyway. Possibly more evidence will make it easier for me to judge. (I would love -- though we'll never get it -- to see the notes Sanderson was handed, to know what's his work and what's Jordan's.)
In terms of analysis, that's all that leaps to mind. If there's anything I've mentioned in earlier posts that I ought to follow up on, or things you guys would like to hear me opine on, let me know. ToM commentary will probably come in late November and early December, and then in January . . . A Memory of Light.
And now we talk about structure.
I don't envy Sanderson the challenge he faced, picking up the end of this series and trying to wrangle it into something like order. Jordan may have insisted that by god it was going to be ONE MORE BOOK, but I don't see any way in hell that could have ever worked -- and I say that without even having read Towers of Midnight yet, let alone A Memory of Light. There's enough here in this book that unless both of those are Crossroads of Twilight-level bogs of plotlessness (which I very much doubt), a single volume would have read like the Cliff Notes version of the finale.
But Sanderson didn't have a terribly good foundation to build on, structurally speaking, as he went into the final stretch. Card-weaving would make an ideal metaphor to describe the situation here, but since very few of you know how that works, we'll go with architecture instead: he, as the construction manager, inherited a building with four good, solid stories at the bottom, three or so dodgy levels above that, three ramshackle levels held together with increasing quantities of baling wire and duct tape, and then one that makes a valiant attempt at being structurally sound. Atop this mess, he had to build one (eventually three) final levels, and make them as habitable and pleasant as possible.
(Full disclosure: I wrote this post before reading Towers of Midnight, but ended up going ahead on that one just so I could stop worrying about spoilers when I look things up on the wiki, etc. As I polish this for posting, though, I'm avoiding making any changes that reflect my opinions post-ToM. Those comments, I will leave for the ToM posts.)
There are inevitably going to be some decisions he makes that are not ideal in their own right, but are necessary from the perspective of the eleven stories of varying solidity beneath him. Sanderson could focus equally on the major characters, but it would come at the price of delivering satisfying amounts of forward motion and resolution -- and that's a particular concern here, in the first of his own books, where everybody is going to be judging his ability to finish what Jordan started. He had to make this part of the story as exciting and satisfying as he possibly could; even, I think, if it meant creating problems for himself later on. Alternatively, he could go the Martin route of ignoring certain people entirely, so as to advance the chosen characters more energetically; but this would probably piss off readers for whom their favorites were among those ignored, and that's a real problem when he's trying to establish himself as Jordan's successor. Unsurprisingly, then, he went with a compromise: acknowledging most of the major protagonists -- Elayne being the chief exception -- but somewhat neglecting a few (Mat and Perrin) in favor of being able to accomplish something significant with others (Rand and Egwene).
The form this compromise takes is partly based, I think, on the fact that he'd written a substantial chunk of the "last book" before the decision was made to split it into three. Rand's later chapters make references to Perrin and Mat in situations we have not yet seen them in; their timelines are clearly no longer in synch. Personally, I have no problem with that. The Path of Daggers showed what happens when you start arbitrarily slicing your narrative into novel-sized chunks of timeline, rather than structuring it around having satisfactory payoffs at appropriate points. This is better, even if it does have its flaws.
Could you do this book more efficiently? Sure. Skip the scene where Ituralde prepares his battle at Darluna and start with the aftermath scene, where he talks to the Seanchan general. Or skip that one, too, tell us in narrative about what he's been doing, and go straight to the scene where Rand shows up and recruits him for the Borderlands. Or don't even do that. Leave him entirely as background, something Rand mentions in passing. (Really, if you were going to do that, you should have done it back in CoT, rather than launching him as an ongoing POV character. But I digress. Much like this series does!) Skip Gawyn's time with the Younglings and just show him leaving, or go further and pick him up when he arrives at the rebel camp. Indicate the repetitive, inexplicable punishment Aviendha's been getting from the Wise Ones, but don't actually show it.
You could do that. I'm unconvinced, though, that it would (at this stage) be an improvement. Back when I made my first post, about The Eye of the World , I talked about how you could theoretically have the Trollocs attack on page 20, instead of spending time on Emond's Field and the people there. I feel like we have, at long last, returned to something approaching that equilibrium here. You could make small excisions, maybe, but given the starting conditions going into TGS, big jumps would feel like the story was rushing -- like Sanderson was taking short-cuts to the end of the story, trying to deliver the plot points without much care for atmosphere. Aviendha's situation doesn't mean much if we get told, not shown, the final lesson a Wise One must learn. Rand's abandonment of Arad Doman is significant even if, ultimately, he doesn't do much there; it is significant because he doesn't do much there.
Of course, my tolerance for spending so much time on Ituralde and Gawyn and so on is mostly there because of what happens with the major protagonists. You guys, Rand appears IN CHAPTER ONE. It's like he's the main character or something! Seriously, I've said before that Rand hasn't really felt like the center of the story since roughly Lord of Chaos. Here, he finally moves back into the spotlight. And it's funny; I find myself inclined to say "he doesn't accomplish much" on a plot front in this book -- despite the fact that he wipes out two Forsaken. (Theoretically. While checking something else, I noticed that Graendal gets pov several times in Towers of Midnight. That may simply be an artifact of timeline de-synchronization, though.) The thing is, the Forsaken don't much feel like significant elements of the story at this point; with the exception of Moridin, they're just pins Rand needs to knock down on his way to the important stuff. They're on par with trying to find somebody to run Arad Doman. It's an item on a checklist, not a turning point in its own right.
Here's the thing, though. Even if Rand didn't take out Semirhage and (maybe) Graendal, i.e. accomplish meaningful plot actions, I would still be happy with The Gathering Storm. And that's because he undergoes a meaningful character arc over the course of the book. Figuring out a reason to care about the world and its fate isn't exactly a plot issue -- not in the way people usually use that word -- but it's far more satisfying to me than throwing down with a villain would be. We've had a lot of villain throwdowns over the last eleven books; more right now wouldn't really add anything new. Rand's transformation is new.
