alanajoli: (Default)
Reminder: Tomorrow's guest blog is Alayna Williams, who will have a contest along with her post. Pop back by!

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David Weber (who I've mentioned here before) writes the "Safehold" series, a really excellent set of books (if the first is a representative example) that poses all sorts of questions about religion, faith, gender identity, technology, politics, and the nature of men and kings. It's science fiction, but it feels like high fantasy, in no small part due to the Arthuriana that gets wrapped in. There's a lot to talk about in Off Armageddon Reef, the first novel, alone, and I have a feeling if I were still in college, I'd probably try to see how the book could get worked into a paper. But as I'm a blogger, my musings here are pretty off-the-cuff, far less formal, and deal with just one aspect of the book (until something else comes up that sparks my bloggerly interest).

So I've picked just one thing I've been thinking about as we've been reading the novel (as I mentioned, this is our current family read-aloud at Casa Abbott) to discuss in this entry. The main character of the novel is, arguably, Merlin Athrawes. To give a brief explanation (instead of the detailed one), Merlin is effectively a robot in the pass-for-a-human style who contains the personality and memories of a now-deceased biological human. That human was Nimue Alban. Nimue, as the name would imply, is a female, and in order to be able to accomplish her mission on Safehold, Nimue-as-a-robot took on the role of Merlin, a male (whose form the robot's hardware does, in fact, make anatomically accurate). In many ways, Merlin and Nimue are the same – only Merlin can't think of himself as Nimue (despite remembering to be her, and having her sexual preference, for example). In order to believe that he is who he says he is – who he's become – he has to think of himself as Merlin.

And yet, Nimue is still relevant to the story, because it's Nimue's mission that Merlin is enacting. The circle this forms in the narrative is brilliantly done, and the gender work is really interesting. Nimue was a soldier – a tactics officer – and someone who studied military history and kendo. She has a lot of knowledge that might be considered traditionally in the masculine interest range – and those references crop up in the way she thinks, both as herself and as Merlin. Nimue was also a woman of faith, and that aspect of her personality – and her seeking to redeem the truth – provides as much frame of reference as her military background. As Merlin, she's emotionally attached to the people she's become friends with, even as she knows she has to use them to accomplish her own mission – which she believes is to their betterment as well. So, even while she's Merlin, thinking of herself as male and interacting with the world as a male character, her frame of reference is from her former, female personality.

We talk a lot about "men with boobs" as a female archetype in a lot of SF/F, and I think Nimue is a brilliant example of how not to write a man with boobs type character. Even while she's interacting with the world as her male persona – and sometimes it's easy to just think of Merlin as Merlin, without thinking of him as Nimue – that female identity is providing the framework within which the male persona works. But there's also a potentially interesting comment lurking here – one that got covered in real life by Norah Vincent in her research for her book Self Made Man, and is a trope of those great hero journeys I grew up with in Tamora Pierce's "Song of the Lioness" books. Nimue Alban is easily able to pass for male. Granted, she has what are considered a male skill set and knowledge, in the world of the novel, and she has the advantage of being able to actually have a male body, courtesy of the robot's hardware. But there's never any question, from any of the characters (who do question other aspects of her abilities and knowledge) that she's a man. To me, that says something very interesting about assigned gender identity – that it's more a way of interacting with the world, and of the role that other people expect you to take on, than it is about anatomy, or even personality.

I don't know if I think that's true, but I do think it's an interesting way to present the idea, and I'm having fun pondering it.
alanajoli: (british mythology)
Today was our monthly Viking Saga game, and I love love love how my players are letting me drag legends and fairy tales all together in a very satisfying fashion. Today, they helped Fata Morgana, aka Morgan le Fay, out of being encased in crystal by her former pupil, the nemesis of the PCs. Since one of the PCs used to hang out with Arthur and company, he was none too pleased at helping Morgan. Another was not fond of the idea of aiding a person who had encased Myrddin Ambrosious in crystal (as he's a member of the druidic order that follows in Merlin's footsteps in our cosmology). But, as one of the players said, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend, until they become my enemy." So, I got to have fun playing Morgan as an NPC. She's a great favorite of mine as one of the early bad girls of literature. But the bad-girl aspect isn't what I love about her. It's that she's so wonderfully ambiguous: sure, she raised her son (who she may have had by her own brother, Arthur) to take over Arthur's kingdom. Sure she had a huge grudge against the Pendragons. (And really, given the whole story of Uther and Igraine, who can blame her? Uther was a total jerk.) She may well have been hugely power-hungry, searching for magic greater than she could contain or control. But in several of the stories, she's also one of the women who escorted the fallen Arthur to Avalon, where he would sleep until his wounds could be healed. She's Arthur's antagonist -- until she's his protector.

What does that mean?

I suspect Robert Graves would suggest that she's playing out part of the story of the White Goddess. She's often considered part of a trinity of women (always with Morgause, who is sometimes Mordred's mother instead of Morgan, and sometimes with Nimue or Viviane or Elaine). A look at the Mordred story reflects Graves's depiction of the cycle of the Year King: the new king becomes the lover of the goddess, then must be slain by the king who follows him, who is in turn slain. The king's death is symbolic of the death of the year, and his life, the fertility of his kingdom. Morgan as a goddess figure -- or as a fairy figure, given her French title -- has distinct appeal, and makes her moral complexity, or her amoral standing, that much more interesting.

