#i get that they're criticizing shallow surface reads of the story

[fictionadventurer]

Yes, President Snow tried to make the people of Panem focus on Katniss and Peeta's love story to keep them from focusing on the rebellion. But that doesn't mean the love story doesn't matter. The irony at the heart of the Hunger Games trilogy is that the Capitol thought the love story was pointless, but it was actually the entire point all along.

President Snow tried to frame Katniss and Peeta's act of love--trying to die for each other--as something irrational. No sensible person would do anything so stupid and rebellious! They only did it because love puts you out of your right mind! Emotions make you irrational and unpredictable, a danger to yourself and others! Falling in love turns you into a fool--only following the rational ideas of the Capitol will keep you and your families safe from the irrational effects of love.

Unfortunately for him, the audience begins to see that the foolishness of love is wiser than the Capitol's wisdom. A society where emotions can flourish, where people can act selflessly, where children are cared for, enemies are honored (or at least treated as people), and other people are worth dying for, might require more trust, might require you to risk yourself, but it makes for a much more beautiful world than the rational oppression of life under the Capitol's rule.

Snow thought that a love story would prove to the people how important their society was. He thought it could distract from revolution, because he couldn't see the deeper truth.

In a society built upon the principle of kill-or-be-killed, love is the revolution.

#the hunger games #suzanne collins #another post making a slightly different variation of the same point that's been made a thousand times #but i've just seen a few dozen too many takes like #'the capitol tried to distract people with the love story' #'and now people focus on thg's love story instead of the revolution part so we're just like the capitol!' #i get that they're criticizing shallow surface reads of the story #that care about the aesthetic and emotions above any deeper message #it doesn't mean that their phrasing isn't annoying and wrong

[aotopmha]

Chainsaw Man episode 2:

I think the element with the most potential is actually the wierd relationship between Makima and Denji.

Episode 2 introduced what seems to be our core cast, but I think the roller coaster of feelings Denji went through at the start of the episode was the highlight.

Denji has a sense of what good and bad relationships look like, but because he has had a pretty horrible life and few (to no) relationships, the moment he recieves any kind of kindness, any kind of critical thinking in a relationship goes out of the window. He doesn't have much of a sense of nuance for feelings.

Power and Aki are jerks/crazy to him, so they're crazy (and to be fair Power absolutely seems exactly inside as she is on the surface) and he seems to at least understand Aki better after the confrontation with him, but Makima is nice to him once (also because she has boobs), so she's nice, when in truth she is kind of treating him like a dog.

Positive reinforcement via reward: warm clothes, food, nice words.

The most emotionally genuine she seemed was when she hugged him, but even in that scene I got the sense there is a clear cold wall in there and no real genuine warmth behind her actions and Denji isn't seeing any of that.

I read her as super emotionally detatched and that makes sense considering what her job is (and if that's the correct reading I'm curious what made her that way however simple of complex that might might be), but this is also leaning into a stereotype that can be taken into some really annoying directions: women are just cold, manipulative assholes/crazies leading men on.

But it could also go in a way where Makima is treated like a human being by the narrative even if she is manipulative while Denji also learns that chasing boobs is the shallow thing, but also that Makima is actually kinda using him.

There's a scene in episode 2 where Denji feels like even if his dream seems to have come true, there is something missing in his life.

That something is probably not boobs, but a genuine emotional connection with someone and with the info I have 2 episodes in, right now Makima either has a massive wall or nothing in terms of a genuine ability/wish to connect to people emotionally.

Denji is essentially one of the horrible monsters humanity is fighting, but something also tells me Makima's lack of empathy might be separate.

And as said that can be spun in wierd directions (women are cold monsters for not taking care of men's feelings, wierd mysterious creatures whose only purpose is to be manipulative/cruel etc).

But I'm hoping for both complex Denji and complex Makima.

Complex messed up/wierd relationships are one way to get me invested in a story.

And as also said this one has potential and I hope the story does something interesting with it.

#Chainsaw Man #CSM

[jeannereames]

Have you read "Song of Achilles"? What do you think about it?

Overall, I liked it. Unlike some critics, I wasn't much fussed by the modernization of Achilles's relationship with Patroklos because, well, it's a myth in the first place. Myths always undergo manipulation each time they're retold in order to speak to the audience hearing it; she's just the latest in a string. She queered the story for the early 21st Century. I'm cool with that. I might have preferred she not draw the shade on sex scenes (YMMV), and show us a little more clearly why the two boys work as a pair. It seems more assumed than demonstrated because of course, they are. But I want to see why. Again, YMMV.*

That said, I DID have more serious issues with how she handled Achilles's mother Thetis--the same as I have issues with how Mary Renault handled Olympias. There's no evidence (at all) that Thetis disliked Patroklos--far less than the smear campaign the ancient sources took to Olympias (and Hephaistion). So the negativizing of Thetis, the sole major female character outside Briseis, by a female author (in this day and age) troubled me. I'm hardly the first to point it out, and I think Circe was an attempt to silence her critics.

