Snowflake catchup (#9-11) with Dragaera + watching Witcher, POI
Challenge #9: In your own space, promote at least one canon that you adore (old, new, forever fandom).
OK, well, y'all know this is going to be Dragaera, right? :P I actually had a post written up along these lines back in 2015, but I figure it's been long enough that I can repost-with-additions. But if it looks familiar, that's probably why.
So, OK, first of all, what even is Dragaera? Let's have a couple of quick introductory points:
1) Dragaera is a series of books -- or, rather, two different sub-series and a standalone, all set in the same universe.
2) Said universe is a world populated by Dragaerans (~Elves, but there's more to it), Easterners (humans like us, although the Dragaerans consider themselves humans), gods (occasionally), as well as an assortment of weird critters, like telepathic owls, bat-winged panthers, and web-weaving fox things, plus bunnies that eat dragons. It's technically sci-fi, I guess (see this Penny Arcade comic about it), but it works just fine as secondary-world fantasy, I think. The Dragaerans have a rigid House (Planet of Hats more than caste) structure, with each house taking a turn at governing the empire, switching every couple of hundred/thousand years. There are different kinds of magic, soul-destroying weapons, both sentient and not, and general swashbuckling a la Chronicles of Amber.
3a) The protagonist of the Vlad books is an assassin/minor crime boss (or at least he starts out as one; where he goes from there is, I think, a not very usual arc); there are currently at 15 books of a planned 19 book series (one for each of the 17 houses + chronological bookends).
3b) The narrator of the Paarfi books, which are a loving Three Musketeers homage/pastiche, is an in-universe historian who does not fully grasp what brevity is; there are five of these, although they form a trilogy (it's complicated). A new, standalone, Paarfi book will be coming out later this year: The Baron of Magister Valley (~Count of Monte Cristo)
3c) The standalone, Brokedown Palace, set in an Easterner kingdom and basically a fairy tale (or an allegory, I've been told, but it can be read as a fairy tale). It's cute, but I wouldn't start there.
4) The Vlad books start with Jhereg, going in publication order, or with Taltos going in chronological order. Consensus seems to be that Jhereg (pub order) is the better starting point. The first bunch are available in omnibus editions (grouped by publication order), the first of which is The Book of Jhereg. The Paarfi books start with The Phoenix Guards. As of now, all of them are (finally) available in e-book format (and the Paarfi books are probably hard to find in hard copy).
5) If you read these books, I will love you forever.
Top 17 reasons people should read the Dragaera books:
1) First person smartass in the Vlad Taltos books. If you enjoy The Dresden Files, chances are this style of narration will appeal to you. (And when Vlad comes across as an ass, he is actually meant to be an ass, which I find refreshing.)
2) Alternately: Dumas pastiche (in the Paarfi books), if you're into that.
3) Worldbuilding #aesthetic reminiscent of Chronicles of Amber. I don't mean that Dragaera is *like* Amber, but there's intrigue between people with kinda crazy priorities, named magical swords, sorcery, dramatic fights, lots of banter. And the world is big, and complicated, and really interesting to explore.
4) The gender-equality of the setting. The Dragerans are a very gender-equal society (Easterners who have held on to their culture, less so), and it's actually carried through to every level of worldbuilding. The women are at least as badass as the male characters: the ruler of the Empire is Empress Zerika; the legendary general and most powerful non-divine person in Dragaera is a woman; the Porthos analogue in the Paarfi books is female; the highly respected assassin team, the Sword and the Dagger, are both women; many of the competent antagonists are women as well, etc. etc. There are default gender-neutral pronouns in Dragaeran -- they are not used in the English text, because the English text is presented as a translation, but when Paarfi hears about gender-netural pronouns being replaced by "he" in the translation of his writing, he is not happy about that at all. What I like about the way this is done in the Dragaera books is that this is just the way it is. There's none of this stuff that annoys me with Scott Lynch, where he sets up a pretty gender-neutral world and then decides to deliver feminist lectures via Sabetha-as-mouthpiece anyway -- it is quite simply not an issue in Dragaera (but we do get glimpses of other places which are not like that). And the gender equality doesn't turn Dragaera into any sort of utopia -- there are plenty of other kinds of inequality there, which is treated with nuance and thought. But it's definitely a world where one doesn't have to worry about token females or sexy lamps or whatever.
