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Jaxyon posted:1) The author has created a bad story because oppression is somewhat justified when the victims are powerful wizards who can kill with a thought. 3) The author created a fine story, but trying to find parallels in real world oppression is a quagmire because of story choices the author made.
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Aug 13, 2021 20:21
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killer crane posted:3) The author created a fine story, but trying to find parallels in real world oppression is a quagmire because of story choices the author made. I think there's tons of parallels in real world oppression, but it's also a fantasy book. I can't say I don't see where Alabaster is coming from even if I don't condone his behavior.
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Aug 13, 2021 20:26
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Jaxyon posted:This is a bad take because oppression is never justified. This is wrong. Oppression against a group of people because of their inherent characteristics is never justified in the real world. In magic made-up fantasy world it's absolutely possible to create a situation where oppression is justifiable. That's why people are saying the story doesn't translate well to real life. If you want a facile example, imagine a race of magic people who will spontaneously explode and destroy the whole planet if you don't, say, cut off one of their fingers before they turn 20. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people from real Earth who were historically oppressed who don't pose any inherent threat to anyone. Orogenes are somewhere between those extremes. Most of the posters in the thread understand that since their abilities require the orogenes to mentally suppress them by default instead of consciously choosing to activate them and the consequences range from deadly to cataclysmic they fall more towards the inherently dangerous side. If they were able to only activate their abilities by choice then it's more of a grey area, but since they're not some system needs to be implemented to stop them from spontaneously killing everybody. Jemisin's solution is that it's not a problem if they're raised by other orogenes who can stop them by reflex if they ever use their powers to accidentally harm someone. That could be true, but I don't know if it's completely proven true in the text; Essun is able to restrain herself sometimes by remembering her broken hand trauma and abusive training and she raises her daughter with the exact same trauma-inducing methodology. Hoa's crew seems to get along okay until they decide to destroy the world, but they have some atypical circumstances. Imagine if an elementary school class with a black student had to bring along one or two black parents on every field trip because otherwise if the kid got tired and cranky by the end of the day the museum would burn down. If that sounds absurd, it's because the literary metaphor doesn't map very well. If all of the orogenes had perfect control over their abilities and could use them only when they want then there's still the risk of them choosing to do so to conquer the world or whatever, but that's true of any group with more power than another so it isn't really interesting to discuss. That should only result in their oppression if they choose to do it (and if their victims are able to stop them) and only the ones who make that choice should be judged for it, like the way modern law enforcement would work if the police weren't hopelessly corrupt.
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Aug 14, 2021 00:08
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This donkey gets it. I have no idea who Hoa is, but I've only read the first novel.
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Aug 14, 2021 16:33
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Getting some real "not letting me walk down the streets with grenades is oppression" vibes.
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Aug 14, 2021 19:48
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Xarn posted:Getting some real "not letting me walk down the streets with grenades is oppression" vibes. Grenades are something you can buy, and are a choice to have. You literally cannot help how you're born. It's very pertinent discussion of "the safety of many" vs. "the actual human rights of a few". DreamingofRoses fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Aug 14, 2021 |
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Aug 14, 2021 20:34
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DreamingofRoses posted:Grenades are something you can buy, and are a choice to have. That's why trying to apply the story to real world oppression is problematic. Some of the themes do apply well to the real world, but at some point the story itself undermines what I would assume the author's intent was.
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Aug 14, 2021 21:00
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DreamingofRoses posted:Grenades are something you can buy, and are a choice to have. There are many real-life humans who enjoy committing violent acts. Some even state that they feel remorse or regret their actions, but are compelled to act again and again. They are considered 'sane' for the purposes of court proceedings. Is separating them from their potential victims oppression because their desires are innate? I've enjoyed this thread. I fall on the side of 'not the best metaphor for the experience of the oppressed', but I'm going to reread the series because it's been a few years. I'm pretty sensitive to the 'we would be better masters' fantasy/sci-fi trope - which is why I enjoyed finishing Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Redemption's Blade" recently which confronts those subjects pretty explicitly, even if I thought the book wasn't his strongest. It's also why I found "The Power" by Naomi Alderman really odd. For people who think "The Fifth Season" is a good metaphor for the experiences of the oppressed, is "The Power" also a good metaphor?
