Towards the within

[dolorosa_12]

This weekend feels more efficient than others so far this year — I've done almost everything I wanted to do, and it's only 1.30pm on Sunday!

Every year, I know this specific snowflake_challenge prompt is coming: In your own space, create a fanwork. And every year, I swear I'll start working on something so that it will be ready to post by the time the prompt comes around, and every year I end up being completely unprepared.





However, this year I'm lucky, in that threesentenceficathon is also happening, with some great prompts, and so I have fanworks ready to post! I've grouped all my fills together in an AO3 series, so if I fill more prompts, they can just get added on, but at the moment there are three ficlets posted. The fandoms covered so far are Greek mythology (Hades/Persephone), Peaky Blinders (Ada Shelby), and the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale (Rumpelstiltskin/Miller's Daughter). There are a couple of other prompts that caught my eye, so I'll see how many more I can add.

halfamoon will be running again this February. This is a fourteen-day fest focusing on female characters. Every two days, there's a new prompt, for which you can create fanworks, or share recs for other people's work that fits the prompt. The prompts list for this year is out in advance.

The detailed nomination statistics for last year's Hugo Awards have
finally been made public, and there seem to be a lot of problems (most notably, a number of works or individuals that were eligible for shortlisting and achieved the requisite number of votes to be shortlisted appear to have been arbitrarily ruled ineligible for reasons that are as yet unclear). Cora Buhlert's blog post is probably the best starting point, as it's a good summary in its own right, and links to pretty much every other piece of discussion of the matter.

Reading-wise it's been a slow week. I've only finished one book, The Last Sun (K.D. Edwards), the first in a series of urban fantasy books in which characters with supernatural abilities have washed up on the shores of Earth after their home in Atlantis was destroyed, and in which powerful, aristocratic Houses (based on tarot — the Tower, the Lovers, the Hermit and so on) vie for control of their new, closed community. Our point-of-view character is the last remaining survivor of the destroyed Sun House, and he works as a sort of supernatural private detective for hire.

It's incredibly tropey, everyone has incredibly angsty backstories and unresolved trauma, and in general I found it fun in an escapist sort of way. I wish more of the secondary characters were women, and that we got to know more of the interior lives of the female characters we do meet, but hopefully there's more of that as the series progresses — it's not going to stop me reading future books, nor indeed the free short stories that the author has posted online. In fact, once I've finished catching up on Dreamwidth, I'm going to read any of those that fit chronologically with what I've read so far.

Comments

[merit]

The 2023 Hugos were a minor surprise to me though I attributed that to the rise, and dominance, of cosy fantasy on some of the nominations. And to be fair, kind of out of step with popular fantasy (I hardly saw anyone talk about the Spare Man compared to the other novel nominees).

Though I didn't realise how widespread some of the issues were! The figures being /that much/ out definitely make it more uncertain for the eventual winners.

[dolorosa_12]

I just assumed that the books I'd expected to be a shoe-in (Babel most notably) and that weren't on the list of finalists were absent because their authors had declined. Having left Twitter (and begun disengaging from SFF Book Twitter many months before that), I wasn't as plugged in to professional SFF conversations as I'd been previously.

My read on the situation (and to be fair this is just speculation) is that most people who come from democratic countries completely fail to comprehend a) the way authoritarian/totalitarian countries use sporting and cultural events (even niche things like Worldcon) as a way to project their power and prestige, and b) how state censorship works (Ada Palmer has a good post about this; in summary state entities are not running around cancelling everything, they're trying to create an atmosphere in which ordinary people self-censor by default, and are in a constant state of anxiety about whether something they say/read/watch/do is likely to be censored or not).

So I don't think the Chinese government directly checked the list of finalists and asked that certain people/books be removed — I think it's likely there was preemptive self-censorship on the part of the con-runners.

[merit]

I would probably say that Kuang, at this stage of her career, would not decline a nomination.

Yes, I read Palmer's post and it was quite insightful of what could have happened. Anyone mildly~ and event potentially controversial was nixed because of what could have happened (without anything actually happening).

[dolorosa_12]

She's now come out and said she did not decline a nomination, but given her background (her father was a student protester at Tiananmen Square and had to flee the country), I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd declined it for political reasons.

[eglantiere]

most people who come from democratic countries completely fail to comprehend a) the way authoritarian/totalitarian countries use sporting and cultural events (even niche things like Worldcon) as a way to project their power and prestige, and b) how state censorship works

oh god do they ever. this is one of my enduring pet peeves, and it's killing me.

[dolorosa_12]

I mean, I think what people assume happen is some kind of all-powerful, well-funded censorship department with clear rules on what can and cannot be said, consistently applied, rather than chaotically and unevenly and arbitrarily applied persecution in individual cases, designed to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and preemptive self-censorship.

As to the sporting and cultural events, I think people are just naive.

[meteordust]

I've only read the first two of The Last Sun books so far, but the second one does introduce more female characters, which I liked a lot. (I haven't caught up to the third one yet.)

I did feel that the first book was very heavy on the male cast, and I daydreamed a bit about who I would genderswap to balance things out. That did make me realise (and appreciate) that some of the male characters fit tropes that are more commonly assigned to female characters (eg the femme fatale with underground access to information, the fragile younger sister with powers).

[dolorosa_12]

I'm definitely keen to keep reading, I just wish that the cosy found family of misfits could have been expansive enough to include women (with backstories and personalities) from the beginning. But it's good to know that the book does improve on that score.

That did make me realise (and appreciate) that some of the male characters fit tropes that are more commonly assigned to female characters (eg the femme fatale with underground access to information, the fragile younger sister with powers).

That's a very good point.

[eglantiere]

i adore the tarot sequence! it's not without warts, and i think in the later books he starts leaning into found family feel good stuff a BIT heavier than literary quality requires, but it's still so fun, and so - imbued by enjoyment, i think? both authorial and mine. (and yes, there will be more female characters as things move forward, and one of the thing that i took for the unchecked authorial benign misogyny is actually a clever plot point!)

[dolorosa_12]

I picked them up on your indirect recommendation — I think I saw you request them or write for them in a recent exchange, and got intrigued. I find the series very self-indulgent, but in a good way — imbued by enjoyment, as you say.

and yes, there will be more female characters as things move forward, and one of the thing that i took for the unchecked authorial benign misogyny is actually a clever plot point!

That's very good to know. I'm definitely keen to continue, and knowing this increases my interest.