Marie Brennan's Blog, page 94

NEW WORLDS, YEAR ONE is out now!

The Patreon tree has delivered its first crop of fruit!

(All the fruit trees in my backyard are currently in flower. I have agricultural metaphors on the brain.)

The New Worlds Patreon has been trucking along for more than a year now, building up a huge pile of material. I’ve gathered the initial mass of it into New Worlds, Year One: A Writer’s Guide to the Art of Worldbuilding: all the posts from that first year, edited and reorganized for your convenience. That’s on sale now, and other installments will follow in due course! If you are a writer, or an artist, or a game designer, or a GM — anybody with a need to invent worlds, or heck, just anybody who likes thinking about different ways of living in real or imaginary worlds — this book is for you.

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New Worlds: Writing Systems

In hindsight, writing systems are such an obvious topic for a series on worldbuilding for writers that I’m surprised I didn’t get around to them sooner! But I’m there now, with the latest New Worlds Patreon essay, in which we discuss everything from pictographs to featural scripts, along with some of the practical implications of each approach.

Comment over there!

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Hugo FAQ

People have been asking various questions about the Memoirs and the Hugo Awards, so here’s a quick set of answers to share around (so I don’t have to type them over and over again — which, I just recalled, is Isabella’s in-story reason for writing her memoirs, so this is rather meta):

1) Is the series complete?

Yes! The book I’m writing right now is a related sequel, but it concerns Isabella’s grand-daughter Audrey; the Memoirs of Lady Trent themselves are finished. There are five books: A Natural History of Dragons, The Tropic of Serpents, Voyage of the Basilisk, In the Labyrinth of Drakes, and Within the Sanctuary of Wings. There is also a short story, “From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review.”

2) I’m not sure I’ll have enough time to read everything. Where should I start with the Memoirs?

If you need a quick taster, “From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review” is probably the easiest way to get that. It’s somewhat different from the Memoirs, being told in the form of letters rather than, y’know, a memoir — but it will give you a decent sense of Isabella’s personality and some of the series’ core concerns, in only 2100 words, and you can read it for free on Tor.com or get it in ebook. It takes place between the third and fourth book, but neither contains any significant spoilers nor requires you to have read the series to understand it.

Where the novels themselves are concerned, well, the traditional place to start is at the beginning.

The Memoirs of Lady Trent are up for a Hugo!

Fortunately the Hugo people are kind; they don’t make you sit for very long on the news that you’ve been nominated.

New Worlds Theory Post: Inventing Trees

Since this is a month with five Fridays in it, this is a month with a theory post! The New Worlds Patreon promises four essays a month, but one of the funding goals (which we reached some time ago) is a bonus in such months, discussing more theoretical topics: underpinning concepts in anthropology, or practical advice for how to approach worldbuilding in fiction. This is one of the latter, and it concerns the question of when you should invent a thing for your imaginary world, versus using something real.

Comment over there! And don’t forget, the first volume of New Worlds is available for pre-order now!

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Take It Like a Man

(Content warning: I, uh, talk about violence in this. Rather a lot. Not in gory detail, but if the discussion of traumatic and/or sexual violence bothers you, you may not want to read onward.)

My husband and I recently went to see Tomb Raider (short form: it’s ridiculous, but if it weren’t ridiculous it would be doing it wrong, and it has more to enjoy in the first ten minutes than I remember in the entirety of the Angelina Jolie version), and it’s freshened up some thoughts that have been percolating in my mind for a while now about violence and gender in media.

I’ve lost the link now — if somebody out there has it, please do supply in comments — but quite some time ago, I watched a fanvid that was an enormous montage of the attractive male leads in various movies and TV shows being beaten up and/or tortured for the audience’s delectation. It was set to a tune that kept repeating the phrase “and I wanted more,” and the vid complies: it keeps escalating the violence, until (for many people) it hits a point where you don’t want more. What you have is too much; it has stopped being sexy and just hurts. Part of the point of the vid is to ask: where’s your line? At what point does this cease to be fine entertainment and start becoming horrific, the way it would be in real life?

