Sam & the Simorgh (Shahnameh Reading Project 6)

Join Tessa Gratton and me as we read the Shahnameh by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. We’re using the Dick Davis translation (Penguin Classics).

Today’s portion: Sam and the Simorgh

Synopsis: An interlude to introduce Sam, a Persian king(?) and his son Zal, who was raised by a giant bird.

TG: At first I thought this section was a true interlude – a full aside – and I’m surprised it’s really just a brief introduction to how Zal came into being as a wise and learned man. It’s all a set up for the next section, it seems.

I’m not sure what the point of it is in breaking it off of the full story of Zal that comes next, except to bolster the theme that it’s best to trust in God’s plan (Fate?) and love according to the laws of family and God’s command.

It was interesting that Manuchehr noticed that Zal has farr but no one else seemed to – though an argument could be made for the Simorgh noticing, and that’s why she saved his life and raised him instead of feeding him to her chicks. This might be a clue to how farr works, or just further evidence that farr is mysterious, and purposefully so.

The list of gifts that Manuchehr gave to Sam when he sent him off reminded me strongly of the long list of gifts Hrothgar gives Beowulf, and I wonder at that as a similar narrative technique. I wonder if there are parallels in how the list of riches are used in each epic. Obviously it’s a display of wealth and a way to prove the importance of the characters involved, gratitude, and promise. But surely there are important connotations lost on us reading hundreds of years later.

 

KE:  Yes, gift giving customs are such a crucial part of social stability. I haven’t done any specific reading on this issue but I am pretty sure that at this level of kingship (proto state kingship, I guess I will call it?) rulers lavish gifts upon their followers as a means of creating and sustaining ties of loyalty and obligation. It’s also a form of wealth re-distribution, since Zal can, theoretically, then gift some of these things on to his own followers (although we don’t see that).

I loved this line, spoken by Sam to Zal: “It is right to say what is in your heart like this; say it, say whatever you wish.” Sounds very modern! Which is followed immediately by a statement about the astrologers and how “we cannot quarrel with the heavens.” I love how aspects of the story feel so emotionally understandable while other elements clearly include cultural knowledge that I totally lack.

All the paintings illustrating this episode show Zal as an albino, which isn’t quite how I understood it from the text when Sam says, “his black body, and his hair as white as jasmine.” Earlier the infant is described as having a body “like pure silver,” and I can’t quite reconcile silver and black. They seem like such contrasts to me. Regardless, it seems he is albino, a fascinating choice.

Also while googling images for next week I realized the importance of this prologue for Zal, to be followed by the long episode (next week) of his courtship of Rudabeh: They are the parents of the central hero of the Shahnameh, Rostam.

Here is a lovely painting of the Simorgh bringing Zal to Sam.

Sam & Simorgh

Painting of Sam kneeling on the ground. The simorgh with tail flared in in four sections flies down to meet him, bearing his son Zal.

Enthusiasm Thursday: Still working on a post about The Scorpion Rules

I’m running behind on writing up my thoughts about Erin Bow’s The Scorpion Rules, a YA sf novel which I really enjoyed. I’ll post next week. Meanwhile, if you are so inclined, please read it. Then you can join in next week, since in the context of the book I’m writing up what is really a discussion of narrative techniques, in this case opening with a slow build instead of a fast build/urgent hook. (Spoiler: I like slow builds but I also recognize that many readers expect a fast build or urgent hook from the first paragraph, and I have thoughts about how that can play out because a fast build relies on the reader’s familiarity with situations or character types and therefore creates its own forms of limitation.)

 

The Internal Map (Worldbuilding Wednesday 7)

World Building Wednesday: A series of short posts in which I write about my personal theory of how I approach world building, specifics of things to consider, and practical suggestions on how to use world building in the text. This is not a prescriptive program. I don’t think people must do things the way I do. I talk about my process because it is what I know. That’s it. Short bites: long tail.

What do I mean by an internal map?

I define an internal map as how the people in this made up world perceive the cosmos and their place in it.

People and societies have an “internal map” that orients how they see the world and influences the choices they make and the perspectives they cherish, enforce, and share. This is true for characters and cultures in narrative as well.

By cosmos I mean a people’s understanding of the universe, how they perceive that it works, and what brought them to the place (land) they are now. This view may or may not be influenced by religious beliefs.