And it comprehensively settles the question I'd asked before, about whether the whole issue of Rand trying to be "hard as stone" and Cadsuane/Sorilea trying to soften him was actual thematic commentary, or just a way to have a macho hero with one touching moment of weakness at the end. The shift in him as a result of Semirhage's attack is unambiguously BAD, both on a metaphysical level (the connection to Moridin and the Dark One, the weird shadows around him) and a psychological one (the world needs a savior who actually gives a damn about it). I may roll my eyes a bit at the heavy-handed phrasing of his thoughts and the "I am cuendillar" image, but the idea is a good one. Hard-as-stone Hero = Not Good. I'm interested to see how Rand's epiphany plays out in Towers of Midnight.
On to the smaller issues. I like the principle of how Cadsuane breaks Semirhage; it makes very good sense, and is kind of pleasing to boot, given how much I dislike the Forsaken. I do think, however, that it takes effect too quickly (seriously, one spanking and she starts eating off the floor?), and also do wish, in light of previous incidents in the series, that it weren't a freaking spanking. But yes, disrespecting her is very much the way to go. And sheer, straightforward brutality is probably the way to take out Graendal, too. As Rand says, let her think you're going to play her game . . . then punch her in the face.
The fact that he uses balefire on both of them is interesting. On the one hand, yes, erasing bits of the Pattern = Bad, especially when it seems to be unraveling on its own anyway. On the other hand, Rand now knows, beyond a doubt, that it's the only way to be sure of removing a Forsaken from the board. I can't really blame him for using it on those two. Using it on an entire fortress of people, however, is less cool. On the other hand, again, there's an interesting moral question there, since we've been told again and again that Graendal obliterates the minds of her servants. There was no rescuing those people. On the . . . what hand are we on now? Anyway, this isn't just killing people who couldn't be saved; it's preventing them from ever being born again. And that makes this pretty obviously a Moral Event Horizon (for anybody who missed the significance of the True Power usage against Semirhage), not only because Rand does it, but because he doesn't care.
The widespread disintegration of the Pattern is outright fascinating to me. Bits of buildings migrate; will bits of other things start doing the same? Or does the sentience of a person contribute to them holding their own pattern together, so that we don't have to worry about people waking up with somebody else's arm stuck to their shoulder? The failure of plants to sprout and the spontaneous decay of food is seriously alarming -- to the point where I'm wondering how many days are left in-story between now and the Last Battle. It already seems to be nearing the point where the world is going to need some kind of miraculous spring when the Dark One is defeated, or it really will just slide into a non-cosmological abyss of famine and social collapse. It isn't there yet, of course, but a part of me feels like that's because Jordan, and Sanderson after him, are reluctant to fully embrace what the situation they present should look like. I know from my own research how that kind of thing might go, and this book seems to be soft-pedaling it a bit. But this has never been a George R.R. Martin/Joe Abercrombie kind of series, where fucking awful things happen to people at the drop of a hat, so I shouldn't really expect it to start in on that aesthetic now.
Speaking of the countdown to the Last Battle, I made particular note of Verin's assertion that "this battle isn't being fought the way al'Thor assumes it will be." Rand, of course, is fixated on a war along the Blightborder, an assault on Shayol Ghul -- which, narratively speaking, is probably the least interesting option. He's trying to think outside the box, in terms of using Traveling to teleport his armies behind the Blight's own lines, but he's still stuck on the notion of a straight-up war. I am frankly encouraged to have signs that he's wrong about that. A facedown with Shaidar Haran is probably inevitable, since it seems to be the Dark One's avatar, but we've also got Moridin and Padan Fain wandering around, and neither of them are problems one really solves with an army. And there's the fundamental question of what to do about the prison: Min's belief (probably correct) that Rand needs to destroy the remaining seals, Lews Therin's assertion that the Power has to touch the Dark One to patch the Bore (but that leads to corruption), the loss of the Choedan Kal, the general cosmological point that if the Wheel of Time really does turn, then either the Creator made the Dark One's prison broken from the start, or eventually somebody will have to remake his prison anew. I can spin out hypotheticals that involve Rand destroying the Dark One and then, I dunno, Shaidar Haran and Moridin and Padan Fain merging to become the Dark One 2.0 (or 937.0 or whatever iteration the cosmos is really on now) and Rand creating a new, unbroken prison for them, probably with female help, but that's just me letting my imagination off the leash. I have no idea what will actually happen.
Since I mentioned it before, I should note that Sanderson does not sweep away the concept of "pillow-friends," i.e. lesbian relationships between women in the Tower. (I wondered if he would, given his stated political opinions on the subject.) I started to type something about how he's doing as he should, by not projecting his own preferences onto somebody else's story, but then stopped because I have a double standard where that issue is concerned: I'm glad to see him maintain Jordan's inclusion (tepid and elliptical though it is) of homosexuality, but I kind of wish he'd done more to improve gender matters. It's hard for me to judge how he handled that one. Mat's thoughts on the subject felt like too strident of an attempt to hit the "Robert Jordan voice" on gender relations, and Nynaeve similarly felt like a caricature of herself when she went off on "wool-headed men;" also, ye gods with the ogling of other people's bodies in inappropriate circumstances. On the other hand, there are several moments in here that support Leigh Butler's comments about how one of the fundamental problems in this series -- and it is meant as a problem -- is the failure of men and women to communicate with one another. I could have cheered when Siuan finally laid her cards out in front of Gareth Bryne, and was rewarded with an improvement in their working relationship. There were similar, though smaller, moments between Rand and Nynaeve, and Egwene said things to Gawyn rather than leaving them unspoken and expecting him to figure it out on his own. Even Faile told Perrin what she was thinking, which felt radically out of character for her. <g> It's a mixed bag, I guess, and too much so for me to figure out which bits are Sanderson trying to ape Jordan, which bits are him trying to improve Jordan, and which bits are where the story was going anyway. Possibly more evidence will make it easier for me to judge. (I would love -- though we'll never get it -- to see the notes Sanderson was handed, to know what's his work and what's Jordan's.)
