Slashy Books
Sep. 11th, 2004 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been reading my birthday presents, about £100 worth of books I bought for myself, and I realised the series and authors I like the best have a strong slashy component. Not necessarily outright boy meets boy and goes happily into the sunset, but at least boy meets person of confusing gender status, or vice versa, and true love happens on at least one side. How it works out after that rather depends.
In the Vorkosigan books theres a hermaphrodite in love with our hero for a while. In the Tamir books there is a boy who is secretly a girl and gets all stressed about falling in love with other boys. In the Nightrunner books then two guys meet and fall in love and theres also plot and magic and all that good stuff. And in the Robin Hobb books about the Fool there is the abiding love he has for his Catalyst.
Thing is not all the authors have the slashy version of a happy ending in mind. I just finished reading Fool's Fate, the ninth book with the Fool in and probably the end of the series. And instead of Fool and Changer finding some way to do the happily ever after with balancing all the different kinds of love in Changer's life, Fool breaks up with him and leaves him to be happy with his first love. I mean it has been six books at least since I gave a monkeys about that girl. If I ever did. Fool was way more interesting. And I'm never going to believe that one kind of love shuts out all the others. It makes no sense. He can love his foster son, his bastard daughter and his Prince who isnt his son officially, and none of that dilutes what he feels for the other kids. But it ends with saying
Fitz writing about the Fool, the last paragraph of the book-
I miss him often, but in the same way that I miss Nighteyes. I know that such a one will not come again. I count myself fortunate for what I had of them. I do not think I will ever Wit-bond again, nor know such a deep friendship as I had with the Fool. As Burrich once observed to Patience, one horse cannot wear two saddles. I have Molly and she is enough for me, and more.
I am content.
So the 'happy ending' is Fitz in a nice settled ordinary heterosexual marriage, but with no wit-partner and no best friend.
Is it actually meant to be a happy ending? Because if it is then its like it is saying this is the best possible ending.
No more wierd beast partnership thing. All the books have had the tension between the people who think being able to talk to animals and be friends with them is dirty, and the people who know better, and can respect such partnerships. It was always presented that way, prejudice bad, respect good. But the way the ending is set up it is like he is saying he couldnt have a loving marriage and a loving partnership. What up with that? Earlier in the book there was an explanation of one person's prejudice, that when an ancestor had to choose between saving his wit partner or saving his wife and child he chose the horse and the child and descendants suffered for that for generations. But it was pointed out that maybe he went for the horse as a way of saving the kids. So it was still partnership yaaay. But then this ending, which seems more like, get rid of the icky complicated and just have the normal ordinary marriage.
Heterosexual uncomplicated marriage. As opposed to the thing where the male Fool loved the male Fitz and that was all complicated. They had a big row about it. Because Fitz was being dumb and getting edgy by equating love with sex and there was a whole speech about how love could just be love and the Fool loved him. And they had this magic touch thing going on that was compared to being lovers, but avoided the plumbing incompatibility. So that could have been cool. And the Fool had always been there in the middle of things. Like the wit partner, the Fool was a partner and helper who understood all the facets of Fitz's life. About all the woman had going for her was girl parts.
I mean she loved Fitz, we get told so and we get a couple of pages just dealing with that. After the Fool breaks up with Fitz, everyone gets a happy ending, and a lot of that is focused on Fitz chasing this woman. But she is no kind of partner to him. She knows her little bit of the world, she raised the kids fine, but the rest of what Fitz does she doesnt know anything about. She wasnt there for any of the important stuff. She was just this woman he for some reason loved. Yes, I know love is irrational like that.
But the thing that keeps bugging me is that the ending leaves it looking like Fitz has chosen nice socially acceptable sex type love instead of equal partnership and it's the wrong ending. I dont mean it offends me politically or that my slashy little heart wanted the 'plumbing doesnt matter I'll love you forever come live with me' ending. Those things are true too, but what I mean is the whole book seemed to point to an ending where Fitz stopped dumping off everything and paying attention to only one facet at a time and, being healed and whole again, finally can balance his life to have his duties and all of his people. Wit partner, Fool and woman to build a family with. Though I could have lived without the woman part if he realised he already *had* a family and a Beloved and that was working plenty good without his teenage romance.