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Aug 14, 2021 22:15
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Tezer posted:For people who think "The Fifth Season" is a good metaphor for the experiences of the oppressed it's absolutely terrible at that, but interesting and well written enough to be worth a read
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Aug 14, 2021 22:24
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Tezer posted:There are many real-life humans who enjoy committing violent acts. Some even state that they feel remorse or regret their actions, but are compelled to act again and again. They are considered 'sane' for the purposes of court proceedings. Is separating them from their potential victims oppression because their desires are innate? Let’s flip your initial comparison around and look at the precrime unit from Minority Report. Is it just to jail someone for a violent act that they haven’t committed yet but almost certainly will? I haven’t read “The Power”, but I’ll check it out. I feel that “The Fifth Season” works as a metaphor from the point of view of someone from a demographic whose value and autonomy are tied to a body structure that has abilities that we did not ask for, but that society depends on to keep going. YMMV.
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Aug 14, 2021 22:55
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DreamingofRoses posted:Let’s flip your initial comparison around and look at the precrime unit from Minority Report. Is it just to jail someone for a violent act that they haven’t committed yet but almost certainly will? I'll think about this during my reread. There is a difference between 'a serial killer that has killed and we need to prevent from killing again' and 'a precrime suspect who almost certainly will kill but hasn't yet' but I'm a bit fuzzy on which bucket NKJ's characters fit into. Like, I'm pretty sure it's the first bucket, but I'm open to being wrong. quote:I haven’t read “The Power”, but I’ll check it out. I feel that “The Fifth Season” works as a metaphor from the point of view of someone from a demographic whose value and autonomy are tied to a body structure that has abilities that we did not ask for, but that society depends on to keep going. YMMV. I really disliked 'The Power' and just skimmed through the last half as a result. I'll put this behind spoiler tags but it's really just a basic plot point and won't ruin anything. The book imagines a world where women gain the ability to cause pain/kill without effort and almost every female character decides using this power is a great idea. It's a really grim view of human nature that I couldn't identify with. It could just be an unreliable narrator framing device, but it's a bummer to read.
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Aug 14, 2021 23:11
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Time to bring up gunhands again?
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Aug 15, 2021 02:30
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Bilirubin posted:Time to bring up gunhands again? LOL. No, the argument has largely died down so it feels like a good place to leave it. I'm actually curious if anyone in the thread has read the Dreamblood Duology. The sample looked pretty interesting, but I'm being stingy. (Also, my library doesn't have them.)
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Aug 15, 2021 03:30
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DreamingofRoses posted:LOL. No, the argument has largely died down so it feels like a good place to leave it. I'm actually curious if anyone in the thread has read the Dreamblood Duology. The sample looked pretty interesting, but I'm being stingy. (Also, my library doesn't have them.) They're her best work IMO
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Aug 15, 2021 09:44
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Tezer posted:I'll think about this during my reread. There is a difference between 'a serial killer that has killed and we need to prevent from killing again' and 'a precrime suspect who almost certainly will kill but hasn't yet' but I'm a bit fuzzy on which bucket NKJ's characters fit into. Like, I'm pretty sure it's the first bucket, but I'm open to being wrong. Ok, so now I've read them again. If anyone has a good interview where NK Jemisin talks about her thoughts on the themes I would appreciate it. Like, there has been a lot of discussion in this thread about 'slavery' as a theme, but I haven't been able to find a lot of the author's comments on that theme. Most of the characters/groups in the book subjugate or oppress others with the exception of the node maintainers and the Niess. The characters/groups who oppress then face their own oppression by another hand: father earth oppresses the guardians and by extension the orogene, and was oppressed himself by the people of Syl Anagist who tried to enslave him Orogene kill/maim tons of stills, participate in the subjugation of other orogene including node maintainers, oppressed by comm society/guardians Guardians oppress the orogene, are oppressed in turn by Father Earth the people of Syl Anagist oppress the neiss and the proto-stone eaters and later become the stills who are oppressed by father earth/orogene in present day Stills oppress non-comms and participate in the orogene oppression 'system' (but don't run it? the fulcrum runs it?) and run a strict class system based on lineage I think the most ambiguous group is the stone eaters because while they did some 'bad things' subjugation never seemed to be a goal. The series explores the idea that exercising power over others, for whatever purpose, is a selfish activity. It is execution of a single person or organization's will to replace emergent behaviors. The larger the power structure and the more rigid it's precepts, the more likely it is that those within the system without power will experience some form of oppression, subjugation, slavery, and even extinction. These experiences are personal to those experiencing them, and those with power are unlikely to recognize them either due to motivated reasoning or more simplistic causes such as "out of sight, out of mind". I don't think there is an unclean hand left by the end of this series, except for minor characters. I think the most significant character with clean hands left at the end is Tonkee, but she still participated