In terms of analysis, that's all that leaps to mind. If there's anything I've mentioned in earlier posts that I ought to follow up on, or things you guys would like to hear me opine on, let me know. ToM commentary will probably come in late November and early December, and then in January . . . A Memory of Light.
September 26, 2012
Icon winner and new buy links
alessandriana
, you managed what I couldn't; you got the Tower card to be big enough to make out, while still getting the title in the image. Thank you! Just let me know whether you want an eventual print copy of the novel, or tuckerization in the sequel I hope to write. And my thanks to everyone who submitted an icon: you're all far better at this than I am.Apropos of Lies and Prophecy making money, you can now buy it at Barnes and Noble, and Kobo, and Apple, along with Amazon and the actual publisher, Book View Cafe. If you have a preferred e-book vendor that isn't selling it directly, please do let me know; I can't promise I'll be able to get it there, but I can look into it. (BVC sells both epub and mobi formats, though, which should work on pretty much any device.)
I will have an open book thread for Lies and Prophecy soon, but I'm waiting for a specific date. (You'll understand why when we get there.) In the meantime, enjoy!
September 25, 2012
Comets, now conveniently sized for your pocket!
A Star Shall Fall is out today in mass-market paperback. Apart from being, y'know, smaller, with a slightly different cover, it should also have various errata corrected (like the bad arithmetic when Irrith goes to get bread). I say "should" because I don't yet have my hands on a copy to check, but I did have the opportunity to send in corrections, and I think I caught all the places where they were needed. Famous last words . . . .
BTW, since the past couple of days have been crazy, I haven't yet chosen an icon. I'm extending the deadline until tonight, just in case somebody else wants to hop in.
BTW, since the past couple of days have been crazy, I haven't yet chosen an icon. I'm extending the deadline until tonight, just in case somebody else wants to hop in.
(Re)Visiting the Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm (reactions)
I'll be doing two posts apiece for the final three books, the ones written by Sanderson -- not because Sanderson wrote them, but because the story in them is actually new to me. (I should have also done this for Knife of Dreams, on the same grounds, but I'm not going to backtrack that far now.)
In order to keep my remarks something like organized, I'm splitting them into my reactions as a reader, and my analysis as a writer. Of course, it won't really be possible to keep those two things entirely separate: my reader-reactions will inevitably include some analytical comments, and my structural analysis will perforce be colored by my feelings as a reader. But this will at least allow me to have two lengthy posts, rather than one unreadably long monstrosity.
Reactions first. And these are as spoilery as spoilers get, so let's go behind the cut.
Back when I was reading The Gathering Storm the first time, I made a brief post saying that I was kind of glad Sanderson was writing the end of the series, instead of Jordan. I need to unpack what I meant by that . . . especially because my reasoning is the exact opposite of what I expected when I heard they'd tapped him for the job.
Some background: I'm not really a fan of Brandon Sanderson's novels. I got maybe halfway through Mistborn before I realized I didn't care enough about the story to read the rest; I read the start of another one (can't recall which) and bounced out of it in less than a hundred pages. His stuff just doesn't work for me. His magic systems are very original, yes, but they also feel very artificial -- like a video game, with a bar in the upper corner of my screen tracking how much of each metal or whatever the character has left. I like my magic, and my fantasy more generally, to be numinous, and I got the exact opposite of that from Sanderson.
But it's really the characters where his work fell flat for me. Characters are probably my number one doorway into story, and I just never cared about Sanderson's. They didn't come alive in my mind. To be fair, the Wheel of Time is never a series I've really read for deep character investment; Jordan is, as I've said before, not all that great at characterization (on women especially), and the things I remember from high school as being moments of high drama more or less universally turned out to be a lot less compelling when I came back to them on this re-read. But that combination -- a series whose characters I'm not deeply invested in, now in the hands of a writer whose ability to make me care has an abysmal track record -- meant that my expectations for that facet of the story were pretty damn low.
I was shocked at how much certain parts of this book moved me.
The incident that prompted my mid-book post had to do with Semirhage. By the way: HOLY GOD WAS I WRONG when I called her the new holder of the Forsaken Who Went Down Like a Punk title. I take it back I take it back itakeitback. She is, in fact, possibly the most effective of the Forsaken thus far. Sure, she requires an assist from Shaidar Haran and Elza Penfell, and sure, she doesn't get a big epic battle like, say, Rahvin -- nor does she temporarily kill any of Rand's good friends -- but for sheer, effective malevolence, she flat-out wins.
We always knew the Sad Bracelets Domination Band would get used on Rand someday; that particular gun has been sitting on the mantel since, what, The Shadow Rising? And it would have been nicely appalling all on its own. But using that to force Rand to strangle Min, and relive Ilyena's murder . . . and then straight from that into Rand emotionally flat-lining and channeling the True Power. The visceral horror I felt at that moment was remarkable. Jordan and Sanderson had, between them, built a situation from which there was no other visible escape; and yet the solution was arguably worse than no escape at all. Calling on the Dark One for help: not the sort of thing the hero should do. Ever.
That was the point at which I got up and made my post. Because I kept thinking that, although I'm sure Jordan had outlined most or all of that sequence of events, Sanderson had written it more effectively than he would have. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe that scene is even something Jordan wrote before he passed away, and Sanderson only rearranged the commas. But there was emotional force in it that I don't recall ever getting from Jordan's own writing. Not when Nynaeve broke her block; not when Moiraine ~suicided to take out Lanfear. Not even when Rand found Mat hanging from Avendasora, which for my money is one of the most effectively shocking moments in the series. I don't know what chemical reaction happened to take two writers whose characterization doesn't move me very much and combine them into something that does, but the result is undeniable.
