Marie Brennan's Blog, page 230

random linkage

This article is very long, but I found it made for fascinating reading. (Pair with these images to get a sense of what's going on in the vicinity of Old River Control.) I've known for quite a while about the whole "the Mississippi changes its bed" thing, but I didn't realize that it is very specifically trying to do so right now, and has been for several decades, and furthermore the article gives me a very clear sense of both what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has done to stop it, and what the costs of those attempts are.

It isn't cheerful reading; you walk away with a realization that it isn't just New Orleans, it's pretty much all human habitation in the Mississippi River Delta that just maybe, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, shouldn't be there. And I don't know what we can do to fix that, short of throwing our hands up in the air and saying bye-bye to the region. But it's very interesting stuff.

Er, I missed one hundred. Let's go for eighty-one instead!

I've been so occupied with other things that I completely missed my usual "one hundred days until publication" landmark. Also ninety days. Eighty is tomorrow, but that's the weekend, so let's go with eighty-one days, and give you your first excerpt from With Fate Conspire!

"You were unable to stop them."

In other news, I made it to forty thousand words on A Natural History of Dragons last night. I need an icon for that series, so let's do a combined event here: post an icon (or even just an image) in the comments that you think would be appropriate for the adventures of my !nineteenth-century lady naturalist, and the winner will get an ARC of With Fate Conspire.

And I'll try to keep on track better from now on. <guilty look>

a drop in the bucket

I'm trying to get some of my older photos uploaded to Flickr; the newest addition is a largeish set of shots from my 2009 trip to Yosemite National Park.

Books read, May 2011

Last month was both busy and tiring, so not nearly as much reading got done. Most of these have their own posts, too, so this entry will be short. (Short enough, in fact, that I'm not going to bother with a cut.)

Stopping for a Spell, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here.

Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here.

Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan. Discussed here.

Witch's Business, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here.

Hagakure, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, trans. William Scott Wilson. This is a translation of selections from a rather famous seventeenth-century Japanese text on how to be a samurai. But it dates to the early part of the Edo period, which means it comes from one of those points in time where what being a samurai meant was in flux: Japan was (relatively speaking) at peace, so now the expectation was starting to be that samurai should be Confucian gentlemen as well as warriors. Furthermore, Yamamoto -- the guy whose sayings are collected here -- had not seen much war (at least by the standards of the period immediately preceding his), so you have to weigh that into the balance with his declarations about how it's grander to throw your life away for your lord than to kill the enemy for your lord. (I found myself raising an eyebrow at him a lot.) A lot of what's in here comes across as flat-out crazy to a modern American mind, but trying to understand the mentality behind it is a very interesting exercise.

The Ogre Downstairs, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed here.

The Dragon-Seekers, Christopher McGowan. Research for A Natural History of Dragons, and many thanks to elaine_thom for recommending it. This is a social history/collection of biographies about English fossilists in the decades leading up to the publication of On the Origin of Species. There were a few things in the introduction I looked askance at; the writer is a paleontologist rather than a historian, so the context is occasionally a bit weak. But I appreciated the reminder of how people of this kind all knew each other and worked together (or at cross-purposes), and I very much appreciated McGowan's attention to the role played by quarry-workers and other non-specialists, without whom the fossilists would not have been supplied with things to study.

Revisiting the Wheel of Time: Winter's Heart

[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 Crossroads of Twilight, as that's the last book I read before starting this project.]

Took me a while to get around to posting this one. I actually read the book last month, but my notes have been sitting around for a few weeks now -- possibly a sign that I'm running out of steam. This is the ninth book, after all, and I've been doing this since January of last year; after a while, momentum does become an issue. (Doesn't help that the next book is Crossroads of Twilight. I think I may have mentioned how little I'm looking forward to that one, once or twice. Or three times. Or more.)

But anyway. Winter's Heart. Which is, indeed, better-shaped than the previous book, though still suffering the characteristic problems of the Bad Three.

So, the Prologue is seventy-one pages long, in a six hundred and forty-two page book. That translates to fully eleven percent of the text.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call unbalanced.

