labingi

Continuing the Mabinogion Tetrology discussion started here.

Walton's adaptation of the Fourth Branch of the Welsh Mabinogi is her first major book, written in the 1930s, and this may be why it's a bit rough. It also inherits an oddly structured, complex story and navigates it faithfully. It's an ambitious attempt at adding modern psychological depth and realism to this tale, and it's a great idea but not successfully executed, in my opinion. For me as a non-Welsh, lay reader, this is an endeavor that deserves to be redone. The potential is there, but the story falters for two main reasons: too much telling vs. showing and the fact that it's just hard to write a compelling story about unlikable characters.

See my previous post for a spoilery summary. Spoilery thoughts follow... ( Read more... )

I was trying to figure out how to create a link to a ticket site for our Ursula K. Le Guin Birthday Event. (Come on by if you're near Portland, Oregon!) And the very old program we use to post updates was baffling me. I kept clicking around all the many, many menu options for where to add a link.

Then, I uncovered a note that I could use "unfiltered HTML."

"Can it be," I wondered, "that I could just type in an actual HTML tag?"

And, lo, it worked!

The only reason I remember how to do this after 20 years is Dreamwidth, where I do this regularly (and nowhere else). Thank you, Dreamwidth!

Happy Bilbo and Frodo's Birthday! (In the great crossover 'verse in my mind, Frodo is 96 this year, I think. My math is bad, but for reasons unlikely to become apparent right now, my reference point is he's 46 years older than me, so.)

In honor of this year's birthday, I thought I'd respond Tolkienesquely to a video I recently watched, LibraryofaViking's "What Modern Fantasy Gets Wrong (and why it matters)," which is interesting and nuanced, and, its clickbaity title notwithstanding, respectful toward fantasy old and new.



Specifically, I want to respond to the video's reference to R. F. Kuang's defense of fantasy (and SF?) being ideological. I have not seen/read her speech. I'm responding to this video's reference to it; folks familiar with the whole are welcome to add context. I gather that Kuang defends ideological fantasy against the common (often rightwing) critique that it's being ruined by being too "ideological" or "political" (i.e. "woke"). As characterized by LibraryofaViking, she argues that it is artistically valid to take an ideological stand and pursue it didactically in a genre novel.

The Problem I See with (Some) Modern "Ideological" SF&F

I agree ideological didacticism is valid (i.e. it should be publishable and socially allowable, and it can have good artistic quality—Jemisin, for me, is an example; I haven't read Kuang). Likewise, I agree the rightwing critique often has a subtext that the problem is not (entirely) being ideological but being leftwing. It's not just critiquing bad writing; it's critiquing values the critic doesn't agree with and casting this disagreement as a question of "writing quality." Side note: these aren't separate issues; values and artistic quality are entangled, but they are also not the same thing.

That said, as someone often annoyed by the didacticism of modern SF&F, for me, the problem is not that it's ideological; it's that it's simplistic. ( Read more... )

Pleased to share my first article for Sufficiency and Wellbeing magazine, "My Cat Is a God" (literally), featuring Hudson the Hudster.

I have started some book recommendations lists at Bookshop.org. I currently have lists for:

* Genre fiction I love for character and relationship depth.
* Genre fiction I love for being thought provoking.
* Ecological genre fiction recommendations.

So far, these lists include my old standby titles, but I'm hoping to expand them (as I'm hoping to actually get back into reading again!).

Note: This post is about the work, not the author. The author is relevant to the work, but this post is about something other than his actions and their gender implications in the work. I mostly discuss the show but reference the graphic novels. I like the show overall a lot and will discuss that more in another post; this one is just about race.

As was typical of the 1990s, the Sandman graphic novels are pretty white. For their time, they’re not clueless about showing racial diversity, but their handling of race needed updating for the show. Unfortunately, the show’s attempts to be anti-racist strike me as simplistic. Their approach is to take several characters who were white and cast them with Black people. That’s it; that’s the whole approach. This misses two crucial points about race:

1) There are more races than white and Black.

2) Systemic white supremacy is not just about centering white people; it’s about centering white culture.

General Spoilers for Season 2 and the graphic novel equivalent follow( Read more... )

For those who like the Greek classics, I'm gratified to announce my little one-act play on the death of Orpheus, "Orpheus Changed" is up at Eternal Haunted Summer. Summary: middle-aged Orpheus meets an old woman on a hill and they have a chat that preserves the three unities of ancient Greek drama.

Interesting video by Jessie Gender on the "redemption" of Syril Karn in Andor. It prompted some thinky thoughts I'd rather put here than throw at YouTube. (Andor S2 spoilers)



I agree with Jessie's contention that white men are often treated with kid gloves when it comes to creating space for them to see the error of their ways, while marginalized people's lives are dismissed and errors castigated. Jessie cites the difference in fan discourse between sorrow that Syril died without a chance at redemption and near silence that Cinta (a queer woman of color) got summarily killed off. I'd add that this is partly because Syril is a better written character—but, then, white men have long been better written characters. That is evidence of her point.