Other elements of the internal map include cultural beliefs and expectations, laws and customs, and societally approved prejudices and/or rebellion against them. People (and thus characters) understand who they are in the world and what their relationships are to others according to this internalized map. What are the rules and customs of behavior that govern them, and does any given character as an individual obey them or not? Expectations about things like hierarchy, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race will all be part of a character’s internal map.

There will almost certainly be more than one “people” in a secondary world, and each “people” will have a unique way of understanding the cosmos and their relationship to their gods (if they have them), the natural environment, their culture and sub-cultures, and to other groups and peoples both within and outside their own culture.

Internal maps are therefore not monolithic to each world or even each nation (or even individuals in the same setting). They will be influenced by the nuances, variations, and local characteristics that affect any given individual’s life. For example, a Japanese-American girl growing up in Nebraska as one of only a handful of Asian-American students at her high school is going to have a somewhat different internal map than a girl of Japanese ancestry growing up in Hawaii with its majority Asian & Pacific Islander demographic make up, and they again will have different internal maps to a Japanese girl growing up in Japan.

For me, the beginnings of understanding a world starts with my first explorations into an internal map.

Obviously no made up world is going to be as complex as the real world–I believe it is functionally not possible–but having the idea that there is an internal map provides the foundation on which I can build what I hope is a nuanced landscape.

I also have to remember that this map will always be influenced by my own internal map, the one that orients me. If I’m not aware of my own internal perspectives and biases, the ones influenced by my family, my upbringing and schooling, and the society I live in, then I am likely to reinforce or repeat my perspectives and biases within the story I’m writing regardless of whether I’m trying to write a place that is different from where I live.

I’ll use marriage customs as an example. When I read science fiction novels set in the far future in which a woman automatically takes her husband’s name and there is no explanation for why this happened, I perceive defaulting to certain common American legal norms at work. A woman taking her husband’s name is a specific cultural custom, not a universal one. When it is treated as a universal then I know the writer isn’t stepping outside their own internal map. It’s not that this custom should never be invoked in (for example) secondary world or far future fiction, but rather that if the writer chooses to include it then it’s best to be aware that there needs to be context for it.

Here’s another commonly used default: the virgin bride. Not every pre-modern culture concerns itself with women’s virginity as a token of honor and purity. Nor is marriage necessarily about sexual access. If marriage customs have a place in the society you are creating then understand how they work and in what ways marriage is considered useful as an institution in the society you are creating. If you merely replicate generically understood 1950s American marriage customs and sexual mores, you are re-using a cultural map that has been (in many places) superseded in the 21st century and which gas not ever represented a universal marriage pattern.

So, yes, my perspectives and biases will show up in the stories I write in off-hand and subtle, or not so subtle, ways, but the more awareness I can bring to my world creation the more deliberate I can make my choices. Because I guarantee: our unexamined biases will inevitably filter into our imagined worlds.

This is why I don’t “start with a map” by placing mountains and rivers and cities on a piece of paper: because physical landmarks offer only a partial understanding of a world. A physical map is by definition incomplete and circumscribed because it gives no insight into the mental and emotional and spiritual processes of the characters and the cultures in which those characters live their lives.

But at the same time, the physical geography in which a culture arises creates many of its own constraints and possibilities.

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Next week: Geography is Destiny

Coming soon: More on internal maps and how to develop them, including a practical example post and one on diagramming cosmologies. Also a discussion of common narrative maps and tropes and how they influence worldbuilding. And more.

Previously: Introduction, The Flowering of an Image, Inductive to Deductive, Image to Idea: A Practical Idea, Deductive or Inductive: A Guest Perspective (Aliette de Bodard), The Map as Theory

The Vengeance of Manuchehr (Shahnameh Reading Project 5)

Join Tessa Gratton and me as we read the Shahnameh by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. We’re using the Dick Davis translation (Penguin Classics).

Synopsis: Iraj’s grandson Manuchehr goes to war with an army of heroes and sons of kings raised by Feraydun, killing his great-uncles and defeating a demon one-on-one.

TG: This was a lot of war! I enjoyed the descriptions of actual battle – even though it was very poetic and over the top – and also the use of trickery and messengers. I especially liked Qaren pretending to be working for Tur in order to take his castle.

I found some links to elephant armor (though it’s Indian, and more modern than what we’re talking about). This is from the Royal Armouries Museum and I’ve seen the first in person, and it’s awe-inspiring to stand next to.

Museum exhibit of an elephant in armor. The head and sides are protected by armor.

Museum exhibit of an elephant in armor. The head and sides are protected by armor.

