(no subject)
Dec. 26th, 2014 09:14 amHad a very good time over Jewmas. We did the counting and we're pretty sure this is the seventh year of observing Jewmas with more or less the same group of people, and it's a tradition I value because it is sort of an untradition. We get together because we don't have anything better to do, because as Jews we don't have other obligations on Christmas, and we get together to just laze around someone's house all day watching movies and eating food.
This year we also lazed around writing fic: I got everyone involved in group-writing a Yuletide Madness fic, which was very fun.
Speaking of Yuletide, my two gifts this year were both "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" fics, a drabble that was more or less canonical and a longer treatment of an astronaut AU. I love them both.
The Last Astronaut (1306 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Character
Additional Tags: Space Exploration, Science Fiction
Summary:
When The Quest Is Ended (100 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Childe Roland
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Drabble, Quest
Summary:
"Childe Roland" is a really dark version of a quest story and both of these fics do a great job of digging into that darkness for the reasons behind it. I'm going to heave a guess that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
raspberryhunter wrote the drabble, and that I don't know the author of the longer fic.
I want to say more about "Childe Roland" and these fics. I wrote a sort of obnoxiously meditative comment on "The Last Astronaut" that doesn't quite capture what I'm trying to say. I wanted to use the space of this journal to try to do a fuller job. I will probably still fail.
I read a lot of fantasy. I read a lot of, as Michael Chabon charmingly puts it, "stories with plots", which for all its flaws is a more comfortable descriptor for me than any of Campbell's. And obviously I also spend a lot of time reading work that deconstructs genre in various ways.
The obvious, conventional criticism of genre is that by conventionalizing narrative it strips it of its realism. Endings aren't real, beginnings aren't real, they're arbitrarily selected points that shape stories in deliberate ways. This is an important and valid criticism, but it's not Browning's. Browning doesn't care that narratives cloak reality in convention, or he does, but not in this poem. He's much more concerned about the other problem: that narratives ARE real. That there are beginnings and there are endings, and as humans we have to confront those beginnings and endings even if we'd rather not. And that death is the most obvious and genuine ending of human narratives. I don't think it's saying anything controversial to suggest that the most obvious reading of the Dark Tower is as a precise metaphor for death. The end of the quest.
Neither of my fics take this most obvious reading. There are other stories we are part of and they have other endings, and sometimes those are happy endings, but often they are not. I've spent a lot of my life trying to avoid unhappy endings, sometimes by confronting the problems I'm immersed in and trying to change them, but often by trying to delay the inevitable. Quest stories move us because they tell the story of our own struggles, made epic. Browning's poem, and these fics, move me because they speak of a part of the quest I'd prefer to ignore, and they force me to confront my own shortcomings and reflect on my own opportunities for heroism.
This hardly seems a fair recommendation for such lovely stories, but it's the recommendation I have. Approach them gingerly and with respect, but I do urge you to approach them. Even without canon knowledge, these are accessible and enjoyable stories about how we interact with narrative and the world around us.
This year we also lazed around writing fic: I got everyone involved in group-writing a Yuletide Madness fic, which was very fun.
Speaking of Yuletide, my two gifts this year were both "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" fics, a drabble that was more or less canonical and a longer treatment of an astronaut AU. I love them both.
The Last Astronaut (1306 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Character
Additional Tags: Space Exploration, Science Fiction
Summary:
The last of her kind faces a fraught journey across an alien landscape.
When The Quest Is Ended (100 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Childe Roland
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Drabble, Quest
Summary:
Childe Roland has found the goal of his quest, but that's impossible.
"Childe Roland" is a really dark version of a quest story and both of these fics do a great job of digging into that darkness for the reasons behind it. I'm going to heave a guess that
raspberryhunter wrote the drabble, and that I don't know the author of the longer fic.I want to say more about "Childe Roland" and these fics. I wrote a sort of obnoxiously meditative comment on "The Last Astronaut" that doesn't quite capture what I'm trying to say. I wanted to use the space of this journal to try to do a fuller job. I will probably still fail.
I read a lot of fantasy. I read a lot of, as Michael Chabon charmingly puts it, "stories with plots", which for all its flaws is a more comfortable descriptor for me than any of Campbell's. And obviously I also spend a lot of time reading work that deconstructs genre in various ways.
The obvious, conventional criticism of genre is that by conventionalizing narrative it strips it of its realism. Endings aren't real, beginnings aren't real, they're arbitrarily selected points that shape stories in deliberate ways. This is an important and valid criticism, but it's not Browning's. Browning doesn't care that narratives cloak reality in convention, or he does, but not in this poem. He's much more concerned about the other problem: that narratives ARE real. That there are beginnings and there are endings, and as humans we have to confront those beginnings and endings even if we'd rather not. And that death is the most obvious and genuine ending of human narratives. I don't think it's saying anything controversial to suggest that the most obvious reading of the Dark Tower is as a precise metaphor for death. The end of the quest.
Neither of my fics take this most obvious reading. There are other stories we are part of and they have other endings, and sometimes those are happy endings, but often they are not. I've spent a lot of my life trying to avoid unhappy endings, sometimes by confronting the problems I'm immersed in and trying to change them, but often by trying to delay the inevitable. Quest stories move us because they tell the story of our own struggles, made epic. Browning's poem, and these fics, move me because they speak of a part of the quest I'd prefer to ignore, and they force me to confront my own shortcomings and reflect on my own opportunities for heroism.
This hardly seems a fair recommendation for such lovely stories, but it's the recommendation I have. Approach them gingerly and with respect, but I do urge you to approach them. Even without canon knowledge, these are accessible and enjoyable stories about how we interact with narrative and the world around us.