Okay, so we all know I’m very given to metaphors for my characters, right? Right. So, it should surprise no one that the following thought wandered by as I was eating lunch and trying to work out the bridge from end-of-canon Shit Going Down to after:

Lin Shu in relation to Prince Qi was a hawk; he would have been Qi’s hawk, would have flown for him, but (the critical point about hawks) would never have been actually tamed.

Lin Shu in relation to Jingyan is a cat; he’s fully domesticated, if also a total asshole at times, given to deliberately shoving things off tables, and as far as he’s concerned the proper order of the world is that Jingyan is His Person, forever amen, interlopers can expect to be casually clawed, and Jingyan can expect to be yowled at if he doesn’t pay attention promptly enough.

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So, I've fallen into Nirvana in Fire, and my goodness but this is a fun one.

Of course, I know, like, five words of the language by ear, as yet, so I'm having to rely on fanposts to pick out the /really/ juicy stuff. This intro, despite being brief, gave me two nice points to dig into.

For one, I do believe that what they're all calling Mei Changsu, translated here as the "Qilin Genius", is, indeed, a reference to the qilin, better known to anime fandom as the kirin, herald or portent of a ruler or great sage. Which is delightful purely on the symbolic level, in that Mei Changsu is exactly that, narratively, and also that the ruler he choses is neither of the ones who are so hot to secure him. But I am also giggling helplessly, because, if I'm not mistaken, Mei Changsu himself is the one who composes the message in which both the crown prince and Yu are told to seek him. And can't you just picture his glinty little smirk over that? On the one hand: arrogant creature. On the other... well, talk about calling your fate to you.

The even juicier concept that post gave me, though, was jianghu. Because my goodness but this makes so much sense (in narrative and genre terms) of Mei Changsu's choice in the end.

( Suppose I should spoiler-cut this )

Okay, that got rather lyrical, but it's wuxia after all, what do you expect?

One of the things that fascinates me about Kuroko no Basuke is the way it messes with its own genre.

Shounen sports manga or anime generally center around an underdog or unknown team who, by determination and effort, by the talents of a few older players and the heretofore unrevealed talents of one or two younger players, struggle through the gauntlet of local tournaments to play at the national tournament for their age group. It's a genre that focuses on the value of teamwork and grit and entices the audience with the figure of the often unprepossessing and average young hero who discovers his special talent and value thanks to entering this sport. He even finds himself supplied with a new set of intense personal relationships, usually in the person of his rival(s) but sometimes also in his team. For a relatively recent and very well executed, example of the genre, I recommend Eyeshield 21 (at least up until the end of Nationals, at which point the way the authors play with cliche dives over the shark into disturbing national stereotypes).

The thing is, the focus is on the hero's growth. He starts out inexperienced or undisciplined and has to strengthen himself to meet every new level as the team claws its way up the charts. This is where the plot tension comes from. The team almost invariably suffers a loss somewhere in the first half of the story, one that sets them back but does not completely wash them out, and which spurs them to new heights of determination and growth. In the end, the team, and the hero, realize their true strength and overcome.

Kuroko no Basuke starts where most series end.

( Read more... )

So, what do we mean when we say that Laurel K Hamilton is writing fanfic of herself? What do we mean when we say Twilight is fanfic? There are a lot of circumstances and skills encompassed by the word "fanfic", and I think it would be helpful to actually name some of them separately. Among other things, it might help us be able to say what it is we like about any piece of writing and what we don't like, more specifically and with less fire-hazard.

I started by trying to separate out the skill sets involved. Formulating the difference between writing fanfic and writing origific is always slippery, but one of the things that's come to mind recently is: fanfic relies on the skill of seeing what isn't there but could be.

This is, in some ways, a response to the hoary old fallacy of fanfic as "training wheels", which is absurd. The mechanical skills are transferable, yes, but the worldbuilding and characterization skills are not. All you have to do is read the first books of a few people who switched from fan to origi writing--they're right back to square one.