Here are some elephant tusk swords:

Elephant Sword, 15th–17th century Indian, Iron or steel; L. 24 in. (61.2 cm); Wt. 5 lb. 3 oz. (2362 g) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Jeri Garbaccio, in honor of Donald J. La Rocca, 2015 (2015.103) http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/679021

Elephant Sword, 15th–17th century
Indian,
Iron or steel; L. 24 in. (61.2 cm); Wt. 5 lb. 3 oz. (2362 g)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Jeri Garbaccio, in honor of Donald J. La Rocca, 2015 (2015.103)
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/679021

elephant tusk swords Source: https://chalklands.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/elephanttuskswords.jpg

elephant tusk swords

These would be attached to the sawn down end of the tusks.

(Source: https://chalklands.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/elephanttuskswords.jpg) 

Since fate came up last week, I thought I’d mention the section where the Evil Brothers try to convince Feraydun that they only acted as fate proscribed. They said they only acted in order to bring what was written to pass. But I don’t think they mean fate as we think of it – I think they really mean “nature.” When they compare themselves to lions and dragons, it seems like they mean they only behaved according to their natures, too, just like last time we were told we shouldn’t be surprised that the moon gives off moonlight. There’s a definite connection between the idea of “fate” and the idea of “nature.” And then again, it was so important to Feraydun that he raise Manuchehr so that the winds of heaven never touch him and even his nurse did not walk upon the earth. He clearly was concerned with keeping the goodness Manuchehr was born with pure, so there might be something to fear from “nurture.”

KE:  Here’s a question. I’m continuing to grapple with the notion of farr. While I believe any such concept must have a particular and specific meaning for its own culture, I do also see similar concepts in other cultures. It isn’t really the divine right of kings, which allows for a lot more corruption if all that matters is whether you are designated by God to stand above others, but rather the relationship between the ruler and righteousness (or heaven as it stands in for righteousness and purity). Lose that righteousness and your rule will fail, the crops will wither, and your people have the right to overthrow you. The idea of American Exceptionalism is drawn in part from this conception that some carry a particular purity or divine approval. And how does this intertwine with fate and nature? We know from Jamshid’s example that you can lose farr. But can you gain it, or must it be something given to you or that you possess intrinsically? I have no firm views on this matter; I just find it interesting.

The narrative issues in this section intrigued me. Is there any suspense? Is suspense necessary? Aren’t we sure that Manuchehr will win? Perhaps the point isn’t whether it happens but how it happens. Perhaps it is the anticipation, waiting for the fulfillment of divine justice. One (of many) reasons I find reading outside my familiar narrative landscape important is because it introduces me to different approaches to and goals for narrative.

One last note: I think my favorite detail was the description of the messenger chosen by Manuchehr to bring Tur’s head to Feraydun. What a lovely little portrait of empathy, which I found very touching:

“and when the man arrived his face was filled with shame, his eyes with tears, since he wondered how he could show the severed head of the king of China to the Persian king, because no matter how evil a son might be, or how terrible his crimes, a father’s heart would be wrung by such a sight.”

Next week: The Tale of Sam and the Simorgh (Feb 19)
Previously: Introduction, The First Kings, The Demon King Zahhak Feraydun and His Three Sons, The Story of Iraj

Enthusiasm Thursday: Making Wolf by Tade Thompson

Making Wolf by Tade Thompson (Rosarium Publishing)

making wolf

When Weston Kogi arrives in his West African home country to attend his aunt’s funeral, he has no idea what’s in store for him. How could he? Mistaken for an experienced police detective, Kogi is tossed into the middle of a thoroughly ugly conflict in the (fictitious) nation of Alcacia.

Making Wolf is an old school mystery-action-thriller and an intense, powerful, riveting story. This could be described as a dude book, filled with violent action, brutal reversals, corrupt and awful people, a scant handful of decent folk, and several beautiful and smart women. The conflicts are ragged and unclean. Everyone gets their hands dirty. In less assured hands a story like this can come across as gratuitous and shallow and juvenile, like an adolescent boy playing at being a tough man when his definition of tough is purely Hollywood. Making Wolf works because Thompson has an unflinching understanding of how cynical and compromised people can become while depicting them as people with understandable motives and reactions. It is, as I’ve said, a violent book, but I never felt pandered to.