5) Character growth. I have more fun with younger Vlad, when he was just a thug who didn't stop to examine his own motives for very long... but I think his character arc from there is interestingly done: both the kinds of things that bring it about and the way he reacts to those things, and what realizations he does and doesn't have about said character growth, and how he reacts to that.
6) The unreliable narrator thing. No, really, I've never seen an author so committed to the concept of unreliable narrator across such a long series (Ada Palmer comes close, but we're talking 4 books by the end, not 20+). It's disconcerting, because once you stop to think about it, you realize that we don't actually know ANYTHING, but it's something Brust plays with really neatly. And across different narrators, too, as mentioned above.
7) Speaking of Brust playing with things, the variation between books. He likes playing with time (alternating strands of timelines in Taltos and Dragon, e.g., interludes in Tiassa which take place out of time entirely), and chapter epigraphs (an in-universe song, etiquette lesson titles, a laundry list), and genre flavors (Dragon the war story, Tiassa the set of heists, Vallista the gothic). Many of them can be read pretty well as standalones, although:
8) I believe the real strength of the series -- and the thing I love best about it -- is something that becomes clear once you've read a good chunk of the books. For me this number was ten. I've recently come up with a metaphor to describe the effect, which I quite like, so I'm going to reuse it here: Say you're doing an uphill hike in a forest: the trail is nice, you're enjoying the birdsong, but it's an ordinary sort of hike and you're not sure if it's really worth the extra energy of the uphill climb. And then you crest a hill and WHOA, there's all this other stuff you can see all of a sudden. There's no short cut to the vista point, and it's going to depend on the individual reader whether the climb is worth it, or where along the way they're going to want to turn back. But I can't think of another series that had this sort of effect for me, where the whole was truly greater than the sum of its parts.
9) Really fun dialogue, and chunks of storytelling through dialogue alone. I realize the latter is not everybody's cup of tea, but I find it really fun, to have even non-verbal actions and happenings revealed through people's verbal reactions to them.
10) There are plenty of books which tackle the idea of relations between fantasy races, some more allegorically than others, but I find Dragaera's take on this nuanced and unusual; never didactic (or if it seems to be didactic at any point, never being straightforwardly that) but always present, informing the characters and driving the action.
11) Fast, fun plots driven by Rule of Cool (in the Vlad books, and with a few exceptions). They're devilishly hard to hold onto once one's done with the book, I find, but while you're reading, the books just GO, and sweep you along.
12) Orca is uncannily prescient about the banking crisis of 2008. Like, to a ridiculous degree. My favorite bit on that note is this tweet from (I forgot to note down the author): "Any day now, Steven Brust will finish his incisive allegory about the 2008 financial crash, “Orca”, and drop it in a wormhole to 1996."
13) Food porn. No, seriously. Vlad is a gourmand and loves to cook, and Dzur, at minimum, will make you hungry. Throughout the whole book. (I may not really remember the PLOT of Dzur, but I could tell you at least three of the dishes Vlad ate in the framing-narrative meal.)
14) Excellent reread value! I'm a person who almost never rereads books, but this series is one of the rare exceptions. And even the books I've reread the most, I always find something new in them each time I reread them -- an offhand remark that's suddenly hilarious in context of later books, a clever bit of foreshadowing, a puzzling intentionally-seeded contradiction or new question.
15) Brust wrote Paarfirotica (pretty much what it says on the tin). It's... you know, porn written in the style of Paarfi, the Dumas expy, which I do not think is everyone's cup of tea, and I certainly don't find it hot, but I'm amused by the fact that such a thing exists. On a similar note, Iorich includes a gag reel/outtakes at the end of the book. Pulling a gag reel off in a printed medium is something, certainly! He generally loves trolling his readers, but, you know, good-naturedly so.
16) I realize not everybody is as obsessed with collecting sorting systems as me, but if you happen to be, Dragaera offers an excellent one, with 17 categories to sort into, some of which, like Yendi and Tiassa, for example, I find have no ready equivalents in other sorting systems I know.