Fanfic happens when we see a character shape or story shape that isn't there but resonates anyway. Hence Leather Pants Draco, and his popularity. The readers see, accurately, the character shape that could provide a dramatic foil to Harry. That shape is not the one that Rowling used, but the way a more vivid anti-hero might interact with Harry is a deeply appealing one. Similarly, hence the safe-house trope in Gundam Wing fic. The characters never all live together, or even work together for long, in canon, but the viewers see, accurately, the plot shape that could provide more powerful and dramatic character interactions, and that shape demands a band of brothers, working together.

This is not a skill set that any author, writing from scratch, is ever going to use. Origific requires choosing a single path, a single form for characters and plot. Alternate possibilities just go on back into the idea-melt. Origific is the first swipe. It can't be the second.

We have spent so long valorizing the Solitary And Original Artist that we tend to think it's the first of those that matters, that takes the most work, that has the most value. But I have to say, I enjoyed Maya's HP fic a great deal more than Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy. I would like to see fanfic writers give themselves more credit for what they do. The things readers and viewers see, that aren't there, are very often powerful and desirable shapes. Bringing them forth is a worthy project.

So one thing I think people mean when they say that some (usually very popular) book is fanfic-ish is that it has struck, on the first go, one of those powerfully resonating shapes and run with it.

One of the skill sets that is sometimes held in common is how to write in a shared world. It's a very particular skill. One has to take account of what the other people have written, the history that has already been created, and fit one's own ideas into the mosaic. It also means not repeating all the world-introduction every time while still conveying the major points for those who may be coming in relatively cold. That last applies to an un-shared world, too, if it shows up in an extended series.

The dark side of this is that sometimes authors get lazy. They don't even bother hitting the major points, but just dive into the story, let the previous characterization or canon carry all the burden of development, and assume that any reader who isn't familiar with that has only themselves to blame. This is one of the other things people seem to mean when they call origific fanfic-ish. It is not a particular weakness or tendency of fanfic, though. It's a weakness of lazy writers everywhere. It may show up in somewhat higher absolute numbers, in fanfic, because fanfic is, by its nature, a shared world writing form. But proportionally, based on an unscientific survey of popular commercial series and popular fic, I'd say there are about as many lazy writers on either side.

So there are two things that came to mind when I thought about what we can mean by "fanfic" as an adjective. *tosses it out to her readers* Any others to throw in the pot?

And it is work. This is what I think a whole lot of people miss when they go to take their required literature course:

A lit class is not a class in art appreciation.

It is a class in analytical skills.

( It doesn't help that a whole lot of lit teachers don't realize they need to say this out loud )

I think I've finally pinned down something that makes me twitch about the things one can find in English regarding the history and wearing of kimono. And this one is actually not the spectacle of white girls wanting to be geisha or otherwise appropriating culturally specific ceremonials, though that makes me twitch pretty damn bad. No, this one is subtler: the stunning class bias encoded in nearly every text, to the point that only one in fifty or so will even mention that the kimono styles they are all talking about are solely what the upper class wore in any given period.

When you read that site about jyuuni-hitoe, or that book about the history of kimono, or that message board about how to wear kimono today, and they all talk about "the history of kimono" or "the types of kimono" nary a word will you find about the fact that all these fashions and rules and standards and layers were exclusively those of nobles or the warrior class. Or that there were a lot more people than that walking around with clothing on that was, of necessity, far simpler and more utile, and that they are just as much part of this clothing history.

And I don't know if a similar erasure is part of the Japanese discourse of kimono. I suspect it is from the little snippets I've seen but a bit differently shaped--more part and parcel of the post-Civil War arrogation of warrior-class privileges to the general populace. Compare with the way everyone in the US will say they are middle class, blue collar and white, taxi driver to CEO.