As a character, Weston is often clueless and out of his depth. He compromises, and not always in a noble way. He makes bad choices, sometimes because they are the most rational choices. He lies to himself. He lies to others. In other words, he feels not like a superhero whom destiny has fitted out to charge in and become the savior but like an imperfect person who finds a way to survive and, possibly, to figure out who he has a chance of becoming. I could identify with some of the metaphorical and psychological elements of his journey, which made it a sobering trip.

The pacing is electric. The story and situation grabbed me immediately and never let up. Thompson has a precise eye for local detail and a thorough understanding of the setting, which he delineates succinctly and with exactitude.

I often don’t feel I’m good at expressing my emotional experience of reading. I’m far more comfortable when analyzing structure or theme, while the core of this novel is its emotional, visceral ride. I was surprised at how engrossed I was in a story that in other hands I would probably have disliked. Thompson’s writing is absolutely solid, but it’s the clear-eyed, unblinking, harsh aesthetic he brings that sold me.

Highly recommended.

TW: for extreme violence.

The Map As Theory (Worldbuilding Wednesday 6)

World Building Wednesday: A series of short posts in which I write about my personal theory of how I approach world building, specifics of things to consider, and practical suggestions on how to use world building in the text. This is not a prescriptive program. I don’t think people must do things the way I do. I talk about my process because it is what I know. That’s it. Short bites: long tail.

I always start with a map.

However–and this is crucial–there are two kinds of maps.

One is the physical, geographical “external” map.

The other is the socio-cultural “internal” map.

When I use the word map many people think I am talking about a physical representation of the geography of a world. But a map isn’t limited to physical representation. Maps are patterns we impose. When world building I believe it is important to be aware of maps AS PATTERNS and to think about what these often unconsciously-imposed patterns may mean when we create a secondary world.

As world builders, writers can go over the same sort of terrain over and over again because it’s the landscape people are familiar with.

Here are three well worn narrative maps:

King (or any authoritarian adult male figure) dies at hand of usurper, son flees, and must return to overthrow the usurper and restore rightful rule/status.

Evil lord or horde lays waste (or oppressive king places chains on his subjects) and band of heroes must rise up (rise up!) to take back the land and/or beat back the threat.

Two people meet and feel attraction; obstacles intervene and are overcome; they kiss.

Most readers recognize these sorts of narrative maps, and often choose to return to places that have familiar contours. I do, too. There is nothing wrong with creating a setting that feels familiar and comfortable and is populated by characters who act in ways familiar and comfortable to you as the writer. I do this as well, or in specific ways within my books.

Just be aware that stories that are specific to your experience and your comfort and familiarity level are not universal stories, even if we have been told they are. For example, the Joseph Campbell version of The Hero’s Journey is not universal, it is particularist. That’s fine that it is what it is, but best not to claim for it something it is not.

The beauty of fiction in general and fantasy and science fiction in particular is that we always have a chance to move beyond the border, beyond the boundaries, to see the world in a way we haven’t looked at it before.

While building a world, I believe one must constantly negotiate the balance between the experiences and subjective assumptions I bring to the world I’m creating and the experiences and assumptions that are meant to exist in the world itself, that are meant to represent this specific world’s way of being rather than my own way of being.

I can think like I do, but I also need to know how the people in my world think.

If the two are the same, I need to know and recognize that. If they are different, I need to write their world as the characters see it, not as I see it. (I’ll explore this point in more detail in a later post.)

Furthermore, maps are not objective. It is commonplace to define a “western-style” map as an objective measure of the land, but it isn’t. Mapmakers are always making choices about how a place is represented and what matters enough to put on the map.

No one builds a world from an objective place. As a world builder, you are making a series of decisions about what matters enough to go in the map, and about what and how it is represented. If a place or character isn’t on YOUR map, the map in your mind of what matters about the world you want to write about, then you the writer can certainly not go to places you’ve never thought about, places you think don’t matter enough to warrant notice. Matters that aren’t visible to you.

This is why the map I start with is the internal map.

Every character in the story has an internal map through which they measure, comprehend, and navigate the world they live in. Their maps won’t be the same as every other character’s, and they (probably) won’t be the same as mine.

To understand how “the peoples of my world” look at the world they “live in,” I have to move outside my own narrow range of experience. To a fair degree I never can, but with conscious effort I can attempt to widen my view and shrink my limitations bit by bit and piece by piece. If I don’t think about the unconscious ways in which my understanding of the world is limited by my upbringing and its setting, and by my own cultural expectations and experiences and perceptions and biases, then I will bring those unexamined assumptions into my world building (and I do indeed do this all the time despite my efforts not to). Again, it’s fine to do that if that’s the story you want to tell, but that too is a choice. Own it.