Nothing else got me quite that intensely, but the emotional strength of the narrative reappeared in other parts of the book. The horrified reactions by other characters to Rand's loss of affect, and then his own journey from the rock bottom of attacking Tam to the height of his epiphany on Dragonmount. I actually felt his despair over the inevitability of the cosmos he lives in: the Wheel of Time turns, everything comes round again, and what's the point of defeating the Dark One if everybody's just going to end up rinsing and repeating in a few thousand years? (It made Moridin weirdly sympathetic, when Rand spoke to him in that dream. Might as well skip to the end.) Love as the lifeline Rand clings to isn't the most original theme in the world, but our stories come back to it again and again because there's truth in the idea. If things like love aren't what we live for, what makes the suffering worthwhile, then maybe we should just skip to the end.
(I do wonder, though. Rand thinks to himself that Ilyena might live again -- and of course her name is an awful lot like Elayne's. But he's in love with three women. Min thinks the prophecy about Callendor refers to Rand plus two women in a circle, but is that really what it's predicting? Though it would be weird as hell to have Elayne, Aviendha, and Min full-on merge into a single person, if they're somehow three pieces of Ilyena's soul. Or, for that matter, for Rand, Mat, and Perrin to do the same, our ta'veren trio. Though Rand figures out that Lews Therin was his own mind talking to him all along, and he's also weirdly connected to Moridin these days, so maybe that is going somewhere. There are a variety of interesting threes walking around, and it's fun to play games with that that line might mean.)
Egwene, of course, is awesome. I agree with a friend of mine that it's sad the Green Ajah didn't make a better showing of it during the Seanchan attack, but then again, Egwene identifies with them, so that counts for something. I also noticed that her interactions with Aes Sedai of various stripes explicitly has them praising her for the qualities she shares with their Ajahs: the Browns respect her knowledge of history, the Whites admire her logic, she's trying to heal the Tower like a Yellow, etc. It's a bit heavy-handed, but it's also appropriate: she's the first Amyrlin in centuries -- maybe ever -- to truly be of all Ajahs and none.
And Verin. VERIN.
Okay, look: I never liked all the fan speculation about her being Black Ajah. My reason was that I hated the Black Ajah, and not in that "I hate them because they are villains" way, but rather in the "I hate them because they're annoying" way. And since I liked Verin, the prospect of her being associated with those irritating shrews was not one I wanted to contemplate.
If she had to be Black Ajah, this is hands-down the best way it could have turned out. It is so very much a Brown way to be Black, and it not only preserves Verin as a character worthy of respect, it gives me new reasons to admire her. In fact, she had so many little moments of awesomeness in her final scene, I could probably re-read it several more times and still be grinning. Her use of that innocuous little ter'angreal. Her comment about selfishness being the primary quality recommending the "Chosen" to the Dark One. Her cleverness in circumventing her new oath; I wonder whether we'll ever find out whether her speculation about the loophole being something the Dark One left in there on purpose is meaningful in-world, or whether that was just the narrative hanging a lampshade on the fact that it's a pretty badly worded oath. And although I'm not a fan of Sheriam being Black Ajah, I have to admit that I appreciated her thoughts on why she'd joined. I still think there's an absurd number of Darkfriends out there, both within the White Tower and without, but it makes sense to me -- as much as sense can be made out of this -- that many Aes Sedai join just because it's a way to get ahead of their sisters, and that most of them don't think it means they're going to be along for the ride when the end of the world arrives. (It still doesn't make perfect sense, given the incontrovertible proof of the Dark One's existence and his apparent supremacy over every dead soul EVER. This is a world without any real religion, a world in which the Creator doesn't do a single thing to protect or redeem anyone. So if you swear yourself to the Dark One, you're kind of permanently fucked.)
Elaida is gone. This is good. Do I want to see her collared by the Seanchan? No. I wonder if we'll ever see her again, or whether the damane will get freed en masse so we can at least assume she didn't stay in captivity forever. Given how Jordan shipped Galina off to the Waste with Therava et al, though, I wouldn't hold my breath for Elaida's chances.
Perrin . . . I want to punch him in the face less than I feared I would? Not a rousing recommendation, but as you may recall, as of Knife of Dreams he'd lost my sympathy so hard, I'd written him off for good. He at least recognizes some of his errors here, the way that he neglected abso-fucking-lutely everything in the world in his monomaniacal obsession with rescuing Faile. (And Faile, for her own part, acknowledges the thorny problem of Rolan and the other "protectors," which I very much appreciated.) He still doesn't notice that selling four hundred women into slavery is a bad thing, though, and nobody's really pointed it out to him yet.
(Gawyn, I want to punch in the face more than I expected. Good lord, but he's being thick here. About Rand and about Egwene, and the best I can say for him is that he gets smart enough to walk away from Elaida's side. And that Egwene handles him pretty well in the aftermath of her rescue -- but that's praise for her, not him.)
Oddly -- and sadly -- Mat is the character I'm the least happy with here. Not because he does anything bad, but because I think Sanderson is the least successful at writing him. I have to agree with a friend of mine, who speculated that Sanderson likes Mat too much, and it warps the resulting text. These chapters feel like he's trying too hard. His ranting about how women are incomprehensible, and the silly plan he comes up with for going into town (before Verin comes to him), and so on; those things needed a lighter touch than they got here. It's a shame, because Mat is one of my favorite characters -- and I don't think my dissatisfaction is because Mat is one of my favorite characters. I think he doesn't work as well in Sanderson's hands, and I'm just hoping his later stuff is more on-target. Nynaeve felt a bit the same to me, in her first pov bit, hammering too hard on the "wool-headed sheepherder" mentality, but she improved a bit as things went along. Maybe Mat will do the same.