Of course, the part of all this that amuses me mightily, from an historical perspective, is that the modern wearing of kimono, despite having been frozen by largely ceremonial use, has still managed to steadily inch its way further and further toward the working class and even peasant mode of clothing: one layer, simple ties. It reminds me, albeit reversed, of the way the merchant class got around the sumptuary laws: put the good stuff on the inside. Or, in this case, reduce the layers and ties on the inside by using clip-ons and decorations that are stitched in place.

But is there any mention of this, or even of the fact that people existed who were not wearing twelve layers of silk according to the season? Vanishingly little. Argh.

Short form: It doesn't work.

I run into this when I'm teaching first year writing, too. Students will ask things like "how long should the introduction be", and the answer isn't "one paragraph for a five page paper and two for a ten page paper". No, the answer is "long enough to introduce the topic and give any background information your reader needs, not so long that you start to get into your body arguments before you actually get to the body". They ask "so, is three pages too long" and I can't answer in any meaningful way without actually reading the paper. It might be. It might not. Pages are the wrong yardstick with which to measure, because it's the content that matters.

For similar reasons, the infamous advice to cut adverbs is useless when accepted and deployed uncritically. The more useful rephrasing might be: Persistently using adverbs as a shortcut, in place of giving some meaningful description of the characters' actions or thoughts, will make the story shallower, and adding them where there are already sufficient cues will make the story sloppier. The more useful initial phrasing might have been: Identify the techniques you are prone to overuse and remember to pay attention to those while you're editing.

Of course, that doesn't sound nearly so satisfyingly solid and simple, does it? It's not as catchy as "The road to hell is paved with adverbs". It sounds less like "fewer than three pages" and more like "not so long you start writing body arguments".

Prescriptive advice isn't always wrong, but it isn't going to be right, either--again, those are the wrong yardsticks. It universalizes the particular way of writing that worked for one author/reader or even a group of authors/readers. It borrows the false authority of absolutism instead of putting in the work of self-examination that might yield the far more useful explanation of why, in that particular case, a particular writing approach worked.

So to anyone who is tempted to write a how-to or a this-is-better: try to remember that your view is specific and particular, not universal, and do the 'why' work. It's just as necessary in non-fiction as it is in fiction.

Notice: This is a repost of an entry; the first was cruelly devoured in a crossposting glitch and all the lovely comments with it. If anyone wants to comment again or more I will be perfectly pleased to carry on the conversations.

So, here’s the thing. I’m all in favor of having books that are id-candy, brain-fluff, that demand nothing from your intellect and instead go straight on to punch your emoporn joybuttons.

This is, after all, why I own three quarters of everything Mercedes Lackey has ever published.

But, first off, id-candy is a different thing from good writing. The joybuttons don’t care about bad grammar or triteness or slop, they just resonate to the character shapes that hit one’s kinks. Kinks are often trite and cliche, when you think about it. Id-candy is enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t make your brain engage, it doesn’t deal in subtleties, it doesn’t make you do any work. To get enjoyment out of genuinely artful prose, you generally have to think, to ponder even, to put in some work.

Saying that you enjoy your id-candy immensely and saying that your id-candy is great writing are very different statements. Among other things, the first is true and the second generally isn’t. (Unless you’re using a completely Utilitarian definition of “good”, and when people try to compare Rowling and Tolkien it is unfortunately clear that they are not employing such a definition at all.)

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of trite, cliched slop, of course.

Let us consider Misty, for example. She’s the Queen of Exposition, has a tendency to extremely moralistic and preachy narrative, and drives home her morals with a ten pound sledge. She is guilty of the most egregious cultural flattening and caricaturization and the only thing that comforts me even minutely is that she does it to everyone, whitebread, ‘noble savage’ and orientalist alike. (I maintain that Ancient Egypt should take out a restraining order on the woman.) Her characters are flat, their angst is repetitive, and half the time the stories read like SCA handbooks instead of novels.

Nevertheless–three quarters, right there on my shelf, and I reread handfuls of them at fairly regular intervals. This is because they are excellent brain-fluff emoporn.

Also because they are not toxic. Her moralism can get wearing awfully fast, but at least they are morals I can agree with. Mostly.