17) Did I mention I'd love you forever if you read them? :P
There is, alas, not much in the way of an active transformative works fandom, although there are some very solid fannish resources which I find incredibly handy to keep track of everyone:
Resources
- The Dragaera Timeline, which is epic, and very helpful to keeping track of some of the more complicated events and plots on a micro level, too. (Up to date through Vallista i.e. fully current
- Lyorn Records, the fandom wiki
- The Cycle, which shows all of the Dragaera Houses in order, and what the critters associated with them look like
- Dragaera map (click for detailed insets)
- Jo Walton has wonderful posts on Tor.com, one for each book through Iorich, starting with this general intro (I think the easiest way to find the rest is via the Vlad Taltos tag)
- TV Tropes page
Fanart
- Dylan Meconis / quirkybird did graphic novel-y character sketches for Vlad, Cawti, Kragar, Aliera, Loiosh, Morrolan here (and another spoilery one, but if you've read the books, click past Morrolan). You can see the full lineup (no spoilers) here. Full albom link here (with the spoiler).
-
alexis_rd did some wonderful art a couple of years ago, of which my favorite are Aliera and kitty, Morrolan being a badass/Morrolan being a nerd, and crossover OTP to end all crossover OTPs = Blackwand/Bob from The Dresden Files
Fanfic
- The Sword and the Dagger (gen, 6.2k, Cawti, Norathar) by
rachelmanija, with a perfectly Brustian voice and framing device, and even 17 (very short!) chapters.
- Witchcraft by dhaunea (teen, 4.3k, Vlad/Morrolan) -- basically the conclusion to the events of Taltos that I've always wanted
- all the Dragaera fics by
misura (of which my favorites are all the Vlad/Morrolan ones, but they're all great)
- Pomegranate Seeds by
jmtorres (teen, 2k, Aliera/Kiera) [a podfic also exists]
- and a Paarfi fic for good measure: Author's Note by
shinon (teen, Pel-centric gen)
Meta (spoilery)
-
sholio's excellent post of Thoughts on Dragaerans, and
-
rachelmanija's on Innovation and Stagnation in Dragaera
Challenge #10: In your own space, talk About A Creator/Someone Who Inspired You.
I'm going to go with the Be the Serpent trio -- "three redheaded fantasy authors", i.e. Freya Marske, Alexandra Rowland, and Macey . Now, I've read and enjoyed a bunch of Freya's fic. I've read Alex's book (which I thought was ambitious but frustrating) and a short story/almost prose poem of theirs (which I liked a lot) and some of their meta (our taste in fiction seems to be divergent enough that even when we like the same things -- e.g. The Goblin Emperor -- we like it for different reasons); their costuming skills are amazing, though -- I got to see the book corset live at Worldcon San Jose, and it was pretty incredible! I haven't read anything by Macey yet, but I want to, because I really like the sound of the tropes and themes she seems to like exploring.
But the inspiring thing to me is, of course, the Be the Serpent podcast. Which took me from the firm belief that podcasts are Not For Me (I generally dislike audio-only media, because I tend to tune out) to being a huge fan of this specific podcast and recommending it to all and sundry and cautiously trying other podcasts in case I find another one that's a similarly great fit.
The podcast comes from an explicitly fannish place, talking about canons in the context of fandom and talking about fanfic alongside professional fiction (books, shows, movies), which is a really cool premise. I love the level of depth and connection the Serpents get into, having real, interesting discussion while at the same not taking themselves too seriously -- it's just the perfect note of in-group humour. It certainly doesn't hurt that the Serpents love a lot of the fandoms I also love and/or am fannish about (Vorkosigan Saga, Discworld, Naomi Novik, Diana Wynne Jones, Sorting Hat Chats). But, like, I just listened to an episode that was 100% about anime when anime is one of those mediums I have NEVER been able to get into, and while I am definitely not going to go out and watch any of these shows, I had a really great time listening to them talk, for an hour, about this thing I have zero personal interest in. That's pretty amazing!
The podcast just has the best kind of vibe -- it sounds like a group of friends talking about things they love and saying interesting things and teasing each other (which is what it is), and also manages to be incredibly inviting somehow: My only problem with it is that I can't just break into their discussion and be like, "OMG, you're so right, but what about the time Miles did this thing, and by the way, have you read this other canon, because it slots into your taxonomy perfectly!" I mean, presumably the Discord is for that stuff, but I haven't actually venture there yet, because fortunately I have a built-in mini-community of fans on my flist with whom I get to have those post-podcast discussions. But in any case, these guys are having exactly the kind of conversations about canons and fandom that I enjoy participating in -- drawing connections between all my favorite things, talking fondly but with the recognition of their flaws about favorite characters, sharing your favorite fandoms with your favorite people guided by your knowledge of them and what they like. It's basically How I do Fandom: The Podcast, and it's both something I really love consuming *and* something that inspires me to talk/write more about fannish things myself, which is why I thought it was a good thing to talk about for this Snowflake challenge.