I say “part of the point” because the vid actually got me thinking down an entirely different track, which is the gendered differences in violence. Not in terms of how characters inflict it — though that’s an interesting topic in its own right — but how they take it. And how we, as an audience, receive that story.

There are plenty of violent scenes that I have no problem with if the target is a man, but flinch right out of if it’s a woman. There are a lot of reasons for this. One is the social context: the meaning we associate with a man hitting/torturing another man is very different from a man hitting/torturing a woman, and the circumstances under which those two things happen in real life is often different, too. Another is that, well, I’m a straight woman: there’s frequently (though not always!) a sexualized element to all of this, and I’m attracted to men, so of course I’d rather watch them in such scenes than female characters. The flip side of that is audience identification: torture a woman, and I imagine myself in her place, to a much greater degree than I identify with a male character. I don’t want to experience that. So I don’t much enjoy watching it.

. . . sort of. And this is where I get into the actual realization that fanvid inspired.

***

Let me digress for a moment to lay out a detailed example, from the movie G.I. Jane. This is a 1997 film starring Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen, about the effort to integrate women with our armed forces; Moore’s character is admitted to Navy SEAL training as a “test case.” Mortensen, as the Command Master Chief in charge of that training, does not want her there, and he does his best to drive her out. But it’s worth noting that he is scrupulously fair about his efforts: his hostility remains within the bounds of the rules.

Until a sequence near the end of the film. The remaining SEAL candidates are put through an exercise where they’re supposed to get recon on a site and get out with their intel; they fail, and the “enemy” (their instructors) take them prisoner. The point of the exercise is to expose them to some of the conditions they might encounter as prisoners, so that they’ll be prepared if it happens to them in the field. This means everything from locking them in cages to actions that (depending on where you draw your line) constitute torture: one of the guys has done something bad to his knee, and the “interrogators” dig their fingers into it, maybe not doing any additional damage but sure as hell inflicting a lot of pain. The job of the candidates is to endure that kind of thing without giving any information, and to try to find a way out.

When it comes time for Mortensen’s character to interrogate Moore’s, he smacks her around a bit, then drags her out to continue the process in front of the caged men — because he knows that he can use her suffering as a lever against them. In fact, that’s the point he wants to make: the problem isn’t (just) with her and her fitness to be a soldier, but with the way her presence makes the men around her more likely to cave, in order to spare her pain. This scene is where he crosses the line; among other things, he threatens Moore’s character with rape (whether he would have actually followed through is ambiguous). She stops him before he can get very far, though, and manages to fight back.

He wins the fight, of course. She’s got her hands literally tied behind her back, and although she gets in some good licks, there’s no way she’s going to win. But here’s the realization I had:

She gets beaten up like a man.

By that, I don’t mean that Mortensen’s character doesn’t pull his punches — although that’s true. I mean the story that fight tells is the kind of story more often given to male characters than to female ones. Moore keeps staggering to her feet, spitting defiance through a mouthful of blood, and the final message is that Mortensen can beat the shit out of her, but he can’t beat her. It is the story of her determination, her grit, her insistence on being a soldier no matter what — and whatever critiques you may want to level at that narrative, the fact that she gets to have it is interesting.

***

When male characters get beaten up or tortured, the focus is on their strength. They endure with clenched teeth and stifled cries, and sooner or later they find a way to fight back. Or they break — and then the story is about the limits of their strength, the fact that this event was so terrible it took this strong, resilient man past the point of even his ability to endure.

When female characters get beaten up or tortured, the focus is on their vulnerability. They scream, they cry, they beg for mercy. They’re the objects upon which pain is inflicted, rather than the subjects who respond to it. The story is about their weakness, the ways in which they can be reduced to a helpless state.