Instead we get him dumping everything to go chase his childhood sweetheart and, okay, romantic if you like that sort of thing, but the book didnt give us anything about how he went from seeing her as teenage her to be picked up again to seeing her as a grown woman who might have changed a lot and he had to build a relationship with. Or show us the building part. It had him courting her by reminding her of the good old days, when they were *half* the age they are now, and then the sex, and then the fast forward to years later and married and living together.
And it isnt just the girl. All the things he has as his happy ending are things he wanted six or seven books ago, as a boy. Which makes sense on one level because he just got back the memories from then, but makes no sense on another level because the Fool has been making such a point of how people change and cant go back and then theres this ending that says maybe they can and be happier for it than they could be by moving forward and on as their grown selves.
If we are supposed to be all yaaay about this ending, taking it seriously and all, the author screwed up. Doubly so. The books did not build towards it, and the ending didnt put in the work to make us like it.
I can only see it making sense if the series is not, in fact, over, but the Fool will come back and there will be a new wolf partner and the proper ending will happen later.
Things not having the right ending bugs me like nothing else. And I've been told off before now because the author makes up the story so whatever ending they slap on there is the right ending. Well, no. The author writes down the story, but a story has a shape, and the craft of the writing leads the reader to a certain set of expectations by the end of the book. If you have someone going off into the sunset with the wrong person, then yes, it is the wrong ending, because the story didnt lead there. If it has to jump and lurch and skip to get to that particular sunset then it is going to annoy some readers. Including me.
Which is frustrating, because up until then I was liking the story.
In the Vorkosigan books theres a hermaphrodite in love with our hero for a while. In the Tamir books there is a boy who is secretly a girl and gets all stressed about falling in love with other boys. In the Nightrunner books then two guys meet and fall in love and theres also plot and magic and all that good stuff. And in the Robin Hobb books about the Fool there is the abiding love he has for his Catalyst.
Thing is not all the authors have the slashy version of a happy ending in mind. I just finished reading Fool's Fate, the ninth book with the Fool in and probably the end of the series. And instead of Fool and Changer finding some way to do the happily ever after with balancing all the different kinds of love in Changer's life, Fool breaks up with him and leaves him to be happy with his first love. I mean it has been six books at least since I gave a monkeys about that girl. If I ever did. Fool was way more interesting. And I'm never going to believe that one kind of love shuts out all the others. It makes no sense. He can love his foster son, his bastard daughter and his Prince who isnt his son officially, and none of that dilutes what he feels for the other kids. But it ends with saying
Fitz writing about the Fool, the last paragraph of the book-
I miss him often, but in the same way that I miss Nighteyes. I know that such a one will not come again. I count myself fortunate for what I had of them. I do not think I will ever Wit-bond again, nor know such a deep friendship as I had with the Fool. As Burrich once observed to Patience, one horse cannot wear two saddles. I have Molly and she is enough for me, and more.
I am content.
So the 'happy ending' is Fitz in a nice settled ordinary heterosexual marriage, but with no wit-partner and no best friend.
Is it actually meant to be a happy ending? Because if it is then its like it is saying this is the best possible ending.
No more wierd beast partnership thing. All the books have had the tension between the people who think being able to talk to animals and be friends with them is dirty, and the people who know better, and can respect such partnerships. It was always presented that way, prejudice bad, respect good. But the way the ending is set up it is like he is saying he couldnt have a loving marriage and a loving partnership. What up with that? Earlier in the book there was an explanation of one person's prejudice, that when an ancestor had to choose between saving his wit partner or saving his wife and child he chose the horse and the child and descendants suffered for that for generations. But it was pointed out that maybe he went for the horse as a way of saving the kids. So it was still partnership yaaay. But then this ending, which seems more like, get rid of the icky complicated and just have the normal ordinary marriage.
Heterosexual uncomplicated marriage. As opposed to the thing where the male Fool loved the male Fitz and that was all complicated. They had a big row about it. Because Fitz was being dumb and getting edgy by equating love with sex and there was a whole speech about how love could just be love and the Fool loved him. And they had this magic touch thing going on that was compared to being lovers, but avoided the plumbing incompatibility. So that could have been cool. And the Fool had always been there in the middle of things. Like the wit partner, the Fool was a partner and helper who understood all the facets of Fitz's life. About all the woman had going for her was girl parts.
I mean she loved Fitz, we get told so and we get a couple of pages just dealing with that. After the Fool breaks up with Fitz, everyone gets a happy ending, and a lot of that is focused on Fitz chasing this woman. But she is no kind of partner to him. She knows her little bit of the world, she raised the kids fine, but the rest of what Fitz does she doesnt know anything about. She wasnt there for any of the important stuff. She was just this woman he for some reason loved. Yes, I know love is irrational like that.