Anyway, Be the Serpent is GREAT -- I can't wait for a new episode every 2 weeks, even if the topic is not something I'm intrinsically interested in. Some of my favorites, though, have been the the one about Machiavellian Overthinkers, My (Psychic, Firebreathing) Little Pony, and the magic systems one.
Challenge #11: In your own space, recommend a fannish or creative resource.
Rocket Stack Rank -- is a great way to keep track of short SFF fiction published in semiprozines and anthologies and everywhere. I don't find the site's own reviews any more useful than most reviews (i.e. not very), but the algorithm that aggregates awards and distinctions and recs for stories almost invariably bubbles up to the top the stories I like best, which is very handy. The site also does various useful things like list the word count in stories so I know whether they're short stories or novelettes, and categorization of stories if I want to look at a particular subgenre. Last year they also did a compilation of illustrations and cover art, which made nominating pro artists SO MUCH easier; I hope they reprise it this year, too. And they were talking about collating a list of short form editors for the stories, which would be AMAZING. But even the core functionality is something I find super-useful, both for award nominations and even just for finding short fiction I want to read.
Nancy Pearl's Four Doors to Reading -- a concept I learned about this past year, which proved both eye-opening and very intuitive once I learned it was a thing. Not only is it a fun and handy way to think about books which work or don't work for me (and why), which is something I enjoy thinking/talking about, but I find it also helps me rec things to people, both in terms of figuring out which books may work for friends and in terms of having a common language to talk about the recs.
On the creative side, dafont.com. I finally got the nerve to venture beyond standard fonts in my icon-making this past year, and found this site (full of cool free fonts) very easy to use and a lot of fun to browse.
Also, this is a good place to stash the cool resources I learned about from browsing other people's Snowflake posts:
- Tip of My Tongue ~thesaurus that helps you identify half-remembered words
- Unsplash, for free images
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I appear to have watched The Witcher. I've been curious about the show since a) several flisters have watched and enjoyed it, b) O watched and enjoyed it (in retrospect, I'm not sure I really approve, given the level of gore and also boobs, but whatever, I guess; I don't like the idea of limiting what the rodents read/watch, and he's basically a grown-up by now), and c) I've read the first couple of Witcher books and like the world, and was curious to see how the adaptatin would go. But actually what REALLY made me pick up the show this weekend, as opposed to in some nebulous future, was coming across some Geralt/Jaskier smut recs via the Snowflake Challenge and reading and enjoying them. (I don't usually pick up fandoms from fic, but in this case I know the characters from the books, definitely well enough to follow the dynamics in porn.) Anyway, thoughts: Spoilery, I guess?
1) The show is actually too heavy on horror elements and gore for my taste -- all the squelching sounds and heads getting lopped off, and monstrous creatures going RAAAR. Honestly, I was checking my phone during those extended scenes and looking up for dialogue, but that's fine.
1a) Actually, along those lines, my first reaction to the show was, "this is a bit live-action Castlevania, if Trevor and Alucard were the same person" -- and, honestly, the show didn't really dispell that throughout.
2) I REALLY liked the title cards! the brooch-y looking images, different for each episode, related to the things happening in the episode, and forming the Witcher symbol for the final episode.
3) I also liked the music in most of the episodes, especially all the folk-y, ballad-y bits. And "Toss a coin to your Witcher" is ineed a terrible earworm XD (I've now heard it in Russian, too, courtesy of
ikel89, and I like different bits of it best in different languages, but I think the English one is earwormier (though it's the same tune).
4) I like Geralt and his unimpressed grunts, and the way he talks to his horse (for whose name I kind of wish the show had chosen a different fish than Roach; I'll just think of the horse as Plotva, as in Russian).
4a) I cannot fault the show's device of people endlessly commenting that Geralt stinks of horse as an excuse to put him naked in bathtubs for various scenes, with other characters wandering around him and interacting with him.
4b) I also like Ciri, though I was expecting something more interesting from the moment where Geralt and she finally meet each other.
5) The show is really good at its HBICs, with Calanthe and Tissaia (and later Fringilla) -- I was very pleased any time they were on-screen.
5a) Conversely, I dislike Yennefer on the show even more than I did from the books I read, because she, you know, makes an informed choice to give up her womb for the transformation and power. Admittedly, it's not like she had great options, but she does make a choice and even acknowledges it later that she did, she just "didn't know what it would mean to [her]". Well, lady, sucks to be you, but you don't get to have a vendetta about it, then. Also, wanting to have a baby so as to matter to another person? A+ reasoning there.