But okay, given how I've harped on the prologues lately, let me point out the improvement: there are only four points of view this time, all of them pre-established, and two of them belonging to major characters (Elayne and Rand). Given the tendency to add to the cast and waste time with minor characters, this is good. Not perfect, mind you: Seaine finds members of the Black Ajah, but we the readers knew about them already, so why do we care about her discovery? Likewise, the accusation against Elaida would be more interesting if we we weren't comprehensively sure that she isn't. Toveine has appeared before, for the brief scene of her boot party failing at the Black Tower, but her scene here seems mostly a device to update us that (surprise surprise) Taim and Logain don't get along. The protagonist scenes are much more satisfying; I rather like the adoption ritual between Elayne and Aviendha, though I don't entirely buy the anger moment -- maybe the saidar weaves help that along? And Rand's scene announces a Big Important Thing, which ACTUALLY PAYS OFF BEFORE THE END OF THE BOOK. Holy shit, y'all. It's like, progress or something.

(Side note: I find it interesting that Taim ordered his minions to face the wall when Elayne started stripping. Even if he's a lech himself, it comes across as weirdly considerate of him.)

As for the rest of the book, the only way I can organize this anymore is by character, with some side notes at the end.

Perrin first. My notes say "don't care, don't care, don't care, sigh." The problem with him is that he doesn't do anything except angst, have trouble with Berelain, and tell Masema they're leaving. Faile is the more interesting pov right now, and I like her better when we're in her head, too -- though at this stage of the story, elaborating on her situation is maybe not the wisest choice.

At this point, I'm firmly convinced that Jordan himself had lost interest in Perrin -- and furthermore, that it happened a while ago. Book by book, what has happened with Perrin since his big victory in TSR? TFoH, he took a sabbatical from the story. LoC, he remained absent for most of the book, then wrangled people for the save-Rand expedition at Dumai's Wells. ACoS, he observed Rand, and was sent to deal with Masema. TPoD, he picked up Alliandre and Morgase (not recognizing the latter), and had some mostly pointless conversations with Masema. This book, he goes in search of Faile.

Mat, in the same span of time, died and came back to life, killed Couladin, put together an army, gave it to Egwene, helped Elayne and Nynaeve and Aviendha, fought the gholam, saved three Aes Sedai, and kidnapped the Daughter of Nine Moons.

I just don't think Jordan was excited about Perrin's part of the story anymore. Maybe he was excited by stuff that was going to happen, but for whatever reason -- possibly contained in the books I haven't read yet -- he kept it in reserve, and filled these pages with make-work instead. Why not have Perrin deal with Luc/Isam/Slayer instead? We've barely heard anything from that plot since TSR. Presumably Jordan is saving it for later; unfortunately, the effect is that it robs now of any interest.

Elayne next, because I wrote these notes vaguely in the order the characters get focus in the story. The problem here is that her section is too leisurely. The detail in it isn't inherently bad -- but it isn't important enough to warrant delaying the story for it. Case in point: the assassination attempt. Jordan seems to want it to come as a sudden shock, but in order to do that, he puts us through a lot of tedium first, as Elayne meets with the First Maid, then with the First Clerk, etc, etc, yawn. Just get to the attack already, and trust in your skill as a writer to make it exciting. (Mat's hanging in TSR wasn't prefaced by a lot of routine business, and for my money, that was one of the most shocking moments in the series.) Ditto meeting with the Borderlanders: at this point, we're willing to trust that Elayne and her peeps are competent enough to set it all up; we don't need to see the math. Just hop right in to the scene where Elayne rides up to negotiate with them -- that's the interesting part.

In a post-script to previous discussions, I should note that again, the transition to sex between Elayne and Rand is oddly bloodless. And the women once again evince the attitude of fascinated prudery that characterizes their entire gender throughout this series.

Mat: well, let's start with Tuon. I remember fan speculation in the years leading up to this book; we guessed she would be sul'dam, and we were right. (There was just too much irony to be had in him marrying a woman who can channel.) And she's dark-skinned, which I had forgotten. So much for the positives: for the negatives, eh. It isn't quite Lanfear-level disappointment, but I did want her to be cooler than she is. Maybe the problem is partly that her chapter doesn't accomplishing anything significant except to tell us who she is.

Moving on to Mat himself -- what's up with the colors, anyway? All three guys are getting them. I don't remember that being explained in CoT; does it come later? (Don't tell me what the explanation is, though.) Anyway, I suspect his story got put on hold for the duration of TPoD because Jordan didn't want Tuon to arrive until after Suroth had been defeated by Rand's forces, and that was the Big Finale for that book, so. If true, then this, ladies and gents, is the danger of giving each protagonist at most one important Event per book.