That’s the second thing. You have to be careful of the id-candy that uses a moral framework that’s harmful to you.

The Twilight books are a prime example of this. The writing is no worse than most id-candy, but the value system those books are hung on is poison. It’s misogynist, racist, deterministic, conflates obsession and stalking with love, and runs the mobius strip of nihilism and femininity myths at full speed with special emphasis on death by/for childbirth. (I would not want to be this woman’s therapist, not without hazard pay). This id-candy has a razor blade in it.

Some people probably bemoan the loss of innocent fun now that we chop up Halloween candy before eating it to make sure there aren’t any evil surprises in it. I expect some people feel the same about their id-candy. But, you know, I’d much rather take the time to chop and evaluate than swallow a needle.

So, a bunch of would-be allies have protested getting “flamed” or “piled on” or basically told to sit down and shut up, in Racefail 09, because they tried to join the discussion by contributing their own experience.

Well what did they expect?

In any discussion of privilege, stereotypes, oppression, agency, if you are on the plus side of the particular issue, do not try to join in with comments about your experience. It may seem like a gesture of sympathy and solidarity, but it isn’t. It’s you taking the focus away from the injured party. Don’t do that. It’s not about you.

Do not try to say that you are not privileged because, while you may be plus in this particular area, you are minus in others. For one thing, that’s flat wrong. If you are plus in this area, then you have privilege in this area. Trying to deny that by waving all the other areas in which you are minus just makes you part of the fail and ensures that the people who have to deal with a minus in the current discussion will have zero reason to respect your minus when that’s under discussion. For another thing, it’s beside the point. Because right now, it’s not about you.

Do not suggest that, yes, this is awful, and shouldn’t we all try to be colorblind (religion-blind, gender-blind, etc.). The only way anyone could imagine such a thing is a) possible or b) a good idea is by being plus in the area in question, and therefore not having to worry about it, not having to be aware of it constantly, not having to deal with how it makes you invisible or second class every day. Such a statement comes only out of a plus experience. Don’t make it. Because it’s not about you.

Do not, for the love of little pixels, try to tell anyone to calm down or be less angry. Do not try to join in by offering your own solution to the problem of being angry. Being angry isn’t the problem, it’s a reaction to the problem. More importantly, that isn’t your anger, so you don’t have any right to say what gets done with it. If it makes you uncomfortable, too bad. It isn’t about you.

You’re plus in a given debate and you still want to contribute? Listen. Don’t talk. Listen. Don’t tell about your own experience. Listen to someone else’s. Don’t deny the anger and don’t try to fix it. Listen to it. When you see another plus person failing in one of the above manners, step up and point out that it isn’t about them, and now is not the time for defensiveness or guilt. Now is the time for listening. Because the sad truth is that a lot of us listen better to people who are like us than to the people who actually have the experience under discussion. If you can redirect attention to where it currently should be, do it. That’s a bare first step, but it’s one that truly astonishing numbers of people seem unable to manage.

Also? Do not comment to this and prove the point in spades by talking about how your intrusion of your own experience into this or any similar discussion wasn’t like that. Because (all together now) it isn’t about you.

First the caveats: I don’t read even modern Japanese, far less 7th C Japanese, far less ancient Chinese, so my sources are all at one remove. I have tried to find ones that are not obviously biased in their translations and interpretations. Since this is a web essay, I have also tried to refer to web-sources, where I could find ones that seem reputable or are backed up from reputable paper sources. Nevertheless, this is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, and there are places where I had to make assumptions and guesses. Do not take this essay’s conclusion as an attested source, because it isn’t.

Summary

The Twelve Divine Commanders (Juuni Shinshou) who appear as the shikigami of Abe no Seimei and his alternates in current popular literature such as Yami no Matsuei and Shounen Onmyouji seem to have started life as a group of tutelary deities or personifications in the five element system, settling into twelve figures with elemental powers based on the ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches.

( Read the full account )