and benefited from her position in the leadership class. I guess she didn't murder anyone so that's good? The orogene kill a lot more people than I remembered from my first read. A couple of people who 'deserve it' and an absolutely stunning number of people distant from the conflict who the orogene just snuff out for a tangential reason. Essentially, if you aren't someone Essun cares about, and even then it's a coin toss your life is worth nothing. I set a bookmark every time an orogene killed/came close to killing someone capriciously: The Fifth Season Essun as a child "almost kills" a boy at school Essun as an adult kills the person that is helping her escape Tirimo Essun destroys the ability of Tirimo to survive the season by cracking their aquifer Essun kills everyone in Allia when threatened by a single guardian. You can argue she didn't mean to do it, but how many extra bodies does that excuse buy? Essun is about to be captured and kills most of the people of Meov during her escape Alabaster kills everyone when he kicks off the Season, not just the Fulcrum and the node system. Seven year old going to school? Sorry, dead. Farm laborer with an interest in painting? Dead. All dead. The Obelisk Gate Wudeh is taught as a child how 'not to ice people by accident'. No actual incidents, but the need for the training is concerning.... do we normally train children not to accidentally murder people? Same with Eitz who is 'in control of it, enough to do no harm' Nassun kills Eitz while he is trying to wake her up One of the Castrima orogene students messes up and almost kills another student while training Nassun kills everyone in the antarctic fulcrum, including children and refugees working the fields Litisk killed Kirl (story that jija tells about his childhood) Cutter kills Betine Ykks kills Cutter Essun kills Waineen (maybe 'deserved' but Essun did it out of 'instinct' because '[waineen] was jija') and was 'about to wipe out Castrima' before she stopped herself) Essun stops the attack on Castrima (fine), and then reaches out and kills everyone in Rennanis (uh... not fine) The Stone Sky Ykka and Essun discuss how they can't control their powers while sleeping and if they are surprised they will likely kill people Ykka kills Phauld (gray area, but certainly not a great outcome) Ykka and Essun decide to keep the node maintainers in place, and create more to protect Rennanis. Not exactly 'killing' but worth a mention since it's horrible Essun explores this contradiction at the start of The Stone Sky. It's a question that is never answered, or perhaps cannot be answered. Her choices are selfish and monsterous, but why would any individual choose differently? Is there anything more important to the (average) individual than their own life? Why is her final decision different? "how many towns have you wiped out now? One semi-intentionally. The other three were accidents, but really, does that matter? Not to the dead...So many lives saved, if only you had stayed in your cage. Or died on demand." Tezer fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 19:55
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Tezer posted:Essun explores this contradiction at the start of The Stone Sky. It's a question that is never answered, or perhaps cannot be answered. Her choices are selfish and monsterous, but why would any individual choose differently? Is there anything more important to the (average) individual than their own life? Why is her final decision different? Hmm see when I originally read these books a few years back I thought Jemisin was trying to make a point about how to arrive at a just society after systematic oppression has occurred. And I didn't find that the books presented a very good case for how what was happening actually got any closer to a just world. But this theme makes a lot more sense to me in the context of what actually happens. People make various compromises and employ various strategies and sometimes undertake monstrous actions to protect those closest to them, suggesting justice isn't real and everything is about one side against another. It's also a much more... pessimistic theme that is very similar to what KJ Parker explores in every book I've ever read of his.
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Sep 13, 2021 18:55
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Not sure if I should resurrect this thread but. I made myself read all three books in fairly short succession. I expected it to be a hate-read, but ultimately it wasn't. I wouldn't say that I thought the broken earth trilogy was amazing, and I thought there were a lot of really really stupid details and failures of imagination and bad worldbuilding. Nonetheless, I thought the major theme of how damaging oppression was, and showing how being treated badly can cause members of a group to treat other members of their own group badly to protect them, was very instructive. Obviously, the whole "oppressed wizards" thing is what it is. I know this thread has gone back and forth on that detail of the setting. I did have a couple of thoughts that emerged from reading the trilogy: Slavery was very much the victimization of a people. But if you want to write fiction that is in any way uplifting or empowering, writing endless stories about a people being victimized when they have really no power, and they are left with either escape or stoicism as options - how is that empowering or uplifting? So, while I agree that "oppressed wizards" is kind of a stupid theme in some ways, I can also see why someone wants to write a story that depicts the group that is obviously the analogous group for enslaved people's as being powerful in some way. Opressing wizards is in some ways kind of stupid, and it's almost hard to imagine how it could really occur. We've all seen scanners, how could you oppress those people, they'd make your head explode. It also doesn't map onto the historical practice of slavery, especially racial chattery slavery in the US one to one. Okay, yes this is true. It's also a fictional story, and exploring aspects of something that happened in the real world through fiction is sort of the point of speculative fiction. So yes, there is a discussion to be had if a child who can't control their temper can kill someone, that doesn't necessarily mean that we can't learn from that analogy, no analogy is ever perfect, because if it is, it's not actually an analogy.