I'm not big on Morgan-as-hero, because I think casting her as the protagonist against Arthur and co. as the sympathetic figure in the narrative makes her less interesting. But Morgan as priestess of Avalon, as lady of the Tor or the Well (or the Tor and the Well), as the pagan sorceress participating Graves's mythic cycle -- that Morgan fascinates me. The Morgan in the game's cosmology is, as an NPC, less complex... but I've paired her off as a sometimes-consort of Loki. To me, that's like throwing two Tricksters in a cauldron, stirring, and seeing what comes out next.
alanajoli: (british mythology)
It's been a week and a half since I posted? This whole summer thing is wreaking havoc on my blog schedule. (The beach is such a homey place, though... I just can't stay away! Thank goodness for review books that are portable "work" that isn't on my laptop.) The big news is that Serenity Adventures won an Origins Award this weekend! I'm really thrilled -- the competition was very stiff, I thought -- and I wish a huge congrats to editor Jamie Chambers and the other contributors. Good work team!

I've been pondering a number of posts since I was last here, and the one that's been sticking with me is similar to a post I wrote after coming home from Greece and Turkey last year, about alignment. I suspect I recalibrate my spiritual life a little bit every time I come back from a study tour, because I always learn something about myself while I'm away. Sometimes I learn even more when I come back.

When I first went to England as a student on the Myth in Stone tour in 2000, Mark Vecchio advised me that if I wanted to buy a cross necklace for myself, I should look in Glastonbury. ExpandRead more... )
alanajoli: (Into the Reach)
A fun thing happened while I was in Greece--I received an invitation to submit a biography to the French roleplaying site, GROG: Guide du Roliste Galactique. Of course, I was a bit busy to fill out their questionnaire at the time. Yesterday, I finally got back to the site editor and contributed my biography, which he has already translated and placed here. My photo will be up shortly as well. How fun is that?

(I've been instructed to encourage other game writers, artists, designers, etc. to contribute as well. If you're interested, shoot me a note at alanajoli at virgilandbeatrice dot com and I'll forward on the information!)

In other news, the senryu contest on Spacewesterns.com finished up yesterday, so I'm expecting to start reading a lot of great Senryu in the next few days! I'm also working on another short story, which I should have started much earlier, in hopes of finishing it to my satisfaction in time to submit to the Lace and Blade volume 2 open call for Norilana books. I've been reading through the first volume and am very much enjoying the stories--so here's hoping mine will reach the bar that's been set. Given that I've now done a few stories on the Isle of Man, I thought I'd turn to Glastonbury, England, my favorite place in the whole world (despite hefty competition from Ephesus, Naxos, Port St. Erin, South Haven, MI, and the Thimbles). To start heading in the right direction, I've been reading The Avalonians by Patrick Benham, which tells the story of a group of young men and women involved in some of the physchical activities (including the finding of something like a holy grail) at the turn of the 20th Century. My short piece, which I'm calling "The Chalice Girl" for now, is only going to touch on that very tangentially, as it's also going to be part of a piece building into the universe of the Blackstone WIP. ("Don't Let Go" also takes place in that universe. Probably.)

That said, I'd better get back to it!
alanajoli: (padre breen)
Some friends and I are planning a King Arthur plotted Dogs in the Vineyard game. (DitV is a storytelling based system that I haven't played in before, so I can't say much more about it than its name.) Since I actually have done some Arthurian study (I took a tour course in England where we met with Geoffrey Ashe, who is an Arthurian scholar, and with whom I've communicated since), I'm naturally interested in pulling in some of the more obscure stuff that I've learned. Given my love of Glastonbury, England (where Geoffrey lives and where I've now been twice--and would go back at the drop of a hat if it weren't so expensive), I've started drawing on some of the legends I learned there: Joseph of Arimathea built the first-ever Christian church in Glastonbury, it is said. Glastonbury, originally surrounded by water due to the changing coastline (or during certain seasons, or surrounded by fens/marshes rather than sea, depending on the story), is the legendary Isle of Avalon, where Morgan and her priestesses once lived. The combination of those two ideas in one place--early Christians and Celtic mystics--makes for some interesting character ideas using some of the philosophies of Celtic Christianity (that I also picked up in Glastonbury).

All of this brainstorming led me to an interesting idea: like many early churches, might'nt the church at Avalon have received letters from Peter, Paul, or John, who wrote letters to so many of the other early churches, offering guidance? If so, what might those letters have said? And if the Letters to the Avalonians were classified for the Apocrypha, rather than for Scripture itself, what might have happened to that potential book of the Bible?

It all sounds like an Indiana Jones style adventure waiting to happen. Or, alas, something reminiscent of The DaVinci Code. Despite that, I think one day it may surface in my writing projects. That way, I'll have to go back to Glastonbury for research!

"Don't Let Go"
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Alana Joli Abbott

November 2023

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