***

The above isn’t universally true, of course. But it’s a common enough pattern that when it gets broken, I notice. I have no problem watching Demi Moore get kicked in the teeth, even though I’m a woman and don’t want to imagine myself being kicked in the teeth, even though she’s not the kind of person I’m attracted to, even though it’s a man doing the kicking. Because the story I’m watching there is about her toughness, and I like imagining myself as tough. By contrast, Mette Ivie Harrison pointed out once that George, the werewolf in the UK version of Being Human, is coded female by the story: when he changes shape, he screams. High-pitched and shrill, the way women scream when they’re tortured on TV. (There are lots of other ways George is coded female, but that’s the one relevant to my point here.) It’s a shocking sound, because we don’t usually hear it from men on the screen: they’re stoic, they muffle the sounds of their pain. Because we’re watching their efforts to resist it, control it, rather than the way it controls them.

This is why you can’t just dismiss concerns about gendered violence in media by pointing at the guys and saying “look at the awful things that happen to them!” Because more often than not, those awful things are telling a completely different story.

Which makes Tomb Raider especially interesting to me, because I think it bridges the gap between those two modes. Alicia Vikander’s Lara Croft screams quite a bit in the film, and most of the time it isn’t rage-filled defiance; it’s a woman in genuine pain, her voice forced high and thin and raw. We’re seeing Lara at the start of her career, not already transformed into a battle-hardened veteran who shrugs off everything with ease. We see her vulnerable and suffering, whether it’s at the hands of her female opponent in an MMA bout or at her own hands when she pulls a splinter of metal from her side or at the hands of the male villain when he kicks her in that same perforated side . . . but we also see her rising above that pain. She doesn’t start out with the resilience of a typical action hero; instead we’re watching the process by which she acquires it.

So in the end, even though we see her vulnerability — which is how the female end of side of the story usually gets told — it isn’t about that vulnerability. It’s about the fact that you can admit you feel pain, you can scream and kick and cry over it . . . and then you can pick yourself up and keep going, because you have things to do and people who depend on you to do them.

We need that story, because most of us are not battle-hardened veterans who can endure everything with attractively gritted teeth, but probably all of us will have points in our lives where we need to scream and kick and cry and keep going. And we need stories about tough people of whatever gender, not just the standard-issue male variety. And we also need stories about not so tough people of whatever gender, men most especially included, because it’s a pernicious idea that if you can’t just dust yourself off and soldier on then you’re not really a man (read: not really worthwhile). We need to see both what resistance to suffering looks like, and what happens when resistance isn’t possible.

I’m always going to prefer the stories where people manage to rise above their trials, regardless of gender; I don’t enjoy watching the abject victimization of anybody. But all too often, that’s the only thing on offer for my own kind. Which makes the exceptions weirdly refreshing — even when it involves imagining myself being kicked in the teeth.

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New Worlds: Body Modification II (Reshaping)

Onward to other types of body modification!

This is one of the months with five Fridays, so the next New Worlds Patreon essay will be a “theory piece,” talking about some of the underpinning concepts and ways to approach this subject in fiction, rather than specific cultural content.

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A question for the linguists

It feels to me like every time I read about the evolution of a language over time, the general pattern is one of it becoming grammatically simpler. They go from having lots of cases to fewer or none at all, shed moods or aspects or dual forms, even (on the phonological rather than grammatical end) give up on more difficult to pronounce sounds in favor of easier ones.

Which leaves me wondering: when and how do the complicated features develop in the first place? Are there particular conditions (e.g. isolation) under which a language is likely to make itself into a more elaborate system?

Or is this just sample bias, and the pattern I think I’ve been seeing isn’t really a pattern at all?

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Strong and Femme

I’ve never bought into the argument that dismisses a certain kind of female character as badly written because “she’s just a man dressed up in women’s clothing.” I myself am not terribly feminine in the stereotypical sense: I rarely wear skirts, prefer action movies to romantic comedies, don’t readily share my feelings, etc.

But that’s not the same thing as saying that I have a problem with skirts, romantic comedies, and talking about your feelings.

I’ve seen a bunch of conversations lately around the whole Strong Female Character schtick — and I capitalize that for a reason, because a Strong Female Character is a specific archetype, not just a character who happens to be female and in some sense strong. You know the type: she wears leather, carries a gun, doesn’t take anybody’s shit, et cetera and so forth.