So, yes, early on in the process I will draw a cartographical representation of the physical world. Yet for me the most important “map” is bigger than that. It’s not flat, it’s multi-dimensional: A physical map intersects with this internal map, and these conjoined maps influence and are influenced by the architecture of the narrative as it unfolds.

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Next week: The Internal Map
Previously: Introduction, The Flowering of an Image, Inductive to Deductive, Image to Idea: A Practical Idea, Deductive or Inductive: A Guest Perspective (Aliette de Bodard)

The Story of Iraj (Shahnameh Reading Project 4)

Join Tessa Gratton and me as we read the Shahnameh by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. We’re using the Dick Davis translation (Penguin Classics).

Summary: In which Feraydun divides his lands into three parts for his three sons, and the two oldest becomes jealous that Iraj, the youngest, recieved the best part. They kill him, and Feraydun mourns spectacularly.

An illustration depicting the king, Feraydun, dividing his empire between his three sons. Feraydun is shown as a dragon and each son is mounted on a horse.

An illustration depicting the king, Feraydun, dividing his empire between his three sons. Feraydun is shown as a dragon and each son is mounted on a horse.

KE: Well. That was depressing. All my worst fears realized, and so very sad.

Here are a few of the particular things that interested me besides Ferdowsi’s examination of envy, nobility, and grief.

Of course the good son becomes king of Persia “because he is worthy” while the other two are relegated to the opposite ends of the Earth where, we may be encouraged to believe, the somewhat less worthy are meant to reign.

Feraydun’s two wives play no part in the drama at all despite being the mothers of the sons. Neither do the Yemenite princesess whose marriages were such a large part of the previous section. It’s fascinating that Iraj’s bloodline is carried on through a daughter; that her issue (the subject of the next section) will become the instrument of vengeance. She’s not named, however (although her mother is), but her spouse is abruptly introduced as Pashang with no further information, which makes me wonder if it was assumed that the audience knew who Pashang was from some other story cycle or supplementary tales. Else why mention the man by name? Maybe we will find out in the next section although I’m doubtful.

I continue to really enjoy Davis’s translation because I assume it is doing a good job of bringing across to me Ferdowsi’s vivid and powerful images.

 

TG: I noticed that immediately about the daughter, too. I was laughing that Feraydun was hoping for a grandson to take vengeance for Iraj’s death, and then OOPS a girl! But as soon as she wasn’t named and her husband and mother were I pretty much gave up on that hope. We’ll find out in the next section.

I love love loved the language in this section. So many phrases stood out to me. “The blossoms of his face ran with blood” “your body’s shroud a lion’s maw” “sealed the tight eyes of happiness.” SO GREAT. And the words of wisdom were particularly well drawn this time, too: “grasp this cup while it is still dawn, or at night supper will be at your expense” and “one should not be surprised that the moon radiates moonlight” in particular are going to stay with me for a while.

The descriptions of grief were just amazing. Throwing dust on their heads, blackening their faces, burning the garden, his “waist girdled with blood,” weeping so long the grass grows up to his chest… magnificent.

I have to admit that the longer rhyming poems pull me out, though, because I wonder how much we lose in the effort to create the rhymes. Maybe very little, but it does jar me out of the narrative when they’re so simply rhymed.

And, lastly, what a great moment calling back to the dragon from last section, when the brothers make it clear that they can’t trust their father because he deceived them when they were youths. In a way, that one piece of selfish magic Feraydun performed, to test them, led to his sons’ betrayal and the death of Iraj.

KE: I have mixed feelings about the poems. I like the idea of including verse, but I’m not sure Davis’s poetry is as good as his prose in terms of giving us a taste of Ferdowsi.

Besides the marvelous and evocative images and emotion in this section, that callback really resonated. I thought the dragon test was a cheap trick at the time for a parent to engage in (shades of King Lear), and it really did rebound against him in the end.

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Next week: The Vengeance of Manuchehr (February 12)
Previously: Introduction, The First Kings, The Demon King Zahhak, Feraydun and His Three Sons

Enthusiasm Thursday: some of my favorite music videos

I’m so old I remember when MTV played music videos. My not-yet-husband and I used to go to a frozen yoghurt store so I could watch MTV (we couldn’t afford cable). I love music videos. I still do although the thrill isn’t as intense as it was then, when it was a new way of interacting with songs you would otherwise only hear.