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May 1, 2022 17:25
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pseudanonymous posted:I made myself read all three books in fairly short succession. I expected it to be a hate-read, but ultimately it wasn't. Why would you expect that? She's a popular and well regarded author. quote:Opressing wizards is in some ways kind of stupid, and it's almost hard to imagine how it could really occur. Well, in the books they go with frequent trauma and abuse, along with counter-wizards.
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May 2, 2022 07:50
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Jaxyon posted:Why would you expect that? She's a popular and well regarded author. She semi-recently got a bit of ire from fragile people on the internet for telling the truth about Lovecraft being a raving insane racist while also having him be an aspect of the antagonist in one of her recent books. First thing I thought of. Oh, also the comic book nerds are mad about her work on a Green Lantern book because why would a black woman write a better black woman Green Lantern than the usual white men that write Green Lantern books? At least those are the only current complaints about her I see on social media. People either tend to like how she expresses a traumatized character POV because it resonates with their own trauma or they spout Incel/GOP-style complaints about "wokeness" or whatever.
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May 2, 2022 11:40
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Jaxyon posted:Why would you expect that? She's a popular and well regarded author. she's not well-regarded by critics whose regard I regard. The headline of my review would definitely be "not as bad as I thought it would be" which is hardly a ringing endorsement. The prose is a slog, the characterization is lazy and bad, the books are rife with some of the dumbest tropes of fantasy, the plotting is bad, there's this forced second person narrative thing that might get explained at the end but I just didn't care by then.
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May 2, 2022 16:33
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pseudanonymous posted:she's not well-regarded by critics whose regard I regard. Oh cool I love to hear different viewpoints, can you link some?
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May 2, 2022 18:40
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Jaxyon posted:Oh cool I love to hear different viewpoints, can you link some? I mean, most people can't say what they think about someone like this, in my opinion as she's a Black African Negro, and, as we've seen in this thread, people instantly react to any criticism of her by saying it's because the critic is a chud. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 2, 2022 19:16
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pseudanonymous posted:I mean, most people can't say what they think about someone like this, in my opinion as she's a Black African Negro, and, as we've seen in this thread, people instantly react to any criticism of her by saying it's because the critic is a chud. Do you feel it's impossible to criticize a black woman without seeming racist? Or do you think perhaps there's a lot of racist criticisms of her that are being correctly called out and you'd rather not put in the extra work because you might get a bad response?
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May 2, 2022 20:00
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Jaxyon posted:Do you feel it's impossible to criticize a black woman without seeming racist? Or do you think perhaps there's a lot of racist criticisms of her that are being correctly called out and you'd rather not put in the extra work because you might get a bad response? I think it's definitely the latter.
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May 2, 2022 20:22
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Jaxyon posted:Do you feel it's impossible to criticize a black woman without seeming racist? Or do you think perhaps there's a lot of racist criticisms of her that are being correctly called out and you'd rather not put in the extra work because you might get a bad response? You may want to look at their post history ITT before getting into another argument with them.
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May 3, 2022 06:26
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pseudanonymous posted:
I agree that there are a lot of valid critiques of Jemisin's work. The Broken Earth trilogy, to my mind, aimed at "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" but the mark it hit was closer to Galt's Gulch than to Annares. The whole work felt somewhat structurally and thematically weird and ill-constructed and I'm not exactly a fan. pseudanonymous posted:in my opinion as she's a Black African Negro, OTOH DONT loving DO THIS Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:13 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 12:30
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Has anybody read Far Sector since it finished?