I like that character just fine, when she’s done well. What I don’t like is the sense that she’s the only type of female character who is strong. I don’t like watching her spit on the women around her who do show conventially feminine qualities, as if that somehow makes them lesser.

Which is why it’s made me so happy that lately, I’ve seen a number of female characters in media who are strong and still girly, feminine, femme, use whatever word you prefer for it. Characters who are allowed to like lipstick and still go to Narnia. Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsis, and Mrs. Which in A Wrinkle in Time are in-your-face femme, and they’re amazing. Vice Admiral Holdo is a badass in a quasi-Grecian gown. Etta Candy is one of my favorite characters in Wonder Woman; Cassandra the math genius on The Librarians is 100% girly (and a useful counterbalance to Eve the ex-NATO counterterrorism expert). Having these things pinging on my radar led to me writing this passage in the sequel to the Memoirs of Lady Trent, after Audrey’s sister Lotte apologizes for writing her a letter full of gossip about her Season:

Never apologize for writing to me about frippery and husband-hunting. I might not have any interest in that for my own sake, but I care about it a great deal for your sake, because it makes you happy.

I used to not, you know. I thought I was obliged, as Lady Trent’s granddaughter, to sneer at all things feminine and frilly. I made the mistake once of saying something about that in Grandmama’s hearing, and oh, did she ever set me down hard. She didn’t raise her voice. She only explained to me, very calmly, that if any obligation accrued to me as her granddaughter, then it was to acknowledge the right of any person to pursue their own dreams instead of the ones I felt they ought to have. By the time she was done, I wanted to crawl under the rug and die. But I’m glad she did it, because of course she was right.

I’ve written Isabella as someone who, while not a Strong Female Character, is also not terribly interested in traditional femininity, and her granddaughter Audrey is in some ways the same. And I looked at that and thought, I don’t want my readers thinking I’m writing them this way because it’s the only good way for them to be. So Lotte is very conventionally feminine, and Audrey thinks that’s wonderful, rather than looking down on it.

I’d like our society to stop looking down on such things. If I could boil all the problems that worry and frustrate and upset and anger and baffle me right now down to one point, it would be the breathtaking failure of compassion that has overrun conservatism these days. The attitude that says, I’ve got mine, and if helping anybody else get theirs — or even just get by — costs me so much as a single penny or an ounce of effort, then they can go hang. The mentality that says, my ways is the only way, and everybody else’s way deserves to get paved under. The worldview that says, men and women are Totally Separate Things, and women’s side of things is stupid and unimportant and far less valuable than the men’s side, because it’s soft and soft is the worst thing you could possibly be.

We need the qualities that have long been labeled “feminine,” like compassion and caring and nurturing and empathy and kindness and a love of beauty for its own sake. We need to see there is strength in those things, too — not just in the willingness and ability to gun down whatever’s in your path and trample the corpse to get what you want.

So bring on your ladies. Give me more opportunities to revel in the awesomeness of women in skirts, women with lipstick, women who like all the girly things and that’s just fine. And while you’re at it, show me your Strong Female Characters painting their toenails and your badass men comforting small children and just people in general acknowledging that hey, being nice is a good thing. Solve some problems with compassion and understanding instead of violence.

It might just work in the real world, too.

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New Worlds: Body Modification I (Adornment)

From cosmetics (a temporary and easily removable alteration to one’s appearance), we move on to the more lasting or even permanent alterations grouped under the name “body modification.” But there are enough types of modification that I’ve had to separate them out into two posts; this first one discusses things I’ve decided to call “adornment,” i.e. small changes that mostly add on to the body’s appearance in some fashion. The larger changes that reshape the body to a more substantial degree will come next week.

Also, I’m pleased to say that the New Worlds Patreon is fairly close to its next funding goal! So if you’ve been thinking about becoming a patron, or sharing it with people who would enjoy this sort of thing, please do — then we can have a print edition of the collected essays, along with the ebook!

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