These are a few of my favorite music videos from over the years. This is not a top ten list but a “some I feel like enthusiasming about right now” list.
 

All Night Long (Lionel Richie)

This is a sweet, goofy video from 1983, and as much as I love it (and I do) just about everything from it is clearly from a different era. The style and color palette of the clothing has not, shall we say, worn well. Too many of the outfits remind me of the dread era of Jane Fonda Workouts. What were they thinking?

Lionel Richie looks so incredibly young and suave, and he has the effortlessly pleasing visage and presence of the videogenic. The infectious beat, the easy cheerfulness of the dance party vibe where everyone is celebrated and celebrating, and the unexpected policeman make this a classic that for all its hokey-ness never loses its appeal for me.

 

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Beat It (Michael Jackson)

I asked my spouse what music videos were most memorable for him, and Beat It (1982) is the first one he mentioned. It was innovative, massively popular, and hugely influential, of course. However, while I appreciate its place as a classic, for me it hasn’t aged that well although the dance-off remains great and Jackson is a great singer. As with West Side Story, the dancers don’t really look as tough as they are meant to be. And it reminds me of how much women get relegated to the sidelines in this kind of story. That awful kiss in the diner makes me cringe every time.
 

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Somebody to Love (Justin Bieber, featuring Usher)

No, no, stop. Don’t walk away. Bear with me.

I love the clever and flashy direction of this cheerful 2010 video. Okay, Bieber is not a great singer, and he can’t dance, but Usher can sing (and dance), and the dance crews are great, and diverse, and foregrounded as near equals in the sense that the video doesn’t work without them.

And–get this!–all the women are clothed! This is a bigger deal than you may realize in an era of so many music videos with clothed men and unclothed women, and I appreciate it greatly. Also, regardless of your Bieber feels, it’s a pretty great pop song qua pop song. And Usher can sing. Listen to him fancy up that melody.

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Shoop (Salt-N-Pepa) (1994)

I miss 90s music. I miss this 90s music, the one with the women owning their sexuality and making their way in company with each other.
 

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Express Yourself (Madonna) (1989)

“Come on girls, do you believe in love? Because I’ve got something to say about it, and it goes like this.”

Madonna plays multiple roles in a reworking of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The plot is classic, the man is beautiful, the jazz band-as-automatons is chilling and effective, and the video is visually sophisticated, with a filmic aesthetic and a gorgeous palette. Plus the song is sex positive!

Also: that milk.

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Take On Me (a-ha) (1985)

That girl is me at 15.

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Escapade (Janet Jackson)

Few songs and their attendant videos make me as purely happy as this one. (If I had to assign songs to characters, this would be Cat Barahal’s song.)

Despite its 1989 release, here we find no vintage 80s hair or vintage 80s clothes to date it a la “All Night Long,” so it still feels and looks fresh. Janet Jackson’s gear is always timeless, and her clothes were particularly to my taste during her RHYTHM NATION period. How much do I want that jacket???

The choreography is crisp and interesting, the carnival setting joyful and complex, and the video as dance-and-story is top-notch. There is a mysterious and handsome man. And Janet Jackson may have the greatest smile in the history of music videos. What’s not to love?
 

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Black Hand Side (Pharoahe Monch featuring Styles ) and Phonte)

Great song and great video from 2011. This simply is one of the smartest uses of the medium to enhance & complicate the message, and of course it does not pull its social commentary punch. The sequence where he is walking along behind the young couple is sheer brilliance, deep insight into how much prejudice is embedded in the stories we tell ourselves about “how people are” and how racism constrains the stories we are willing to believe.

If I had to have a top three music videos of all time, this would be on it.
 

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Fantastic Baby (Big Bang)(2012)

The clothes. The hair. The style. The beat. The owl. This is everything a music video is supposed to be.
 

 

 

That’s nine. What would you add?

Deductive or Inductive: A Guest Perspective (Worldbuilding Wednesday 5)

World Building Wednesday: A series of short posts in which I write about my personal theory of how I approach world building, specifics of things to consider, and practical suggestions on how to use world building in the text. This is not a prescriptive program. I don’t think people must do things the way I do. I talk about my process because it is what I know. That’s it. Short bites: long tail.

Today I’m thrilled to present a guest post by Aliette de Bodard. Having written about whether I use an inductive or deductive (top down or bottom up) approach, I thought it would be illuminating to see how another writer works in a way different from my own. I can’t emphasize enough that writing isn’t a specific process to learn, but rather a matter of discovering the process works for you.