I see a contrast between the delaying effect placed on Mat's escape from Ebou Dar, though, and Elayne's scenes earlier. There, it felt like Jordan was trying to set up a sudden shock; here, he's building tension, and it works much better. For one thing, the logistics aren't routine. The gathering of disguises and a'dam and all the rest of it could blow up in Mat's face at any time, so it's worth following them step by step, watching things go wronger and wronger until we hit the disaster of Tuon at the end. I don't begrudge the time spent on this -- not like I begrudge Elayne's padded-out pages.

Olver: not funny to me.

Fain: still not dead.

This is the book where I like Nynaeve better, though -- or rather, I go back to feeling justified in liking her, rather than reading against the text to preserve the characteristics I like, and ignore the ones I don't. She seems to have arrived at something like an equilibrium of respect with Rand; they still butt heads occasionally, but they do so in a relatively productive manner, which is all too rare in this series. It helps, of course, that she no longer has to be angry all the time.

Rand himself is also better, in large part because -- as I said before -- he announces a goal, follows through, and FINISHES IT IN THIS BOOK. Halle-bloody-lujah. Far Madding works relatively well, too. Yeah, Jordan's introducing yet another corner of the world -- but it's got some genuinely original details (though please can we ignore the strap in the hotel room, what the hell), it has some worthwhile plot taking place there, and (most importantly) we get in and then get out again, without the place spawning new complications that will continue to haunt us for the next four books. As with various other scenes earlier in the series, the moment of Lan telling Rand to let him fall is shorter than I remember, and not quite as awesome . . . but oh well, I can still kind of fill it in.

I find myself pondering this motif of Rand needing to be "harder than stone." On the one hand, it is tres macho, in ways we've seen a thousand times. On the other hand, we have various characters -- Cadsuane chiefest among them -- insisting that Rand needs to be softer, and I'm pretty sure the author is on their side. I mention this mostly as a reminder to myself to keep an eye on that as the story continues; I won't really know what I think of it until I see where it's going. It might just turn out to be Jordan having his cake and eating it, too -- spending books and books with an uber-hardass hero before he has a touching moment of emotional weakness at the end. Or it might not: there's a chance here for some actual commentary on the concept, which would be pretty cool if it happened.

Small side note before we get to the two final topics I want to discuss: are the Seanchan going to repopulate Randland? We've talked before about how depopulated the continent seems, and what the possible explanations are for that. One way or another, the Seanchan homeland doesn't seem to have had an equivalent demographic drop, if they can export such a quantity of settlers to their new colonies.

Now, plot topic first. I always think of this particular finale as the Forsaken Hoe-down: it's a party, and everybody's invited!

Seriously, Moridin is the only Forsaken who doesn't show up outside Shadar Logoth. We've got Cyndane, Moghedien, Graendal, Aran'gar, Osan'gar, Demandred . . . and I swear Jordan threw up his hands and said, "You know what? Screw it. Yes, Cyndane is Lanfear! Osan'gar is Dashiva! Moridin is Ishamael! Hell, Elza's a Darkfriend! Are you all happy yet!" There was so much fan speculation that got Kripke'd in this finale, and most of it with very little fanfare. I can't shake the impression that Jordan lost patience with all the hand-waving and obfuscation, and decided to simplify his life.

Which isn't a bad thing. This is one of the better finales we've had in a while, in part because we get the satisfaction of results -- both for us, and for Rand, who pulls off a serious victory here. I do find it funny, though, that after eight books of him running around fighting the bad guys, he basically sits this one out, while around him a very motley assortment of male and female channelers cooperate in the throwdown. (My notes say "Lanfear, meet Alivia. And her angreal. heh. heh heh heh heeee.) My one slight frowny-face comes from the fact that Rand's ter'angreal survives the cleansing, and Nynaeve's doesn't. This is probably relevant, and it makes me a little sad for what it implies.

(Put Osan'gar on the list alongside Sammael, though, for scenes that Jordan may have intended to be actual deaths, but which are so ambiguously-staged that we get no satisfaction from them. I actually went and checked the Wheel of Time wiki to see what happened to Osan'gar, and even there it's not definite.)

Finally, one non-plot-focused issue:

Torture.

