(no subject)

[beccaelizabeth]

I've been rereading Temeraire.
While the first one reads quite satisfyingly as a guy falling in love with his dragon, the second seems like a lot of nasty happening to someone who survives it until things get sorted out around him, and all the emotion stuff seems to be in another pov somewhere. Or I guess just about keywords that don't click with me.

I don't know, a lot of published fiction feels thin. A lot of fanfic is light on the kind of plot where politics and adventures happen, but they give you a whole yearning having cycle that's made of the good stuff, for reals.

and then of course sometimes you strike gold and find something with plot and yearning. like fic equivalent of banquets with all the courses.



some pairings though... I have noticed that when I read a pairing I don't ship the characters all seem slightly funhouse mirrored and humans do not, to my mind, work like that. It's like if the author can see those two getting together they see very different things where the people are at. Frequently unsatisfying. which is why certain pairings nope me out of a story at a glance. the way humans would have to work in order to ship that is just... epic nope.


mostly though I just feel whiny and end up not liking anything very much.
annoyance.




and I know I can't write things that look like a balanced meal to me, and not only on account of the still not actually writing bit of problem.

time keeps happen and I need to fill it up better.

Comments

[beccaelizabeth]

So far the answer seems to be
because dragons are really impressionable at birth
form a bond with one particular human
and can then be talked into anything
if their human says so.

like, by book two, they've shown that other cultures think it's flat out abusive to bond before the dragon is fifteen months old

and in book one the relationship with dragons gets compared to keeping a mistress happy, or ideally a wife

but an abused dragon will happily starve
because their human says to

so

the basic answer is
abuse.

like, there's also a lot about bringing ten or twelve year olds to war, because napoleonic era

and some about women's rights, or lack thereof, especially as regards capital

and also a bunch about the slave trade
and makes that comparison explicit


so it's taking that soul bonding with a dragon thing and going
hang on
isn't this a bit creepy

and then trying to fix it by having a dragon campaign for dragons rights.



so yeah, crewed dragons with bombs and rifles, explicit comparison to age of sail ships, awesome sky battles to try and turn the course of the napoleonic wars
really cool


but the actual point is why are they killing each other
this is several kinds of abusive
and once the characters realise that, doing something about it.

though my reread is on book two so they've just resolved to do something, i can't remember how far they get, and i don't own the whole series yet anyway.



it has bits about colonialism and all the sorts of structural inequalities and the dragons are somewhere between a defamiliarisation technique to give a new lens on old oppressions and a... I think of it as science fiction approach, where okay you've got these new elements, but how would that work? soft sf napoleonic au dragons...

... I like that approach rather a lot
it's just whenever I'm not reading fanfic I miss the emotional payoffs
and then feel daft when I notice I'm complaining about lack of chocolate in a roast dinner.

[executrix]

I'd probably feel the same way about an Age of Sail story with sentient ships!
I don't think it's daft, literal roast dinners often have pudding. Besides, when you're analyzing something, an important question is "how does this meet my expectations?" (although sometimes expectations do have to be re-jiggered, either by recognizing they're not realistic, or just because you can't find what you want so you have to accept what you can get!)