For that matter, I was irritated with Pat Barker's handling of Briseis in The Silence of the Girls--supposedly a retelling of Homer from a feminist perspective that started well and ended in a confused mishmash. Briseis's story was eaten by Achilles’s. Maybe that was her point (the "silencing" of the girls), but she failed to underscore it well enough, imo. Achilles sucked all the air out of the room, as he tends to do--and got away from her.

By contrast, if you want to see a master of subversion, read Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad. It's not perfect, but when it comes to TRULY writing a book about subaltern perspectives on ancient epic, she nailed it. She not only flipped the narrative, but by the end of the book, she'd flipped it AGAIN.

Yes, it's Penelope's story, but Penelope lies (well done!) and by the end, Atwood has exposed that even a "feminist" retelling by centering an elite woman's voice is not that radical. She re-centers the (virtually) unnamed "Handmaids." Brilliant. But Atwood's take is also brutal, not lyrical or romantic, unlike The Song of Achilles or The Silence of the Girls, in places. ;) You won't walk away from Atwood drawing fanart. It's not that sort of book.

(Full disclosure: I've taught Miller (Song), Barker, and Atwood in a class on Greece in historical fiction, so I've done a lot of thinking about the thematic arcs of all three: where they work and where, imo, they fail.)

Anyway, I get that Miller sought to challenge traditional (straight male) readings of Homer with a queer-centered one. I'm all for that. I just found it unfortunate that Thetis was negativized when it wasn't necessary or in the original story.** (New info added below.)

This raises a complicated question about how female authors write female characters in ancient or medieval worlds, even fictional ones. There's some very good recent discussion by female SFF authors, including popular tropes that, while they might seem feminist on the surface...aren't. They can be rather shallow. Anyway, you can run a search for SFWA discussion of the matter.

An even more troubling trend among some female authors of historicals (and historical fantasy for that matter) is the vilifying and/or erasure of female characters. This comes up with Mary Renault, which can be a shock to some of her fans. (Seriously. Think about how she portrays not just Olympias but most women in her Greek historical fiction. It ain't pretty.)

Renault had issues with both gay activism (yes, really) and also with women, including other lesbians. Her attitude is reminiscent of the "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher. Women must become "honorary men" in order to be taken seriously and so they must denigrate other women. Renault's own words doing so are documented in her bios (Sweetman and Zilboorg). Nor has this really gone away among some women in male-dominated professions, unfortunately.

I don't consider Miller to have anywhere near the same issues Renault did. Yet even for writers who consider themselves feminists, it can be tough to recognize JUST how deep these hostile tropes GO. And so they accidentally repeat them.

If you're not familiar with the Bechdel Test, let me recommend it. ;) Film, novel...doesn't matter.

I hope that, even in a novel about a misogynistic society with two male lead protags, I did some justice to the women, especially poor Olympias/Myrtale. That said, were I to start writing the novels NOW (remember, I started them in 1988 when I was 24 years old), I would probably have centered Kleopatra and Kampaspe even more. You can be sure they have important stories, going forward. ;) So do a few other women.

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*To be fair, some readers didn't like that aspect of Alexander and Hephaistion's relationship in Dancing with the Lion: Becoming. They wanted it to Just Happen Already! But I'm allergic to that sort of romantization; it feels like short-circuited characterization. So reader preferences can vary.

** I recently had a chance to chat with a woman who knows Miller, and knows the Iliad extremely well too, and I asked her if she happened to know why Miller handles Thetis the way she did? She said it's because Thetis's entire goal is protect Achilles, and as a goddess, she had the power to do so--and saw Patroklos as very human and in the way. Ironically, that's exactly why Olympias clashes with Hephaistion in Dancing with the Lion. In the little short story "Two Scorpions" available on the website, I made that even blunter. I will say that, with more women in the story, I had the chance to show her protective side towards others at the court (not just Alexandros), that gives her greater dimension.

#Women in historical fiction #women in Greek historical fiction #Madeline Miller #Song of Achilles #Pat Barker #The Silence of the Girls #Margaret Atwood #The Penelopiad #Olympias #Thetis #Kleopatra #Mary Renault #Bechel test #asks