Specifically, the Chair of Remorse used on Talene in the Prologue. That's what got me thinking, anyway, though the topic is really threaded throughout this whole series. The use against known criminals is already iffy: the consequences it shows them are hypothetical, not real, and it's definitely psychologically harmful -- but then again, so is a lot of what we do in our real-world prisons, and this method strikes me as having better odds of preventing recidivism. Its use against Talene, though? You can't call that anything but torture.

The peculiar thing about the Talene incident is that unlike most torture scenes by the "good guys" in fiction, they aren't trying to get any information out of her. One of the usual arguments made against torture in interrogation, of course, is that the information it produces isn't reliable, especially when compared to other, more humane methods. The dynamic here is different, though. They're torturing her specifically to break her will, so that she'll re-swear the Oaths, and then be inextricably bound to speak the truth. And of course, Talene wouldn't have resisted for so long unless she had something to hide . . . .

This comes down to one of the things that fascinates me about fantasy: the fact that you can create a world whose logical conditions are not the same as ours. Torture does not produce reliable information -- but in this fictional world, magic can, and torture can produce a situation that allows the magic to work. Furthermore, members of the Black Ajah have incontrovertible proof that the Satan-figure they swore themselves to is real, and if they renege on their oaths to him, they are fucked. The methods used by real-world interrogators often hinge on convincing the target that they can better their lot by cooperating -- but that doesn't work in Randland. Cooperation is a death warrant, when Myrddraal and Grey Men and Forsaken can step out of nowhere and shiv you on the spot. (And you don't even get the promise of going to heaven afterward.)

In a scenario like that, how do you convince the bad guys to turn? Isn't the used of such tactics thereby justified?

Maybe -- within the story. But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that all of this comes about because of the author's choices. Jordan created a situation where Seaine and the others are justified in torturing Talene, where it produces important, useful results. And he's made use of it before; way back in LoC, Nynaeve thinks of what they've been doing to Moghedien as being "just short of torture." We don't get details, so how badly you read that line depends on your own assumptions. Having re-read this scene, I'm inclined to revoke my earlier, more charitable interpretation: it probably is torture, once again justified by the results it produces. And those results happen because Jordan has created a setting in which the torture is both necessary and effective.

This is not cool. And, like the "we were trying to tell a humorous gender-flipped story about rape" problem of Mat and Tylin, I'm pretty seriously disturbed, now that I'm an alert enough reader to notice it.
Whoof. CoT next, and after that, I'm into the books I haven't read before (including New Spring). I may speed up my timeline of reading and posting; I may want to take new material at a faster pace. We'll see.

things I am remembering while watching Game of Thrones

It's been a long time since I read the books. I think I've been through each one twice, except for A Feast for Crows, which I read when it came out, and that was the last I touched the series. And I decided -- just before they announced the No Really We Mean It This Time publication date for book five -- that I'm going to hold off until the end is in sight, so that means I'm fuzzy on a lot of things.

But watching the TV series, I remember why I like the books. It isn't because Martin's writing is Gritty! Epic! Fantasy! Grit for grit's sake is not pleasing to me. I've picked up, and then put down, several other series in that vein. But Martin manages some things that his fellows in the sub-sub-genre don't, and they are why I hooked onto him and bounced off the others.

Example: characters. There are many unpleasant people in this series . . . and yet, they're unpleasant people I want to know more about. The absolute bastards are generally intelligent bastards, and I'm keen to see what they do next. The bitter assholes have understandable motivations for their bitterness and assholitude, and some of them preserve a weird core of decency underneath it (which is not the same as a Heart of Gold). People have loyalties instead of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. I am a reader who generally prefers sympathetic characters; what Martin manages, and many other authors do not, is making me sympathize with people who aren't very nice. (Exhibit A: Jaime Lannister.)

Also the world. I loves me a good world, whether it's secondary or built off the real world. I don't just mean the setting detail, though that's part of it; the wall of ice and the regional surnames for bastards and Dany eating the stallion's heart, all that stuff pleases my little anthropological heart. But there's also the history underpinning it, that makes it feel real instead of a set built just for this story -- and the history is both In Ye Olden Days stuff and the intricate network of kinship and alliances that sets up the present moment. Catelyn calling out to the armsmen in the tavern, and Jory reminding Jaime that they fought at each other's sides once. (I especially love how many of those details the TV show is managing to preserve.)