I think that's most of what I have to say that's primarily about how I reacted to the book, rather than what I think of it. The analytical post will follow before long, in which I will look at structural matters and the payoff of various narrative strands.
And in the meanwhile, I will try to convince myself not to read Towers of Midnight just yet. But it's a testament to how enjoyable The Gathering Storm was that I'm actively interested in getting the rest of the story, and soon.
In order to keep my remarks something like organized, I'm splitting them into my reactions as a reader, and my analysis as a writer. Of course, it won't really be possible to keep those two things entirely separate: my reader-reactions will inevitably include some analytical comments, and my structural analysis will perforce be colored by my feelings as a reader. But this will at least allow me to have two lengthy posts, rather than one unreadably long monstrosity.
Reactions first. And these are as spoilery as spoilers get, so let's go behind the cut.
Back when I was reading The Gathering Storm the first time, I made a brief post saying that I was kind of glad Sanderson was writing the end of the series, instead of Jordan. I need to unpack what I meant by that . . . especially because my reasoning is the exact opposite of what I expected when I heard they'd tapped him for the job.
Some background: I'm not really a fan of Brandon Sanderson's novels. I got maybe halfway through Mistborn before I realized I didn't care enough about the story to read the rest; I read the start of another one (can't recall which) and bounced out of it in less than a hundred pages. His stuff just doesn't work for me. His magic systems are very original, yes, but they also feel very artificial -- like a video game, with a bar in the upper corner of my screen tracking how much of each metal or whatever the character has left. I like my magic, and my fantasy more generally, to be numinous, and I got the exact opposite of that from Sanderson.
But it's really the characters where his work fell flat for me. Characters are probably my number one doorway into story, and I just never cared about Sanderson's. They didn't come alive in my mind. To be fair, the Wheel of Time is never a series I've really read for deep character investment; Jordan is, as I've said before, not all that great at characterization (on women especially), and the things I remember from high school as being moments of high drama more or less universally turned out to be a lot less compelling when I came back to them on this re-read. But that combination -- a series whose characters I'm not deeply invested in, now in the hands of a writer whose ability to make me care has an abysmal track record -- meant that my expectations for that facet of the story were pretty damn low.
I was shocked at how much certain parts of this book moved me.
The incident that prompted my mid-book post had to do with Semirhage. By the way: HOLY GOD WAS I WRONG when I called her the new holder of the Forsaken Who Went Down Like a Punk title. I take it back I take it back itakeitback. She is, in fact, possibly the most effective of the Forsaken thus far. Sure, she requires an assist from Shaidar Haran and Elza Penfell, and sure, she doesn't get a big epic battle like, say, Rahvin -- nor does she temporarily kill any of Rand's good friends -- but for sheer, effective malevolence, she flat-out wins.
We always knew the Sad Bracelets Domination Band would get used on Rand someday; that particular gun has been sitting on the mantel since, what, The Shadow Rising? And it would have been nicely appalling all on its own. But using that to force Rand to strangle Min, and relive Ilyena's murder . . . and then straight from that into Rand emotionally flat-lining and channeling the True Power. The visceral horror I felt at that moment was remarkable. Jordan and Sanderson had, between them, built a situation from which there was no other visible escape; and yet the solution was arguably worse than no escape at all. Calling on the Dark One for help: not the sort of thing the hero should do. Ever.
That was the point at which I got up and made my post. Because I kept thinking that, although I'm sure Jordan had outlined most or all of that sequence of events, Sanderson had written it more effectively than he would have. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe that scene is even something Jordan wrote before he passed away, and Sanderson only rearranged the commas. But there was emotional force in it that I don't recall ever getting from Jordan's own writing. Not when Nynaeve broke her block; not when Moiraine ~suicided to take out Lanfear. Not even when Rand found Mat hanging from Avendasora, which for my money is one of the most effectively shocking moments in the series. I don't know what chemical reaction happened to take two writers whose characterization doesn't move me very much and combine them into something that does, but the result is undeniable.
Nothing else got me quite that intensely, but the emotional strength of the narrative reappeared in other parts of the book. The horrified reactions by other characters to Rand's loss of affect, and then his own journey from the rock bottom of attacking Tam to the height of his epiphany on Dragonmount. I actually felt his despair over the inevitability of the cosmos he lives in: the Wheel of Time turns, everything comes round again, and what's the point of defeating the Dark One if everybody's just going to end up rinsing and repeating in a few thousand years? (It made Moridin weirdly sympathetic, when Rand spoke to him in that dream. Might as well skip to the end.) Love as the lifeline Rand clings to isn't the most original theme in the world, but our stories come back to it again and again because there's truth in the idea. If things like love aren't what we live for, what makes the suffering worthwhile, then maybe we should just skip to the end.
(I do wonder, though. Rand thinks to himself that Ilyena might live again -- and of course her name is an awful lot like Elayne's. But he's in love with three women. Min thinks the prophecy about Callendor refers to Rand plus two women in a circle, but is that really what it's predicting? Though it would be weird as hell to have Elayne, Aviendha, and Min full-on merge into a single person, if they're somehow three pieces of Ilyena's soul. Or, for that matter, for Rand, Mat, and Perrin to do the same, our ta'veren trio. Though Rand figures out that Lews Therin was his own mind talking to him all along, and he's also weirdly connected to Moridin these days, so maybe that is going somewhere. There are a variety of interesting threes walking around, and it's fun to play games with that that line might mean.)