But the thing that keeps bugging me is that the ending leaves it looking like Fitz has chosen nice socially acceptable sex type love instead of equal partnership and it's the wrong ending. I dont mean it offends me politically or that my slashy little heart wanted the 'plumbing doesnt matter I'll love you forever come live with me' ending. Those things are true too, but what I mean is the whole book seemed to point to an ending where Fitz stopped dumping off everything and paying attention to only one facet at a time and, being healed and whole again, finally can balance his life to have his duties and all of his people. Wit partner, Fool and woman to build a family with. Though I could have lived without the woman part if he realised he already *had* a family and a Beloved and that was working plenty good without his teenage romance.
Instead we get him dumping everything to go chase his childhood sweetheart and, okay, romantic if you like that sort of thing, but the book didnt give us anything about how he went from seeing her as teenage her to be picked up again to seeing her as a grown woman who might have changed a lot and he had to build a relationship with. Or show us the building part. It had him courting her by reminding her of the good old days, when they were *half* the age they are now, and then the sex, and then the fast forward to years later and married and living together.
And it isnt just the girl. All the things he has as his happy ending are things he wanted six or seven books ago, as a boy. Which makes sense on one level because he just got back the memories from then, but makes no sense on another level because the Fool has been making such a point of how people change and cant go back and then theres this ending that says maybe they can and be happier for it than they could be by moving forward and on as their grown selves.
If we are supposed to be all yaaay about this ending, taking it seriously and all, the author screwed up. Doubly so. The books did not build towards it, and the ending didnt put in the work to make us like it.
I can only see it making sense if the series is not, in fact, over, but the Fool will come back and there will be a new wolf partner and the proper ending will happen later.
Things not having the right ending bugs me like nothing else. And I've been told off before now because the author makes up the story so whatever ending they slap on there is the right ending. Well, no. The author writes down the story, but a story has a shape, and the craft of the writing leads the reader to a certain set of expectations by the end of the book. If you have someone going off into the sunset with the wrong person, then yes, it is the wrong ending, because the story didnt lead there. If it has to jump and lurch and skip to get to that particular sunset then it is going to annoy some readers. Including me.
Which is frustrating, because up until then I was liking the story.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-11 11:23 am (UTC)Since bloody when?
And in the since when column- I know Fitz always thought of the Fool as male, but it seemed to be established as incontrovertible fact somewhere between books. There was confusion and ambiguity about the plumbing issue. Fool lived as male and female depending on what he needed to do. And he matured slow because his people live longer. I would have been vastly annoyed if he had turned out to be female, because then it would be All Okay, with the uncomfortable bits being the misunderstanding phase of the grand romance. But at least it would still have been the right person.
as well as the part where its out of thin air it annoys me because of the layers of strange it adds to a nice simple m/m love. Like gay=not human? Without some kind of positively portrayed m/m relationship, the way the Fool loves Fitz can be read as m/m love gets you killed a lot. And then they turn out to not be human, break it off and go away.
strange freaky wrong and not fitting. ending casts the whole thing in a wierd light. makes it all uncomfortable.
Actually, everyone in Fitz's life uses him for their own purposes. I dont remember if Molly does. Probably not. Because that would make the ending 'Fitz ends up with only one who doesnt want to use him', which would make more sense. But I was reading it all along as Fitz and Fool against the world. Which isnt the only way to see it. Sure Fitz chooses the Fool, but the Fool had been using him, and telling him so.
The other thing I keep thinking of is that convenient Skill users have lived to great ages, and Fitz just got youthed, and theoretically he could live for ages and ages. Yet part of why the Fool leaves is that humans dont live long. Maybe he means Fitz can live a mortal lifetime with his mortal love, then come be immortal with the Fool for ages and ages.
I like that ending much better.
*nods to self happily*
no subject
Date: 2004-09-11 12:53 pm (UTC)Its like after the Fool breaks it off with Fitz everything goes out of its way- way out, with breakage- to snap everyone back into a 'normal' pattern. m/f happy homes all round. Which is just not right. Not for this story. Its all about change and making opportunities for new patterns, yet once the fool leaves the pattern gets very old and non fun.
Either there will be more books that fix it or its a very very odd way to end things.