Ranting about not accepting your fate (in fiction)
I finally read Robin Hobb's Shaman's Crossing (don't worry, this won't spoil anything important!) and I found one thing especially pleasing about it: how very accepting they were of their fate. "Our religion tells what I am to become based on how many older brothers I have - great!" "My parents have chosen me a wife - they surely know what's good for me!" and so on.
And although it's so very different from what we nowadays believe in, I like that. Because it drives me crazy how in so many books the society is supposed to be like that, and then suddenly in that book no one accepts that anymore. And they succeed in doing what they want! Wtf? Why can there never be a book about not changing the old ways? (Because it wouldn't be interesting?) Or a book about wanting to change the old ways but not succeeding in it? That would be nice as well. "And then after a bit of whining they accepted their fate and *gasp* lived happily ever after, like their parents and grandparents and greatgrandparents before them!"
Why do we never see something like that? Because it's against what we believe in? Please. I never went to see King Arthur because I was told Guinevere was made into a superwoman. Even though we now think that women can be just as powerful etc. as men, I don't want to be told that women were like that in Middle Ages. I'm not so insecure about women's right to rule their own lives that I must be told that women have always wanted to do that but just haven't been able to.
Of course, in Shaman's Crossing there are people who don't accept their fate, and succeed in marrying the one they want to, but I can live with that... because the hero still does as he's expected to :D
And the end! I loved the end! Carsina's letter to Nevare made me melt and grin and actually like that girl, even if her bad spelling had made me dislike her :D And I also loved how the Tree Woman was killed - because now I've no clue what's going to happen in the next books of that trilogy, even though when I was reading Shaman's Crossing I had all kinds of ideas what's going to happen next, I now don't think they'll happen.
(Oh, and notice my new mood theme!)
And although it's so very different from what we nowadays believe in, I like that. Because it drives me crazy how in so many books the society is supposed to be like that, and then suddenly in that book no one accepts that anymore. And they succeed in doing what they want! Wtf? Why can there never be a book about not changing the old ways? (Because it wouldn't be interesting?) Or a book about wanting to change the old ways but not succeeding in it? That would be nice as well. "And then after a bit of whining they accepted their fate and *gasp* lived happily ever after, like their parents and grandparents and greatgrandparents before them!"
Why do we never see something like that? Because it's against what we believe in? Please. I never went to see King Arthur because I was told Guinevere was made into a superwoman. Even though we now think that women can be just as powerful etc. as men, I don't want to be told that women were like that in Middle Ages. I'm not so insecure about women's right to rule their own lives that I must be told that women have always wanted to do that but just haven't been able to.
Of course, in Shaman's Crossing there are people who don't accept their fate, and succeed in marrying the one they want to, but I can live with that... because the hero still does as he's expected to :D
And the end! I loved the end! Carsina's letter to Nevare made me melt and grin and actually like that girl, even if her bad spelling had made me dislike her :D And I also loved how the Tree Woman was killed - because now I've no clue what's going to happen in the next books of that trilogy, even though when I was reading Shaman's Crossing I had all kinds of ideas what's going to happen next, I now don't think they'll happen.
(Oh, and notice my new mood theme!)