6) However, the MVP of the whole enterprise is definitely Jaskier, who was my favorite part of the whole show (not nearly enough of him at the end there), along with his dynamic with Geralt. And he doesn't quite break the fourth wall, since he's a bard, so he can say things like "I'm just delivering exposition", but it's a neat device an I really enjoyed it. And the Jaskier/Geralt really does write itself, pretty much XD
7) I found the switching between timelines weirdly handled, because I feel like it wasn't signalled at all? Like, there's no external device to indicate what year we're in, and NONE OF THESE PEOPLE AGE, so it was hard to tell whether we were 30 years before the destruction of Cintra or 5 years or 10 days. I remember some of the general progression of events from the books but I'm pretty sure some of it was different on the show -- like I think the massive mage battle was much earlier, in the books? It just seems like an odd choice not to do SOMETHING, with a timeline that jumps around so much...
8) I recognized some of the stories and allusions to a few more (like the doppler -- although I like the actual story of him better). But one I was very happy to see make it in was the one with the golden dragon. It's the first story in the first book that I read, which probably gives me special fonness for it, but also I think it's one of the better standalone stories, and it was adopted very nicely here. And I liked the actor playing Borch a lot.
9) The mix of accents in this show is really odd. Like, I like that there's a mix -- so far, besides the upper-crust British, there's been Scottish, German, Slavic, and I think French. But I think there have been weird mixes where members of one family or denizens of one town have different accents, and that's just weird.
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Once I ran out of Witcher, I also watched some more Person of Interest, season 2, halfway through: (Spoilers!)
- It took just the episode with The Machine training montage with the blackjack table to make me go AWWW at it, especially its grumpy "USER ERROR" message when Finch decides to lose all the money he won, and the insistent "STAY" buzzing to save him from the car crash. And then it was trying to math-make Finch and Grace, aww!
- The episode with Root's backstory was a really interesting one, and she is definitely continuing to be one of the more interesting characters. Like, she is fairly clearly a sociopath, but I've got to kind of... ?respect? a person who is willing to put herself on the line, or at least get severely beaten up, to illustrate a point. And her dynamic with Finch was quite interesting. (Also, the episode got me in that I was thinking she was the kidnapped girl who managed to get away, though it does make a lot more sense for her to be the younger friend -- that was nicely put together and foreshadowed).
- It's really interesting to see that Finch isn't just over his kidnapping, but has a panic attack the first time he goes outside by himself (although it looks like Reese's presence steadies him). Also interesting to hear him echo Root's "bad code" in the episode with the possibly-reformed mob hitman; he does walk it back afterwards, when John asks about it, and says that it doesn't apply to people, because people can change, but apparently Root's words have kind of stuck with him.
- It was nice to get some (implied) Finch backstory and more Finch in general in "2piR" (the one with the teenage genius), and interesting to see that Finch regards the Machine as 'his greatest mistake'.
- Finch and the dog are being great comic relief, better than the baby. Escalating from handling a tennis ball with a handkerchief to walkies and a squeaky toy, awww. (Side note, my BIL considered getting a Malinois, and decided against it because they're not good family dogs -- they're very loyal to one individual only, so it's been interesting watching this dog, and I kind of laughed at John knowing Dutch commands saving the day in that first episode).
- Nice to see more Elias, calm and affable in his prison jumpsuit, and nice to see him sit down with Finch now that
sunlit_stone pointed out the similarities between the two of them to me.
- The episode in the suburbs had John in a polo shirt, as opposed to suit or motorcycle gear or, like, army stuff -- that was really odd to see!
- I'm continuing the enjoy the range of stories the rather gimmicky 'person of interest could be perpetrator or victim' formula is continuing to supply, like the situation with the suicide risk, the two spouses who had taken out hits on each other, and the doctor being blackmailed into being an instrument of murder.
- Speaking of the episode with the doctor, I'd just been thinking that it was getting really noticeable that everyone whose number came up appeared to be in straight relationships if they were in any sort of relationship at all, which make the show feel more dated for me than any other aspects, and here we go, an adorable lesbian married couple.
This entry was originally posted at https://hamsterwoman.dreamwidth.org/1120436.html. Comment wherever you prefer (I prefer LJ).