Here you go:

 

From the top down, or how vibes and research drive my worldbuilding

by Aliette de Bodard

Disclaimer: this is the way things happen to work for me now. Like all writing advice, this is no way an obligation. I’m simply sharing stuff that currently helps me write fiction–and if it doesn’t work for you, or if only part of it works for you, that’s totally cool. Everyone has a different process, and also processes change quite a bit over the months/years!

I have a tendency to build my universes from the top down.

It’s by no means an absolute rule: I’m a big fan of “whatever works”, and especially for short stories I have built with a mixture of top down and bottom up, or simply bottom up like Alis does (though I can’t noodle for long. I have to get specific fairly fast).

But very often, with longer works, I tend to go for a very specific vibe, often tied to a subgenre/mix of subgenres that I find intriguing. Obsidian and Blood was explicitly conceived as a series of noir mysteries/fantasies featuring Aztec culture (and in particular Aztec magic derived from blood sacrifices).

The vibe is the dominant mood of a setting for me: for instance, Xuya, my Vietnamese space opera universe, is heavily focused on families and interpersonal relationships, and on the intersections of tradition and science. It gives a certain… tone to the stories? I’m not saying they’re all comedies or tragedies! But rather that they have a certain thematic focus on families and daily life, and that they also have an accompanying tone (what I think of as “quiet”, “intimate” stories rather than large-scales ones). They’re very different beasts from Dominion of the Fallen stories/novels.

Dominion of the Fallen (my series which started with The House of Shattered Wings, and which I’m working on at the moment) is a decadent/post-apocalyptic series set in a Paris devastated by a magical war. The thematic focus is the mechanics of survival/the impossible choices faced in a resource-scarce environment, and the tone is (grim)dark. Even in the short story “Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship” (an adventure/caper featuring two characters who fall in love with each other), the setting is never free of I think of as “grimdark 19th Century”: huge social injustices, an omnipresent colonial mindset, and oppressive, cruel characters in positions of power. In that story, it’s background, and not the main focus of the narrative, but it’s still there.

Once I have a setting, I research a lot. I tend to pick time periods that I think will be relevant: for Xuya, it’s 19th-Century/early-20th Vietnam (which serves as the basis for an intergalactic empire based on Vietnamese culture). For The House of Shattered Wings, I researched Belle Epoque Paris, as well as the history of colonies in both World Wars/colonial immigration to France in the first half of the 20th Century. I read fiction from the time period, non-fiction on it, and other media I find interesting (amusingly, for The House of Shattered Wings, I ended up drawing on a lot of anime, both set in Western-inspired worlds, and in post-apocalyptic settings: Black Butler, Full Metal Alchemist, Ergo Proxy).

This gives me what I think of as the base. The base is the backdrop against which the characters move: it’s both the physical settings (a Vietnamese pagoda orbital is very different from a magically nuked Notre-Dame) and the resulting mindsets of characters. Mindset being very important to me, because otherwise everyone ends up feeling like 21st-Century French characters in period costumes. For instance, in Xuya, familial ties and ancestor worship are very important: characters always know who is eldest/youngest in a relationship. In Dominion of the Fallen, the mindset is pragmatic: it’s not so much what you do, as what you can get away with–all hidden under a thin veneer of politeness and courtesy that preserves an increasingly fragile social order.

I need to know this in order to know about my characters: how usual or unusual they are, against accepted norms. A Xuya character with no respect for their parents, for instance, is wildly outside the norm and possibly a bit of a pariah because of this. And Madeleine, a character in The House of Shattered Wings, is what we would think of, today, as a decent character who tries to do the right thing: in that universe, however, she is widely viewed as being too naive and principled to survive.

I then get the plot in a sort of organic fashion from the worldbuilding: after all of this work,I generally have strong images and ideas for scenes that I slowly string together until it (hopefully) coalesces into something that makes sense! And, lately, about halfway through writing the book, I will pause and look again at the plot on the basis of what’s been written so far, to see if the extra worldbuilding I improvised as I was writing has shaken loose any ideas.

You’re going to point out this method leaves little room for improvisation. Actually, it does! I like having a large chunk of the worldbuilding while in planning stages (because I’m lazy and it’s cheaper to do it early), but there’s also a significant portion that gets added in/changed as I’m writing, because I can’t plan everything in advance.