Egwene, of course, is awesome. I agree with a friend of mine that it's sad the Green Ajah didn't make a better showing of it during the Seanchan attack, but then again, Egwene identifies with them, so that counts for something. I also noticed that her interactions with Aes Sedai of various stripes explicitly has them praising her for the qualities she shares with their Ajahs: the Browns respect her knowledge of history, the Whites admire her logic, she's trying to heal the Tower like a Yellow, etc. It's a bit heavy-handed, but it's also appropriate: she's the first Amyrlin in centuries -- maybe ever -- to truly be of all Ajahs and none.
And Verin. VERIN.
Okay, look: I never liked all the fan speculation about her being Black Ajah. My reason was that I hated the Black Ajah, and not in that "I hate them because they are villains" way, but rather in the "I hate them because they're annoying" way. And since I liked Verin, the prospect of her being associated with those irritating shrews was not one I wanted to contemplate.
If she had to be Black Ajah, this is hands-down the best way it could have turned out. It is so very much a Brown way to be Black, and it not only preserves Verin as a character worthy of respect, it gives me new reasons to admire her. In fact, she had so many little moments of awesomeness in her final scene, I could probably re-read it several more times and still be grinning. Her use of that innocuous little ter'angreal. Her comment about selfishness being the primary quality recommending the "Chosen" to the Dark One. Her cleverness in circumventing her new oath; I wonder whether we'll ever find out whether her speculation about the loophole being something the Dark One left in there on purpose is meaningful in-world, or whether that was just the narrative hanging a lampshade on the fact that it's a pretty badly worded oath. And although I'm not a fan of Sheriam being Black Ajah, I have to admit that I appreciated her thoughts on why she'd joined. I still think there's an absurd number of Darkfriends out there, both within the White Tower and without, but it makes sense to me -- as much as sense can be made out of this -- that many Aes Sedai join just because it's a way to get ahead of their sisters, and that most of them don't think it means they're going to be along for the ride when the end of the world arrives. (It still doesn't make perfect sense, given the incontrovertible proof of the Dark One's existence and his apparent supremacy over every dead soul EVER. This is a world without any real religion, a world in which the Creator doesn't do a single thing to protect or redeem anyone. So if you swear yourself to the Dark One, you're kind of permanently fucked.)
Elaida is gone. This is good. Do I want to see her collared by the Seanchan? No. I wonder if we'll ever see her again, or whether the damane will get freed en masse so we can at least assume she didn't stay in captivity forever. Given how Jordan shipped Galina off to the Waste with Therava et al, though, I wouldn't hold my breath for Elaida's chances.
Perrin . . . I want to punch him in the face less than I feared I would? Not a rousing recommendation, but as you may recall, as of Knife of Dreams he'd lost my sympathy so hard, I'd written him off for good. He at least recognizes some of his errors here, the way that he neglected abso-fucking-lutely everything in the world in his monomaniacal obsession with rescuing Faile. (And Faile, for her own part, acknowledges the thorny problem of Rolan and the other "protectors," which I very much appreciated.) He still doesn't notice that selling four hundred women into slavery is a bad thing, though, and nobody's really pointed it out to him yet.
(Gawyn, I want to punch in the face more than I expected. Good lord, but he's being thick here. About Rand and about Egwene, and the best I can say for him is that he gets smart enough to walk away from Elaida's side. And that Egwene handles him pretty well in the aftermath of her rescue -- but that's praise for her, not him.)
Oddly -- and sadly -- Mat is the character I'm the least happy with here. Not because he does anything bad, but because I think Sanderson is the least successful at writing him. I have to agree with a friend of mine, who speculated that Sanderson likes Mat too much, and it warps the resulting text. These chapters feel like he's trying too hard. His ranting about how women are incomprehensible, and the silly plan he comes up with for going into town (before Verin comes to him), and so on; those things needed a lighter touch than they got here. It's a shame, because Mat is one of my favorite characters -- and I don't think my dissatisfaction is because Mat is one of my favorite characters. I think he doesn't work as well in Sanderson's hands, and I'm just hoping his later stuff is more on-target. Nynaeve felt a bit the same to me, in her first pov bit, hammering too hard on the "wool-headed sheepherder" mentality, but she improved a bit as things went along. Maybe Mat will do the same.
I think that's most of what I have to say that's primarily about how I reacted to the book, rather than what I think of it. The analytical post will follow before long, in which I will look at structural matters and the payoff of various narrative strands.
And in the meanwhile, I will try to convince myself not to read Towers of Midnight just yet. But it's a testament to how enjoyable The Gathering Storm was that I'm actively interested in getting the rest of the story, and soon.
September 24, 2012
Yuletide nominations are open
For those who are interested, Yuletide nominations have begun.
Note that this is an optional part of the process, even if you want to do Yuletide; it's only necessary if there's something specific you know you want to request. (Or offer, since some people nominate based on what they'd be interested in writing.) If you do have something in that vein, though, nomination is the only way to be sure it will be available this year.
(If you're not sure what Yuletide is in the first place, or want more info, there's finally an up-to-date FAQ you can consult.)
Note that this is an optional part of the process, even if you want to do Yuletide; it's only necessary if there's something specific you know you want to request. (Or offer, since some people nominate based on what they'd be interested in writing.) If you do have something in that vein, though, nomination is the only way to be sure it will be available this year.
(If you're not sure what Yuletide is in the first place, or want more info, there's finally an up-to-date FAQ you can consult.)
September 21, 2012
you knew this was coming
My general incompetence with image manipulation continues. So: who wants to make me an icon for
Lies and Prophecy
? (You can find a large version of the cover here.) It can be animated or static, it can show the hand or just a card or whatever looks good at 100x100 pixels.
I'll pick one on Monday, to give people a little time to work. And the winning artist can have their choice between a print copy of Lies and Prophecy once I have 'em, or tuckerization (that is, the use of their name) for a minor character in the sequel -- presuming, of course, that L&P sells well enough for me to write the sequel, which I hope it will. I promise to make it a cool character, though.