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May 3, 2022 13:15
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biracial bear for uncut posted:You may want to look at their post history ITT before getting into another argument with them. Man it is super weird how all of these very Not Racist people keep having trouble with a black woman's books maybe people are oversensitive about race
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May 3, 2022 17:26
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I agree that there are a lot of valid critiques of Jemisin's work. The Broken Earth trilogy, to my mind, aimed at "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" but the mark it hit was closer to Galt's Gulch than to Annares. The whole work felt somewhat structurally and thematically weird and ill-constructed and I'm not exactly a fan. You mean the second-person narrative sections, or something else? I read somewhere that the intent for those second person sections was to try to make the reader feel the way the character felt, or at least bring the reader closer to that character's POV. This seems to only work for people that have experienced real life versions of some of those abuses though. See people in earlier parts of the thread being unable to suspend their disbelief because "wizards would always break free and seek revenge". I think it's worth noting that Jemesin has referenced her own experiences with abuse in her blogs, and mentioned in a few interviews over the years that these books are as much a therapeutic exercise in fiction writing as anything else. The fact that we live in a society that incentivizes and promotes making a public spectacle of one's own traumas (even if you are shrouding it in fictional cloth) would be a whole other discussion.
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May 3, 2022 18:45
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biracial bear for uncut posted:You mean the second-person narrative sections, or something else? The work as a whole. It all ends up being a bit too John Galty esque for my taste : "what if the whole world depended on [oppressed minority]? Wouldn't the oppressed minority be justified in taking revenge? Wouldn't that be great?" With the difference of course that ayn Rand was talking about fake imagined "oppression" and Jemisin is tackling a story about the real thing. So credit to her for that. But it still ends up being a revenge fantasy and once I noticed the structural similarity to Atlas Shrugged it was hard to stop thinking about it. It's well executed technically and there's no part of it that I thought was bad, there's just little i n it that I didn't think "LeGuin already did this and better" or, worse, "Ayn Rand did this also ans that's never a positive comparison." But that's as much my personal taste as anything, not so much critique as it is mere preference. Sometimes I've read too much and have a hard time separating one work from.another. It might be a much better work if I had been able to read it without thinking of LeGuin and Rand the whole time. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:11 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 19:09
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Oh no did you actually read rand
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May 3, 2022 19:19
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Harold Fjord posted:Oh no did you actually read rand At one point I considered it a mission to read literally everything It has had both good and bad results
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May 3, 2022 19:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
Viewed as a whole, I don’t think you can say it’s about revenge. I’d say the focus is on trauma and the after effects, which for some characters in some parts of their process can involve revenge but not always. Nassun drops into nihilism before he final change of mind but she isn’t trying to get revenge on anyone, she’s just sick of the world and the trauma it’s caused her. Essun’s initial drive when we meet her at the start of book 1 is to rescue her daughter and get revenge, but we see that throughout most of her life she’s either struggled for acceptance as a child and young adult or tried to hide and make do as she approaches middle age. As we follow her journey there is an element of revenge to this but she ultimately ends up not being in a position to follow through with it and focusing on both protecting her daughter and working to make a coexisting community of stills and progenies. She does hosed up things throughout her journey from icing the town she’s in at the start of book 1 to the abusive training of her daughter to her knee jerk reaction to killing someone in book 2 when they’re going to hit a child, but these seem to be more based around trauma begetting more trauma (e.g. the beaten child reminds her of her child getting beaten to death for being orogenetic, abusive training is how she was trained). Essun doesn’t end up victorious and gloating over all the people who have done her wrong and harmed her, so it doesn’t strike me as a revenge fantasy.
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May 3, 2022 21:32
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team overhead smash posted:Essun doesn’t end up victorious and gloating over all the people who have done her wrong and harmed her, so it doesn’t strike me as a revenge fantasy. Alabaster commits genocide and doing so is necessary to save the world. The wizards can now heal because they committed genocide against the society that harmed them. And it makes sense for a black woman to write this kind of power fantasy, it makes sense for anyone that is traumatized by the society we live in to desire to see it all pulled down... But when you publish a book where your veiled desire is to not just see the system fall, but to kill the majority of people within it indiscriminately because they may have unknowingly benefited from your trauma, it's hosed up. And maybe she's not trying to condone genocide to get her revenge, but in the story it's a heroic action that releases the energy needed to save the world, and absolutely justified by the story.
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May 3, 2022 22:14
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pseudanonymous posted:there's this forced second person narrative thing that might get explained at the end but I just didn't care by then. The narratee of the second person sections is revealed at the end of the first book, and honestly, I think you gotta be kind of dense or inattentive to not realize who it is before then.