It can be small things, or large ones: a lot of it is details, which have to be congruent with the larger setting. I agonise over small throwaway things, like the exact name for a low-level servant in my alternate universe (where domestic service isn’t gendered, so “maid” isn’t going to work), or where people get their running water from to wash their laundry (which turns out to be trickier than you think in a city where the Seine has turned dark and rather… aggressive). Some of it comes straightaway without much effort, and some of it comes from research: one particular scene ended up having lush, green gardens because the name of the place evoked something I’d seen elsewhere.

So my worldbuilding process looks a bit like this:

  1. Get a high-level concept
  2. Research, research, research
  3. Get images, ideas and snippets from research
  4. Create a plot congruent with the mood of 1.
  5. Draft, while improvising missing details (keeping previous steps as an overall guideline)

So that’s my worldbuilding process –or at least, the way I currently do it, because, like anything to do with writing processes, this is always breathing and changing and springing last minute surprises on me!

 

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KE: Many, many thanks to Aliette for a fantastic and illuminating post. It’s so important to see how varied and adaptive the writing process is. Remember: The goal is to figure out WHAT WORKS FOR YOU (and what works for the current project).

Next week: The Map As Theory
Previously: Introduction, The Flowering of an Image, Inductive or Deductive, Image to Idea: A Practical Example

Feraydun and His Three Sons (Shahnameh Reading Project 3)

Join Tessa Gratton and I as we read the Shahnameh by Abolqasem Ferdowsi. We’re using the Dick Davis translation (Penguin Classics).

SYNOPSIS: Feraydun’s three sons earn their names and marry the three daughters of the king of the Yemen.

3 daughters wedding

An illustrated page showing a king presiding over the wedding of his three daughters.

TG:  This story is very simple and straight-forward, and a story-type I’m very familiar with, and yet it surprised my by how technically well it’s told, and how self-sustaining it is.

I read the line that the princes could hold their own against elephants before they were named and assumed that was a delightful bit of hyperbole meaning they were big and strong even when babies. THEN the note that the princesses of the King of Yemen were “three unnamed daughters” came and I paused to think for a while about naming conventions. Clearly the daughters are marriageable age, so what does this mean? They have no names of their own? Why not? Are they only named in relation to their eventual husbands? How does this work? I remembered the line about the princes and decided maybe it was a detail I was never going to get the answer to, something I don’t understand because of a lack of exposure. Or it was a use of basic fairy-tale convention.

AND INSTEAD IT’S WHAT THE ENTIRE STORY IS ABOUT.

The three unnamed princes and three unnamed princesses coming together and only then earning their names from Feraydun – the most powerful character currently in the world, with the farr of God and magic of angels. This story is not about Feraydun dividing his land or fighting between the sons, it’s about how they got their names and, of course, foreshadowing.

I went back and read through the whole story again to see how the hints about the theme were dropped in so casually and gracefully that I – a very practiced reader – noticed them, but not how they were part of the internal scaffolding.

I continue to be impressed by the role and treatment of women. The princesses weren’t unnamed because they were women, and they are valued by their father for themselves and how they make him feel. Not political or monetary worth. He’s only concerned with enraging Feraydun, not gaining alliance with him through the means of his daughters. All the women so far, though ruled and sometimes even controlled entirely by the men, aren’t chattel. They have power in their own right as advisors, sorceresses, mothers.

KE: I agree. I also entered this section with preconceptions and then they were all exploded. I suppose this is the “good dad” episode although naturally there may be more good dads later but I was specifically enamored of how the story deals with the king of Yemen and his love for his daughters. He doesn’t reject Feraydun’s request out of hatred for the other king. He isn’t evil or conniving, even though he does connive a bit. I was so impressed that he simply really loves his daughters. As people. As good company. What a concept. Also, so far the two kings also identified as Arab have not done well against the Persians, although obviously the king of Yemen isn’t in the same category as Zahhak. His deceit is, one might argue, for a good cause (at least by our standards).

Like you, I read the clues as to what the episode was about without really registering them until the naming happens and then the light went on and I realized I had been played by a master.

It also interested me that Feraydun finds a way to praise each quality of his sons even if, as with Salm, we might in another circumstance expect him to be condemned as a coward. Yet it IS also possible to see his behavior from a different angle, as the king does.

I did feel there were echoes of the ancient Indo-European folktale pattern of the three sons and the youngest son having a special destiny. I don’t know if this will turn out to be the case but given that the next section is the story of the youngest son, I guess we are about to find out.

Next week (February 5): The Story of Iraj
Previously: Introduction, The First Kings, The Demon King Zahhak