I'll pick one on Monday, to give people a little time to work. And the winning artist can have their choice between a print copy of Lies and Prophecy once I have 'em, or tuckerization (that is, the use of their name) for a minor character in the sequel -- presuming, of course, that L&P sells well enough for me to write the sequel, which I hope it will. I promise to make it a cool character, though.
September 20, 2012
more Driftwood!
My short story output has been dismal lately, but I did manage to complete and sell another Driftwood story: "The Ascent of Unreason," now live at BCS (not to be confused with BVC, which is what I originally typed), both as text and as a podcast. (And if you check that last link, you'll see that there are also e-reader versions available -- pdf, mobi, epub, etc.)
I have work I really ought to be doing today, work with deadlines attached . . . but I sort of feel like writing a short story. I may poke at my various seedlings and see if any of them are ready to sprout.
I have work I really ought to be doing today, work with deadlines attached . . . but I sort of feel like writing a short story. I may poke at my various seedlings and see if any of them are ready to sprout.
September 19, 2012
Mitt Romney, Bubble Boy
In light of Romney's self-inflicted gut wound this week, I find myself dwelling on this piece by Jeremiah Goulka, about how and why he ceased to be a Republican.
Goulka says a lot more, going into detail about how Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War pried the scales from his eyes, but that's the part that I keep thinking about -- because it's the only way I can make sense of Mitt Romney.
I think the man has spent his entire life in a socio-economic bubble so hermetically sealed that he doesn't even realize the world outside it exists. That's how he can see forty-seven percent of this country as moochers selfishly glued to the governmental teat, shirking personal responsibility while the virtuous men of his class keep the country going. That's why he thinks people making two hundred thousand dollars a year are middle class; that's why he can say, with a straight face, that he "inherited nothing." By his standards, those statements are true. But his standards are so skewed, the skew has completely vanished from his field of vision. He's a poster boy for privilege: carrying so much of it, and so utterly blind to the knapsack on his back.
And it means that when he opens his mouth around people from outside his bubble, he comes across as a condescending dick. It's happened again and again on the campaign trail, despite what I presume are the best efforts of his handlers to teach him less counter-productive habits; it happened on a massive scale at that fundraiser, because he never meant those words to be heard by the hoi polloi. It happens when they send Ann out to be his surrogate, because she's been living in the same bubble, a world where she and Mitt were "struggling to make ends meet" back when they were living off his stock portfolio.
During the 2008 campaign, I remember somebody writing a cute post wherein they pretended the presidential election was a piece of fanfic, and criticized it for Obama's Mary Sue qualities and the OOC way John McCain was being written, betraying all his principles in a cynical bid for the win. If 2012 were a workshop story, I'd be bleeding ink all over the page, lambasting the writer for saddling the Republican party with such an unrealistic caricature of arrogant, wealthy, self-interested self-absorption as their candidate. Because even when I can explain Mitt Romney, I have trouble believing that this really what we've ended up with.
The enormity of the advantages I had always enjoyed started to truly sink in. Everyone begins life thinking that his or her normal is the normal. For the first time, I found myself paying attention to broken eggs rather than making omelets. Up until then, I hadn’t really seen most Americans as living, breathing, thinking, feeling, hoping, loving, dreaming, hurting people. My values shifted -- from an individualistic celebration of success (that involved dividing the world into the morally deserving and the undeserving) to an interest in people as people.
[...]
My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality. To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their “just” desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn’t actually work that way.
Goulka says a lot more, going into detail about how Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War pried the scales from his eyes, but that's the part that I keep thinking about -- because it's the only way I can make sense of Mitt Romney.
I think the man has spent his entire life in a socio-economic bubble so hermetically sealed that he doesn't even realize the world outside it exists. That's how he can see forty-seven percent of this country as moochers selfishly glued to the governmental teat, shirking personal responsibility while the virtuous men of his class keep the country going. That's why he thinks people making two hundred thousand dollars a year are middle class; that's why he can say, with a straight face, that he "inherited nothing." By his standards, those statements are true. But his standards are so skewed, the skew has completely vanished from his field of vision. He's a poster boy for privilege: carrying so much of it, and so utterly blind to the knapsack on his back.
And it means that when he opens his mouth around people from outside his bubble, he comes across as a condescending dick. It's happened again and again on the campaign trail, despite what I presume are the best efforts of his handlers to teach him less counter-productive habits; it happened on a massive scale at that fundraiser, because he never meant those words to be heard by the hoi polloi. It happens when they send Ann out to be his surrogate, because she's been living in the same bubble, a world where she and Mitt were "struggling to make ends meet" back when they were living off his stock portfolio.
During the 2008 campaign, I remember somebody writing a cute post wherein they pretended the presidential election was a piece of fanfic, and criticized it for Obama's Mary Sue qualities and the OOC way John McCain was being written, betraying all his principles in a cynical bid for the win. If 2012 were a workshop story, I'd be bleeding ink all over the page, lambasting the writer for saddling the Republican party with such an unrealistic caricature of arrogant, wealthy, self-interested self-absorption as their candidate. Because even when I can explain Mitt Romney, I have trouble believing that this really what we've ended up with.
Writing Fight Scenes: Smooth Moves
[This is a post in my series on how to write fight scenes. Other installments may be found under the tag.]
I've said before that you don't actually have to give a blow-by-blow description of your fight in order to write a good scene, and in fact you often don't want to. Going into detail slows the action down and risks confusing a reader who can't visualize the movement very well.
But sometimes, at key moments, it can be good to describe specific moves. The sequence that leads to somebody being killed or disarmed or knocked to the ground can be worth focusing on -- a brief snapshot that shows a character's desperation, competence, etc. So let's talk for a moment about how you can work that out, even if you don't have a lot of training.