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May 3, 2022 22:35
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killer crane posted:Alabaster commits genocide and doing so is necessary to save the world. I still fundamentally disagree with this interpretation. In the story it’s presented as a man becoming a monster after he hit his limit, while being able to salvage something better from the wreckage. There’s lots of fantasy stories where unintentional genocide occurs because the ‘good guys’ win (what happens to the orcs at the end of Lord of the Rings?) This one’s got the order around slightly, but destroying a city of people thriving off of slavery, who keep the status quo instead of doing anything about the Seasons or the reason they exist, is practically epic fantasy bread and butter, just presented more realistically and with everyone involved being human instead of mock paintings of good and evil. It’s hardly condoning genocide.
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May 3, 2022 23:09
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killer crane posted:Alabaster commits genocide and doing so is necessary to save the world. Alabaster was definitely driven by revenge but this isn’t his story, so although it contains revenge I wouldn’t call it a revenge fantasy story any more than I’d call it a love story due to Zhou’s fixation on Essun. Alabaster isn’t one of the main POV characters (As much as there is a POV character when we’re talking about the focus of a second person narration) and the two main POV characters spend most of the first three books suffering from the effects of that revenge. Essun chews Albaster out for setting off the rift and I don’t think there’s a single instance of anyone in the books supporting Alabastar’s actions as good or even necessary. From what Inrecall from a recent reread the Yumanese rift specifically is never presented as necessary and just. They needed a large amount of energy released which involved some kind of massive tectonic event, but his decision to do it in a way which destroyed as much of the largely populated empire that oppressed him as possible and very specifically focusing on the facility where he lived rather than doing it, say, in some barely populated corner of Antarctica is never implied to be anything but personal anger from Alabaster. team overhead smash fucked around with this message at 23:37 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 23:32
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team overhead smash posted:Alabaster was definitely driven by revenge but this isn’t his story, Eh, it kinda is? Like, ok, he's deuteragonist or tritagonist but still, he's a big part of the story and he's overall portrayed as heroic and positive if embittered. He's the gandalf of the story, not the Saruman. I'll admit it's been a long time since I read the series (I read it all in 2017 when Stone Sky came out) and parts are kinda vague and muddled in my head in retrospect, though. Apart from the other issues I mentioned above I remember thinking that the end was also kindof . . mixed. Ok, you have a nominally left-wing message here in your story, and it ends with . . . the world being ruled by a class of elite magical overlords? Ok . . It just felt thematically incoherent, like it was trying to make Big Points but ended up tugging itself in a lot of contradictory directions that it didn't really fully explore the implications of. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:41 on May 4, 2022 |
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May 4, 2022 00:39
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:It just felt thematically incoherent, like it was trying to make Big Points but ended up tugging itself in a lot of contradictory directions that it didn't really fully explore the implications of. I felt the same way. For example, I thought the turn when Essun admitted that they needed to continue the enslavement of the node maintainers and even look into how to create more in the third book was an interesting turn after decrying the practice as abominable up to that point, but then the book doesn't really explore that contradiction.
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May 4, 2022 01:18
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Eh, it kinda is? Like, ok, he's deuteragonist or tritagonist but still, he's a big part of the story and he's overall portrayed as heroic and positive if embittered. He's the gandalf of the story, not the Saruman. I'll admit it's been a long time since I read the series (I read it all in 2017 when Stone Sky came out) and parts are kinda vague and muddled in my head in retrospect, though. He’s part of the story, just like every character, but he’s part of Essun’s story and as mentioned before with the protagonist specifically chewing him out and saying she has no sympathy for him dying due to the massive deaths he’s caused, I don’t think he’s presented as a hero. We do understand why he did it and can empathise with him because it goes into his past traumas, but I don’t think anything in the text supports condoning him; in the same way you might understand with and empathise the suffering of a Ukrainian committing war crimes against Russian soldiers or the bullied kid who brings a knife into school, but still understand those actions are wrong. Also I think you may be misremembering the ending as it’s been to long. Nassun raises with Hou that with the seasons ended orogenes are no longer needed and fears a genocide of orogenes by stills. Hou counters with the possibility that orogenes could likewise genocide the stills and rule the world, but focuses on the fact that everyone is going to cooperate for the time being to survive and that there will be a whole range range of choices available so if a Essun cares about how things end up it’s up to her to change people’s mind. If that wasn’t explicit enough there’s the coda where stone Essun awake and says she wants to make the the world a better place. The ending isn’t magical overlords in charge and that’s cool, it’s “You can’t magically kill racism, so become an activist”. Also for me the way that there is no clear real life parallels to Alabaster’s opening of the rift just sets it up for me as part of the fantasy conceit to set up the mid-apocalyptic setting rather than Jemisin trying to go “genocide is good actually” especially when that flies in the face of the rest of her message.
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May 4, 2022 09:10
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