But I'm frustrated by recent fandom's/leftwing YouTube's discourse on "redemption." I love a good redemption story; it's my favorite kind, but I think we need to dig deeper into the concept because, too often, it gets used without being explored.

"Redemption" is (at least primarily) a Christian concept. Traditionally, it refers to being saved from damnation, and this entails is a mix of personal responsibility and external acceptance. It requires personal responsibility in the form of actions like repentance of sins, penance, baptism, truly reformed behavior, etc. It requires external acceptance because ultimately it's God's to accept or withhold, and in many versions of Christianity, it cannot fully be attained without God's grace, that is, without that mystical quality of salvation that one cannot earn but is given.

When we use in secular discussions, as of characters like Syril Karn or DS9's Garak, or real people (Jessie mentions JK Rowling), we often end up with formulations like video commenter elanthys makes: "But not everyone deserves redemption, and not everyone who does gets it...." What does this actually mean? "Deserves" according to whom? "Gets" from whom? In the theological context, the answer is God. God can grant grace to someone who doesn't "deserve" it. (In traditional Calvinism, no one deserves it.) All redeemed people ultimately "get" it from God.

So who grants redemption in secular society? I think, by default, it usually translates to "us," the people having the conversation, the good people, the good leftists, the anti-fascists, etc. "We" judge that some do not deserve redemption. "We," sometimes in error, withhold it from those who may. What does it mean to be redeemed? In Christianity, it means heading to heaven. In the secular context, it means being socially forgiven, I guess? No longer cancelled, etc.? Slate wiped clean?

I do not trust myself to determine who metaphysically "deserves" anything. There are people I have not forgiven, but that says more about me than them. I do believe in accountability, which is, in essence, what Jessie is calling for. Accountability is a comparatively easy concept, if hard to achieve. If you've done harm, own it and take proportionally appropriate steps to repair it or—if it can't be repaired—do other, ideally related work to bring more good into the world.

Syril is never accountable for his actions. If he hadn't died and was to have a "redemption" arc, I think he would have had to spend the rest of his life trying to repair the damage or, more accurately, change the system so similar damage does not continue. But did he "deserve redemption"? I don't like the God-like insight that question presupposes.

Personally, I'm a Buddhist, and I prefer a Buddhist framework: that we are all on the path to awakening. We're just in different places, going at different rates, and taking different "side trails" to get there. The question of what we "deserve" is fairly meaningless. We are where we are; we carry the karma that we carry and work through it as best we can. And we can, to an extent, recognize that in each other and help each other through it.

I feel the need for some "escapist" literature (or video), and right now I want to escape into something dreamy and otherworldly. I would love recommendations.

An example of the type of thing would be Angel's Egg, the 1980s short anime. On the fast-paced, action, heartwarming end, maybe the recent movie, Flow. At the intellectual/concrete extreme, maybe A Voyage to Arcturus.

Seeking stories with...

* nature/beauty
* a dreamy or surreal quality - like it may be a dream or metaphor or afterlife or enchantment or something.
* on the slow, quiet end.
* vaguely old-timey in setting, like anywhere from 150-7000 years ago or the rough equivalent in an otherworld.
* some story/plot, though it can be slight, long enough that I get to spend time with the characters: novella or long; hour-ish video or longer.

Don't want...

* anything YA
* anything obviously moralizing;
* any "strong feminist heroine" or anything that smacks of contemporary politics of any kind from any side of the aisle;
* anything fast-paced or action packed. (I'm fine with Flow at the extreme end of fast.)
* anything that "feels" like it was written in and for the 2020s or 2010s;
* anything really short.

Fine with or Fine with Caveats...

* melancholy, dark, horror-tinged if not super dark/depressing/horror
* relatively thin characters, as long as what's there isn't any of the "don't want."
* romance if it's subtle, not the main point, not stereotypical. (Romance will be an easier sell if it's m/m.)
* child, teen characters as long as the story itself doesn't feel aimed at modern kids/teens (see Angel's Egg).
* written/created in pretty much any time period from ancient to present, if it more or less fits the above.

Thanks in advance for rec's!

My overall take: it’s excellent, and my chief feeling at the end was “disappointed.” This is only partly the series’ fault. It’s partly the inevitability to ending up at Rogue One, which is melancholy. It’s partly that it was a long three years’ wait with high expectations, and there’s no way a handful of episodes could live up to those fantasies.

The series falters in its own right due to its compressed timeline. You can tell it was four seasons’ worth of storytelling compressed into one. It reminds of seasons 4 and 5 of Babylon 5: it’s clear they had a good plan, and they had to pivot hard to align it with a different production timeline. They couldn’t quite pull it off, but they came about as close as anyone could. I hope there may be either deleted scenes (maybe a directors’ cut?) or a novelization/comic book that uses the five-year story they clearly had mapped out, character building and all. I’d buy it. The action, script, filming, etc. remain top notch.

As many have noted, this series is incredibly important, trenchant, and bloody prophetic as a fictionalization of the fascist upsurge we are currently living through. At times, it was difficult to watch because it hit so close to home. That’s needed and deserves high praise.

Spoilers follow( Read more... )