Warning: it involves looking like a complete weirdo. :-)
As with the maps, the key is to have a clear understanding of the physical circumstances of the scene. How are the combatants standing? Which foot is forward, how are they holding their weapons, which direction are they moving? If Fighter A blocks in this direction, where is the obvious place for Fighter B to attack next?
You can try to imagine it all in your head, but -- speaking as somebody who does really well with spatial visualization, and has actual combat training -- that's damn hard, and it goes better with concrete aids. You can try using action figures or something, but be sure to pick something fully articulated; a stiff-armed figure won't do you much good. The best, though, is to get some kind of prop to stand in for your weapons (even if it's just a yardstick or a cardboard tube for a sword), and a friend to be your opponent.
Whatever your setup, now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!
Not actual sparring -- not unless you've got the proper training and safety gear. (In which case, knock yourself out (in the non-literal sense).) But walk through the movements, slowly, and think about whether they work. If I come at my opponent with an overhand strike, what are her options for blocking, or which way could she move to avoid the blow? Having protected herself, what's the most open target on me for her to counter-attack? Or is there some way I can continue my strike into a second move before she gets a chance to respond? If I'm trying to achieve a specific effect, like sweeping her foot out from under her (because my story needs her to end up on the ground), what can I do to close the distance between us without getting skewered as I approach?
Don't forget to think about what your plan would be like at full speed. When you're going one movement at a time, stopping to think about tactics at each turn, it's easy to overlook the fact that momentum is also an issue. If your character is swinging a two-handed broadsword full-armed, reversing the direction of the weapon on short notice isn't a very feasible option, even if her enemy is wide open for it. If she's just been hit in the stomach and is doubled over to the left, any kind of high attack from the left will first require her to straighten up and turn -- and while that's going on, her opponent will probably be busy doing something else.
Also don't lose sight of the fundamental considerations: how trained the characters are, what they're willing to do. It may be true that the easiest and most effective move from a given position would be to kick the other guy in the head, but that doesn't mean that's what the character would do.
You'll need some way to record the moves you come up with, unless (again) you're really good at holding this sort of thing in your head. If you're trained at the kind of combat you're writing about, you'll probably have terminology for the purpose; otherwise make up whatever will still be clear to you when you come back to your notes in a week or a month. Whether it's technical jargon or your own personal system, though, it probably won't be the words you use for it in the actual story. Worry about mechanics now; artistic concerns come later.
Is this easier to do when you know how to fight? Sure. But even if you don't, miming your way through the key moves can make it concrete enough for you to write about it more vividly, and help you avoid making up a sequence that a reader who is visual and/or combat-trained will find howlingly implausible. You don't need the whole fight -- you probably don't want the whole fight -- but having a few specifics can give the scene more weight, and that's never a bad thing.
I've said before that you don't actually have to give a blow-by-blow description of your fight in order to write a good scene, and in fact you often don't want to. Going into detail slows the action down and risks confusing a reader who can't visualize the movement very well.
But sometimes, at key moments, it can be good to describe specific moves. The sequence that leads to somebody being killed or disarmed or knocked to the ground can be worth focusing on -- a brief snapshot that shows a character's desperation, competence, etc. So let's talk for a moment about how you can work that out, even if you don't have a lot of training.
Warning: it involves looking like a complete weirdo. :-)
As with the maps, the key is to have a clear understanding of the physical circumstances of the scene. How are the combatants standing? Which foot is forward, how are they holding their weapons, which direction are they moving? If Fighter A blocks in this direction, where is the obvious place for Fighter B to attack next?
You can try to imagine it all in your head, but -- speaking as somebody who does really well with spatial visualization, and has actual combat training -- that's damn hard, and it goes better with concrete aids. You can try using action figures or something, but be sure to pick something fully articulated; a stiff-armed figure won't do you much good. The best, though, is to get some kind of prop to stand in for your weapons (even if it's just a yardstick or a cardboard tube for a sword), and a friend to be your opponent.
Whatever your setup, now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!
Not actual sparring -- not unless you've got the proper training and safety gear. (In which case, knock yourself out (in the non-literal sense).) But walk through the movements, slowly, and think about whether they work. If I come at my opponent with an overhand strike, what are her options for blocking, or which way could she move to avoid the blow? Having protected herself, what's the most open target on me for her to counter-attack? Or is there some way I can continue my strike into a second move before she gets a chance to respond? If I'm trying to achieve a specific effect, like sweeping her foot out from under her (because my story needs her to end up on the ground), what can I do to close the distance between us without getting skewered as I approach?
Don't forget to think about what your plan would be like at full speed. When you're going one movement at a time, stopping to think about tactics at each turn, it's easy to overlook the fact that momentum is also an issue. If your character is swinging a two-handed broadsword full-armed, reversing the direction of the weapon on short notice isn't a very feasible option, even if her enemy is wide open for it. If she's just been hit in the stomach and is doubled over to the left, any kind of high attack from the left will first require her to straighten up and turn -- and while that's going on, her opponent will probably be busy doing something else.
Also don't lose sight of the fundamental considerations: how trained the characters are, what they're willing to do. It may be true that the easiest and most effective move from a given position would be to kick the other guy in the head, but that doesn't mean that's what the character would do.
You'll need some way to record the moves you come up with, unless (again) you're really good at holding this sort of thing in your head. If you're trained at the kind of combat you're writing about, you'll probably have terminology for the purpose; otherwise make up whatever will still be clear to you when you come back to your notes in a week or a month. Whether it's technical jargon or your own personal system, though, it probably won't be the words you use for it in the actual story. Worry about mechanics now; artistic concerns come later.
Is this easier to do when you know how to fight? Sure. But even if you don't, miming your way through the key moves can make it concrete enough for you to write about it more vividly, and help you avoid making up a sequence that a reader who is visual and/or combat-trained will find howlingly implausible. You don't need the whole fight -- you probably don't want the whole fight -- but having a few specifics can give the scene more weight, and that's never a bad thing.