And, partially underlying those world details, the fact that Martin makes me believe -- as so many of his compatriots don't -- that he understands how medieval society worked. How politics work. Money and favors and people passing along tidbits of information; the importance of kinship and ideals, and pragmatism ramming up hard against those ideals. My friends and I are catching up on past episodes, and the conversation between Robert and Cersei just made me so happy, because of the richness it managed to convey. "What's holding this kingdom together?" "Our marriage." The trade in daughters isn't a side note to the important stuff; it's one of the central posts holding that society up. And Robert's a shitty king, but he understands war -- really understands it, not "the author tells me he does" -- so you suddenly see that he isn't an idiot, just very ill-suited to his current challenges, and it took both him and Cersei to screw up their marriage. That whole scene felt real, because it was based on real understanding, rather than the pale fictional shadow so many authors fall back on.

I know there's a lot of shocking stuff in his story, and it isn't to everybody's taste. But for my own part, I don't ever feel like I'm being shocked gratuitously -- which is not true for many of the other Gritty! Epic! Fantasy! authors I've tried. (Note: I speak here of the books, and not HBO, which continues to give me uncomfortable-looking sex scenes I could really do without.) And Martin gives me things to care about, too, even when they're broken and ugly things and I don't understand why I care. If I had to put it in simple terms, I might say I feel a sense of empathy in his story, that I don't feel in his imitators' work.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I'm really enjoying the TV series, and it's reminding me of why I enjoy the books, too. I haven't given up on them; I'm just going to wait until I can enjoy them on my own, more timely schedule.

a question for the embroiderers

I know I have people reading this blog who spin, crochet, weave, knit, and sew; I figure odds are good at least a couple of you embroider.

How would you recommend going about embroidering this figure?



Assume a smallish size -- maybe two inches in diameter. I'd love to hear what types of stitch you would use where, in what order, and bonus points for specifying whether it's what an experienced embroiderer would do, or what a hypothetical embroiderer who used to know about three stitches fifteen years ago might have an easier time with. (Not that we know anybody fitting that description, nosirree.) I'm mostly concerned with making the end result look good; cutting corners to make it less of a pain in the ass is not necessary. :-)

I'm not even sure how to effectively transfer the design to the material (which is dark grey, and will be embroidered in white) -- I'm almost tempted to print it onto thin paper and then just stitch straight over that. Is this a bad idea?

(The whole project is probably a bad idea, for the aforementioned reason of three stitches semi-mastered fifteen years ago. But it's not like I've ever done anything crazy in the textiles department before. kurayami_hime , remember the Greek key belt?)

FUCK.

You would think that if you kept your bike chained to a post inside a locked garage beneath your townhouse complex, it would be well-enough secured that you don't have to worry about it being stolen.

You'd be wrong.

buh . . . but . . . WHY?

Just put in a DVD of a Japanese film (Ichi).

The music playing on the menu screen is a Japanese-language rendition* of "The Wind that Shakes the Barley."

Just . . . what? The hell?

Aaaaand now it's playing over the credits. I am very curious to see if the plot of the film somehow mirrors or makes use of the events in that song. (Minus, one presumes, the specific Irish context.)

Jesus! It doesn't just sound like Lisa Gerrard, it is her voice!

Okay, I'll stop live-blogging the movie's musical choices now.



*I'm presuming that's what they're singing. Can't understand the lyrics enough to be sure. The melody, however, is unmistakable.

link salad is putting Firefox on a diet

Yeah, there were two other writing-related links I forgot to include in the original post (and the follow-up post).

First, The Periodic Table of Storytelling, built from TV Tropes. There's some entertaining stuff in there.

And second, this post over at 2D Goggles? Yeah. That is so very much what it's like, sometimes. (Both writing and running an RPG, now that I think of it.) Especially the bit with the tiger. <evil grin>

And then, because it seems a waste of a perfectly good link salad to stop at the writing-related material:

"The Possibilian" -- a fascinating article about David Eagleman, a leading researcher on brain function and how we perceive time. His take at the end, on science and religion, is particularly engaging; there's something to be said for celebrating how much we don't know, and could potentially learn.

What makes a body obscene? -- tooth_and_claw and anybody else who really digs androgyny/playing with gender perception/etc. will dig the image. The story of what happened to the magazine is also particularly interesting.

Poor Jane's Almanac -- a fascinating tale of Benjamin Franklin's sister, and what it meant to be a woman in the eighteenth century.

Okay, that's enough for this round. Now hopefully my tab groupings will be a little less absurdly overcrowded.